#is...silly. its not a narrative trope i thought i put a lot of thought into because its very unrealistic and i think staking some kind of

[fandxmslxt69]

CLEM'S BIRTHDAY HANG OUT!!

Hello friends!

As March comes to an end (my birth month wooo) I thought it would be a fun idea to have a little hang out during the last week! So from March 25 - 31 we are PARTYING !

Sort of!

My askbox is open to all sorts of silly dilly fun time! This is my first little hang out so PLEASE BE KIND TO ME i'm just a silly girl who wants to make friends and have some fun! I'm also hoping this might get me back into writing!

Yes, the poster is all Loki NO HE'S NOT THE CENTRE OF ATTENTION!! Here's a little info I guess (I am just winging this as we speak, it is not very thought out):

Rules & Info

The event will run from 03/25 to 03/31 - you can send in as many asks and hang out as much as you would like!!! No I will not kill you if you drop a hello in my askbox start of April - to be honest, I love friends so I won't ever turn anyone away

You can stop by my askbox to say hi, share some thoughts (or thots...) tell me anything, or play a game! (will talk about that in a bit)

Anyyyyoneeee is welcome I don't care if we aren't mutuals or we don't even talk, STOP BY AND SAY HI :D If you are rude or disrespectful in any way, I will kick your butt and break your nose.

This is a positive, fun zone. I just want to have my fun and mind my business, please don't be trying to cause problems. I'm a relatively small blog so thankfully no one really looks my way but I've had some bumps in the past.

THIS IS MY FIRST TIME DOING THIS AND IM LITERALLY GOING TO DIE FROM NERVES SO BE PATIENT WITH ME OKAY

Games:

Fuck, marry, kill - send me any three characters that you want me to decide a fate for....oh my god please don't make me kill anyone I love dearly....

Blurbs!! - send me a little prompt/kink/thought & a character and I will try SOOOOO HARD to put out a little itty bitty something of writing! Like 500 words or so!! Can be fluffy or smutty. Angst is not allowed unless its just a LITTLE sad and with lots of fluffy stuff after

Character Association - tell me about yourself and let me give you a character. This is literally my favourite game ever, and I swear I'm super good at it

Book Recs - tell me your reading vibes/popular tropes you like and I will give you FIVE (not one, not two, but FIVE!!!) book recs because I like talking about books. If you show up talking about non fiction, then sorry but I am not your gal at all.

Chat - Come talk!! Come chat!! Come say hi and giggle with me about anything!! Come be crazy with me over narratives and themes and character arcs!!! Tell me about school or your day, your OCs, latest WIPs or anything currently on your mind!

Okay that's all I could come up with but literally any and all games are free game. I am keeping this as chill and lowkey as possible.

Characters/Fandoms:

You guys already KNOW my vibes and what I'm around and what I'm not, so feel free to send anything! I float around Marvel/DC (just send in any character and if I don't vibe with it I'll just let you know or leave it unanswered), I think it's obviously I'm Oscar Isaac obsessed....um. Pretty much anything. It's free game and I'll put my foot down if I'm down okay with something or don't want to answer :D

I'm..about to tag some friends...if that's okay...

@divine-knight-hand @romanarose @sarahscribbles @lokischambermaid @lokisgoodgirl @sailorholly @in-som-niyah @fictive-sl0th @mischief2sarawr @saturn-rings-writes @superficialdomina @planetwaynez...and I can't remember anyone else now I'm sorry LMAO

KISSES EVERYONE <3

Clem

PS: If you're worried whether I'm comfy or not or familiar with a character or not, just send it in anyway and we'll figure it out from there!

[shadow0haven]

I'm gonna do some rambling below about the Malev Christmas thing a little bit because people have been saying people have taken it too seriously and I want to explore/explain why I think people are upset and why I agree/my thoughts.

So HG released a christmas episode for malev and its a silly and campy episode of jokes and a "they get snowed in on christmas" episode like from a sitcom.

Honestly, that would have been nice from the get go. It's an interesting and trope I enjoy so I was ready to listen, until I heard negativity.

People are claiming that people hate the special specifically because HG makes fun of shippers. It's not *just* those two specific lines about shippers that I see people being upset about. It's quite a lot more.

For the longest time, Harlan has been poking fun at shippers in a lot of lines, in livestreams, in jokes and specials he puts out on patreon. A lot of the patreon people aren't mad or upset specifically because he does it, but because it's done so often. We KNOW Jarthur is never going to be Canon. We don't need a reminder constantly in the specials that they aren't canon and never will be, because it's a horror podcast and it's been explicitly stated all over John and Arthur are platonic in canon and always will be as far as we know. Having it constantly joked about when we know it won't happen is tiring.

A joke is made about the mail delivery person hating Arthur and loving John. On server and in conversation, etc, it's come up that HG finds it weird people like John, or Yellow, or other characters, more than Arthur. He also does "playful teasing" about people who enjoy certain characters or make certain theories, while also being annoyed people don't like Arthur more. A lot of us DO like Arthur, but not certain aspects of the character or how the character handled certain situations. That doesn't mean we hate the character. Part of this I think stems from HG having said that Arthur is "basically him", saying that Arthur is a self insert. That's fine and dandy, but it does make a lot of us uncomfortable for a lot of situations when we try to separate the character from a real person when the person playing the character insists "the character is me". This isn't a slight against HG, but I find it frustrating and that it ruined a bit of the "this is a narrative based around fictional characters etc" when the creator insists the main character is his self insert and essentially just him. Self inserts are cool! I also have my own! But there has to be a degree of separation that people aren't getting and it makes a lot of us uncomfortable.

A joke by the mail carrier also about "people going online and arguing for a living" or something along those lines. A lot of people that enjoy the show also critique it, make theories, and always talk about ways things could be handled better or how things could have turned out. Yes, there are people who are strictly only negative because they dislike HG for a myriad of reasons, and this joke felt like it was aimed specifically at these people that have issue with him, his interactions with fans, and the way he's handled things in the past that was just... unneeded.

On a less serious note, there were things that were just not my style in which I myself specifically don't vibe with the special. It was very campy and cracky, which is what it was obviously going for. For ME, I just wasn't into the "staged sitcom script because of Kayne" deal. And that's okay! Just because it wasn't my mileage, doesn't mean it was bad for other people. Like how I don't read certain kinds of fanfiction because they just aren't for me, this special just wasn't for me because of the tone of it.

I know there are probably more things, or things I'm forgetting, I know there was more teasing about "Arthur having PTSD but he can get over it in seconds" joke that made me a little meh, some of the jokes were funny and gave me a good chuckle, but I think this is the main reason people are having issue with the special.

To clarify, I'm talking about JUST the Christmas special and not the show itself. Just this specific episode. If I wanted to talk about why I and other people have issues with the show, or if people were interested in what I think, I'd make another post.

This is NOT a hate post, but simply talking about why I myself take issue with several aspects of the special, as well as why others (and the reasons I've heard from others) have mentioned about it.

Your mileage may vary, etc etc. I still enjoy the show and the characters very much, but sometimes this kind of stuff makes it difficult.

[annalyticall]

Saw your tags about MHA being a lesson in restraint when it comes to having different opinion than the fandom norm and please take this ask as an excuse to share your MHA thoughts <- I want to know them if you're willing to share

Oh ho ho I will gladly talk about how my MHA opinions differ from fandom thank you for the opportunity. That said I'm basing what 'fanon' is on what seems to be most popular in fan fics and popular posts I see on Twitter and Tumblr

Also I'm breaking this up into sections because I've noticed a lot of my fanon opinions tends to overlap

Fanon uses character interactions as proof of ships, cliques, or found families instead of considering each interaction as part of a narrative whole. Now, I know this isn't unique to MHA, every fandom does this to some extent, however with a cast as large as MHA's it's more prevalent when so many ships overlap. Each major or even minor interaction is "proof" of a ship being canon and is more or less valid than "proof" for other ships - meanwhile the narrative so rarely cares about romance (barring the Toga/Uraraka/Deku subplot) that arguing about any of that feels very pointless. Bakudeku shippers are the most guilty to me about this; for example, in a recent chapter when Deku thinks about how Iida held his hand and helped him feel calm (a moment that ties into the larger narrative theme of helping a lost child by taking their hand), I saw Bakudeku shippers try to pretend Deku was actually thinking about how much he wanted to hold Bakugo's hand since he never took it in their youth, despite that never being hinted at. I don't even dislike Bakugo or Bakudeku as a ship but it gets so grating when I see big moments for other characters get watered down because they don't fit a shipping lens, which goes doubly for MHA where the narrative supports the idea that everyone is important and everyone should help everyone no matter who they are to them.

While I'm beating the Bakudeku hornet's nest I might as well throw in my grievances with the Erasermic Family and its persistence in almost every. Single. Fic. Or at least the ones I read because Aizawa is one of my favorite characters, but so many Aizawa-related fics I've read seem intent on making Present Mic his husband and Shinsou his adopted son. Listen. Erasermic is fine. It's fine. I even like it from time to time. I just wish it wasn't a fanfic staple because I actually think their canon relationship of comfortable-yet-somewhat-strained old high school friends is much more interesting to explore, especially with the twist of Shirakumo's fate. It also cheapens Present Mic sometimes, because Present Mic is usually portrayed in these fics as... how should I say this... motherly? Wife-like. I don't like that. He's a silly goofy guy but he's also impulsive and angry and puts on a facade and that nuance almost never gets translated when he's transplanted into a domestic familial role with Aizawa. Shinsou being Aizawa's son also feels like it cheapens Shinsou's character arc in a way? I don't hate the son theory I guess but Aizawa clearly only trained him, not adopted him, and making Shinsou a "mini-me" of sorts tends to blur his actual character and motivations to be the same as Aizawa's when they're not. The only dynamic here that has any canon foothold is Aizawa being an adoptive father to Eri. I think Aizawa being a dad to most of the other kids is overblown sometimes but he will always be Eri's dad to me. Present Mic is like her goofy uncle.

Fanon loves making backstories too tragic. Two of the most popular fic tropes I see either makes Midoriya's mom abusive or gives Shinsou a muzzle and abusive foster family, which... okay, one thing I really love about MHA canon is that everyone has a good reason for what they do and everyone suffers a little hardship due to the way society is all in varied and relatable ways. Characters like Midoriya and Shinsou DO suffer in canon but not any more than being bullied in middle school for their quirk or lack of quirk, which I think works well enough for two boys who still aspire to be good and still have some faith in the system that hurt them like most people in this universe do. Characters like Toga, Twice, and Shigaraki already have plenty of tragedy to justify their villainy, as well as Hawks who also has a tragic backstory and serves as a hero counter for them, so it doesn't appeal to me to so often give that pain tenfold to characters who don't fit those roles beyond a what-if exercise.

