#i had originally watched the first 3 and a half eps then dropped it and didnt watch it again for several months

[lollytea]

Happy birthday to "My name is Hunter." Lives were changed.

[kyouka-supremacy]

I don't get it, is the first season 5 episode going to premiere today at the Anime Expo?

[daughterofluthien]

I’ve seen a lot of opinions going around about That scene—The Titling Scene—and how it differed from canon, and I wanted to offer my two cents.

First off, I was absolutely in the camp of folks initially being mildly disappointed by the way this was adapted. It was sort of an ‘oh. That’s it?’ reaction for me—which makes sense, since the titling scene is THEE scene for me in the original stream. Like, I was anticipating it so much, that it would almost be impossible for me not to be disappointed.

I do think the wording could’ve been stronger—I’m not sure why the changed the line to “do watch your manners towards a noble” rather than just “regardless of your relationship with her, do watch your manners,” unless they were worried that an audience wouldn’t understand the implication/why Percy chose to title her in that moment. But honestly, while it lessens the impact a little, that’s a minor quibble at the end of the day.

The bigger thing that I had an issue with—and what I’ve seen a lot of other folks have issue with as well—is that it isn’t the mic drop moment that it was on stream. Syldor doesn’t back down, he verbally attacks Percy over it instead. And that was… definitely frustrating, on a first watch. However, on a rewatch and some contemplation, here’s a couple thoughts about why I think they made the decision they did, and why I think it was the right one (even if I do still prefer the stream version akskfkkd).

1). Rather than talking over Vex, Percy empowers Vex to defend herself.

look, the titling is an incredible moment. Iconique. *chef’s kiss* Especially in the context of an improvised scene. But in a scripted show I can see how there would be something that might not sit right about having Vex essentially remain passive for the entire encounter.

In stream iirc she talks back to syldor more in the initial conversation, which makes the titling scene Percy backing her up. But in the show, in what I assume was an attempt to both show continuity to vex as a kid trying to gain Syldor’s approval and so that Saundor can reaaaaalllly focus in on the daddy issues stuff, Vex kinda shuts down for the first third of this ep. She reverts to how she was as a kid—where Vax has already yelled at him, she’s still trying to earn his approval. Which means, when it comes to the titling scene, if it played as is on stream, Vex would essentially remain passive the entire time, which… is less than ideal, honestly.

Instead, seeing Syldor berate Percy is the catalyst she needs to stand up to her father—to defend Percy, but also to, finally, defend herself. This is Vex’s arc—it needs to be fully about her an her decisions.

2). The titling is for Vex’s benefit, not Syldor’s.

Obviously, Percy wouldn’t just title anybody to make a point to a shitty dad, so this was very clearly always a gift to Vex. But on stream, in the moment, it does play as if the purpose is mainly to embarrass Syldor. (Which it does, spectacularly and gloriously.)

However, with the title being a complete no sell in the show, that means that the purpose it does have is on Vex—which their follow up conversation proved.

Which, honestly, I can get behind. Fuck Syldor, this was never about him anyways. Who cares what he thinks.

3). Economy of mic-drops

The Feywild arc in campaign 1 occurred over 5 episodes of critical role and nearly 17 hours of gameplay. TLOVM is telling that same story in less than an hour. In order to set up the feywild and Garmelie/Artagan (as well as leave a little time for some breathing room and character moments, after the breakneck pace of the first half of the season), they decided to pack two memorable, fan-favorite Perc’ahlia moments into 30 min.

In order for “My heart is someone else’s” to have the impact that it needed to, the previous mic drop moment needed to set it up, not overshadow it.

(And holy shit did it have an impact. The music, the realization, the determination in her voice. Percy’s lil eyebrow raise reaction shot… Let me tell you, I immediately ascended out of the material plane)

To go back to my original point, this needed to be Vex’s story arc, not Percy’s. Especially in such a short form media, the titling needed to serve her arc of overcoming her insecurities and not being emotionally trapped by the shitty relationships in her past. And I think they definitely adapted the scene in a way that served that purpose.

Do I like the original moment better, still? Yes. Yes I do. But I also really like how they decided to adapt it, changes and all.

[absolutebl]

10 BLs Worth Sticking With Despite the Start

Sometimes I had to really stick with a show despite myself to make it trough. In a few instances, I actually dropped a show and then someone convinced me to try again. 

1. 2gether

It’s not secret that I think GMMTV’s big guns 2gether is overrated. But it tops this list because I think I had to try this BL 6X before finally getting though the first 3 episodes. Honestly, had there been any other new BLs (there wasn’t much back then) I probubly never would have watched 2g. I absolutely loathe the character of Green, such a caricature of predatory gay, not to mention punching down humor on femme. I have real issues with the start of this show. But I actually kinda enjoyed the rest of it. 

2. DNA Says Love You

I really did not like the first episode of this recent Taiwanese drama. I think it has to so with the fact that Amber isn’t introduced until the very end, and he holds this BL down. But even saying that, the first half of this series drags for me. I’m just not into the paranormal investigator aspect, I find it boring. 

3. He’s Coming To Me 

I just remember finding it pretty dull until the two leads get together as adults, and I only ever rewatch the second half. 

4. Oh Boarding House! 

In general Japan and Korea are pretty good on their hooks (they don’t have as much time for fart around with as Thailand). But I wasn’t into this one as it didn’t know if it wanted to be a sitcom or a BL. Once it decided to be a KBL I really enjoyed it, but I doubt I will ever rewatch the first few eps. 

5. Gameboys 

I could not get into the premies of this one. Too close to home in terms of quarantine at the time and also I’ve never been one for online gaming or dating. And I could not see how they would manage all chemistry dynamics with separated characters. They defied the odds, and I was impressed, but it took me a while and it’s not a rewatcher for me. 

6. HIStory 2 Right or Wrong 

An odd one to pick, but I think many are with me that it’s the neglectful parent aspect I found really off putting. I got over it because I like the pair dynamic so much, but it’s still hard to watch a single dad be that much of a deadbeat and still sympathize with him finding love. This is the reason I don’t rec it as much as I normal would for a BL that hits all my buttons (age gap, teacher student, out gay, accepting bi, tiny family). 

7. So Much In Love

One of those Thai pulps I don’t talk about much because its hard to find and not good. Except... I really liked the premise, I enjoyed the leads and the horror elements. It’s on this list because I am glad I gave it a chance and stuck with it. And if it ever got picked up by GaGa I would probubly watch it again. 

8. Ingredients the series

Ooof it’s so SLOOOOOWWWWWWW. But then, I switched off that part of my brain and was like, ahhh.... this is the bubble bath BLs, just relax and enjoy. 

9. Love Sick 

Becha didn’t guess this one? Look, go back and rewatch that first ep. OMG is it lousy. Nothing happens, it’s chaos, there’s too much time spent on other couples. It’s a terrible opener. Fair though, because it didn’t know what it was, or what it was doing yet because it was the one to break that ground in Thailand. 

10. Why R U?

Topping the list. What can I say? I HATED SaifahZon. Like deeply disliked Tommy’s character in the first ep, their dynamic, just everything about them, and originally were to lead-out this show out. I didn’t like it at all until the focus turned to FighterTutor. And honestly it was mostly Zee who won me over. (Those soft soft eyes of his.) Have I come around to SaifahZon? Mostly... I still prefer FIghterTutor tho. 

 Honorable Mention

Secret Crush On You - I basically had to stop/start, fast forwards, finagle my way through the first 6 eps of this show. And some of the rest of it too. It’s too cringey for me, yet the queer rep is so wonderful. The struggle is real.

Triage - it’s airing right now and I never rec a BL I haven’t finished. But I hated the time loop premise going in (I am NOT a fan of Groundhog Day). ALSO I had seen and actively disliked the short it’s based off. ALSO I was never a huge fan of this lead pair. And yet it was just high enough concept and well enough done in a medical setting (my weakness) for me to REALLY TRY... It took me three eps to get into, but now it’s one of my current favorites. I hope they land it well, it’s really pretty special. 

Vietnamese BL in general. Look they don’t really have a system down yet, so they often open a little weak, slow, or awkward. Because this is their style, I kinda always give the a pass on the first few episodes. But we all have to be okay with this if we are going to watch VBL because it doesn’t seem to be changing anytime soon.  

(source) 

I am genuinely curious, what are some of yours? What did you start and then stop? What made you drop it? Why did you pick it back up again? 

[alaffy]

X-Men ’97, Ep. 1x01 – To Me, My X-Men (Spoilers)

I started writing my thoughts on the original series, but I quickly gave that up when I realized that I clearly had some slightly rose-tinted glasses for that show.  It’s a good show, but I remember it being better than it was.  Also, I only watched the first 3 and a half seasons when I was younger.  Doing a rewatch now, I can see that it clearly dropped off in writing around the fourth season. 

But this sequel series?  My God is it fantastic.  And what I love about it is that, instead of keeping it at the same age level as the original series (aimed for older kids/younger teens), the show is more for teens and adults.  The writing on the show is quite a bit more complex and, at times, the show is pretty brutal to watch as they do not hold back during certain events.  Also, this isn’t a show that is to be watched once and be done with.  Like rewatching this first episode…well, I’ll get to this in a minute. 

The first episode is pretty much reintroducing the show.  And it’s kind of set up like the first episode of the original series.  We are told that a year has passed since the events of the series finale.  We find out that the Friends of Humanity are kidnapping Mutants and, in this case, it’s a young mutant named Roberto da Costa.  And Roberto is rescued by the X-Men. 

The first thing I noted in this show is that…the Friends of Humanity were in the original series and they were portrayed as a hate group in the original series, but they never really came across as something too threatening.  Like, in most cases, they were people almost cosplaying a hate group.  But here, they actually felt dangerous. 

The second thing that I noted is how the animation has upped it’s game.  We would see the X-Men use their powers in the original series, but nothing like this.  In the original, it was more they happened to use their powers while fighting, where here they are fighting with their powers.  Specifically, that moment with Cyclops.

The rest of the episode plays out pretty much as expected.  For those who might not be as familiar with all the X-Men, we are given several scenes that highlight the current roster and their powers.  For those who know the X-Men or watched the original, we are given an update on what’s happened since the original finale.  The two main takeaways are that, because the world believes Xavier was assassinated, there’s been kind of a…let’s say people have been a little more tolerant towards mutants (more on this in a second).  The other issue is that Jean and Scott are expecting a baby and are considering leaving the X-Men.

Anyway, Roberto is brought back to the mansion for Roberto’s protection and because Cyclops wants to know if Roberto heard the Friends explain how they got their hands on Sentinel tech.  Roberto manages to run away from the mansion.  Most of the team goes to track him down, while Cyclops and Storm go to speak to Henry Gyrich to see if they can locate where the Sentinel tech is coming from/see if he’s heard anything from the Sentinel creator Bolivar Trask.  Gyrich is currently in jail for the assassination of Xavier.  And I love this whole conversation here, specifically how Gyrich points out that people currently have good will towards Mutants because it’s “fashionable.”  And, let’s face it, he has a point.  Because that’s the reality of the human race, at least in part.  There are people who are generally trying to do better, but there are also people who take on causes because it’s what everyone else is doing or it makes them look good.  Just because people seem to be warming up towards Mutants, doesn’t mean they actually are.

