#its just kinda uncreative i feel like they could have gone in a more interesting visual direction with it

[neofelis----nebulosa]

watched the second full scene released from kfp 4 and it is significantly lowering my expectations

[fictionfixations]

i found a fic where midoriya is ranpos reincarnation

and now i have the story outline sorta of a bsd x mha.

also there are references to things and things im trying to exlpain to myself to remember later but maybe you wont and im not gonna explain that haha this is kinda influenced but i also dont wanna write fuckin dostoevsky because how the fuck do you take him down that man is probably smarter and more dangerous then afo imo?? i dont want to make the book a thing (LOOK. the manga is still in its 'what the fuck is happening this is chaos' and the stuff thats mentioned is kinda in that part?? okay so the guy with the perfect crime ability, i know thats been adapted to the anime but the manga hasnt ended, they havent figured out the actual solution to the story thats going on so also 'how the fuck am i meant to do that im so uncreative'

ahaha also the mention of a shatter thing is a reference to some other mha fic but haha go look through my bookmarks i dare you, i copied and pasted an excerpt that explained what happened with shatter. its nice. :))))

okay so just because i started a multi-chapter fic that i actually wanted to finish the next thing i know i have so many documents open with multi-chapter stories and im repeating a mistake i made that ended up with a lotta discontinued fics

instead of being kicked out of the dorms because of outing the guy at the police academy for like cheating on his s/o or whatever, he reluctantly continues and becomes a detective. the youngest ever, and the one who has ended up solving the most cold cases ever.

he becomes tsukauchis problem he is also quirkless. he was never told that he had an ability by fukuzawa-dono. but he is insanely smart, even more then nezu

hes taught by the law enforcement there that not everyone knows what he does, so its important to point things out

ranpo doesnt have much skill in protecting himself, but his knowledge lets him predict some things, as a faux foresight. he gets bested by a new organization (The LOV? except they have more power, and recruit Mushiro Fushiguro or whats its name, the guy with the Perfect Crime ability. Ranpo got involved in the investigation against the LOV. Someone is killed as a threat, and right before his eyes all the evidence is gone, and he has that feeling that something is missing. ..Ah. It's threatening him not to go any further. He does.), and tsukauchi gets hurt, therefore the police department is deemed too risky and is moved to the custody of one Aizawa Shouta. (ofc, erasermic, and shinsou is there) He ends up shadowing Aizawa at his job, having already graduated, and technically class a's senpai.

on the meanwhile, the investigation team collaborates with the Armed Detective Agency from Yokohama, noting the existence of an Ability User they had been chasing down, having been able to figure out that the murder of a certain Mystery novel writer had been in close-ish contact with a man with an ability. 'Perfect Crime'.

like lady nagant, the guy fuckin DIES after they find him and have an encounter and ends up regretting it (because of course ranpo figures it out) but not after giving a very ominous message

they go to the summer camp, ranpo as an honorary member, and trusting in his teammates, gets kidnapped instead in place of bakugo.

afo is interested in the self-proclaimed greatest detective, the youngest one in fact. ranpo feels threatened. he wants him. needs those strategic smarts, but knows that Ranpo would never. Instead, he would make it so Ranpo could never help the other side. He shatters him. for once, his intuition fails him. his teammates are too late.

He was scared. (this is what he gets for being reckless all the time. almost suicidal with how much trust he puts in his colleagues to make it in time.)

think of yosano after she exploded the thing and was all depressed and unreacting.

before this, he meets shinsou at aizawa's place. he bluntly questions why shinsou hasnt used his mindreading. shinsou: what?? aizawa: what have i told you about people not understanding some things? stop being so blunt. ranpo: blink blink oh. Hey Shinsou, did you know that logically you should be able to mind read someone while you're brainwashing them- well actually, its more like you're putting them to sleep, but in a state of sleepwalking, y'know? so their mind is still kinda active and registering things that they're seeing in dreams, and you can interact with them that way and their mind would be much easier to see and read because you're kind of.. in their brain? shinsou: … I CAN DO WHAT NOW? aizawa: ..Ranpo.

shinsou reaches out to ranpo. his eyes stay in their shattered shape but he can see after hes free.

ranpo learns to be less hesitant, but is still paranoid.

[harrynightingales]

Straight male writer: 6 years is nothing to an immortal! Their relationship needs ANGST to be interesting!! Me: am I supposed to believe that these two men, who have been together for almost a millennium, who KNOW that any death could be their last because their immortality isn’t guaranteed, wouldn’t speak for SIX YEARS??? (If the unspeakable happened during that time period the survivor would never forgive himself!)

i'm with you anon!!! i actually have a lot of rambly thoughts on this and now feel enabled to share them because hey, you started it! under the cut because this is long as hell

edit: just as a heads up i read this as anon referring to the writer of the ttt3 moon landing story who to be fair i don't know if he is straight, or just as a general ~straight man writer~ perspective

first of all hard agree that the idea of angst = complex and interesting is really frustrating. i say that as someone who definitely can and does enjoy angsty miscommunication based fic but it definitely strikes me as something a) quite rare for them and b) not at all required for an interesting story. there are so many potential experiences for the anthology writers to explore that focusing on conflict all the time seems. uncreative.