Fanon takes things characters say at face value and accepts the most shallow interpretation of a character. This is especially true for liars like Dabi and Hawks, who often say one thing and mean another. It's not as much of a problem at current since both Hawks and Dabi are probably at their most authentic in canon right now, but it's still an issue in fics I read where Hawks is presented genuinely as a flirty and cocky hero and Dabi is presented genuinely as someone who doesn't care about anyone but himself. It's really frustrating when something I love about Hawks is his nuanced interactions with almost every other character, which are always glossed over in his discourse. I'll give two of the most glaring examples:

I've almost never seen a take about this scene that justifies why Hawks does this - I usually only see comments about how he's getting into Todoroki's space, isn't aware of personal boundaries, or is being too nosy in the family drama. To me, the answer to why he does this is clearly deeper: he's dropping his laid-back facade and asking a serious question all while putting himself in Todoroki's shoes and planting himself firmly on Todoroki's side. He wants an answer to the scar because the answer is important to him; if Endeavor was the one who inflicted it, it would have tarnished the view he had of his old hero because Hawks knows what it's like to have an abusive father. This is only further cemented when later on Hawks says Todoroki is better than he is because Todoroki is finding it within himself to help the parents who hurt him, unlike Hawks, who feels he abandoned his own.

There's also this and other panels during the fight with Twice ("I'll be sure to tell that to the league") where Hawks seems to be rubbing salt in the wound and overall being a dick about betraying Twice's trust, and I've seen the interpretation here that Hawks is simply being a dick because he is one. And, I mean, this isn't to say that Hawks can't be a dick sometimes, but in the moment it feels like a culmination of two things: 1. Half of this interaction is framed through Twice's POV, so of course we're seeing the worst of Hawks here, and 2. Hawks is intentionally distancing himself from the Hawks he knows would have gladly been Twice's friend, because he knows there's a chance he might have to kill him. Whenever we're in Hawks' head during this fight, it's always focusing on how much he doesn't want to fight Twice and how much hope he has for things to turn out for the better. When he finally makes up his mind that he can't turn it in his favor, he turns cold and harsh again, probably as a coping mechanism similar to Lady Nagant's. Also frustrating when people use this as an example of in-universe police brutality when in actuality Hawks is a groomed child soldier acting very hesitantly to fulfill government orders. Those two issues are not the same.

Oversimplification isn't contained to Dabi and Hawks, though. Kaminari flirts sometimes so all he is is a flirt, Midoriya cries sometimes so he's submissive and weak, Iida is bossy sometimes so he's a goody-two-shoes stick-in-the-mud. One-note fanon characterizations plague almost every character and that does almost none of the actual characters justice. Any character with more relevance than, say, Ojiro has more than one side to them in canon that doesn't get captured all that much in fanon.

Fanon overanalyzes things that are Shonen convention. It's funny, on one hand, I think fanon interprets characters too shallowly, and on the other, I think it reaches far too deep to draw conclusions where the actual answer is "because the author wanted it." Aizawa and All Might bear the brunt of this mischaracterization because they're the main adults in this series, so all of their missteps feel overanalyzed to prove an abuse of authority when actually it's just irrational decisions made to keep the story moving forward. "All Might was irresponsible for telling a quirkless kid he didn't have a chance at becoming a hero and leaving him alone on a roof" I guarantee you the implications of that was probably not even a thought when that scene was written, and if it was, All Might certainly wouldn't have assumed them or else he would have dealt with that differently. "Aizawa is a bad teacher for not expelling Bakugo after he almost killed Deku in their first test" if he expelled Bakugo or had properly dealt with their toxic relationship earlier we would not have a story. "Aizawa is a bad teacher for not expelling Mineta for being a creepy weirdo" if he expelled Mineta then Horikoshi wouldn't have his favorite comic relief pervert archetype. Sometimes we just have to say "Horikoshi wanted this to happen so that's why it happened that way" and move on.

Fanon has selective memory and short attention span. Maybe this is just because there seemed to be a falling off of fandom participation around the time of Season 5, but a lot of fanon I've seen seems stuck in pre-season 5 era characterizations, sometimes even pre-Season 3. Bakugo and Endeavor both have some of the best character developement in the series, and Aizawa also has a lot of subtle growth, but people tend to focus on how bad Bakugo and Endeavor were in Season 1-3 and how good Aizawa is in Season 4, even though Aizawa was also kind of an asshole Season 1-3. It tends to lead to some cartoonishly evil takes on Bakugo and Endeavor and overly-saccharine takes on "Dad"zawa. I say this also as someone who loves Aizawa and is fairly neutral on Bakugo and Endeavor, but I just don't think fanon takes in the whole picture of their character arc sometimes.

Those are my big umbrella opinions, I have more minute ones (especially regarding Iida, Aizawa, and Hawks) but I've already ranted long enough. I know a lot of this comes down to a young fanbase but to be honest the people I tend to disagree the most with are my age so I can't chalk it all up to that lol. Anyways thanks for the chance to rant!

[grasslandgirl]

1, 14, 24 for any, 48, 49!!

mwah mwah mwah mwah mwah

1. What fic of yours would you recommend to someone who had never read any of your work? (In other words, what do you think is the best introduction to your fics?)

sfjkvnksjfbs this is so difficult bc i feel like so much of what i write is impossibly niche and only for myself and a handful of my friends skjfvnsk so i have no idea what an effective introduction to my body of work would be. my figayda coffeeshop au, maybe? just because i think it's really solid and a good demonstration of my narrative style/rhythm? alternately, my figfabian lounge singer au for similar reasons? i dunno ksjfnksjf

honorable mention jamie @gilears and my 2nd pov figgorgug fic we wrote last year bc its some of my favorite and best work and one of the things i've most enjoyed writing-- and i think it's a really solid hook into figgorgug, which i have not been able to stop writing since kjsfnbvksfjbn

14. Are there any tropes you would only read if written by a trusted friend or writer?

i really only read oc-heavy if i really trust the author!! as a genre/style of fic they don't usually hold a lot of appeal for me unless i know the person writing it/ the backstory and process of the oc/ trust the author to build and integrate appropriate and interesting ocs (a really great example of this is santeri @fearlessjournalism 's brushfire, and also casey all of your clsoc fic <3)

24. Are there any easter eggs in [insert fic], and if so, what are they?

idk if it's really an easter egg but jam and i have a running joke about a handful of beats/moments i keep putting into my figgorgug fics, with varying amounts of intention; including but not limited to: diners, pancakes, (fig) sitting on counters/tables, sunflowers, stolen clothes/sweatshirts, and kissing hands <3

48. What’s the last fic you read? Do you recommend it?

i was looking around through the zuko/sokka tag and read a modern nye get together fic and it was. fine. readable but not something i'd bookmark or send to people like "oooh i really liked this"

49. What are you currently working on? Share a few lines if you’re up for it!

working on a fig/gorgug right person wrong time fic rn 😵‍💫 having many thoughts in my silly little head about it <3

There’s something rotting inside of her. Fig’s always been a little on the wrong side of selfish; Sandra Lynn says she gets it from her, but maybe it’s the hell influence too. She wants to be happy for her friends, the freedom from Aguefort and school and childhood thats burning on the horizon for all of them. A whole class of peers ready to stumble forward into the real world all together- college and work and more adventures and quests ready for the taking. Fig wants to be happy, wants to glow with a vicarious joy when Fabian talks about learning specialty knots and sending letters to Garthy and Jamina on the Leviathan. Or when Riz rolls out his conspiracy board and talks through it to them with tapping fingers that itch to get back on the road- with Penny, this time. Fig wants to join in on the excitement when Gorgug and Kristen make plans for finding a cafe on campus that’s theirs and trying to convince the dorms to let them room together. But she’s not. Because Fig can’t help but feel like everyone’s moving on without her. Like it’s the last weeks of eighth grade all over again and her horns are finally getting too big to be covered by her hair and all her (ex) friends have stopped pretending to make plans for the summer or for freshman year with Fig, anymore. The Bad Kids have been Fig’s roots, and her wings, and all the other metaphors she’s shoved into her songs all these years, and she doesn’t really know what she’s going to do with herself without them. Now that it feels like they’re all going their separate ways, with no school year starting in the fall to drag them back together. It’s just Fig, and the band she started because she wanted to scream and hear Gorgug slam on the drums- only this time it’s really just Fig.

send me numbers from this fic writer's ask list!!

[erstwhilesparrow]

what's double life, sparrow? it almost sounds like a dnd podcast title jsdfgkjh

reyni, i would like to preface this by saying that i'm genuinely delighted and flattered by your consistent efforts to reach out / discuss shared interests, and that i hope my responses reasonably convey how much i like seeing you in my inbox. i appreciate you! :]

that said. i regret to inform you double life is not a dnd podcast; it is a minecraft roleplay series on youtube. double life is the third season of what i think we're calling the life series, where a bunch of creators scheme, collect resources, and fight to the death on a very small map. the goal is to hold on to your limited number of lives longer than everyone else, and the prize is [???]. (the prize is you have fun fucking around with your friends, and a lot of people on the internet get very sad about your roleplay character.) i have seen double life be described by turns as a telenovela, a sitcom, and a minecraft gay marriage simulator. i really really like it, and in particular i'm a huge fan of the way they do soulmates, but i will put that under a cut for reasons of [talking a lot about something that is not really directly answering the question]. i'm (not very) sorry that i keep reblogging fanart that makes silly youtube videos look all edgy and serious :P

hi there, welcome to the space underneath the readmore! the thing about double life is its shiny new conceit, the thing that makes it different from previous seasons of the life series, is (:sparkles:) soulmates! each player is "soulbound" to one other player, and what this means mechanically is that when one of them takes damage, the other person takes that same amount of damage. what this means narratively, on the other hand, has widely varied depending on the creator / soulbound pair.

i've tried describing this set-up to multiple people without mentioning the minecraft component and the thing that particular exercise has thrown into sharp focus is that "person who feels your physical pain (and only your physical pain)" is. not necessarily a very conventional definition of soulmate. and the thing i keep ending up at is that i kind of adore that fact? it gets dressed up in language and behaviour we typically use when dealing with romantic relationships (some characters refer to their soulbound partners as their "crazy exes", others find their partner and immediately start flirting with them, i mean even just the fact that they call this being soulmates) but it is so important to me that the soulbond is fundamentally a game mechanic.

it's completely arbitrary who gets paired with who, and i know that none of the creators went into this game with the goal of picking apart the whole way people often think about romance, but the fact of its randomness combined with the ways the players talk about the bond is so deeply appealing to me for a soulmate story because i think it opens up avenues and / or spaces for discussing aspects of romantic relationships i am personally very interested in exploring?

i've thought for a long time about soulmate stories, because i'm invested in Doing Weird Shit to romance tropes (see: that summer i wrote what is to date my longest published fic about hanahaki But Make It Weirder) and this is sure one of them! i know there are other people -- on tumblr even! -- who are interested in this too, but i've never been totally satisfied with the stories i've seen?