At this point, as it’s clear Gyrich won’t give them information, Jean Grey (who is using Cerebro back at the Mansion) penetrates Gyrich’s mind.  And this next scene, this is what I mean that this is not a show to watch only once.  Jean is suddenly brought into a psychic hellscape that, at the time, clearly foreshadows that something horrible is about to happen.  But what it is, or if the X-Men will stop it from happening if they find Trask, is unknown to the audience at that time.  Well, sort of.  See, the answer is actually in the scene; specifically the line spoken by Cable and the slowed down music in the background, show that Jean (and the audience) is being warned of the events that will happen in episode five.  But, like Jean, we won’t understand until it’s too late.

But to wrap this up.  The X-Men find out where Trask is and, after dropping Roberto and Jubilee back at the mansion, they go and defeat Trask.  And we finally get to see why Storm is considered an Omega Mutant (arguably the best moment in the episode).

Meanwhile, Jubilee discovers that Roberto has been hiding his Mutant powers from his parents.  Clearly, Roberto is taking Jubilee’s place as the gateway character for audience.  The character that’s new to the whole experience so that the writers can explain everything to new audience members.  But what the writers do well here is that, while Roberto’s storyline goes on throughout the season, it’s kind of a C plot.  It’s still important, but it’s not going to be brought up in every episode. 

And, at the end of the episode, Jean and Cyclops get ready to tell the team that they are going to leave.  That plan lasts all about two seconds, as Magento shows up with Xavier’s Last Will and Testament and declares himself the new leader of the X-Men. 

[the-eclectic-wonderer]

Tag someone you want to know AND/OR some of your besties.

I was tagged by @valentinaonthemoon, my sweetest mutual! Thank you!

Favourite colour: warm shades of yellow (think gold yellow or sunglow yellow).

Last song: Dreams by The Cranberries (thank you, Derry Girls!)

Last movie: Anastasia (1997). My brother mentioned he'd never seen it, and I simply had to show it to him. It's as magical as i remember. The last new movie (as in, not a rewatch) I watched was Asteroid City by Wes Anderson, which left such an impression on me I still rant about it regularly with the friend I saw it with. It was an incredible experience!

Currently watching: The Golden Girls! I'm having such a blast - it's hilarious, the girls have amazing chemistry and interactions, and its treatment of 'charged' themes (regarding eg sexuality, gender identity, poverty, race, having/not having children etc) holds up surprisingly well for a show that was made between 1985 and 1992. It's easy to see why it's so well-liked. I'm also watching season 2 of Loki, and enjoying it very much! I haven't really posted anything about it yet because I'm watching with family, and we're quite behind schedule. So no spoilers, please!

Other stuff I watched this year: Oh, dear. I don't remember all of them, but let's see... I rewatched Steven Universe, Steven Universe Future and Brooklyn Nine-Nine in the first few months of the year, but I don't remember watching anything new in particular (although I remember playing a lot of videogames - that's probably why). I caught up with the new season of the lovely Only Murders In The Building just in time to theorize about the last four episodes or so (and this season was so so so good, I think it's become my favourite!), and I watched S2 of Our Flag Means Death as it aired (I still haven't recovered from the ending of Ep. 3, good heavens). A dear friend recommended Derry Girls to me a couple of weeks back; I finished it just a few days ago and loved it to bits. It completely broke my heart and put it back together in such a gentle, caring way - instant favourite. And then, of course, although I haven't talked about it all that much, I've also watched Good Omens, season 2. And then rewatched Season 1. And then rewatched both in Italian, to check out the translation. And then rewatched them both in English, because I missed the original voices. I might have a bit of a problem.

Shows I dropped this year/didn’t finish: I don't recall anything specific this year, but the last season and a half of The Marvelous Mrs Maisel has been hanging above my head for a while. I reached a point in the story where the second-hand embarrassment was so intense I couldn't bear to keep watching, and it's been haunting me ever since. I'd love to get back into it, eventually, when I find the courage.

Currently reading: The Blackwater series, by Michael McDowell. I'm not usually a fan of horror, but the cover art captured my attention, and before I knew it the story had captivated me completely. I'm also re-reading and annotating A Girl's Story (which is a horrible translation of the original title, Mémoire de fille) by Annie Ernaux for my book club. It's a poignant, thought-provoking work, and a truly deserved Nobel prize winner.

Currently listening to: Mr. Hozier decided to drop his new album at precisely the right time to twist the knife into my Good Omens heartbreak, and so it was inevitable I'd end up listening to his stuff a whole lot. Jokes aside, Unreal Unearth is phenomenal and has made me cry a lot of tears so far. Then we have some sparse stuff (Glenn Miller, Queen, Kate Bush) and some rock - mostly Greta van Fleet (Starcatcher) and Voyager (Colours in the Sun and Fearless in Love). The most recent addition to the roster is the new album by Rebecca Sugar, Spiral Bound (Good Morning Afternoon has quickly become a new favourite of mine).

Currently working on: a couple of WIP fanfics, planning for Christmas gifts.

Current obsession: Listen. Listen. If you follow me, you know. You know what my current obsession is. Good Omens has filled my every waking thought since July 28th, 2023 and I have made it everyone's problem for months. (I'm not sorry about it, by the way. i did warn you all.) At this point, I'm guessing this new obsession will sustain me at least until season 3 drops.

This was really fun, thank you @valentinaonthemoon! I honestly can't choose someone to tag, so - if you got this far and would like to tell the world about your interests, please consider this your official invite. And tag me if you do it! Enjoy!

[cthulhuswaifu]

dudes i started watching trigun stampede and having seen like half of the og trigun I have many thoughts!!!

unfortunately i am Bad at articulating my thoughts so I will try to list a couple:

The animation feels like what the og show was supposed to feel, yknow??? like the crusty 90s animation was a huge reason I decided to tap out halfway through bc it feels like they wanted a lot of movement but due to budget or just technological limits they weren't able to and it just looked. not good sometimes. I'm not trying to bash the animation and I'm also not an animator so i have no real idea of what the original production was like or what limits they may or may not have had. However! Putting studio orange on the job was a fuckin stroke of genius bc they know their 3d. and what with the frenetic energy the show should have had, the freedom that 3d animation allows for camera movement and whatnot is what the story deserved. Vash's bugs-bunny style character movements look so much more convincing and energetic (listen i love the of ep 1 crab walk too it was delightfully animated but i think the 3d lets them fully encapsulate that scrambling, frantic energy he carries in action scenes). once again i am not an animator and i have not outlined this at all and I'm absolutely not trying to be some credited critic i am just a Guy.

Subpoint!! the depiction of violence/death/destruction works way better. Once again I'm not going to go after the animators for not having the time/budget/whatever to give the violence and death in the story the weight they should have had. However, it is way more convincing and striking and works better with the tone etc etc i put this in after writing the next two points and my root-beer-fueled sugar high is starting to fade rip

I do miss milly, shes a delight, but i think replacing her character with a more jaded and serious one was the right move for this remake. already the tone is diving into the darker themes of the story and having someone like roberto be the voice of reason between him and Meryl matches the tone of the show better than having the more lighthearted dynamic milly and Meryl had in the original. The original took f o r e v e r to touch on the darker themes of vash's backstory and the overall tone was absolutely more on the quirky, comedic side. This worked well for the dynamic-duo-insurance-girls thing but stampede changing both milly's character AND their careers works way better for what the show is going for. like. if meryl and Roberto were still insurance agents trying to keep a handle on vash, that comedic value would have been totally undermined and had to have been scrapped after episode 3. The tonal dissonace would have been too strong and would have totally killed the mood. Milly is still my girl tho i love her with all my being

I do prefer the slower worldbuilding of the original. I understand with the focus on vash's relationship with his brother instead of the story the original focused on means we need more context for his character and the world the characters live in. But i liked vash being a mystery to both the characters and the watchers! it felt cool to see this goofball of a dude just. let down the facade and make us want to wonder who this guy really is, yknow? but again! as i have said many times! stampede is focused on the darkness in vash's story and the world of trigun so it makes total sense that they introduce vash as a tragic character first! and i love it! i love me a good dark story and instead of the "silly dude with a dark backstory who changes tone at the drop of a hat" character the "guy who has seen some shit and still tries to do good and be kind and funny in spite of it" character just works better there.

Anyway as previously stated i am kind of flagging so ill stop there and I'm sure ill have more thoughts later because I just cant be normal about these things

I think both versions have their merits and drawbacks and I'm not trying to say one is objectively better than the other (even if I do prefer stampede bc I'm a hoe for good animation and dark storytelling) so please do not kill me

i wrote this mess instead of studying for midterms pray 4 me

[agnisleftpec]

i present my stupidly long reactions/opinions post to all of natla. i wrote it all as i watched, and i got more and more words in my head as i went, so it gets long. no i will not be editing this. i am not a review blog, i just have opinions ajhgsfjkf

ep 1 good: -gyatso. i love him so much -overall this was a good enough intro, but not much really stood out to me as good?? it's. kind of a weak intro asjdhgsfh

bad: -fire nation helmets trying to look a little less dopey by adding angles to the eye sockets is stupid af. like i can understand why they might have thought the circle eyes looked dopey, but personally, it felt eery and othering to me, like there aren't people behind those masks. also it's closer to a skull motif than the weird angular half cirlce shape. -aang being able to basically superman fly?? and hover?? it looks really weird, and i also kinda breaks some potential future plots?? like, he can just. hover up into the air and fly away without his staff. and they seemed to have replaced aang's jumping with it. now he just starts hovering. -i dont like that katara doesn't bend aang out of the ice in rage. i dont really care about sokka dropping the blatant sexism, but i still think they should've been fighting about SOMETHING. even without the comparison of their jobs at home, they already had something to bicker about before losing the boat, they should've kept that up. katara's angry bending was such a good way to communicate her character as well as show viewers her raw power and that bending is effected by emotions, i really dont like that they dropped it. -there's a heavy lean into sokka's relationship with aang that's probaly a result of the writers knowing how much the fandom loves sokka lately, but also. it really feels like it's overshadowing katara's role in aang's new life. like, if i hadn't seen the original show, i would assume that the main relationship is aang and sokka from this episode.

overall a servicable intro i guess, but i was. boring. it was really boring asjhgsfh

ep 2 good: -zuko is an artist and they stole his fucking journal im screamin. this is so funny. he's so mad that he lost his fckin diary and aang is using it to figure out his next steps. im just. i love this -actually really liked that waterbending scroll as a gift from gran gran, it makes it a lot more personal and very smoothly sidesteps the original plot for the scroll, which you gotta admit is a lot of screentime that they dont have -sokka trying to impress and relate to suki and looking like a gotdamn fool while doing it. he's fucking smitten. i love this. AND SUKI STARING AT HIM WITH HIS SHIRT OFF LATER. yeah. yeah i like this better than the original episode actually -sokka's dialogue overall is amazing, mostly because he's funny. the funny dialogue is overall pretty good i my opinion. which leads into a bad point: most of the serious and heartfelt dialogue feels pretty unnatural. the actors are overall pretty inexperienced, but the script is doing them no favors

bad: -Lt. Jee has a topknot. how fukcing dare they -they just used "VIP" in a sentence. i dont like the acknowledgment of a latin alphabet. why do they have an acronym for an english phrase using the latin alphabet when we've seen no latin letters anywhere -aang meeting with kyoshi first was fun, but the weird filter they have over the spirit world (?)/the whole scene genuinely makes it hard to look at -NO UNAGI??????? NONE??? NOT A SINGLE GIANT EEL FISH???? -did momo just make a chimpanzee sound. im going. to lose it.