anyways the 6 years comment has been fully disregarded by me. in general i have the approach of picking the canon/word of god comments that i like and ignoring the rest. specifically, it strikes me as the type of thought a writer would have when first writing about immortals, the whole idea that years pass like its nothing because they live so long. i imagine the writer was guilty of the same thing that grucka himself admitted to, of picking something that sounded cool because it was ~possible with immortal characters (in grucka's case, randomly picking 6000 as an age for andy) without actually thinking through the implications and whether it makes sense.

because as i mentioned in my reply (which i assume you saw?), the human experience of fighting with someone you love and not speaking to them fucking sucks. it feels good and satisfying for all of what? a day? and beyond that you just miss that person, especially when they are so intertwined with your every day life the way joe and nicky are. and exactly like you said, why on earth would they willingly put themselves through that when we canonically know how much they value and love each other?? because the way i see it you can fully disagree with someone and be angry with them but still make it clear that you love them by communicating. and the silent treatment is truly just the absence of any sort of communication and i can't imagine a scenario where an argument would be so very important to justify that level of anger to avoid any communication for more than a few days.

to be clear the actual events of the comic are not the main concern for me. i do think the philosophical differences between joe and nicky that are highlighted are interesting and would naturally bring some tension. i even can kind of understand the choice to go silent on each other - joe really eloquently explains his point to andy, but maybe he hadn't quite figured out his own thought process enough to explain it at the time of the original argument with nicky. and the hill i will die on re: joe/nicky's relationship is that it is built on respect, i imagine they would be emotionally mature enough to not lash out in anger and potentially say something hurtful that they can't take back. so choosing to remove themselves from the situation and not speak so as to not make things worse makes sense, as an initial reaction. where it loses me personally is that you can see that both ~activities if you can call them that are really important to joe and nicky. for joe, seeing the moon landing and appreciating beauty and progress in the world, and for nicky, serving justice to more people that caused innocent people harm (the "more" very consciously there because joe obviously also believes in their work and stopping injustice, but in this case they have different priorities past a certain baseline). and going back to my idea as respect as foundational for them, part of that in a relationship is recognizing that what is important and of value to your partner becomes important to you, even if you don't fully understand it. the way that joe so earnestly talked about wanting to experience the beauty of the moon landing and wanting to experience it with nicky makes me believe that nicky would reconsider his priorities, especially taking into account the "once in a lifetime" nature of watching the first the moon landing vs simply the convenience of having the hitlist targets all at home. and similarly, even if joe isn't fully convinced that everyone on nicky's hitlist needs to get taken out, he would recognize how and why that is important to nicky and not allow it to be something that comes between them, because like i said earlier fighting for justice is something they have in common. so in my mind the most in-character ideal response would be "argument of what to do next after taking out the serial killer -> both explain their positions and why that is their priority -> COMPROMISE". 

but ANYWAYS that huge ramble aside, the main plot "fight" of their's is not such a big deal to me, especially since its clear that joe knows nicky will call and its implied that he does shortly after the event of the comics. if anything, as others have said, it just seems FAR better suited for early days in their relationship rather than multiple centuries into it when they would have PLENTY of opportunity to iron out their moral approaches to killing plus gone through Communication In Relationships 101.

it really is just the 6 years comment that grinds my gears. again, a 6 year silent treatment argument could maybeee make sense in like, the first century of their relationship, as they were figuring stuff out and also before they discovered the fact that they can lose their immortality. like you said anon, once they have that information, i truly cannot believe they would willingly waste that much time over something that can't have been all that consequential. and i really don’t understand the argument that “because they’re immortal time doesn’t mean the same thing to them and 6 years is nothing!!” because imo that’s just.. not how the brain works. like they are fully human and process emotions as humans, and the human way is that conflict/anger/stress feel BAD, especially when you’re in the middle of it. your emotions are heightened which would put you on edge and feeling irritable and the brain is absolutely NOT meant to be in that state for an extended period of time. and again, why would they put themselves through that when they could just?? do the grown up thing and have a conversation. what would be the motivation to experience those shitty feelings for 6 years when an alternative exists?? not to mention greg's comment that the two of them had never willingly spent time apart, and even if they were still (indirectly) interacting while not speaking, the emotional distance it would require to be physically next to someone and disregard them like that for MULTIPLE YEARS runs really contrary to the way the relationship is presented. 

that being said i do find this post super funny and i definitely can imagine them going through the motions of "negative" relationship experiences (can you say jealousy and lorenzo???) entirely for the sexual payoff. but again, to take it kinda seriously, even that in my mind would be based on a foundation of understanding that they do love each other and they're not really REALLY mad at each other, just

p.s. i wrote almost this whole thing in a daze about 24 hours ago and then i saw this post which makes a lot of the same points as me so hopefully this isn’t repetitive and i’m sorry op i promise i wasn’t stealing your ideas. nice to be on the same page as others though!