like, obviously, just playing the trope straight throws me off because it constantly feels... too easy? like it shouldn't have worked out that neatly? it typically assumes a certain amount of... natural importance to romance that i don't agree with? but the ones that try to complicate the trope have also never quite clicked for me. the closest i've gotten to being able to say why is... i think they are often "what if soulmates existing sucked for this one specific person because [this person isn't their soulmate's soulmate / this person is in love with someone who isn't their soulmate / this person doesn't seem to have a soulmate at all / this person is aro which comes with its own set of potential complications]?" and there's. it feels like a personal problem? one that that specific person has to [repress / ignore / cope with / solve]? and that, on top of being wildly depressing, just. doesn't ring true or feel interesting to me?

because sometimes [gestures broadly at the whole thing of dating / relationships / falling in love] is good for people! it works out for them, and they genuinely are getting things they need / want out of it even though it's not perfect! i care about stories that can play around with that! i don't care about stories where this works out fairy-tale-happy-ending perfect, but i do care about what it takes to get to this being Good For You, what those types of people might fail to consider when they assess other people's relationships, the very subtle ways things can go wrong in a relationship because parties involved have been told their whole lives that this thing they're doing is Good and Correct and The Only Way, what it looks like to feel that pressure toward a romantic relationships and attempt to conform to those expectations, and so on. there are so many different ways to be hurt here! and that sort of thing just. doesn't fit into either of the models of soulmate stories i've described above?

but double life! double life has So Much of that! it's so delicious! there's such a range in the way that the players approach the bond, and it's so so fun and useful as a springboard for thinking about and illustrating -- in the [greatly exaggerated for funsies but nevertheless reflective of real parts of our society] way of sci-fi / fantasy fiction -- so many of the ways people approach romance, outside of the binary of [Perfect And Good] and [Just The Shittiest Ever]. and, again, i cannot imagine any of the creators set out to On Purpose say any of the stuff i've described here -- it was improv and playing around and friends trying out new stories to tell. but they give themselves over to an arbitrary system for defining their relations to each other, and some struggle to fit themselves to it and others don't, and we as the audience can see just how arbitrary it is but we and they find meaning regardless, and none of them think to say, "hey, what if we just gave up on every single piece of this system entirely?" and in the end it all falls apart anyway, because separate from being a soulmate story it was also a death game and it was never not going to be a tragedy. i care So Much about it. despite this being the season where the rules of the game themselves seemed to intertwine themselves with the concept of love, it was also the season where the power of love failed, where everything unravelled not despite but because of it.

[readymades2002]

hm okay so marcille’s wish seems to have Two facets to it. there is the thing she says she wants, which is to create opportunities for people that a difference in lifespans can block off, and what her fear drove her towards, which is never having to watch everyone die before her again. we’ve seen what that difference in lifespan means before, how everyone else resents elves for looking at everyone as children with short memories who don’t know what’s best for them, it’s very much an established thing! and the way it’s talked about in this chapter DOES worry me a little bit, like, narratively speaking.

lifespan is...like. it’s different than other axes? the idea of living a thousand years is NIGHTMARISH to me and i think that...that is a heavy weight to give others to carry without their input. i do think that it is, dare i say, Not Good to do that.

but the way it is refuted, and the way lifespan differences are shown to be kind of a social class...thing, it does make me feel a little weird because on the ONE hand literally its very scary yes but on the OTHER is this a metaphor for something and is this refutation a metaphorical response to that something. you know. marcille wanting to eliminate inequalities between lifespans as something that Just Isn’t Good For Everyone or something to that effect. idk the translation including the phrase “racial disparities” DID put me on edge here too, i know in Fantasy World they use Race to mean something more like species which is not uncommon by any means but i still think its a very poor choice of word and keeping the history of fantasy “races” and their...Inspirations in mind makes it worse. i might be reading too much into it but 1) thats what i do and 2) seeing that one GODDAMN kabru shapeshifter joke really REALLY Got Me ugh

for now i am gonna look at it more optimistically though and say that marcille’s motivations simply looking at them as they are are very interesting. i don’t doubt that she wants others to have more opportunities denied to them by their lifespans (though i think the solution of “simply make lifespans longer” instead of “do something about elves holding power” is a short-sighted one. VERY in-character though, that’s not a complaint about that. just thinking as i go) but she is motivated by her own fear. marcille is kind of a selfish person! she is self-centered and a little thoughtless and she’s been through a lot that drives her to soothe the fear created by it. she may be convincing herself of her good intentions, of her care for her friends, but ultimately, she does not want to be alone. i mean who doesn’t but its the kind of thing she is willing to go to questionably ethical lengths to achieve with only her own desires in mind. i think that the birds outside her wizard tower (have you seen the birds. for the record the birds in dunmeshi are simply divine. excellent birds. wonderful birds) point to her motivations well. losing a bird (especially one as long lived as a cockatoo!) affected her deeply. she’s disturbed by the lion conjuring a puppet of her father, but she keeps him around anyway. the temptation is great and the fear of loss powerful! there is marcille who is very put together and knows what to do better than anyone else and who believes in her own accomplishments and abilities enough to stake the world on it, and there is also marcille who is thoughtless and petty and insecure and terrified of being alone and it makes for a very dangerous combination! she’s such a fascinating character!!! i think this is an excellent arc for her

[absolutebl]

Can I tap on the wellspring knowledge of your BL encyclopedia levels of sageness? I'm honestly a little bit stomped, discombobulated, mystified.

Whyever do I seem to grow onto Why R U? as much as it would seem I somehow do?

Or maybe I should rephrase the question:

What ingredients does Why R U? juggle around with to somehow cook up its dish the way it does?

I really just watched this out of silly completism after Make it Right (which I didn't even really like all that much). Coming from there I expected a sort of globmess in terms of narrative and pacing, and... kind of got that served as expected? And as I watched it there were frowns, eyerolls, speed ups, cheek twitches over too much music inserts (whatever is the deal with that random guy on the stage before Saifah and Zon have theirs which is at least plot relevant?) a good deal of "this is somehow really dumb, DUMB", irritating fujoshi cutouts (Zol was okay in the end tho), too much cheese overdosing, too much spice overdosing, too much suffering sob story melodrama and me wrestling with somehow being viciously faceblind to every single character until about very late stretches of the series and also just wondering why I was still on it. Watching it the first time round was not really fun. It was patience taxing. I got the first little lol maybe in the last 3 minutes of the main series. And then a week passed and another and some more and somehow there's a whole bunch of recurring twitches calling for rewatches. (Which also have now been satisfied beyond the excuse of "maybe it's just that I feel a little bit bad about meanly trashing over it in my head like I did when I didn't even watch it that attentively.") That's a clear indicator I actually like something. Probably a lot.

I just have a tricky time putting my finger on why. I found some, but they hardly seem to justify a show crush in dimensions like this. If I try to ask my rationale it much rather comes up with more reasons why I shouldn't be liking this. It's pretty loud about elements that go against my established personal taste (as I am aware of right now, e.g. I know it's famed for its depiction of High Heat with good chemistry, but I don't like High Heat all that much.... or at least I thought I didn't....?) And objectively, it's not like it's a sort of every frame is a painting piece of work with very good direction production values, narratively the pace is all over the place at times as well. (I also still don't quite get what the third pair was good for. Establishing Zol as this world's creator-goddess of sorts with the power to enforce ships? And then Zon taking up the conclusion narrative is even literally kicking them out of relevancy when he says that this tale was just about the four of them?)

A bizarre case on a mystery level like this drops about once or twice per decade and typically also takes about as much time to be fully unriddled. Or at least the last two ones did. But going through some of your tropes collection posts I found some more hints pointing to... probably newly found soft spots for narrative and visual tropes?

So basically, is there more worthy of note than what I already found out to check out for verification? Just what does the show seem to be doing so right?

The preliminary list of candidates I made out so far:

Eyes emoting

vs. full body dramaturgy (You did that post on Saint's physicality, but it kind of feels like both of the two main pairs keep contrasting more crass bolder movements against loads of eyeing around...?)

A touch of meta and tropey self-awareness. (I really like the manga of Zettai BL and Bad Buddy's last line was a riot for me.)

Mild Tsundere x Dork x Overwhelmed disaster handfuls notoriously busy with having a few freakouts

Like loads of "What is thiiiiiis" or "How did it wind up being like this???" exasperation. (This is totally me with this show.)

Paired with a character that has the uberhuman ability to handle them without winding up needing therapy for babysitting burnout (Saifah, what's your secret?)

Enemies to Lovers, but the former is more like attraction misconstrued as irritation

excessive amounts of pillow hugs in all sorts of flavors

excessive amounts of shoulder leans

notorious amounts of puff your cheeks up

run away in a flight response and get caught again (maybe? It does suspiciously show up in Utskushii Kare and Bad Buddy too...)

bob your chin over x (although I am not entirely sure if it's this or if it's because Zon uses it to make Saifah stop his guitar zippery already. Anything that makes them put that damned guitar away might be more welcome for cheers than I was aware of so far)

Miscommunication, but they actually sit there and try wringing that needd talk out from pretty much the beginning all the time, so it's more down to characters speaking different languages rather than all being idiots too awkward to even open their mouths.

The teased knows how to turn things around to tease back, even more viciously if needed (This suspiciously also shows up in Bad Buddy)

probably this means vice dynamics?

Although SaifahZon kinda are adorkable, too

picturesque piggyback rides? Maybe? cocks head left and right and right back

??????

All About Show Crushes 

Honestly Why R U? is such a mess.

But I'm the same as you. On first watch I was like... I don't know... but the chemistry is good. I actively disliked Siafah Zon tho. Like I watched a bit in the first few eps and then skipped their part. I think I didn't do an actual watch of their story until the reshoot extras came out and even now they are just a bit to cheesy cringe for me.

I think your list is pretty exhaustive. But there is one more thing...

sometimes we like a thing because we like a thing. 

like there is no really good reason for it and we (especially me, and apparently you) can hunt about and try to explain it, or can gravitate to one spectacular reason (I fell like this is me and color rush) but sometimes it defies explanation. 

For me one of those is Oxygen, objectively there isn’t a whole lot to recommend it (I mean it’s fine but for the amount of times I’ve rewatched it, fine is not a sufficient moniker). I just LOVE that show.  

I think trying to figure out a show crush is like trying to figure out a person crush. Odd and possibly eventually tempered by persistent exposure. 

Sometimes it’s not about the show’s internal chemistry and narrative qualities or filming or anything, it’s about your chemistry WITH that show. 

After all you two are in a relationship (bit one sided, but that’s part of what crush means, unrequited). 

And sometimes it’ll last and sometimes it wont. 

This is kinda and odd place to go but follow me here:

one of things we don’t talk about or really acknowledge enough is that we can have friendship and/or plutonic crushes on other people. People you don’t necessarily want to bone or romance, but you do just really LOVE spending time with. 