neutral: -zuko and iroh don't know zhao yet… that's fucking wack

a MUCH better episode than the first one, this actually got me excited for stuff

ep 3 good: -love this internal resistence. very cool aspect to explore that i think the main show was missing -CABBAGE MERCHANT -fire nation terrorists in omashu is kind of terrifying. i like it -ok the casting and costume design for the freedom fighters is actually spot on, i love it. also jet's weapon use is so faithful to the original, it's gorgeous -OOOOOOH, sokka's warrior vs engineer, hakoda vs machanist father figure is so good, i love this -THAT FUCKIN LADY WHO JUST STARTED SMACKING ZUKO. im fuckin choking -i did actually really like the fight scene between all the cloths and scaves and stuff, it was short but it was fun. honestly i love every zuko and aang in this episode, it's very good

bad: -did. did they say attitude control on the airship? …did they mean altitiude control…? is attitude a common problem with airships?? (maybe it is, idk shit about air travel terms. mybe attitiude means something else entirely. but i don't think so) -WHy. why are the fire nation spies wearing RED. wh

neutral: -putting teo and the mechanist ("sai" now) in omashu is a pretty decent way to combine plots, but im not sure if i like that it probably wont get aang's grief over his cultural home being changed and partially desstroyed. i always thought that was a super important to aang's character, but also the narrative does have other chances to lean into aang's cultural grief -putting JET in omashu. that's a choice. -Lt. Jee as an informant for zhao… that's wack

side note, this is the point where i really started to notice that the music is… boring. it's super boring. we go from what feels like basically background noise style western orchestral music which really isn't that notable to the credit role remaster, and it's jsut so jarring. have they not been using the og soundtrack?? i can remember hearing the fire nation motif, but like… not much else. might need to go back and listen. what's the point of remastering the soundtrack if you aren't gonna use it?

ep 4 good: -FLOPSY STATUES -im lovin zuko's infiltration thing, it's amusing to watch. but also, maybe a bad point, cuz he's not… very good at it. blue spirit who?? i suppose needinng to talk to people lowers his stealth exponentionally. there's a reason the blue spriit doesn't talk. im leaving this point here cuz im having fun, but it's still got problems -OOOOH they're using this as the iroh captured and zuko choosing to sasve him or find aang, that's clever. the whole "make a choice" thing from that guard was a bit on the nose though. -sokka and katara bonding and chatting about expectations is great. i really like them bonding a lot. HOWEVEER. there is a LOT of focus on sokka's burdens, we haven't once touched on what katara's been doing. this is. an unforseen consequence of removing sokka's (blatant) sexism, isn't it. they cant figure out how to give katara's role the same amount of value without someone to act like it isn't important.

bad: -the implication that sokka is scared of haunted tunnels. why would he be scared, this bitch does not believe in spirit nonsense. unless he does now. natla sokka is supersticious. -i really dont like the mad hatter's tea party vibe from bumi. like, bumi was always off his rocker, but this brand of kooky feels off. -while i like the conversation of soka not trusting katara, i really dont like the seeming personality reversal in the tunnel. it's minor, but it's just so weird to see sokka sasy stuff like "woo love leads the way" without mocking it, and katara beig the one who says that's stupid. -how did they manange to make zuko look older for his flashback. good lord. oh no. -bumi: "you vs me, to the death." im fucking. im so done. i hate this bumi i hate him. i understand him being upset that aang vanished, but he is so fucking mean in this. -ok i. do not like them giving the zhao v zuko agni kai ending to iroh. i really dont like that at all. we lose the point of zhao being a fuckin bastard, about zuko being the type to give mercy (which the show has already thrown out twice now from zuko almost blaasting fire in someone's face after they we on the ground and basically defeated. dont really like that change in character. they added all this awkwardness and these comments about what an honorable soldier shouldn't do, and yet they do this?? dumb), and having iroh defend him with ease. innstead it's replaced with "dont show mercy to earthbenders." ok. -the badgeermoles. sense feelings. and react to them. FEELINGS. im.

neutral: -THE SINGING NOMADS??? i thought this tunnel plto sounded like it could be similar to the cave of two lovers, but i really did not expect to see the singing nomads here. i do love them though -look, i dont care about shipping, but OOF. the poor kataang shippers. they're just throwing out all the kataang scenes but not building up an actual friendship in its place. i'm not a fan

bad episode. did not like this one. there were some goo parts, but overall it was just so disappointing compared to the original. on its own, i supposes it's a servicable episode, but so far, none of the others have really let me down this much in terms of expectations.

ep 5 good -ooooohh. i know this one is going to be controvertial, but i actually love the part where ozai corrects azula in the fact that zuko found the avatar, not zhao, and that he's displaying desireable traits in an heir that she seems to be lacking. like, i wish this came AFTER we had some blatant examples of ozai's favortism towards azula, but i do love the idea that ozai is driving their competition between each other. also that ozai is actually able to be proud of zuko IF he achieves those impossible goals he sets. but we still need more azula favoritism set up. -DID JUNE. FUCK ME, there was so much in two seconds hold on. the western whistle thing. june saying "your dad's kinda cute." she thinks iroh is cute, and she thinks iroh is zuko's dad. im. im fine. -WAN SHI TONG????? WHAT IS HE DOING HERE. my child. i did not expect to see my child in s1. overall, i'm relatively happy with him? wish his face was smaller or the resof him was bigger - he had a lot more poof to his head in the original, in imo a smaller face on the head would help make him look larger in solo shots. he looks pretty scrawny. also the voice is a bit too much old man for my tastes? but i'm picky about this bird. now im just super curious if there will be a library episode if s2 comes, and what that'll look like.

bad: -nothing has exemplified my problems with the changes in this show more than katara not throwing the acorn at aang's head. it's just. her attitude is gone, any whimsy that isn't sokka is gone, and they struggle to meld serious topics with humor. -actual gyatso in the spirit world?? maybe?? first of all, if it is actually gyatso, i dont think they did a good job of prooving that. second, why??? i'm really not a fan of aang actually getting that relief from grief and guilt. guilt is such a huge part of aang's character, i just.. idk, it feels less impactful when he gets actual gyatso telling him its ok instead of learning to manage his guilt on his own, nevere knowing really what gyatso would think og him now, like very other person who loses a loved one. it's just. it feels cheap

neutral -im not sure if i like koh as an actually malicious force in this story. like, it works fine for the narrative presented, but i really liked how koh was in the original, threatening and scary and trying to trick aang into making an expression for snack time, but not actually doing anything but helping aang when asked.

not the best episode, but not the worst. we just did that. it's kind of an in between, so idk if there's much to comment on. overall, im not a huge fan of the plot choices here, but i don't think they're actually bad choices, just not my style.

ep 6 good: -roku: im here to help you with anything you need aang: it has to do with koh roku: …anything but that roku has so much fuckin attitude, i kind of love it -zhao ignoring aang to correct the notetaker guys notes and make he gets his facts straight is both funny and an effective way to show off zhao's ego. also "what are you doing, dont write that down" is makin me think of that one kig who fell of his horse while hunting and said "dont let the historians write about this" and guess what fucking happened -the convo right after was really good imo. aang basically doing a lil test to prove that he and zuko could be friends with their boring old conversation was great. zuko getting mad about compassion is heartbreaking, woohoo. pretty much all around a fun scene, except that last line from aang was a little too on the nose. but at this point, im used to it in this show. -also the journal thing is still great. and i could be totally wrong, but i feel like zuko being super kowledgable about avatar stuff is a fanon thing?? well supported, but i'm pretty sure it doesn't actually come up often how much zuko knows about the past avatars, and fandom kind of took the idea that he MUST know a bunch given his search, and has freuently applied that to aus that turn zuko into this avatar specialist that actuallyhas a lot of info that aang needs. i swear that's a fanon concept, and i kind of love that it's happening here. -Ooohh. omg. the 41st as zuko's crew is DEFINITELY something i've only seen in fanon. the crew NOT KNOWING they were the 41st is completely new, and i honestly adore it.

bad: -not the fuckin mother of faces statue spinning around in his hand like a fuckin loading screen object -zhao yelling "cel - la - brate" like a fuckin party rock song, im. i cant. -blue spirit mask looks plastic. also why'd they make it angrier. i mean, i gujess it doesn't matter, but i dont think it adds anything either. that's a design you shouldn't touch in my opinion, it's too iconic. -the fucking music. the music is so fucking boring. you can't give me one fucking blue spirit motif?? wh. please. i need it -why. why did it take so long to do the whole "i need the avatar alive" and then swords to aang's throat. like. i could deal with that short moment of realization leadinng to a pause, but the actual action of zuko putting his swords to aang's throat feels like it takes forever. the whole shock from the animation was how fuckin immediate zuko's reaction was, how there seemed to be no hesitation from allies with the avatar to betting his life on escape. dont care if they have to speed up the footage, that whole sequence shouldn't have given us time to think. it was too slow from the second zhao told his soldiers to stop. -the agni kai. hm… ok. there's a lot here. at its most basic, i absolutely hate that zuko fought back here, because it feels so incredibly counter to the message of the animated show. like, there's a lot of fuckin weight to zuko's line of "i won't fight you." basically any fanfic can tell you a bunch of different ways this is important. it struck a chord for a reason. zuko fighting back just feels wrong. that said, i don't think it's a god awful scene. it's disappointing and abandons half of the origial meaning, but on its own in the context of the show as we've seen it, it works. we still get the trauma, zuko learns the idea that compassion is weakness, and it's still horrifying in the end. but compared to the original, it does feel like the writers here missed the point of zuko refusing to fight in the original, and that's the most frustrating part.