I realized this recently with one of my besties. She’s basically MY person. We couldn’t live together but we have been literally trapped in a safe room together for 8 hours and never stopped talking (or enjoying each other’s company). 20 years strong and I still have a crush on her. I mean 20 years makes this an oversimplification about our relationship, but you get what I mean? 

Similarly, I think sometimes we just find shows and were like: oh this is MY show, in the same way. No so much that it was made for me, but that I jive with it more then, objectively, I should. 

You’re a food analogy person, so maybe that’s an easier way to think about it. This kind of crushing can be like a particular dish. 

Tom Kha in its iterations has been my favorite biggest comfort food my whole life. I can’t imagine anyone not liking it. I can analyze and explain why it is the greatest, most complex, and sophisticated combination of flavors ever plopped into a bowl, but I know there are people who don’t like coconut and others for whom it is too sour or too spicy. 

It’s about how my taste is perfectly meshed with that soup.

That said, I am currently experiencing deep crush on khao soi and an even deeper one on sundubu jjigae, so... yeah I’m fickle. 

Seriously tho, if you’re into Korean food sundubu jjigae is like the neglected child no one knows about. I like the super spicy veg version with lots of mushrooms. Fuck it’s so good. 

Well that devolved quickly. I must be hungry. 

[fullonfandomindulgence]

unfortunately in my heart of hearts i think if one had stronger anatomy skills hed do more fanservice. i em very sorry for this thought. but... cmon. you feel me

i always kinda liked the (few) traditional fanservice situations in the one-illustrated stuff bc it removed any visual titillation for the reader. the narrative seemed to be trying to communicate that those moments were kinda gross and embarrassing, as they would be in real life for the women and girls being leered at.

but the murata adaptation of one punch man, my god. i mean i appreciate the bits where the men are sexualized too, but cmon. not exactly the same diversity of fits and bodytypes. that one frikken ninja character whos all swathed in these badass loose robes and then she gets slashed at and all her clothes fall off.

and really looking at the tatsumaki vs saitama fight in the original one punch man, when her skirt's going all over the place you coulda just made her bottoms black. just not defined them against the rest of her outfit, which is already just a big black shape. it probably woulda looked cooler. but instead theyre white in like this uncritical perpetuation of the trope, no one in-story comments or seems to notice, just the idea that we can see her underwear is supposed to be the titillating thing i guess, despite that being out of tone with the rest of the scene.

i love that the kids in mob psycho are allowed to be kids without the art leering at them, but i have the uneasy feeling that there might be more leering if one had the technical chops for it. and thats kind of a silly thing to think about, like thats not whats on the page, and more than that one so rarely puts characters in situations for fanservice to even happen. like the utter lack of anything happening between tome and origo in the reigen manga is so so good. generally ones stories are almost sexless. but still, every once in a while, that uneasy feeling comes back up. idk! idk.

tbh i dont watch a lot of anime, i know this shit is small potatoes compared to the dreck that gets put out by some people, probably the whole mob psycho crew deserves credit for not falling into those common tropes. but think its important to allow discussion of this stuff. i fukken love mob psycho and i have a lot of respect for one as an artist but that doesnt mean i think hes a perfect smol creacher or that the work is beyond criticism. i mean fucking puri puri prisoner??? fucking disgusting, just the most regressive-ass stereotype, miss me so hard with that shit. and darkshine? the dude in claw with the lips??

thats a harsh note to end on but it needs be said. anyway. would love to hear other ppls takes on this, idk, im just Really Into mob psycho, and i like engaging with it even in ways that dont cast the work in positive lights. does any of what im saying even make sense? who am i to say. but cmon! you feel me??

[balioc]

A Taxonomy of Magic

This is a purely and relentlessly thematic/Doylist set of categories. 

The question is: What is the magic for, in this universe that was created to have magic?

Or, even better: What is nature of the fantasy that’s on display here?

Because it is, literally, fantasy.  It’s pretty much always someone’s secret desire.

(NOTE: “Magic” here is being used to mean “usually actual magic that is coded as such, but also, like, psionics and superhero powers and other kinds of Weird Unnatural Stuff that has been embedded in a fictional world.”)

(NOTE: These categories often commingle and intersect.  I am definitely not claiming that the boundaries between them are rigid.)

I. Magic as The Gun That Can Be Wielded Only By Nerds

Notable example: Dungeons & Dragons

Of all the magic-fantasies on offer, I think of this one as being the clearest and most distinctive.  It’s a power fantasy, in a very direct sense.  Specifically, it’s the fantasy that certain mental abilities or personality traits -- especially “raw intelligence” -- can translate directly into concrete power.  Being magical gives you the wherewithal to hold your own in base-level interpersonal dominance struggles. 

(D&D wizardry is “as a science nerd, I can use my brainpower to blast you in the face with lightning.”  Similarly, sorcery is “as a colorful weirdo, I can use my force of personality to blast you in the face with lightning,” and warlockry is “as a goth/emo kid, I can use my raw power of alienation to blast you in the face with lightning.”)   

You see this a lot in media centered on fighting, unsurprisingly, and it tends to focus on the combative applications and the pure destructive/coercive force of magic (even if magic is notionally capable of doing lots of different things).   It often presents magic specifically as a parallel alternative to brawn-based fighting power.  There’s often an unconscious/reflexive trope that the heights of magic look like “blowing things up real good” / “wizarding war.” 

II. Magic as The Numinous Hidden Glory of the World

Notable examples: Harry Potter, The Chronicles of Narnia, H.P. Lovecraft’s Dream Cycle

The point of magic, in this formulation, is that it is special.  It is intrinsically wondrous and marvelous.  Interacting with it puts you in a heightened-state-of-existence.  It is -- ultimately -- a metaphor for The Secret Unnameable Yearnings of Your Soul, the glorious jouissance that always seems just out of reach.

It doesn’t so much matter how the magic actually functions, or even what outcomes it produces.  The important thing is what magic is, which is...magical.

This is how you get works that are all about magic but seem entirely disinterested in questions like “what can you achieve with magic?,” “how does the presence of magic change the world?,” etc.  One of the major ways, anyway.

The Numinous Hidden Glory fantasy often revolves around an idea of the magic world, the other-place where everything is drenched in jouissance.  [Sometimes the magic world is another plane of existence, sometimes it’s a hidden society within the “real world,” doesn’t matter.]  The real point of magic, as it’s often presented, is being in that magic world; once you’re there, everything is awesome, even if the actual things you’re seeing and doing are ordinary-seeming or silly.  A magic school is worlds better than a regular school, because it’s magic, even if it’s got exactly the same tedium of classes and social drama that you know from the real world. 

Fantasies of this kind often feature a lot of lush memorable detail that doesn’t particularly cohere in any way.  It all just adds to the magic-ness. 

III. Magic as the Atavistic Anti-Civilizational Power

Notable examples: A Song of Ice and Fire, Godzilla

According to the terms of this fantasy, the point of magic is that it doesn’t make sense.  It doesn’t make sense within the logic of civilized human thought, anyway.  It is nature and chaos given concrete form; it is the thing that tears away at the systems that we, in our [Promethean nobility / overweening hubris], try to build. 

There’s not a baked-in value judgment here.  This kind of magic can be presented as good, bad, or some of both.  Same with civilization, for that matter.

It’s often presented as Old Myths and Folkways that have More Truth and Power Than Seems Reasonable.  Narratively, it often serves as a dramatized version of the failure of episteme, and of the kind of entropic decay that in real life can take centuries to devour empires and ideologies.

This kind of magic is almost always the province of savages, actual inhuman monsters, or (occasionally) the very downtrodden. 

(I think it is enormously telling that in A Song of Ice and Fire -- a series that is jammed full of exotic cults and ancient half-forgotten peoples, all of whom have magic that seems to work and beliefs that at least touch on mysterious truths -- only the Westerosi version of High Medieval Catholicism, the religion to which most of the people we see notionally adhere, is actually just a pack of empty lies.)  

IV. Magic as an Overstuffed Toybox

Notable examples: Naruto, JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure

Or, sometimes, we care about what magic actually does.  More than that -- sometimes we want to see magic doing really interesting things, and then other magic intersecting with it in ways that are even more interesting.

The fantasy here, in simplest terms, is “magic can achieve any arbitrary cool effect.”  There doesn’t tend to be an overarching system that explains how it’s all supposed to come together, or if there is, it tends to be kind of lame and hand-wavey -- a rigorous system of Magic Physics, delineating the limits of the possible, would get in the way of all the cool effects we want to show!

Once again, this shows up a lot in combat-heavy narratives.  Less with the genericized D&D-style “magic is a fist that can punch harder than your regular meat fist,” and more with people throwing weird and wacky powers at each other in order to show how those powers can be used creatively to overcome opposition.  Sometimes, instead of combat, you get magicians using their cool-effects magic to MacGuyver their way out of problems or even trying to resolve large-scale social problems.  Issues of magic usage within the narrative being “fair” or “unfair” or “cheesy” are important here in ways that they generally aren’t elsewhere, since the fantasy on offer comes close to being a game. 

(Ratfic often falls into this category.) 

V. Magic as Alternate-Universe Science

Notable examples: the Cosmere books

This covers most of what gets called “hard fantasy.”  The fantasy on offer is a pretty straightforward one -- “magic has actual rules, you can learn them, and once you’ve learned them you can make predictions and achieve outcomes.”  It’s puzzle-y in the way that the previous fantasy was game-y.  It’s often a superstimulus for the feeling of learning a system in the way that video game grinding is a superstimulus for the feeling of rewarding labor. 

The magic effects on offer tend to be less ridiculous and “broken” than toybox magic, because any logic you can use to achieve a ridiculous effect is going to influence the rest of the magic system, and special cases that aren’t grounded in sufficiently-compelling logic will ruin the fantasy. 

Not super common.

VI.  Magic as Psychology-Made-Real

Notable examples: Revolutionary Girl Utena, Persona

This kind of magic makes explicit, and diagetic, what is implicit and metatextual in most fantasy settings.  The magic is an outgrowth of thought, emotion, and belief.  Things have power in the world because they have power in your head.  The things that seem real in the deepest darkest parts of your mind are actually real. 

This is where you get inner demons manifested as actual demons (servile or hostile or anything in between), swords forged from literal hope, dungeons and labyrinths custom-tailored to reflect someone’s trauma, etc. 

The fantasy, of course, is that your inner drama matters. 

My personal favorite.

VII.  Magic as Pure Window Dressing

Notable examples: later Final Fantasy games, Warhammer 40K

This one is weird; it doesn’t really make sense on its own, only metatextually.  I think of its prevalence as an indicator of the extent to which fantasy has become a cultural staple. 

The fantasy on offer in these works is that you are in a fantasy world that is filled with fantasy tropes.  And that’s it.

Because the important thing here is that the magic doesn’t really do anything at all, or at least, it doesn’t do anything that non-magic can’t do equally well.  It doesn’t even serve as an indication that Things are Special, because as presented in-setting, magic isn’t Special.  Being a wizard is just a job, like being a baker or a tailor or something -- or, usually, like being a soldier, because the magic on offer is usually a very-simple kind of combat magic.  And unlike in D&D, it’s not like magic is used only or chiefly by a particularly noteworthy kind of person.  It’s just...there. 