neutral: -torn on how i feel about zhao tagging along with zuko instead of them being phsycially separate. like, i guess it works, but zhao feels more slimey and less powerful this way. like, i'm not constantly reminded that zhao has more influence and more resources through this partnership. but then again, this episode also kind of solves that issue? i guess it doesn't matter, i just didn't like it. -zuko is a very vocal fighter, and he also makes a good amount of noise during his blue spirit fighting. i guess it doesn't really matter, especially cuz we dont have dante basco's crazy recognizable voice to deal with, but it still feels a bit disappointing for the blue spirit to make noise when we're used to dead silence

i might be going crazy, but i swear i heard some of the original guard grunts from the show when zuko's beating up the guards in front of his cell. i might be crazy, but fuck. ANYWAY. overall i did like this episode. going off the last episode, it still had a lot of plot bits i didn't care for, but overall it's good. yes there are issues, but im honestly more impressed by the things they introduced than i am annoyed with the things they changed. im still thinking about the 41st, like fuck

ep 7

good: -zuko's "ship" blew up!! that's an intersting change, but i think it's a clever one! though i do wonder what will become of zuko's actual ship considering it's fine. my favorite character, alive and well. have fun drowning, zuko. but also, this seems much more brutal to me?? cuz like. jee and iroh were trying to save zuko, and they ended up putting himself in danger in doing so. that's worse than just not being around when danger happened like in the animation, imo. -YUE HAS A FURSONA????????????? -i do love that whole scene of azula putting her foot down and refusing to do more of ozai's dumb little tests of strength. like, maybe not true to her animation arc, but i do like it -honestly the change where katara "wins" the fight with pakku not cuz pakku has a crush on her grandma but because everyone else who watched her figt thought she was badass was really nice. crowd vote says fuck pakku

bad: -OOF THAT FIRST SHOUT OF THE NORTHERN WATER TRIBE. oh that is not good. i haven't mentioned the cgi yet, but this is. oh dear. technically it's eas to miss, but still. -im so sorry, im sure she's lovely, but the first short of yue is so bad, she looks like she does not want to be here at all. i actually startedlaughing out loud wtf -oh i forgot momo existed. but now thtat he's here, he's ugly. i dont like him. -sokka and katara look so fucking pale next to hahn and arnook. i hate it

neutral: -im still neutral about azula and ozai's whole tough love thing. azula's lack of confdence and anger at not feeling good enough really feels like a zuko thing instead of an azula thing. she really doesn't come across in the original as worried at all about how she holds up next to zuko. in a vacuum, i don't think it's a bad choice, but compared to the original it is a jarring shift

overall pretty good. i dont like aang's protective behavior, but i do like that it's showing off some of aang's more negative qualities. we didn't get a bato episode or a intro to the storm episode here, so we haven't really encountered that yet. also im happy katara got to be sort of mad. a little.

ep 8 good: -i do like the early war balloons i think, it feels more reasonable that zhao snuck into the city vs got all the way back to the spirit oasis on komodo rhinnos withou being stopped or followed like they did in the original. -katara mastering waterbending literally without instruction is kind of badass. that whole exchange of "you've found a master haven't you" "yes, it's me" was pretty fun. idk how realistic it is, but like. in the original, she also masteredd waterbending in a matter of days, so. niether are that realistic -i kind of like how fuckin visceral the moon spirit getting stabbed is. like, minor change, doesn't matter, but still. that one shot of the bloody bag with a knife sticking out of it was lovely -ok that's spooky as fuck, the "there is no aang" thing with koizilla. like, the idea that this isn't just aang being possessed or lending his aide, this is him straight up giving up his life to la in that moment -that whole thing about zuko just beig a tool ozai uses to motivate azula was really well done actually. great acting, basically all that fanfic worthy revelation emotion, it was super good. like i was kinda thrown by ozai giving all control around hunter the avatar to zhao after seeming so impressed that zuko found the avatar in the first place, but really, i been played a fool. he doesn't care, he's manipulating azula. this is what the favoritism looks like. yikes. -also obsessed with the visual they talked about with aang/la wandering the world forever in search of a partner they wont find. this new context that koizilla really wasn't just a fuck you to the fire nation, it was meant to be permanent. like, fuck, i love that

bad: -OH THEY GOT RID OF ZHAO GOING TO THE SPIRIT LIBRARY i hate everything. what's the point. they're just gonna nix the library all together. wan shi tong is never coming back. sokka v wan shi tong will never happen. my entire career is over. -kuruk just appearing in a random doorway is wack -koizilla looks bad. baaaaaaaaaaad. where's the glowly lines -ok great yay we got zuko turning his back on zhao and getting attacked, but first of all that meant nothing cuz zuko DID ttry to kill him, zhao just dodge, and second, la should've taken zhao. i just. it's a more satisfying death for him, and also zuko's whole take my hand thing is super fuckin important too. but zuko in this show as a traumatic aversion to compassion, so whatever i guess.

pretty good finale, entertaining and got some good emotion stuff. better than most of the episode's emotions honestly

overall good: -before i speak i need you to look at my icon. scroll down the blog a bit. just take that in. ok? ok. i think zuko kind of carried the story here. overall i was very impressed by his acting, and yes, it was much more awkward and tear-ready than animated zuko, but also that's my fuckin jam. he's out of character in a lot of ways, but all the characters are, and like. lets be fucking real, this is fanon zuko. this is how the majority of fandom characterizes him. -set design was very nice in my opnion. casting choices (minus the water tribe sibs) were amaing visually, maybe no so much in terms of talent but we deal. while the costumes look too new and fee fake, it's not the worst. if you go into this expecting camp and trashy fun, you'll enjoy it. you can't set your standards high -once again, take a scroll through my blog. ok. i love how often aang is just like. clearly dissappointed with zuko's lack of desire to change, how much he wants to connect to zuko but zuko wont stop fuckin hissing and spitting. if aang got to have personality in this script, he'd basically be pointing at zuko like "that's my emotional support enemy," i swear to fuck. i might be pushing it on how much they were really like this in the narrative, but i dont care, im having fun asgjhdfh

bad: -momo and appa both look creepy. they give me realistic pokeon vibes, and not in the detective pikachu type of way. like, detective pikachu is what i was hoping for, something that preserved the cute and still felt semi real. this didn't do that. momo is weirdly top heavy and his eyes scare me, and appa has weird, ever present droopy lips, especially at the corners. it's just uncanny -i dont like how bending looks. it's okay i guess, but it's got so many extra busy particle effects that it feels uncontrolled. i always pictured masterful bending as being really smooth and pretty unnatural looking- smooth water bubbles, fire with weirdly contained flickers and not much smoke, earth without a bunch of crumbling pebblees, air without dust everywhere you dont want it. the wobbly water and earth bending with so many fuckin shards of debris and the firebening with so many sparks is disappointing cuz i would've worldbuilt that to be a lack of mastery thing. anyway. it's fine. -aang is not happy and excitable, and katara isn't angry or sassy. they have the personalities of cardboard boxes. rip.

i actually liked that a lot. lots of good and lots of bad, but overall i had fun and that's what matters. maybe not something i'd rewatch if i didn't have atla brainrot, but not fuckin god awful. the characters were pretty different from their animated counterparts, and that's very frustrating in its own way, and the script was full of poorly written dialogue, and the acting kinda of sucked in a lot of places, but. but. i had fun, and im probably gonna rewatch it, and im gonna enjoy applying these ideas to fanfic and fanart. overall, im glad it exists. it's not going to replace the original, it's not meant to, but it's just trashy fun. i love trashy fun.

[takitakidancetillthesunriseyea]

Ateez MV Teaser Thoughts

The preview starts and ends with the moon, the cromer, and all that important stuff but I’m not feeling big brain enough to deal with that just yet, so I’ll dive right in with Dreamy Day.

First off, seeing them back at the abandoned wearhouse in Universe A gave me so many emotions I thought I wouldn’t have. It’s just so nostalgic. When listening/watching in chronological order that’s always what comes first; the wearhouse. I very much wasn’t expecting it to come up again. Not now.

It (paired with my theory on Crescent 2 and the rest of the MV clips) really got me thinking. Ok, so Dreamy Day is a dream about the wearhouse days. Before their group fell apart, before Halajoong showed up with the cromer, before they lost Yeosang and then got him back, before they witnessed death, before they even entered Universe Z. It really makes sense. If you were lost, and having a hard time, you would dream of when things were good, right?

I ran a few other theories through my head, like maybe it’s Halateez wishing they had a past like that? Or maybe that Feverteez ran away and went back to world A? But it just seems improbable. (At least for Dreamy Day) The teaser is called “The World EP. Fin: Will ‘World A’ Preview” so it’s probably safe to assume it’s about Feverteez not Halateez, and while they could've gone back home at some point, the placement of Crescent 2 and the lyrics of Dreamy Day suggest otherwise. So I’m sticking with that option.

Dreamy Day is Feverteez dreaming of the past. But it’s still just a dream.

The rest of the MV’s could go a completely different direction. Assuming that their unit songs (which I had previously assumed to be lore unrelated) are lore related, there are a handful directions the latter half of the album could go.

1- It could be an anime level flashback explaining their individual pasts, how they met, their emotions, and emphasizing how the past is affecting what they do in Strictland. That would make sense from a story perspective, and a solid chunk of flashback could be justified timeline wise if they’re in a dreamscape.

Going with that theory Matz, iT’s You, and Youth would be about Matz, Woosangsan, and Yungi being/becoming friends. Whereas Everything would be about someone Jongho left behind due to either time travel or depression.

2- It could be them going off and doing their own things. Frankly MATZ, iT’s You, and Youth’s settings still feel fairly dystopian, and Everything’s teaser takes place almost entirely indoors. So it’s possible they’re in Strictland, or perhaps in the future of Universe A.

If they’re still dreaming it would make sense that they’re in different places. It would also explain the more introspective or otherwise nonsensical scenes like this vv

3- It’s more related to Halateez than I originally gave it credit for. Yea it’s “World A” but who says Halateez can’t go to world A? Halajoong did it before, and besides they would’ve had to have traveled there at least once on accident to know how to repeat it.

Actually, I’ve been thinking about that for a while. After learning how to time/universe travel did Halateez ever just drop into other worlds to take a break from their own shitty one? Is that where they learned so much about music and art in a world that outlaws it? On top of that, other than the Real we know almost nothing about Halateez other than that they know how to Time/Universe travel, are fighting the government, and look just like Feverteez.

I only suggest this theory because the setting and characterization in the Youth teaser make me think that it’s Halateez. Yunho is dancing in a room that is reminiscent of his brother’s old room, but at the same time, it’s not that room. The roughness, and desperation really shines through. It reminds me how much those two really had going on in their lives in the lore. Canonically Yunho has lost his brother twice. Like, think about that. Perhaps it’s Feverteez Yungi finally letting loose. Or maybe that whole Fever/Halateez merging into one theory is onto something…

4- It could be Feverteez going home and dealing with their own problems. Learning how things have changed, grieving the past, or perhaps embracing the present.

I mean, what happens if Feverteez really does go home? Everything will be different. They will be different. Even if they return to the same place in the future it will never be the same as it was in the past. Even if Halateez and Feverteez are separate people, their time together will have influenced them. That and the threat of death they faced everyday. Seeing the suffering of others. Feeling their own power and helplessness. Witnessing death. (The Will diaries really held nothing back.)

There’s something beautiful and horrible about coming home a changed person. On one hand, life is good. Home is good. But on the other hand….Somehow coming home after a long time makes you realize all the messed up things about your everyday life you never noticed before. You have a lower tolerance for people’s bullshit when you’ve looked death in the eyes.

At some point in their journey they crossed the point of no return. (*cough* Wonderland *cough*) They will really never be the same people again. There was a point where the people they once were died.

I don’t know unit MV’s will be them going back home, but even still it’s an interesting point to consider…

Do they even have a home? In reality? Outside of their dreamy day?

✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ ✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ ✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧//✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ ✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ ✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧

Anyway, as always feel free to add your opinions. (*^v^*)b I’m just so excited!!! Like, not only are they feeding us good music & good content, but it’s lore heavy too? Ateez never disappoints fr T^T

[steve0discusses]

S5 Ep 15 Pt 2: Don’t Trust Anyone Who Wears a Floor Length Robe Over Their Casuals in Yugioh

Hey, it’s my birthday, so I’m gonna release this early because the rest of today I just have to work like an adult and that’s no fun.

In the first half of this episode we dunked the worlds smallest plane into a lake and so this second half of the episode involved the kids running as far away from their only responsible adults as they could.

Which like...took whole of less than a second for them to peace out and enter mortal danger.

...I’ve never been in a jungle in India but...I have seen the Jungle book many times...and there’s like tigers and stuff in there, right? and tons of monkeys that are hella mean? And freakin snakes? They sing jazz and scat? That’s some terrifying stuff.

Like these city kids have to learn at some point to fear the woods. But they just freakin don’t. And strangely, the most dangerous thing in these woods isn’t even a snake or something, but a human man just being as suspicious as possible lying prone on the ground.

(read more under the cut)

The card cultist happens to have a British accent, because this voice acting team freakin loves to pull out their British accents. It’s not as lowbrow as Valon, but it’s not as...well whatever Bakura is supposed to be. He’s a lot more tame than Bakura’s, but still very British.

I don’t know if this is because British English tends to be taught instead of American sounding English in many parts of India, but, most likely they just wanted to do an accent. And like...he’s an archeologist...and so the stereotype is there...but honestly, the decision of making this guy British gets weirder and weirder as this episode goes on, get ready for it. None of you are ready for what I assume is the very obvious plot twist of this freakin guy.

Catfish of the century, this freakin guy, I’m pretty sure.

Yugi immediately believes this completely out of place white British stranger in the Indian backwoods next to this inaccessible lake and immediately thinks “yes, my Grandfather crash landed in India EXACTLY where I’m standing right now, and now I must save him.”

Thankfully, Yami exists to gently and politely tell Yugi to hella stop.

Also, I like that Yugi has finally stopped wearing his school outfit out of school. But, he is instead wearing a jacket that is so close to his school outfit I honestly couldn’t tell until the end of this episode. It’s like...I think one shade more purple, it has white piping, and his undershirt has a center seam. It’s nice Yugi has 3 versions of the same black sleeveless undershirt, and this show cares enough to show that tiny factoid about Yugi’s closet.

So, because Yugi is a dumbass and Pharaoh has to just sit back and watch this happen so he can say “told you so” later, they follow this random cultist they found in the woods. Much like Hansel and Gretel, we snack on cake crumbs all the way to the witches house, which in this case, is an undiscovered monolith you would have easily seen from outer space.

HMMMMMMMMMM.

And so get ready for this:

Hey guys.

Remember how Alexander the great was buried in a pyramid?

Now because they’re name dropping Alexander, that’s actually kind of helpful, because Alexander the Great’s favorite damn horse in the entire world died while he was at war with India so he named a city after it. It’s believed to be in Punjab, which is in the Northern part of India

Which means we first of all, definitely crossed the tallest mountain range in the world to get here, and also means that we are like...in some really disputed territory of India right now, and it is crazy that these kids went here for a vacation completely unsupervised.

Another fun fact about Alexander is that when he died, it took 6 days for his body to decompose. At the time, they thought it was because he was a God (or in Yugioh’s case, Extremely Cursed) but nowadays historians think it’s because it took him 6 days to fully die. He just wasn’t dead yet. Had to give it a minute and the ancient Babylonians just got way too excited.

Anyway, Alexander super died in Babylon so I don’t know what the hell he’s doing in India. There is a fun spot in History where his body did get dragged to a couple different places, meaning we probably did lose the original Alexander and there’s a lot of people just guessing at where he ended up...but putting him clear up in India sure was a choice when one of his assumed burial sites was literally Egypt, which would be a more fitting location for a Pyramid and a more fitting location for this show.

Especially since Alexander was trying to invent a new race and culture...it seems a little strange he’d be buried in such a massive pyramid, but maybe he got a really, really good pyramid deal from the funeral home when he was like 28 and just figured he’d change it before the time he died at 32.

Which...now that I’m older than 32, how crazy is it that Alexander the Great died at freakin 32? You blink twice and you’re 32. Is history seriously trying to tell me this guy wasn’t like secretly 62? That maybe he just celebrated his 20th for like 20 years in a row as a royal mandate? I just feel like history is playing pranks on me with Alexander.

Anyway, our weird shady new archeologist guy is named Alex and so take that as you will.

I sure hope Alexander the Great was revived to wear khakis and bother children. Guy conquered the world once and was one of history’s Freakin Worst so he does deserve it, but also...it would explain why he thinks it’s normal to wear a Darth Maul robe over your business casual.

Anyway, lets enter the obvious trap pyramid.

Joey just wanted a nice time running around Northern India. He just wanted to eat some yummy chaat and look at some tourist destinations and maybe glance at a Bollywood star or two. But instead he’s gotta deal with spike floors because Yugi couldn’t say no to a cultist.

Also...one of those spikes clearly went through Tea’s feet, right? And she is absolutely fine? Just checking on Tea’s godlike strength and clearly it is still godlike.

Alex gives us a very long explanation of how he went upstairs and Grandpa went downstairs, and there was a door or something so Alex turned back around and Grandpa was gone.

All of those steps were probably plot relevant and I’ll probably forget all about it in 2 episodes.

The thing is Alex...literally thinks he evaporated. Literally thinks that. But how do you disprove it to this freakin guy who like...might have named a city after his horse once and thinks that’s a normal and acceptable thing to do?

and so Joey immediately leaps onto the haunted playing floor.

the way Yugi said this line was sort of hilarious to me so I may cap it. If I remember to do it (I’ve been a little busier lately, with things opening up, as you can tell because my update schedule is in the toilet.)

So, if Joey jumps in...everyone else has to, also.

And we say good bye to Alex and enter the new forest zone, which looks a LOT like the other forest we were just in.

Nice Protoss armor.

We get some hijinks from the local wildlife, which are all cards but real (but not real because we’re in a board game...don’t think about it) and the off brand Sheikah tablets have helpful monsters in them if you touch em.

This season may have been better off as a video game, being honest.

Joey has gone somewhere else, despite going onto the same game tile, and he’s too busy on a mountain range to really help anyone out. So he’s just gonna vibe up here for a bit.

Tea got up after this point and said along the lines of “k, what’s next?” Because mortal danger does not affect her and she fears nothing.

At a beach somewhere, Tea and Tristan spend some quality time together forming a new family with whatever these creatures are.

And Tea’s love of her winged angel comes full circle and now I will suffer this winged orb for the rest of this arc, pretty sure.

Please admire the number of belts on Tea. Her outfit is like max 00′s and I appreciate that. We’ve had a lot of questionable fashion on Yugioh, but they actually dressed Tea pretty on point this arc. Like I often feel like 00′s fashion is hard to define or describe, but it’s Tea right now. That’s it. She did it, it’s right there.

Yugi gets a new flagship card for this arc, and this time it’s Celtic Guardian. Hell why? I feel like his defining card changes every single arc, and they need to like focus and just give him one. In fact, I’m pretty sure it’s still Dark Magician...and maybe the show forgot?

Anyway, if you just got here, this is a link to read the rest:

https://steve0discusses.tumblr.com/tagged/yugioh/chrono

I think I forgot that link in the last recap because yo it’s kind of been a while since I’ve updated, I feel. (well I had a graveyard post and those don’t count really) But, we’re back, we’re still going, slowly but surely.

[incarnateirony]

Hello! :)

This is another question about Walker ratings.

Last week was original series finale, full on Wild West, and the finals came back at 1.028 and .15.

This week finals aren't in, but the prelims 0.971 and .10. That's the third time it's dipped under a million in 5 weeks. it's had prelims at .10 before but they went up to .15 with the finals. Funnily enough the prelims were .20 last week and dropped to .15.

With four weeks left to go, how low is likely?

I can't think this is a cheap show to make, it's got an expensive lead who eats rolex's for breakfast and a large, reasonably known, regular cast. It's not like the normal cast of CW teenage unknowns.

It really is a rubbish show but, will a million keep tuning in to see Jared tic and grimace his way through a shitty script, or can it fall lower?

It's so fucking arrogant of the CW to put this shit out and expect a hit.

The thing about 0.15 is it depends on the thousandths column. 0.15 flat (or like 0.146 that rounds up to 0.15) rounds down to 0.1. 0.151 rounds up to 0.2. To explain that phenomenon with the fast track nationals that are rounded in prelims. (Also, sometimes prelims are off by a few thousandths so read like 0.151 and then may drop to 0.149, or vice verse, so it can shuffle that in finals. That's why they're fast track, not finals)

I already said, when the first episode aired and they rejoiced at the 0.4 rounded up (about 0.35X if I remember in fast track), to enjoy it while it lasted, because "It would be lucky if it didn't round down to 0.1 in its first season"). Not because of typical decline. Typical decline would be about 25%. 33% tops. Not like 66%. Just because I saw it in the cards. And guess what, it happened, and it's not over yet.

The final episode or two may receive a boost just by the nature of promos and push, but between here and there, expect it to continue to fight and fight and fight to round up to 0.2 again. I doubt it will drop BELOW 0.1 flat, but we could all be pleasantly surprised. Expect it to hover in the 0.1-0.15 zone for the rest of the first season run, maybe pulling a few 0.16 if it's lucky depending on what the media weatherdome is like around it on a good day.

It's fall season you'll want to keep an eye on. Premieres tend to launch about where the previous season left off but within a few episodes it's likely to have a minimum 15% decline just from standard annual. And then any further decline from general loss of interest, since this show seems to have a hole in its hull. So basically expect walker to--if it's very lucky--premiere at about 0.13 in fall and then drift down to 0.11 within a few episodes and, from there, do the standard leaky ship effect and probably be airing around 0.08 by spring.

Or it could take a worse track and launch around 0.1 after the first ep or two and then dwindle to something like 0.066, round up to 0.07 by spring.

So basically, where we're at is our current zone to look out for, for most of the rest of the season, with some wobble--down for several, up for end of season. Next season it'll premiere between 0.12-0.14, drift to 0.10-0.11 within a few eps and then drain anywhere to 0.08-0.066/0.07 by spring. If it does any worse than that, god bless its little cowboy spittin' heart.

But this is also what I mean about CW decline in general and its inevitable heat death. Spring and Fall 2020, shows were airing at 0.3 still--SPN, the Flash (~0.4), All American, Batwoman--hell, even Riverdale and Legacies were in zone to round up. to 0.3. Now, everything has crashed through the floor in less than what's considered a full season and is lucky to round up to 0.2, most are in 0.1 range. Their top hits are lucky to hit 0.15x to round up to 0.2. We're talking about a 50% crash on the network which just magically happened to hit around, oh, december, for reasons we'll pretend not to understand.