The great stories of the world, in these works, don’t tend to feature magic as anything more than a minor element.  The point is to reassure the audience that this is the kind of world, the kind of story, that has magic. 

-------------------------------------------------

Thoughts?  Critiques?  Other categories to suggest? 

[roccinan]

7, 11, 12 for your writing ask meme, please ✏

Hello AO3 user dashwood!! Thanks so much for the ask :D

Writer Ask Meme

7. Favorite/most inspirational book?

Ohh, this is a hard one! I definitely have more than one favorite/inspirational book, but I'd say my favorite book of all time is The Little Prince. Not sure if it's much of an influence on my own writing, but I hope it's influenced me as a person. Another favorite is Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies- every single story in that collection destroys me every time I look at them. My absolute favorites in the collection were "A Temporary Matter" and "Sexy."

11. What are you planning to work on next?

My secret santa project ;) Other than that, there are 2 stories I have in mind (that knowing me, I might set aside and pull out another WIP or something else entirely asdasdf). On the Gen side, it will either be the sequel to "Hermanito" or a story that will unironically use the... drumroll... "Tokyo & Berlin" tag HAHAHA, a tale of forced quality time. On the berlermo side, I'm itching to write a long fic, something that runs for more than 10 chapters instead of my typical 4/5, so a sort of "novel." It's hard to describe, but I will say that the prologue is set in a fantasy medieval AU, and the rest of the story is in the present with some fantasy elements. It will involve reincarnation and the soulmates trope, and maybe some inspiration from Goblin.

So I'll either be working on the above or something Martin-centric.

12. Which story of yours do you like best? why?

To be perfectly honest, it's Dies Irae! And there were a number of reasons why. It was actually the one of the very first lcdp fic ideas I ever had, but I kept scrapping it because I thought it was too much of an AU and that nobody would read it. But the fandom seemed very friendly towards AUs, and I couldn't stop thinking about it so I decided to write it anyway and just focus it on Andres/berlermo.

Another reason it's one of my favorites was because it's the first story that really made me think about Andres' life in its own context, something that centered him instead of Martin (who I usually put at the focus of my berlermo stories before Dies Irae). It was a "world" that began and ended with him, and before that, I always thought of Andres as a character that the narrative- canon or otherwise- needed to leave behind in order for the living to move forward. It might sound silly, but writing this story convinced me that he shouldn't just be left behind like that, if that makes any sense lol.

It was also the first time I wrote the brothers using the "same father" headcanon. I got to play around with building my own world in this AU, its little "lore," and experiment with the writing. I wrote the whole thing from Tatiana's POV, and I actually had a blast doing it. Plus, I got to turn her into a talking cat, and that's been one of my proudest achievements LOL.

It was also the first (and last?) straightforward tragedy I wrote for these characters. So I put a lot of emotion into it, and there was even a part that made me surprisingly Sad to reread even though I wrote it asdfadf and it was very cathartic to complete.

[sokkastyles]

Thanks for asking! I realize I never elaborated on the Jet/Zuko parallels so here goes.

Season one Zuko/Jet are both extremists, though on opposite sides of the war. Zuko will stop at nothing to capture the Avatar. Jet will stop at nothing to rid the world of the Fire Nation. Zuko is the fallen prince, while Jet is the war orphan, both trying to restore what they’ve lost. And both have significant interactions with Katara.

Focusing on book one first, I’ve already written about how Jet manipulates Katara, which makes it worse not only because she did have romantic feelings for him, but because she was totally taken in by his whole freedom fighter thing. He also manipulates Aang and tries to manipulate Sokka, but Katara was the main one who felt betrayed by him. Katara has such a big heart and fighting spirit but at this point in the story she is fairly naive, and it shows here. She probably never considered before this episode that somebody fighting on the right side could be a bad person.

I also looked up the mouth wheat thing because I’ve seen it a lot in anime for similar “tough guy” characters and as that other post I reblogged said, it is a stand-in for cigarettes. I also found out that it’s supposed to represent a banchou, which is a juvenile delinquent gang-leader. And Jet is the leader of a bunch of feral kids, although they are ostensibly revolutionaries. Longshot, Smellerbee, and the Duke do seem like they have good intentions, and they often call Jet out on his behavior.

I also think there’s a comparison/foil with Katara’s interactions with Zuko in book one, which revolve around the necklace and his attempted kidnapping of her. Zuko tries to manipulate Katara using her mother’s necklace but is not very good at it. Not necessarily because he has any moral compunctions but because he’s just not that socially adept. He is most often the victim of his father and sister’s manipulations and the few times he tries to copy them he fails ridiculously, because he is incredibly literal-minded. He’s blunt and often fails to understand things that aren’t directly spelled out. He is not a manipulator.

I’ve also seen people compare Jet flooding the Fire Nation village to Zuko burning down Kyoshi Island, in order to make Zuko look worse, but as I’ve said before, Zuko burning down Kyoshi Island was not intentional, it was something that happened as a result of reckless firebending. That doesn’t make it any less bad, but it seems like it’s been popular recently to add this to the list of things that make Zuko “problematic,” so much so that I actually forgot that scene and was surprised when I rewatched the scene recently and discovered it wasn’t the intentional razing of the village that some people on tumblr make it out to be. Zuko’s fault there was simply not caring about the collateral damage in his pursuit of Aang. He wasn’t intentionally trying to burn down the village. Plus, if we were being honest, all the gaang would cause destruction wherever they went given how much bending they do. That’s not something the show dwells on, though, the way that superhero movies don’t dwell on New York getting destroyed for the hundredth time (unless it’s a deconstruction of the genre).

What Jet does is much more deliberate. He’s aware that what he tricks Katara and Aang into doing will cause the deaths of innocents, and dismisses Smellerbee when she tells him so, and he’s aware that the gaang will not approve of his actions enough to hide it from them. There’s also an interesting elemental parallel/foil, Jet destroys a village with water and Zuko destroys one with fire - foreshadowing that water can also be destructive? Hama, anyone? Robert Frost said it. 

I think I know enough of hate to say that for destruction ice is also great, and would suffice.

Anyway.

Book two, the Jet/Zuko parallels/foils are much more explicit, and highlighted by the fact that they actually meet in book two. Zuko’s on redemption road, although he doesn’t know it yet. Jet explicitly states that he wants redemption, although he’s still doing the same things he was doing before. He enlists Zuko in helping him steal stuff because he thinks he’s entitled to it, and I guess you can argue about whether it was justified, since the captain was treating the refugees unfairly, but Jet mostly seems interested in stealing food for himself and his group. To be fair, Prince “ew, poor people” Zuko doesn’t exactly have egalitarian motives, either, which is why helping Jet steal food is a regression in his arc. It’s him donning the Blue Spirit identity (although without the mask) once more because he’s trying to get closer to the material life that he lost. It’s also hilarious that when Jet asks Zuko to do this, Zuko’s dumb ass is like “well, Uncle did tell me to make friends.” Sometimes I wonder who was more naive, book one Katara or book two Zuko. Iroh is like “god, I leave him alone for five minutes and he joins a gang.”

When Jet keeps pressing Zuko about joining the Freedom Fighters, Zuko says no. Again, not for any moral reasons, but because he knows that if Jet keeps pressing, he might find out who Zuko really is. Zuko is honest with Jet when he says “I don’t think you want me in your group.” Not for good reasons, again, but the claim that Zuko somehow manipulated Jet is absolutely wrong. Jet was the one who approached Zuko and made assumptions and got pushy when Zuko said no.

Jet does genuinely want and try to change, but his major temptation is finding out that Iroh is a firebender, which he finds out right after he gets pissed that Zuko rejected him so I do think that was part of his motivation for going after them, considering how pushy Jet acted with the gaang when they rebuffed him. Jet, of course, fails the test, although what happens to him certainly isn’t his fault, even if he did make mistakes. It’s a tragedy that in the end, the choice to turn his life around was taken from him, and he was betrayed by the people who he thought were the good guys. This also highlights the theme that sometimes people on the “good” side can be not nice people, which in turn paves the way for Zuko’s redemption and the wider theme that it is actions that matter the most, not which nation you are from. Separation is an illusion, folks.

Zuko’s test happens first when he attempts to steal Appa, the last time he dons the Blue Spirit mask, and then in “The Crossroads of Destiny.” Unlike Jet, Zuko doesn’t know he’s being tested, he doesn’t know he needs to change, although Iroh keeps telling him he does. The change happens in Zuko without him realizing it.

Katara tries to heal Jet, and Jet dies. Katara almost heals Zuko, and Zuko betrays her. And this time Aang is the one who almost dies, who Katara has to heal. This certainly contributes to Katara’s mistrust of Zuko later on, all three of these events tied together. And all three boys are people she has romantic tension with.

Which brings me to another reason I dislike Jet, or rather, what he is meant to be in Katara’s story. Many people have pointed out that Katara is romantically attracted to Jet, and his superficial resemblance both to the “bad boy” trope, and to Zuko. There’s a reason Zutara shippers make this comparison, although I believe its purpose in the narrative was actually to be anti Zutara and provide support for Kataang, but because the writers really didn’t know how to write Kataang properly, it ends up as the opposite.

Recently I saw a post by a popular blog that was anti Zutara that cited Jet as an example of Katara having “low standards.” And like, I can’t entirely blame the post for its misogyny (Katara is FOURTEEN) because this is what the writers want us to think. Katara’s attraction to Jet is very much playing on the “girl develops a crush on the jerk who doesn’t care about her” stereotype. This is, subtly, one of the ways that the show punishes Katara for not returning Aang’s crush. Interestingly, in this episode Aang doesn’t get jealous of Jet at all, and doesn’t even notice Katara’s attraction, but that’s because Aang in this episode is also still naive and in his early stages of his attraction to Katara, and also thinks Jet is super cool. Sokka instantly hates Jet, though. And Sokka is right, but he also has flavors of the over-protective big brother. I do remember that this episode left a sour taste in my mouth because of the (thankfully downplayed) implications that Katara is a silly girl who falls for the “wrong” types of guys because women don’t know what they want and need a man to help them “discover” their feelings. I also think this is meant to be subtextual in Katara making the hat for Jet which Aang ends up wearing, because Aang is the “good guy” who really does care about Katara, you see? Thanks show, I hate it. To be fair, I blame the writers for this, not Aang. Aang is just having fun hanging out in a treehouse and gets to wear a cool homemade hat. It’s the writers who put this weird misogynistic pressure on Katara.

It’s funny though when people compare Zuko to Jet in order to prove Zutara wrong, because when you compare the two, Zuko is the one who ends up looking better, the one who works hard to repair his damaged relationship with Katara, who genuinely did change. The one whose life she could save after he had done the work to save himself.