This is why boycotting all forms of products that ever passed through their hands, even if they're technically licensed to the parent companies now, is important. Live watching, streaming, even watching on syndication networks like TNT, whatever. Cut out it being profitable, quarantine anyone from wanting to do business with them or buy any products cranked through them, cut out the entire reason for it to exist. It's essentially bankrolled by CBS/WB right now as a content vehicle and if it's failing and nobody is buying their stuff, that bankrolling will end, especially with the netflix deal shattered.

I know it doesn't look like it's doing anything at a glance--but say, SPN's franchiseability being cut in more than 1/3 (77-23) lowers how much or how hard streamers barter for it. Same for all their products having dropping value. It makes it dead in the water even for digital distribution profit. Their ad space is barely worth shit these days. Hell, check out their advertisers, find 10 people that all use their products and call bomb them over half a day threatening to cancel service/use and raise their flags. They'll move to greener pastures. Geico, tmobile, sprint, and so on. (Btw liberty and some others also advertise but fun fact, geico manages liberty to some extent so if you bombard both of them it'll cross share--literally geico agents handle liberty accounts for customer service, don't ask how I know this)

The further people spread the word to cut CW out as a shit network for its handling of *all* shows--both live and digital-- the more its heat death will be expedited.

Do you really think it'll live long when its "hit" shows are running 0.07 and its others are running a nice 0.05 that MIGHT round up to 0.1? MIGHT??? how many will start rounding to 0.0 by next year alone even by classic decline, and how many can you expedite into doing so--

Even at its current trajectory unless the CW MAJORLY changes something, there is no way on planet earth it will make it past fall 2023. And that's being generous. So pedal to the metal, kids. Keep it up, don't go "oh it's been long enough", KEEP spreading the word, KEEP turning it off if you see it on friend/family/work TV, KEEP making sure your friends aren't streaming it, KEEP blasting it without giving them free PR, KEEP them off the digital trends as much as you can. There's a slim chance that one could make them close shop after spring 2022. And I definitely see a decent chance of killing it by Spring 2023.

[annaliesegrace]

So I was a little slow to this show, not sure why...Fringe is one of my favorite shows of literally ALL TIME. So I ended up watching the first 10 episode straight through. After the finale I think I'll rewatch again.

In the meantime a couple notes:

It seems clear to me that whatever injections Bryan is getting means he is immune to the Debris. 1) in "Caroline" Finola could sense the Debris did not want them there but Bryan couldn't and 2) the finale where the brain wipe didnt work. But you could also make the argument since Bryan wasn't under the Debris control the wave wouldn't have worked anyway. But more likely 1 since George seemed convinced Bryan's memory would be toast.

JOHN FREAKING NOBLE. That is all.

The Influx guys seemed...concerned maybe about the ball of light. So it seems to be working against them somehow? And about weird grey blob that seemed to be slowly stalking them.

Brill! Another Fringe vet but seemingly on the "good" side?

Oh, Maddox. I sorta thought he was on the good side for a while, dude seems very family oriented

Finola/Bryan. I enjoyed that we just got dropped 3 weeks into their partnership but we don't get any context for why these people to "investigate" aliens stuff. It just feels like something is missing to me. But over the episodes you see them bond as they trust each other more than thier respective governments. The Icirus eps are particularly good, showing how much they've come to lean on each other. And it's interesting to me that most of the second half of 1x10 involves Finola just...believing this strange man she's never met (and a teenage girl) that the reality she's in is wrong. I mean, she must have felt down deep that she knew him or else why continue jumping to fix it?

CaveFinola. What the fresh hell was that? When did that happen? Is Our Finola a clone? Is one of them from a different reality? When did she get suspended?

JOHN NOBLE. God, I love him. He was robbed of an Emmy for his work on Fringe.

Renewal: I am am avid ratings nerd and have had many of my shows taken down (still pissed about Pitch y'all and this year Prodigal Son). This one has me concerned for sure - the ratings are below the NBC average but they've also shown patience with Manifest which I thought was very odd (I expected that to get cancelled 2 seasons ago). But I also don't see NBC going with 2 high concept shows. Maybe they shuffle this to Peacock as an "Original" series there, that seems most likely to me. Or as a summer series. Crossing fingers!

[absolutebl]

This Week in BL

April 2021 Part 3

Being a highly subjective assessment of one tiny corner of the interwebs. 

Ongoing Series - Thai

Second Chance Ep 3 - this is proper YA, they are dealing with actual high school issues, picking uni, first crushes, online dating, etc... We even got a senior prom trope which almost never happens in Thai stuff (just the freshman uni competition variant). Standard plot pacing means PaperFah’s kiss was too early, might indicate we’re moving to uni in the second half of the series? Tropes included: let me feed you, hand hold, black & white striped shirt, floppy drunk & first kiss. 

Y-Destiny Ep 3 - the first MaxNat ep. Such fun to see them playing different characters. This one is enemies to lovers, tutor/student, but it’s using the “poor little rich kid loose cannon” archetype. Nat is doing his best, but it’s leaving me cold. Lots of tropes tho: boyfriend’s closet, floppy drunk, pillow clutch, the loom & water bottle. 

Lovely Writer Ep 8 - solid installment, good use of many tropes. I really like the leads and I’m glad there isn’t much side dish action, SibGene gave us: punish, touch your face, boyfriend claiming, kissing, sleep cuddling, symmetry, rooftop, cheek kiss, hand hold, and pillow clutch. 

Call It What You Want Ep 3-4 - couldn’t find the subs, don’t really care, will watch if it crosses my radar, otherwise I’m just not into it.  

Brothers Ep 11 - the “everyone wants Chol” show continues (but WHY?), he and Tri are cute together, and now I kinda just want Prab to end up with the twins. I’m confused by the teachers, but Boston showed up (from UWMA), and my boys KhunKaow got together (YES!), so I’m ultimately delighted with the episode. 

Fish Upon The Sky Ep 2 - the makeover happened, and we go from cute with glasses and braces to cute without them. (I’m reminded of those 90′s Pygmalion teen movies where the girl has glasses + ponytail and then *GASP* does not and *GASP* she’s HOT. This was the BL version.) Meanwhile, writers better be careful with Pi, he’s getting too tsundere to like. Did you see they gave AJ a 2gether music intro & pick up line? Well, it’s actually his brother JJ who plays Ohm in 2g. I cackled. GMMTV - you so cheeky. 

Ongoing Series - Not Thai 

HIStory 4: Close To You (Taiwan) Ep 5 - half way point. My poor confused babies. It was a really sweet episode... if what happened before hadn’t happened in the way that it had. Also, these boys have a GREAT friendship but are probably the worst advice givers ever. 

Most Peaceful Place (Vietnam) Ep 3 fin - so cute! Our boys confessed and got together. There was an adorable mutual kiss (I love me a mutual, like Ingredients). Afterwards, they actually seemed to communicate with each other about both sex and their relationship. OMG. How original for BL! This was the last episode, so the series is short, but I still enjoyed it very much. RECOMMENDED. 

My Lascivious Boss (Vietnam) Ep 1-2 - oh boy this one is rough, we started out with homophobia child abuse and moved on to family drama + drunken dub-con one night stand. But production values and subs are better than normal for Vietnam (You Are My Boy levels) + our queer babies are out & proud + it’s higher heat + I’m weak. So I’m watching. 

Word of Honor (China) Ep 25-27 - honestly not much happened, lots of back story. Things are looking dire for the ghosts unless they can turn the Scorpion (I LOVE HIM, he’s my precious deadly baby). Don’t know how they managed to make loosing a battle with an immortal sword god ex-friend cute... but they did. Did some calculations and at 36 eps, mathematically speaking, ep 30 will be the equivalent of a standard BL ep 11. Should I be scared for next week? 

Nobleman Ryu’s Wedding (Korea) Ep 1-2 - it’s so effing adorbs, soft bois do old fashioned tropes like arranged marriage + evil stepsisters meets the more modern fake relationship + secret identity in a surprisingly comfortable mix. It launched with baby is a floppy drunk, forced proximity, performative I saw you feed him, and some fun gay panic. It’s a lot lighter and faster paced than I was expecting, but this is Korea so I don’t know why I’m surprised. 

Stand Alones 

K-pop band OnlyOneOf dropped a new MV that is basically BL bait, using many of the tropes we know and love. I promise I’m not trying to lure anyone into K-pop I just thought it was interesting how consciously they’re yaoi dipping. 

Spin-off We Best Love Fighting Mr. 2nd, Shou Zhen | the Only Love Letter Once Written (SERIOUSLY WITH THE TITLES TAIWAN?) anyway there’s a something or other 25 minutes featuring Pei Shou Yi and his boy that aired Friday. It’s about 10 minutes of reboot footage with 15 min of new content, mostly set in the past. It entirely rests on Chih Tian Shih’s acting, fortunately for us he’s great. However, it doesn’t substantially change or add to these characters’ arcs from the finale of WBL season 2. I don’t know if there will be more or if this was just an extra footage fan service. 

COLOR RUSH GOT ITS MOVIE!!! Okay this is almost the tipping point for me to get Viki Standard. It’s listed at 1:56 minutes long but the original series had only c.120 running time - that is a lot of new content. Although i was disappointed by To My Star’s movie I loved Wish You’s, so I am hoping Color Rush got Wish You level treatment. That said, I feel Color Rush the series is damn near perfect already, hard to improve on perfection. 

Breaking News

Close Friend the series got an updated trailer featuring MaxNat (no subs) so if you like them in Y-Destiny or in Why R U get ready for them to play different characters again, this time for a sports romance segment. Like Y-Destiny, Close Friend looks to be another series of vignettes (Original trailer) coming April 22. 

2gether the movie (Thai trailer) was intended release April 22 but is now postponed due to a surge in C19 cases in Thailand.

Tell the World I Love You, a Thai BL movie that was supposed to release last week, is similarly delayed.  

My Ride has been postponed indefinitely with no airing date. 

The Miracle of Teddy Bear got a teaser vid, no eng subs. 

Gossip

Thai BL actors Nanon (Bad Buddy), Yoon (YYY), and Mark Siwat (LBC, Bite Me) have tested positive for C19. Press releases stated they’re fine, tho filming has paused fore their various projects, obvs. (No word on whether Nanon’s current project was Bad Buddy or not, although it seems likely given his recent Arm Share episode.) 

Next Week Looks Like This:

Some shows may be listed later than actual air date for International accessibility reasons.

Upcoming 2021 BL master post here.

Links to watch are provided when possible, ask in a comment if I missed something.

[blee-bleep]

Though I disagree vehemently about your take I'm also very curious of your arguments for why you think Akko is such a bad character?

Anon, you have no idea what you just fucking asked of me. Time for a review! This is going to be hella’ long. 

Vanilla Character that insists that she has personality

So the one thing I’m going to start off with is; The Relatable/Vanilla Protagonist Syndrome. This is the syndrome that is used for most main characters in order to have a clean-slate character that is basically the audience in order to promote the world-building in the series by having them absolutely no clue of what is the world around them. That is what Akko exactly is, and that is what Trigger abuses her out of. 

Little Witch Academia is an anime that focuses solely on world-building, so much so that they’re willing to pile over their characters in order to show what magic can do. 