[sanstropfremir]

okay, so i watched the entire kingdom ep. and it made enjoy sf9's performance more. initial watch i didn't know they were referencing tbz's danger where they stole the crown and that sf9 was stealing it from them in this cover. i was confused like ateez when they kept asking wait what is happening and like oh is that what this means? i think there were a lot of moving parts and although they were more cohesive compared to the other groups, it did fall a bit flat for me at the end (like you mentioned). supposedly they referenced new world (kmovie) - i never watched it but luckily the overall concept and storyline of their stage was easy to understand. i liked the different outfits each member wore!! i think that was my favorite thing about their performance, despite it being all different it was still cohesive and highlighted each member. i'm still :( about their use of guns in the choreo. i felt like during some parts, the members did not know what to do with them and it just felt awkward. it was okay during their group dance but still, i felt like they could have used it more.

ahh thank you for coming back!!! i love hearing what other people think of the stages since i have such a specific viewpoint and i overlook things all the time! 

i also watched the full episode yesterday and somehow, mnet actually did a pretty good job of showing the level of effort and detail that sf9 put into their stage! actually calling up and getting lessons from not just an actor but a musical theatre actor was like, possibly the best decision they could have made, because he basically told them everything i’ve been yelling about to my lil audience of 5 here. acting lessons > drowning. this stage is massive improvement for them, especially since it's only the second(!) time they've worked on something of this scale (the first was last round’s stage). and they've still got room to grow, which is perfect. the fact that they're taking this silly pop song competition as a serious opportunity to improve their skills is really admirable and shows they have a real respect for the work that goes into the industry of entertainment. but i also hope that they don’t take the whole rankings nonsense to heart because its rigged as fuck and not worth the stress. i also hope we get to see them expand into that confidence they exude a little more and do a stage more lighthearted, where they get to visibly have fun, because ikon really does have the right idea in that you truly can't take this trash fire of a program that seriously.

i think there’s an important difference to note here in how sf9 approached applying theme to their stage versus how tbz is applying theme. sf9 applied genre first, and then lightly referenced specific films on top of that basic foundation, whereas with tbz they start with a name brand and have to build down from there. i vaguely hit on kind of this point in my review but if you have a strong genre foundation it’s easier for the audience to suspend their disbelief, because they can draw on what they understand the tropes to be from their own references, and then if you did want to add some easter eggs in over the top, they aren't necessary for viewer understanding but for those who recognize them it’s a fun lil dopamine hit. if you start from a specific reference, you then either lose your audience right away because they don't know what’s happening, or you’re constantly fighting against the audience’s ability to draw a direct comparison between the two. now you can purposefully use an audiences’ perception of particular reference or genre to subvert their expectations, like in the 2018 robin hood movie with jamie foxx and taron egerton. is it a good movie? absolutely not, it's garbage, but it does have some spectacular takes on medieval fantasy costuming that are fascinating and it successfully manages to look nothing like every other robin hood movie ever made. is it mostly over the top and very “makes you think” meme? yes, but the impulse is in the right place and also this is the first example i thought of because i was thinking about quilted flak jackets yesterday, so sue me. and yes if you are wondering i do purposefully watch bad movies for fun.

as far as the gun choreo, i totally agree with you. i mentioned this when talking about minhyuk’s sword choreo but the physical and figurative weight of a weapon are integral to how it operates in space. some of the gun choreo looks awkward because a) the guns themselves are being used a bit carelessly to how we (as predominantly western viewers) are accustomed to seeing them, and b) they’re obviously fakes and not heavy enough, so the members’ movements aren’t in sync with what we expect their movements to be because our brains understand what it means to move with weight. it's like how you can tell someone is pretending to drink out of an empty paper cup, because their movements reflect that the cup is too light. acting the weight of something is a very difficult skill and there’s a reason mime schools exist, so i wasn’t expecting that level from sf9 at all and i thought they did well regardless of the visual tip off. in comparison, let's use the gun choreo in the ateez stage, because i’m still not over it and i want an excuse to watch it a few more times. why did we not find what seonghwa did awkward or out of place, especially when they used a shotgun sound effect for a rifle and we all know you can't load a bolt action rifle by spinning it around? because the gun itself is a proper weighted replica. also the orange tip, which is required on replica stage weapons. but look at the difference in speed in how the dancers move with their rifles versus how seonghwa moves with his. look at the visible thud that it makes when it hits his shoulder. it really is the smallest details that can make or break the experience. also something something camp has a wider threshold of suspension of disbelief. also the gun choreo had a specific intention within the narrative yadda yadda. sf9 was missing some of that specific intention in a few places, so there could have been some changes to give the guns more weight (literally and figuratively).

also yes sf9 has a killer styling team so far and i’m curious to see what they bring out next!!

[knoepfchen]

Thank you Alex, my fellow “I have a URL that no longer really fits the fandom I’m in but I’ll be damned if I change it now” TOG AU conspirator, @meet-the-girl-who-can, for tagging me in this!

I enjoy “end-of-year reflection” a lot actually, but I’ve not really gotten round to it much in previous years, and so I’m making the best of my planlessness this year. (Also it’s Theodor Fontane’s birthday tomorrow, and I believe it’s what he would have wanted.)

Rules: It’s time to love yourselves! Choose your 5 favorite works (fics, art, edits, etc.) you’ve created this year and link them below to reflect on the amazing things you’ve brought into the world in  2020. If you don’t have five published works, that’s fine! Include ideas/drafts/whatever you like that you’ve worked on/thought about, and talk a little about them instead! Remember, this is all about self-love and positive enthusiasm, so fuck the rules if you need to. Have fun, and tag as many fellow creators as you like so they can share the love! <3

The Old Guard found me at a strange little time in my life. I lost my job earlier this year and decided to take it as a clean break, try to go back to university and take it from there. The Old Guard came out the day I got the acceptance letter from my uni, which was great – but also meant I would definitely be starting all over again, and find myself in a long-distance relationship after years of living with my partner. I guess what I’m trying to say is, when I randomly saw the film on Netflix and pressed play, I was in a bit of a mental and emotional limbo from all the uncertainty suddenly going on in my life, and I latched onto the ideas of immortal love and the only true difference we can make is through acts of kindness like a baby koala to its mother. I wrote my first TOG fic a day later, and what a ride it’s been since.

I’ve read fics by and spoken to so many amazing people in the past couple of months, but I think they’ve all already been tagged (because I’ve been reading these posts like the morning paper) and so I will cop out of tagging on this one. (If you haven’t been tagged and want to do this, feel free to use me as your tagger though – I mean it when I say I love reading these posts!)

5 - a slow landslide AND what i wouldn’t gif

I can’t pick between the two so I’m including them both. This is probably surprising to anyone who’s read both because they could not be more different if they tried, but that’s exactly the problem – I like them equally, but for entirely different reasons. (I also wrote them really shortly after one another, and so it’s quite hard to disentangle them in my mind.) But because while I think I personally just want to read the same fic with the same topic from the same authors over and over, the fics I write sure are all over the place in tone, theme, setting and relationship tackled, and nothing has made me happier than seeing people read and enjoy both :) 

4 - i am lost, in the robes of all this light

Writing Andromaquynh fic can be a bit demoralising if you also write Joe and Nicky – and I don’t mean this as a dig at all, it’s just that that part of the fandom is smaller and so there’s less people reading/commenting/leaving kudos – but I really like how soft this one got. My friend somewhat rightfully pointed out to me that it’s basically an atonement fic because I felt guilt for writing an absolute angstfest of a witchhunt retelling beforehand, but if you can’t guilt trip yourself into writing fix-it fics, who can you guilt trip?

3 - and you smiled, because you knew.

This is the first thing I wrote in this fandom, and it’s a silly idea (five times Joe proposed and one time he didn’t) executed with a degree of serious introspection I’m not sure the trope is made for. Looking back, the narrative voice is off, the tense I used for flashbacks questionable, and the imagery quite literally all over the place, but it also has some of the best lines I’ve ever written and it introduced me to @avaniesque, who has taught me so! much! about history and been a wonderful beta whenever I forayed into historical settings with the guard, so I can and will not complain about it. (She’d tell me to shorten that sentence, too.)

2 - we that are true lovers run into strange capers

Okay so. For my brain, writing this fic was a little like going to my favourite fast food restaurant every day for a month. It was a strangely addictive endeavour, occupying most of my waking thoughts and causing my Spotify Wrapped to look like a fever dream, but it was also the most fun I’ve had writing anything, ever. By all rights, it should have been a hot mess, (I guess it kind of is, but by the time I noticed it seamlessly transitioned from rom-com to corporate heist it was too late) but that’s the way of self-indulgent fic! I still read the comments on this fic when I have a bad day, because everything about it is my happy place.

1 - not sleepy enough to give it up

I was tempted to put this here just because it’s the last thing I’ve written, and the last thing I’ve written is always the momentary best thing I’ve written. But more than that, I think this is the first time I managed to actually write the fic I intended to write; a fic that, reading it, feels exactly the way I imagined it would in my head. I don’t usually reread my own work, but I’ve reread this one a couple of times for non-editing purposes, and I still love it.

[tribow]

So I’ve watched all of Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure

To further specify, I’ve only watched all of the anime that is released as of right now. I don’t know about anything that happens after part 5. I don’t want to write in-depth thoughts about every part so I’ll just write small blurbs of what I thought of all of them.

Part 1: Not what I expected, but when I ignored my expectations I had a really good time with it. Very fun and silly. The ending was actually a little intense. The characters bounce off each other really well, but the anime takes its time in introducing them to you so there isn’t anything significant to latch on to until you get further into the story. Overall, I love what part 1 does. I don’t get why I see so many people think it’s bad compared to the rest of Jojo. Embrace the silliness.

Part 2: This part is fantastic. Joseph is easily my favorite Jojo. This part is the where the series really shows off its ability to construct really interesting battles. The victor in a Jojo fight does not usually win just by overpowering their opponent, but by outwitting them. This part is a perfect example of that. Plus, this is one of the silliest parts in the series. The events that take place are ludicrous and you have a great main character to take you through the whole story.

Part 3: Almost exactly what I was expecting from the series. This is where the “Stands” battle system comes in. It doesn’t exist in the first two parts. There’s a lot of great stuff here, but part 3 feels almost too formulaic sometimes. It doesn’t embrace its silliness as much as the previous part either. However, the more serious tone it works with is very cool. Some of the best battles happen in this part. Unfortunately, there’s a good amount of bullshit that happens too. Maybe the write put themself in a corner with the abilities of some stands.

Part 4: My favorite part. Everything takes place in one bizarre town and it works so well. This part is the one that truly embraces the weird elements this series works with. All of the characters work amazingly well and there’s a lot of great interactions here. Plus, the story has a shift from a weird Action/Slice of Life story to a Mystery/Thriller. This part has some of the least bullshit moments too. Great stuff here.

Part 5: Much of my issues with Part 5 are the same as my issues with Part 3. Unfortunately, I feel like this part has some of the weakest characters in it. It was still fun overall, but I couldn’t bring myself to care as much as I did during all of the previous parts. There’s a lot more bullshit going on in Part 5 too. A lot of events really shouldn’t have played out the way it did, but oh well. I have a feeling the series wrote itself into a corner many times and needed to sprinkle a little bit of bullshit in to keep it moving along. What pains me the most is that the last battle was so interesting except at the very end of it. The last fight of every Jojo is hype as hell, but Part 5 kills its hype right at the end. Still good, just not as good.

Overall, this series is really good, but the hype around this series really doesn’t tell you about several aspects the series has. There’s a good amount of gore/body horror in it. Jojo isn’t afraid to make you really uncomfortable when it wants you to. Also, it has the shounen trope of characters going on long monologues/conversations that realistically would not happen during a battle. It can get very cheesy despite some of the violent nature depicted in its story. If you’re okay with that then yeah, this series is fantastic and deserves a watch or read.

I also watched it all dubbed because I wanted to. The english dub is obviously not better than the incredible japanese voice acting, but a lot of is really silly and I think it fits with the “bizarre” themes of Jojo. Part 1 & 2′s dub have these fake accents going on and it’s unapologetic-ly silly. Part 5′s dub is just genuinely really good and I think it stands up to the sub.

Oh, and one last thing. Animation nerds like me will have a great time watching the series. There’s a lot of narrative color theory detail throughout the entire anime. Not only that, each part has its own “animation shtick” as I like to call it. Basically, it’s just something the animation consistently does to emphasize a certain thing. David Productions does this for every part and I love to see it.

I’m real excited for Part 6, it’ll likely be just as good of a time as the rest of Jojo. It really is a great series. Even if it has some rough moments, it bounces back from them pretty well.

[theghostbeaters]

my timeline of thoughts during my tlou 2 play through (bad and good and maybe even some silly) just let me vent because i can’t stop thinking about it tbh

- i was away from the internet for months because i didn’t want to be spoiled for anything, so when i started to play i had only the deceitful trailers to go by

- the beginning felt pretty normal for the last of us. they started you in the town and then on patrol for your hour of tutorial basically. i also remember thinking the recap of the first game was so nice because i liked seeing their younger selves in the new graphics

- abby was introduced, and like i said i had no clue what was going on because i had not been spoiled so my mind was going a mile a minute on wtf abby and co. were up to. when they spotted jackson my initial thought was maybe they do want joel and they will be the main antagonists? joel and ellie will have to fight them??? but because of the trailers, death of any sort wasn’t on my mind.

- i also had a very odd and pure hatred for owen’s voice, lol. i don’t know what it was but omg from the moment he spoke till his last breath i would always be like “why is he speaking like that??” in the back of my head.

- that scene happened. i’m a crier i’ll admit, but this was something else. I felt shocked, nauseous, numb. I don’t think I actually even cried till I saw the tombstone i was so taken aback by the way they went about this. I don’t care if they are fictional characters. It has been 7 years since the first game came out and almost 5 years that they released the first trailer for part 2. I did not wait this long, excited to see two of the most important characters to me in such realistic graphics get their fucking head caved in. at the very very least a fade to black and then to the tombstone would have gotten the same reaction you wanted from me, but it would have been done in a way less cruel way.

- i took about a 3 hour break. i could not get that image out of my head and it was really starting to upset me more then any media should. i don’t care or want to hear about any walking dead or apocalypse setting trope. it will never be edgy, deep, or meaningful to kill a favorite character in that manner. I want to state that again. In that manner. If they had killed joel in a more tactful way I could have possibly liked the game more.

-i remember thinking it felt forced. like the creators wanted this narrative so badly they seemed to go through hoops and hurdles to get there. there was a random horde that seemed to disappear as quick as it came, abby just gets lucky and has joel and tommy save her and then they go straight to the lions den? would joel from the first game be so quick to do that? Wait was she 100% sure just from two peoples names this was the guy she wanted? Ellie gets there just in time to see the final blow and then the others only get there just in time to miss everything and not be able to help? Whats going on??? This feels too structured and not genuine?? 

- going into his house was just as painful. i’m sorry but i’m going to bring this back up a lot-  if they would had just killed him in a more tactful manner i would have praised the way these little scenes were done. grabbing his watch, ellie smelling his clothes, seeing the pictures of sara and ellie, looking at his workshop and seeing how well he can carve! I couldn’t appreciate it the way I wanted to because I couldn’t get that image out of my head. i was literally bawling the entire time. 

-REVENGE TIME BEGINS:

+so the first scene was set: ellie wanted to go to seattle for revenge, dina was going to go with her, and tommy had already left. I remember having two thoughts here

  +“please tell me its going to be more then ellie just going on a revenge spree and then at the end she doesn’t kill abby because morals / murder is bad / not everything is black and white kind of tropes.” 

  +and “i have a wild feeling tommys gonna be like the only person that makes it out alive. he did it in the first game somehow hes gonna weasel his way free in this one.”

-ELLIES SEGMENTS:

+the graphics are amazing the sceneries are some of the most beautiful i have seen in a game. and it didn’t stop there. every area was amazing. I think most can agree to this. 

+i was determined, no matter what else the game threw at me i was going to see it through to the end and try very hard to visualize it the way the creators wanted it to be visualized. even if i didn’t agree or didn’t like parts, i figured hey the first game was so good this has to revive itself.

+i really liked the gameplay, it was a finer tuned version of the first game. i also liked the idea of the map and how it actively showed you different locations and crossed them out when you were done. but in the back of my head i was thinking “wow this would have all been so neat in the first game”. I shouldn’t be thinking about the first game. I should be enjoying this one.

+i was getting concerned none of the new characters were getting as much character development and love as some of the characters in the first one. I liked dina a lot, and by the very end of the game she did feel pretty rounded out (i especially liked her in the farm segment)  but the beginning and middle seemed almost more focused on “this is ellies girlfriend” instead of “this is dina”. I felt the same with jesse. I liked him but nothing stood out as much as it could and should have. I got more from tess in the short amount of time she was in the first game.

+there were certain segments that felt way more horror like and scary then in the first game and I loved them a lot. The new enemy (shambler) was cool and the settings where they used red lighting looked amazing. I also really loved the new take on stalkers. They were way harder to find and I found myself on edge to get jumped by one during those sections. They funny enough reminded me of dead space stalkers and i thought they were an improvement from the first games.

+at this point i pretty much understood what the creators were going for plot wise, but i personally just didn’t think it was needed. 1) i’m confident the majority of hardcore last of us fans already understand the concept of how every character can be good and bad and that not everything is black and white. we didn’t need to see one beloved character die horribly and the other be in that much pain and lose herself to understand that. 2) did we not pretty much already cover this concept in the first game? but....better? you remember...the ending?

- ELLIES FLASHBACKS:

+ of course I enjoyed them. its what i needed from a sequel. its what the whole game should have been, at least for me personally. the birthday flashback was the highlight of the entire game. i needed it so badly after the mind numbing, emotionally exhausting, weird out of place plot was putting me through. I was glad to finally see how ellie felt about the ending of the first game. but trying to crunch all that in 4 cutscenes? I just don’t feel like it was enough. you basically gave me one scene per year of joel and ellies relationship and you felt like that was enough to let me digest almost 5 years they spent in jackson?

- ABBYS SECTIONS:

+call me an optimist or maybe just stupid i’m not sure but when it rolled over and said “hey take over and check out the life of joel’s killer” my first thought was okay so i was right they want a “”nothing is black and white”” narrative but maybe doing it this way will be new and fresh? I can get through this and enjoy it? .... Its just not a fully possible reality and how could it be? had it been the first game in the series maybe it would had worked, but of course no matter how hard I tried I just felt disassociated from abby because I was already close to joel and ellie. I understood her reasons. I understood the narrative you were going for. I understood the damn parallels. I’m not an evil person that would just laugh about what happened to her dad, but how can you not understand as writers that a huge majority might be able to understand it, but still won’t be able to enjoy it. It felt so pushed and shoved into my face that I couldn’t enjoy it if i wanted to because the game just kept screaming “LOOK AT THE PARALLELS THO!!!”

+abbys dad seemed forced and out of place too. when abby and co. first killed joel i didn’t even think fireflies tbh. I thought it was something he did before he met ellie, or something he did during the 5 years in jackson. like yeah i got it, its not the worse backstory in the world but when put in context to the first game it just doesn’t make sense to me to use as the narrative you want to portray in the second game. maybe i’m nitpicking here but from all the personal notes and all the tapes you can read and listen to about the fireflies in the first game it makes it hard to believe the majority of fans would care for the second games narrative at all. they already made their decisions. it at the very least just seems like bad salesmanship? but maybe they already knew that and thats why the trailers were all lies? (just my thoughts at the time remember) 

+and oh god was the character development even worse for abbys friends. at least they tried to give abby a rounded character development that mirrored ellies but if you think ellies friends barely got character development, abbys friends got almost zero. I didn’t care about a single one. they felt so flimsy and husk like. “this is the boy she likes” “this is a medic friend” “this guy likes sex alot” “this is dog, so of course you like dog”

+I mean its great everyone was able to be so different. abby is muscular, ellie is a lesbian, there were many poc, dina is jewish, they brought in a trans character....but how can i enjoy any of it when more than half of these characters felt put in just to be there instead of well rounded characters you can appreciate for good or bad?

+the sex scene with her and owen was the scene where i personally felt myself giving up. it felt so much like this game wanted to be an HBO classic instead of just a video game that i felt myself detaching even more. (also whats up with owens voice??? lol)

+GROUND ZERO was a very good chapter. That shit was spooky in all the good ways, it felt a lot like dead space with the plastic everywhere, THE BIG ASS MONSTER HAD ME ON MY KNEES. The chase scene up to the actual boss fight was A+. Here is the one catch though - I forgot I was playing as abby. It felt more like just playing first person. Not a character at all. I don’t think that is how you want your game to be played, and no it wasn’t my intention. 

+I wish yara and lev had gotten more screen time. the game was so focused on the abby vs ellie thing and shoving it down your throat that most the side characters got washed out, these two included. Their story was interesting and it would had been nice to see more of them instead of whatever the weird love triangle abby had going on with her two friends I couldn’t care less about. (i stg chances were given, but as i previously stated they felt more like husks of characters then fully rounded ones.)

+getting hunted by tommy was actually a pretty cool highlight of the game for me. and even for a narrative i didn’t personally like it was a good idea to do! it reminded me of the sniper section (but holy hell tommys a better shot lol) and david’s hide and seek section in the first game which i thought was very well done. 