(And apparently for Trigger, world-building also means learning who the author of a 200-yo Twilight spinoff book is and who was Holbrooke’s dad)

But the point is, the anime is a pile of boring trash fire that focuses on world-building, even from its original exposition of the OVA. It uses the pattern of ‘theme/problem of the week’ in half of the series with arcs going nowhere for a while and suddenly rushes an epiphany in the last few episodes. *cough ep 15*

The point with world-building serialization is that it needs a way to be promoted, and what way for it to promote is to get Akko to fuck around with it. As her job as the protag, that’s exactly what she does for more than half of the series. She’s like a stretchy character that is carried by the plot with gross insistence from the show that she has character (which is being stubborn and clumsy that is written off as ‘passionate’).

What’s worse is Trigger has all these ideas yet none of them are polished to its fullest (like the political divide between witches and modern government) or is overlapped by some bullshit to add because Japan. (seriously, a hunting-themed episode with cool lore, and yet a third of the episode is all about robots and building it? What the fuck?)

See, that’s why I think Akko is a horribly written character, not her character itself (if that were the case then I would’ve ditched the show the first episode) but because how she’s executed with it for the show. She’s constantly pulled by different bullshit the show comes up and makes her pull the answers the episode needs out of thin fucking air just because the writers said ‘fuck you’ to development and that they need to end the problem at some point right?

If characters can’t be tied correctly to the worldbuilding then there’s a chance that the character themselves would break, because it just can’t often work with what you’ve already placed in the previous episodes you’ve set up in the first place. Arcs overlap with each other and LWA doesn’t do shit for that until it needs a banging climax. 

Akko is constantly renewed and she learns nothing from what she learned (or at least hints of it), except for the metamorphosis bullshit and Shiny Rod. Which brings me to my next point on why Akko is such a horrible character.

Shiny Rod is a Leech

This thing is basically the plot device that Akko is so tied to. If there’s ever an episode where it solely focuses on Akko herself, it’s often related to either Shiny Rod or Chariot du Nord, which is the shittiest way to limit a character with so much exposition with everything the series has thrown at her. The only other way the series doesn’t do this to her is Diana in episode 12, but it isn’t even focused on her, it’s focused on the cabbage and her Draco Malfoy syndrome.

Anyways, were an episode be connected to Akko in some way, it’s always limiting to her duty as the holder of the Shiny Rod and the occasional situation from Chariot. Not from her friends, who she clearly relates to and has more history with, but with the Shiny Rod and Chariot.

The series lazily signs this as Akko’s resolution to her character by the last episode (FUCK THAT) and does nothing else with her relationship with other characters outside of Diana and Chariot. Honestly, you’d expect that after going through Sucy’s mind and visiting Lotte’s hometown, she would’ve grown as a better character and more than being a two-dimensional ‘chosen-one’ character who only gets an episode if it focuses on the plot-device that pulled her in the magical world in the first place. 

But no, Trigger is still insisting pies, weird shops, and other boring stuff needs to be shown for the series to make it interesting, and dumps the idea to the next. An arc is never properly made for all the shit they let Akko go through because the series is so fast-paced in the wrong places. And when it does focus on what is important (more important than finding about Nightfall’s author), it’s usually done spontaneously thus eliminating the suppose suspense that the single important thing is supposed to do *I HATE EPISODE 15 WHAT THE FUCK*

The point is, Akko is just a ‘believing heart’. A holder of Shiny Rod, who managed to get under Chariot without her knowing. It’s like she’s Midoriya (My Hero Academia) but much watered down and if you take that away from her, she has nothing, when out of all the stuff she could’ve had.

What LWA’s writers hadn’t realized is that what they actually wrote for Akko is what could’ve been her focus but Trigger insists for the world-building theme is that Akko’s arc should only come in the climax and the filler episodes are for her friends because you know, it won’t be more interesting that way and now they have a main protagonist that’s actually interesting beyond their design and suppose-personality. 

Thus I’m next to my last bullshit:

Akko, the Wasted Potential™

I recently rewatched Citrus lately, and though the show is much narrow than LWA’s world of magic, I realized what actually makes it better than it in ways that the latter fails. And it’s their protagonist.

I know you guys will trash about Yuzu being a simp and all, and I absolutely agree with that, but what makes Yuzu better than Akko is not because she’s more down-to-earth, but she has a three-dimensional mindset, a mindset which is the very thing kept away from Akko. 

While Yuzu may not have been pushed into a world of magic by the neck and gets dragged by the plot as violently as Akko (and the two very different themes of the two shows of course), but if you pull those away, their passion are nearly built the same. What differs them both is that Yuzu actually acts out what she needs to do and builds a steady relationship with the other characters around her, even if it’s very subtle and small. (Like, Harumin being her wicked hot sidekick? God yes, top-tier Gyaru)

Akko, on the other hand, literally goes into one of her best friend’s mind in a poison-induced coma and gets shoved into her other best friend’s culture by visiting her hometown. You might think she’d grow from that and realize what it takes to be a better character, right? WRONG.

Of course, Trigger uses these things as filler episodes and nothing more. It doesn’t reflect on Akko’s character because she’s not allowed to think like it should. Though the show would insist she has personality, it does the opposite when Akko’s only character is only used as ‘believing heart’ for the Shiny Rod and nothing much else, because the only times when they do get her a new attitude is dropped off right after.

It would’ve been cool if they dropped the world-building theme for a bit and focus on how they should make the characters much more interesting than having their personalities as the root problems of episodes. 

When I first watched LWA, I had so much more expectation for the characters themselves, especially Amanda O’Neill after her introduction in episode 3. But came episode 5 and then she… didn’t really matter that much despite being in half of the episode. And she didn’t have another one not until 11 episodes later. Imagine making and hyping up such a unique character and barely giving her screentime of three episodes! That’s one of the grossest things you can do in baiting lesbians, Trigger! 

And it doesn’t stop at Amanda; it applies to almost every other character. Chariot is the pink-print disappointment of a hyped character that didn’t have enough time. She’s a plot-device character that everyone was anticipating but she’s barely given the after of a shitty episode 14 (that has another completely different problem altogether). Episode 15 was literally the worst you could’ve done to make a twist because a) the development leading to that revelation was undercooked, and especially shitty because the show basically used Croix as a plot device, b) it’s done nearly towards the end of the series so the timing for her hype was weirdly placed, and c) Chariot’s personality from that episode is being used repeatedly just to let Akko become a sitting duck. 

So yeah, Trigger was so focused on the concept of world-building and making magic look as interesting as possible that the idea that maybe the characters would flat-out look bleak was not in their cone of vision. Akko was fundamentally a boring protagonist because she keeps getting pulled apart and has not ingrained anything in that, and to rub salt into the wound, she becomes so used to it that when Croix set her up with the Wagandea trap, Chariot has to intervene and at the cost of her flight powers, which does not help their characters one bit.

Akko is a shitty protagonist Trigger shredded apart just for their sake of world-building and she has learned nothing from what the show has thrown at her because the writers didn’t think she needed it, because, in the first place, it’s not about her. It’s about the Shiny Rod and completing Chariot’s story (which is half-assed in its own way). Lord knows how they botched her to the point she’s blank. She’s nothing more than a ‘believing heart’ and if Trigger just keeps there, that’s forever what she is. And that, in itself, is why I think Akko is a horrible character.

[cluz1babe]

*** Episode 2 Chapter 4 (STSF) ***

Dean leaned back in the booth. “Since I have you here, can I ask you something?”

“I get the feeling you’re gonna ask me more than something.”

He smirked and continued, “Do you trust me?”

“That’s kind of...” She paused, “Yeah.”

“Why don’t you trust my brother?”

“Sam didn’t tell you?” She shifted and Dean could see the discomfort in her face. “We tried to— I tried to connect with him.”

“It didn’t turn out well.”

“What happened?”

“I saw things I probably shouldn’t have. Instead of those thoughts and feelings flowing back and forth between us, it was all coming from him and going into me. Couldn’t control it.”

“What’d you see?”

She closed her eyes and focused her breathing, bringing it all back to her memory. “There was this person—a man. No, not a man. He had these yellow eyes."

“You saw Azazel. Did you see what he did?”

“No, but I tasted it.”

“And the other times.”

"And everything else."

“There was so much. There was Hell."

"Then almost like he felt…nothing"

“…and he did things… I can’t really judge him based on those actions. And there were a few beautiful things."

“Did you see Lucifer?” Dean asked.

“Yes. He was beautiful.”

“Beautiful?”

Y/N thought of his radiant grace. “His true form was beautiful, but I could also feel the terror. The fact that he was beautiful is no comparison to that feeling.” She thought for a moment. “There were two others in the cage. One was an angel, but don’t know who the other was.”

“Yeah… His name was Adam.”

“Who was he?”

“Our brother. We were related through dad. Michael used him as a vessel and they ended up in the cage with Sam and Lucifer.”

“Oh...” Y/N tried to find anything else to look at. Why hadn’t they told her about any of this?

“I don’t feel like talkin’ about it right now.”

I guess that’s fair, considering I’ve only known them two and a half weeks, she thought.

“What about Cas? Why have you been avoiding him?” Dean questioned.

“I don’t know. I just don’t feel right around him.”

Dean thinks about it for a moment. “Let’s start with something small about you.”

“As in?”

“What’s your last name?

Y/N rolled her eyes. “How many times do I need to have this conversation before you believe me? I don’t know. Or I don’t have one... It’s difficult to find that information without an official document. I wasn’t born in a hospital.”

“You sayin’ you don’t know who your parents are?”

She sighed, “Actually, I don’t care.”

“How can you not care?”

“They decided to check out early and tried to take me with them. That’s how.”

This revelation was unexpected and Dean didn’t know what to say.

“Look, I don’t know anything relevant to my life before 1995.” She continued. "Can we have fun now?”

“Alright, fine. You tell me what you want to tell me.”

“I was raised in a group home."

"Sort of. Someone saved me from my parents' death trap.”

When his senses returned, he prodded her for more. “How old are you?” “I don’t know exactly how old I am, but I was somewhere between 3 and 5 in 1995. Stopped aging in 2016, I think. At least, enough to be noticeable.”

“So you’re in your 30s?”

Y/N shrugged, “Best guess. Only it’s not that simple. There are feelings, thoughts, languages...like memories, in my head. Stuff there's no way I would know if I’m only in my thirties. I often question if what I remember is real or if the other stuff is.”

“What are some of those memories?”

“Actually sounds like you might have a lot in common with Cas.”

"Do you remember what I showed you?” Y/N asked.

“Nothing specific. It all runs together like—“

“Indecipherable thoughts strung together.”

"Within an acid trip.”

"Yeah", she agreed.

Dean swallowed, "Just thinkin' about it makes me want another drink."

“Tell me something about you that know one knows.”

“Sam is the only person who knows almost everything about me and the things he doesn’t know are way too private to be telling anyone else.”

“So tell me something almost no one knows about you.” Y/N pressed after too many drinks.

“I had a daughter.”

Y/N stopped completely, and stared at Dean. “Had? What happened?”

“She was killed.”

“I’m sorry.”

“That’s not the worst part.”

Dumbfounded, Y/N had to ask, “What could make that worse?”

“Sam’s the one who killed her.”

Y/N’s eyes were fixed to Dean’s trying to figure out if he was telling some morbid joke that she didn’t understand. “H-how—?”

“She was trying to kill me.”

Y/N was trying to imagine it in her head. Was she a toddler? 8? 13? Why was she trying to kill him? Maybe it was a possession? That doesn’t seem right. These guys can handle a possession, easily. Plus, they have an angel on their side. “I-I’m sorry.” She didn’t know what else to say.

“I only knew her for a day. I slept with her completely non-pregnant mom. Three days later, she looked like she was 15 years old. Trying to kill me to be accepted into her tribe.”

The more he talked, the more confused Y/N felt, until he told her the full story.

There was a long silence before she finally spoke again.

“Shots!” She blurted out and left her third beer at the table. This conversation was making her uncomfortable. She wasn’t expecting someone like Dean to drop a bomb like that. She slid out of her side in the booth, as quickly as possible.

The band on stage started playing a cover of Led Zeppelin’s Dancing Days and an older gentleman at the bar grabbed Y/N’s hand. At first, Dean thought he was going to have to step in, but She went with him. He was leading her out to the floor in front the stage and started dancing. At first, she laughed, but the man insisted by continuing his dancing. She finally relented and began dancing with him.

There was a crooked smile on Dean’s face. He hadn’t seen her like this before. It was cute. He took a moment watching before he started to feel a pang of envy. He wanted to dance with her. Closer than this man was, though.

However, when Y/N turned to look at him, there was something about her that reminded him of Lisa. There was a different pang in his chest, and his smile was gone. What am I doing here with Y/N? She’s at least 10 years younger. Maybe 12.

When the song was over, She and Dean were laughing again. Maybe the liquor was helping him forget Lisa again. His phone buzzed and he checked it. He made a slight grin upon seeing the message.

“Your brother wondering what we’re up to?”

“No.”

“Castiel?”

It buzzed again. Same reaction. “Definitely not”, he said.

“Ah, you’re talking to a woman.”

“It’s a dating app. Sometimes I get random messages.” Another buzz. “This one’s a picture.”

“Ooh! Let me see.”

“No. When someone shares a picture, you keep it safe and secret. Hidden to the rest of the world. It’s the respectful thing to do.”

“Ask her if I can see it.”

“Why would I do that?” Dean asked, perplexed and also intrigued by the idea.

“You interrupted fun drinking and sharing time by bringing another woman. Even if it is via smartphone. I’d like to know who else it sitting at this table and what they have goin’ on. — Be sure to let her know I’m also into women.”

"Lookin' for a threesome?”

"Why not?”

After giving her a devilish smile, he sends an ask the other woman he's messaging. Dean then leaned in close to Y/N, placed his hand on her thigh, making sure his lips were close to her ear so she could hear him. "Are you trying hard to be naughty or are you just trouble?”

"I'm trouble all the time. Naughty on the side, and nasty late at night." She caught her dumb line and chalked it up to the alcohol. They both giggled. "I'm sorry. I've never been good with my words, especially when I'm tryin' to flirt.”

"It's okay. Maybe I can teach you." Dean caught her lips with his and the kiss quickly became heated, with his hand traveling up her leg and to her breast. Her hand was grazing his crotch, feeling him getting hard. Even right here in front of everyone, he might screw her. He couldn't understand this desire to be inside of her so badly. When his phone buzzed in a reply, he handed Y/N his phone.

She looked at him, impressed. “Wow. Not bad.”

“Yeah, yeah. I don’t get it, though.”

“What?”

“The lack of hair. One, I thought that was over by 2010. Two, I just don’t feel that comfortable with it.”

Y/N shrugged, “So don‘t fuck her.”

“Easier said than done.”

She scoffed, “Why does a woman’s personal choice about her body hair bother you at all?”

“Makes me feel like a sex offender.”

“Sounds like your personal problem.”

“Well, also her age.”

“What’s wrong with her age?” Y/N inquired.

“Too young.”

“Too young?”

“Too young. I need to find someone my own age and stop runnin’ around, you know?” Dean looked off into the distance.

“Settle down? You?”

“Yeah.”

Y/N laughed at him and replied with a smile, “Sure.”

*** EPISODE 1 ***

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

Part One - Episode Two

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2 

CHAPTER 3

PLAYLIST Ep 2 Ch 1-4

EXTRAS:

AO3

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

*** Strong Tongue and Slender Fingers *** (Here and AO3)

*** Alt Strong Tongue and Slender Fingers Smut Scenes *** (Here and AO3)

KLEE (Original Version) (Currently only on AO3)

Alt KLEE Smut (Currently only on AO3)

[doomedandstoned]

Prog-Doom Trio APE VERMIN Blast New EP, 'Arctic Noise’

~Doomed & Stoned Debuts~

By Billy Goate

Album Art by Steven Yoyada

One of the most impressive release years on record was 2018, when all the big dogs of doom dropped new albums. It was a tough year for a fledgling band to make its big splash, but somehow APE VERMIN made us all turn around and take notice, birthing a massive full-length debut 'Sonic Monolith' (2018) -- still a favorite among doomers. Now, we herald the return of the North Carolina heavyweights with an extended play record, 'Arctic Noise' (2021).

Having already crossed the 2-3 year threshold that seems to either make or break many a promising band, Ape Vermin seem here to stay as they near a half-decade together. Originating in 2017, Brett Lee (guitar, vox), William Deal (bass), and Charlie Burleson (drums) dub their style progressive doom. Through firmly grounded to the storied tradition of deep, reverberating doom, these guys are explorers who like ancient man simply are searching for new horizons.

“Our records are stepping stones for us,” frontman Brett Lee states. “We put our heart and soul into them and where Sonic Monolith had a very drone-type feel with an avalanche of groove, this new EP is a little more over the edge, and more melodic at times. We wanted this EP to represent the celebration of echo, death, and rebirth.”

Based in the small town of Valdese with barely 5,000 souls to speak of and nestled near the Catawba River 'neath the looming mountains, Ape Vermin have developed a club weilding style that's also surprisingly spiritual. Their bio depicts their artful style as comp[ose of "juddering riffs, thundering drums and otherworldly concepts that underpin the sheer mania of their music, along with hypnotic riffs and nimble fretwork" which gives"genuine virtuosity to the sonic vistas they create." That, my beloved Doomers & Stoners, I can firmly endorse.

And now to the record before us. We first encounter on Arctic Noise a song called "Megaliths Of Echo." Warping pedal effects and feedback are interrupted by a declamatory guitar lead accented by bass and drums, establishing our main theme. If you listen carefully, a story is being told in the music alone. Chugging riffage erupts with a stampede of rhythm bringing us caveman-like grunting, "Arctic Drone! Asteroid Explode! Shadow! Behold! Echo! Unfold! Astral Fate, Colossus Awake!"

Something momentus has happened, and suddenly the mood shifts down to a Cathedralesque riff that reminds me of that chilling moment on "Tower of Silence" when Lee Dorian announced, "The circle of time has stopped...sun no longer shines." And we're but five minutes into this gigantic near 17 minute slab of ice core.

Fire in the arctic! To celebrate this guilt. We've been surrounded, By the ice! We've killed the martyr, to set free this realm. We've been surrounded, By the ice!

Fire in the arctic! We've been surrounded! We've killed the martyr! The stone has fallen!

It's clear that someone's doom has come. For a moment, you can see it in your mind's eye, perhaps a churning in the gut, as the Neanderthal DNA still abiding inside has a sudden flashback to this momentous day in prehistory. What is happening? No one knows. Confusion abounds. All one can do is stand, watch in awe, and contemplate their fate.

We fade in the end, You've been holding the earth, We've been mining the sun, You will fade in the end.

I talked last night to frontman Brett Lee, who shared: "These songs were written during an intense emotional period." You can see the lyrics both describing some long ago fantastic calamity and also doubling as a metaphor for the bewilderment that comes with change and uncertainty, which all of us know far too well in recent days due to pandemic pandemonium.

Open the door, To find reason to kill, Locked up inside, For 10,000 years.

Something is encased in ice, and thawing. An ancient spirit lies within with the raw instinct for survival. It grabs us in our weakest moments and shouts, "Live, god damn, you, live!" The emotion laden writhing of the axeman seems to stir up such sentiment as I listen. Then a reminder of my own mortality.

We fade in the end, We echo.

We have such a short time to live. Our time is now. Let's attack it with the same uncouth gusto of our forebears, who struggled to survive in the ice and snow. The words of Led Zeppelin's "Immigrant Song" comes to mind in these closing minutes:

We come from the land of the ice and snow From the midnight sun where the hot springs flow The hammer of the gods Will drive our ships to new lands To fight the horde, sing and cry Valhalla, I am coming

Ancient Ruin takes the stage next, with a Near Eastern sounding motif with an attractive hook accompanied by tribal beat and voices singing in Forming The Void like harmony, "Orion." Following this is a vicious drum dominant slog and once again, we hear from our gruff caveman, who exclaims:

Fading out, Cosmic temple Riding out of this hell fear thy brother, meet thy maker Feel the darkness in my soul.

It's clear a religious ritual of some sort is underway, perhaps in response to the inexplicable disaster of the opening number.

We finish our adventure with the namesake track, Arctic Noise, which could very well serve as a Part B to the previous song. The riffage here seems more curious and wandering. A tale is told 'round a cave sheltered camp fire as cold, vicious winds blow about.

Arctic samurai, Astral vision May the arc of life BURN! Ancient avalanche echo All hail noise

I am the wretch I am the fiend Out of the void and in the machine I am the failure I am the one Out of the rapture and into the sun.

A searing solo breaks through that reminded me of one we'd hear on the first High on Fire record, only it begins feeling kind of wobbly and wounded, as if in pain. It quickly becomes seized by adrenaline and expresses itself in a confident, warm-blooded tone. I haven't said enough good things about the drumming so far, but it really shines in the second half of this song, and of course William Deal's basswork is as hearty as ever. The song ends on a cliffhanger, as if to say: "To be continued."

"I leave a lot of imagination in the lyrics," Brett told me, but dispels any notion that this is thematically linked to their debut LP, 'Sonic Monolith' (2021). He ended our conversation with an intriguing footnote: "Although deep in the lyrics in the debut album and also this E.P may you unlock what is to come next!"

Next did you say? That's something to look forward to, for damn sure! What better time than now to become a fan of Ape Vermin and revel in their dirty, gritty doom and fuzz-loaded stoner vibe!

I would be remiss were I to compliment the extraordinary album art by Steven Yoyada (who also penned the remarkable cover for our recent Doomed & Stoned in Denver compilation). Gaze upon this moment frozen in fantasy and you'll discover that it, too, has captured something of the record's soul.

Arctic Noise by Ape Vermin will be officially see the light of day on May 7th via Koloss Records (pre-order here). Fans of Conan, High on Fire, and Mastodon are you listening? Good, because Doomed & Stoned is rocking this mother in its entirety today.

Give ear...

Arctic Noise by APE VERMIN

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