+this is when i went “oh maybe i was wrong, tommys gonna die. i give him a 20% chance of survival now that abby saw his face

-THEATER TIME

+why in the all out hell would you ever think it would be a good idea to tell the player to go after ellie? no matter what narrative? lmao. I died here the most literally for the soul fact i was scared there might be some kind of choice so i wouldn’t mash QTEs as fast as i normally would. and when i found out no, you just gotta power through it i literally found myself going through this 10 minute segment going “but i don’t want to do this”, “i really dont want to do this”, “do i have to do this?” “why do i gotta do this?” and yes i still understood your narrative but it doesn’t matter. it was just awkward. 

+This is where personally I would have put the cali segment if I really wanted to go with a narrative I still say didn’t need to happen because we already went through it in the first game, and then the happy farm bit at the end. 

-FARM

+i felt the game was going on too long and i was literally screaming at my screen to just end my suffering when i realized there was more after seattle. adding the extra PTSD scene just felt like an added fuck you towards the fans. I said it once, I’ll say it 1000x that scene with joel was seared into my brain already. I didn’t need that literal jumpscare. I already knew what ellie was going through dammit I was going through it with her! Let the girl and me for that matter have a bit of happiness after what you put us through!

+holy hell tommy fucking lived. he fucking lived. that mother fucker. hes the new telltales kenny. 

-SANTA BARBARA

+I said previously this section should have some how been merged into the seattle ending. I couldn’t tell you how honestly, but keeping it dragging like they did was so emotionally draining. it didn’t give me any feeling but more sadness and torment for a favorite character that didn’t deserve this kind of treatment. ellie looked so skinny and sad here. and i feel like it was what the creators were going for? because abby ended up looking just as sad looking. The ending fight was so sad and pathetic. I felt bad for both of them and that is what the creators wanted right? but at what cost? most of your fans, if they even managed to play this far, so emotionally drained and tired that they end up hating the game or not wanting to play it again? 

-ENDING

+so how do i feel now that i finished it? overall there were more cons than pros for me. as i said numerous times before this narrative is not new, this narrative was not needed. this narrative definitely shouldn’t have been lied about through trailers. this narrative was basically done better in the first game anyways. the ending did not give me “sad but hopeful”. it just left me empty and depressed. I don’t see myself playing this game ever again. 

+If anyone was able to enjoy it I’m truly happy you were able to and these were all just my personal thoughts and opinions while playing the game. I don’t hate anyone that liked it, I don’t even hate abby. I just personally hate they wrote a narrative that felt so forced down your throat in all the wrong ways. I hate that I wasn’t ready for that joel scene because it still hurts to think about. I hate thinking about how sad ellie looked and how they were both treated. It just wasn’t healthy for me tbh is the best way I can put it. 

[entamewitchlulu]

lulu does flash reviews again

hey it’s been a while since i did one of these, anyway i just finished Princess Connect and I have some Thoughts so this is genuinely just me rambling about it

So, Princess Connect Re:Dive. It’s essentially a 12 episode long commercial for the associated role playing mobile game.  It follows the adventures of the Gourmet Guild, a group of four adventurers whose goal is to investigate and enjoy the various foods of their fantasy world. 

The Guild is made up of Yuuki, ostensibly our protagonist: a somewhat blank-slate sort of character who’s obviously supposed to be whoever your face character in the mobile game is, but who is actually, surprisingly, rather charming. He has lost his memories after some unknown battle he participated in with a bunch of former party members, and tends to respond to things in monosyllables, preferring instead to communicate with thumb’s ups and “mn!” in most cases. Despite this, he seems to be a very sweet boy who cares about his friends and is eager to do his best.  Personally, I found him to be kind of a breath of fresh air in terms of male protagonists of fantasy shows otherwise populated by women.  There’s not a single bit of “lucky pervert” tropes, he doesn’t seem at all interested in pursuing or flirting with any of the other girls, and only one of the girls is interested in him romantically. He’s generally pretty straightforward and good-hearted, so at worst I could call him boring - but even so, again, I found him charming.

Next is Kokkoro, an elf from a small village sent by someone who appears to be a goddess of some kind to find Yuuki and assist him as he recovers his memories. Kokkoro is, in a word, cute. She’s the only member of the cast who is interested in Yuuki romantically.  Despite this happening immediately after she meets him, it sort of makes some sense to me, since she’s clearly been taught that he’s a special and important person whom she is duty-bound to serve, so it makes sense to me that she would hold him in high regard - and since he’s just genuinely so...genuine, it makes sense that it wouldn’t take long for a more sheltered girl to develop feelings for him. And, happily, she has a personality outside of this attraction as well: she’s reliable, patient, and good at sewing, and she enjoys spending time with the rest of the guild.  Her silly faces she makes every time Yuuki gets chewed on by a wolf are hilarious, too.

Third up is Pecorine, who, while Yuuki is supposedly the protagonist, is pretty much set up to be the real protagonist of the show. Pecorine is not-so-subtly secretly the princess of this fantasy world, Landosol, however, it appears for some reason someone else is acting as ruler. Pecorine is ridiculously strong, ridiculously peppy, and always hungry. She’s literally made of nothing but love, joy, and excitement for whatever the next day will bring. She’s always helping people and seems to consider making others happy to be her life goal, alongside eating lots of yummy food. Everyone she encounters eventually becomes her best friend, even when they start off by trying to steal from her. She’s straightforward, doesn’t seem to notice when people don’t have her best interests in mind, and yet, beneath that, she is extremely lonely and vulnerable. If you couldn’t tell, she’s far and away my favorite character of the show.

And finally, there’s Karyl: a cat girl who is, in my opinion, the perfect example of a cat girl. She’s initially a loner who doesn’t see the need for friends, and is, apparently, supposed to assassinate Pecorine. As Pecorine doesn’t notice, she quickly inducts Karyl as her new girlfriend best friend, and Karyl, for all of her tsundere, don’t-touch-me cat vibes, absolutely starts falling for Pecorine’s kindness back.  While she’s the one to call out the guild’s stupid plans and ideas, she generally ends up joining in on the shenanigans, much to her eternal chagrin.

So, I don’t mean to make this just a description of the show, because I do have thoughts and opinions, but I felt like setting up my feelings on the main cast was important before I got into the details of the show itself.  From this point forward, there will be spoilers.

So, what this show does right:

As I mentioned in my talk about Yuuki, in terms of “1 male protagonist surrounded by girls”, it’s a relief to watch a show where the main cast is just all a bunch of good friends and they’re not just all hanging on the bland main character.  Each of the cast is given their own time to develop their own personalities both with each other and outside of each other, and they’re all, genuinely, rather endearing.  There are two characters who show up later who are a bit annoying about their care over Yuuki (calling themselves his big and little sister respectively), but since they aren’t main cast members and connect the show to a larger “what happened before this?” narrative, I didn’t mind it so much.  Plus, despite a cast of all girls in a mobile game, outside of a few skimpy outfits and Pecorine’s occasional boob jiggle, there wasn’t a SINGLE bit of fanservice, which shocked me for this genre. No upskirts, no accidental boob touches, no lewd comments or innuendos.  I was floored, and in a good way.

The character design really isn’t bad for a show based on a mobile game. Characters are distinct in design and personality. The best design is, of course, the girl who is Just a Llama. 

I actually really liked being thrown into this world where it was very obvious that something had already happened Before, but you were only given pieces of it.  It built a very intriguing premise by starting us off seemingly after the climactic battle goes wrong, and adds a sense of unease here or there about knowing that something is a little bit off, but you don’t quite know what.  Not getting all of the answers at the end of the show wasn’t a dealbreaker, either, because I knew I wouldn’t going in - it’s a mobile game show. The story is still going in the mobile game, so they won’t play all their cards in the adaptation.

Karyl and Pecorine are definitely the main characters of the show, and while I’m sure it wasn’t intentional, their story very much feels like a love story, and I just really, really enjoyed that for what I expected to see going in, I instead got two girls who were allowed to have a complicated and yet very sweet relationship that developed slowly over the series into a truly beautiful climax.  Speaking of Pecorine, as well, I have to give some props to the plot twist about her character. It was obvious to me for a while that she was the princess of Landosol, and I assumed that her parents were dead.  I kept wondering why she was leaving her people to the whims of her impersonator instead of taking back her throne, and it was something that sort of bothered me throughout her seemingly cheerfully ignoring what her usurper was doing to her kingdom.  Finding out that the fake princess had, in fact, simply replaced Pecorine with herself in everyone’s memories, leaving Pecorine with no idea what to do and deciding to disappear knowing that even her own parents didn’t remember her as their daughter was a shocking, and powerful, plot twist.

When it’s good, it’s really good.  There are some genuinely heartfelt and powerful moments.  The animation is surprisingly good, beautiful to watch especially during fight scenes.  The final scene especially with its emphasis on Karyl and Pecorine really touched me, as it was clear they put a lot of effort into just the last few frames to make it really touching.

And here’s what this show does wrong:

When I said that when it’s good, it’s really good, the same can be said that when it’s bad, it’s bad.  The main problem with this show is that it wants to be everything.  It wants to be a comedy.  It wants to be a drama.  It wants to have deep character drama and heartfelt moments.  It wants to have intense battles and evil villains alongside a story about four friends making sandwiches out of monster meat.  The comedy bits and drama bits are both solid enough on their own, but smushed together, it makes for a tonally dissonant show that cheapens some of the more heartfelt moments.

The show takes way too long to even get into its main conceit, too.  I think it wasn’t until episode 4 that they started their Gourmet Guild - and then even after that, the food hunting sort of disappeared in a lot of episodes so that you kind of forgot what their goals even were.  And even when the food episodes happened, they almost felt like filler.  Because of the show’s lack of focus, it was hard to truly enjoy any part of it.

And I cannot forget to mention that though I praised the character design in the good stuff section, there were some...concerns.  Episode 3 introduces a fatphobic, borderline racist design. He is shown as cruel, violent, gleefully mean, and morbidly obese in a cast that is otherwise made up of skinny characters.  And worse, he’s the only brown character in a sea of pale, white-coded characters.  His appearance in episode 3 almost made me stop watching.  He showed up briefly in several more episodes after this, and it sucked every single time.  Despite a lot of the other things I loved about this show, I really cannot recommend it to anyone with a clean conscience just because of this character. He’s distressing and uncomfortable to me, so I can’t imagine how a POC might feel while watching it.

Genuinely, if even one or two of their “here’s a cute girl” designs had been Black or brown, I would have felt way better.  But the juxtaposition of this guy being the only dark skinned character in the show combined with his abhorrent personality just really, really distresses me, and I think it’s a warning that people should be aware of before giving it a try.

That being said, overall, I don’t think Princess Connect Re:Dive was a bad show.  As I said, there was a lot of elements I enjoyed, and I will probably go look and see if there’s any Karyl/Pecorine art out there, and since the app is Japanese only, I might even go and read the continued plot somewhere.

So this wasn’t much of a “flash review”, I had a lot to say, I guess lol.  Anyway, if anyone else watched it, please let me know what you thought~ I’d be interested to hear anyone else’s take.  For my part, I’ll give Princess Connect a solid 6/10.