[thearchitectanalyzes]

R.I.P Killing Stalking: Why I dropped it!

So as a lot of you probably know, I dropped KS quite a while back because I lost interest. But I want to say something, clear up a few things, especially regarding the recent update because a lot of my fellow KS blogs who had higher standards for the story are being kinda bullied..? That’s not nice! I’ve only seen some spoilers so I’m not sure Sangwoo’s sexual relationship with his mom is actually canon now or another misinterpretation but people seem convinced so I’ll go with that for now.

Firstly, people are using the term ‘Oedipus complex’ too loosely. You probably know the Greek mythology; Oedipus marries his mother unknowingly and later finds out and gouges his eyes out. Oedipus complex is a theory/term coined by Freud based on that story, which says children at a certain stage in their life develop sexual feelings towards their parents (of the opposite sex). Now both the story and the theory are fucked up and we know Freud had problems with cocain.. BUT THE POINT IS! Oedipus complex HAS NOTHING TO DO with ‘the parent molests the child and therefore the child develops sexual feelings towards them’. What Sangwoo would have had (or has! idk) if he was in fact sexually abused by his mom, is not Oedipus complex but PTSD. Flashbacks/hallucinations are also a symptom of post-traumatic stress disorder.

That being said, I see a lot of people insisting that it was obvious from the start that Sangwoo was sexually abused because “LOOK:

HE HAD SEXUAL FEELINGS TOWARDS HIS MOM FROM THE BEGINNING.”

And I’d say confirmation bias is the worst way to try and prove a point, man! It was one of the million possibilities. Especially if you’re knowledgeable about the subject, open-minded, without a mindset or black and white thinking. A person can have/develop sexual feelings towards someone (that includes parents) WITHOUT being molested or sexually abused by them. The real life example of that is

YES....ED MOTHERFUCKING GEIN! The Butcher of Plainfield!! The real life Norman Bates. The famous murderer who had sexual feelings towards his mother but his mother was a religious and strict woman. And NO he was not sexually abused in any way by anyone. The opposite of this also happens. Not every child that is sexually abused always develops sexual feelings towards the person (parent!).

So NO, I don’t agree that it was always “obvious” but (as I said before) I think it could be the simplest, most predictable and most uncreative cause for Sangwoo’s problems. And alas Koogi chose that .. and this is the reason a lot of people are disappointed now.

Again, I’ve seen people say things like ‘this actually happens a lot in real life’ THEREFORE ‘this is a good story’. And we have different opinions and that’s okay, but my POV personally is that, if you want real life, go watch and read the news media. I read fiction (FICTION!!!) because I want something MORE than what the news media has to offer. I want twisted, creative, unpredictable stories with a touch of psychology or any other real life science.

Look at the Oedipus story itself. Read the book. It is fucked up but also extremely tragic and so damn creative. Especially for its time! Take a look at Harada’s works. That’s what I call REAL LIFE PSYCHOLOGY mixed with creativity and bravery of the artist. Read Color Recipe. Look at how she portrays the manipulative psychopaths. Look how Fukusuke STAYS in character throughout the whole manga (even when you think he is breaking) and stays true to his antisocial symptoms. Even the reader is at points manipulated by the character. It’s fascinating!

Look at how she portrays mental disorders and PTSD when it comes to people who have been sexually abused as children.

Look at how she portrays an emotional attachment, imprinting and mind break being developed in a brutally honest depiction in Mienai Kusari. Read Sumomo and Yatamomo and how she depicts and represents depression in several characters and in different forms. It’s amazing. It’s always highly accurate, and at the same time, Harada always thinks outside of the box and finds creative ways and routes to surprise and satisfy her readers.

So my problem was, ‘my dear Koogi, this started as a very unique work, you could’ve gone with millions of different routes and you chose the easiest one. The characters are constantly out of character for cheap shock values! What happened to the psychological part of the story?’

This is pretty much like the Venom movie. You know what they say, “the audiences love it, critiques hate it”. If the critiques hate it, it means there are fundamental, deep flaws with the movie. And let’s face it, it was a HORRIBLE movie but... apparently entertaining! I’m not trying to say some of us here know better. I’m trying to say, despite you agreeing to the horrible flaws/mistakes of the story/comic, those flaws still exist, they just don’t matter to the majority of ‘the audience’. ‘the audience’ still find it entertaining while a minority with different standards might think, ‘this could’ve been a lot better!’.

I’m a psych/criminology student and a psychology and criminology enthusiast. The thriller, dark psychology and HOW they are depicted matter to me (and to a lot of other people). And we have different reasons and different standards so let’s respect each other. KS started with the words ‘Borderline Personality Disorder’ and I had great hopes for it. I was excited because Koogi made it seem like it was a psychological thriller! I made this blog and started with psychological analyses of the work (which is something that would’ve worked for something like Color Recipe for example!) but soon I realized I can’t use psychology. Why? because at first, it seemed like the story was filled with psychological inaccuracies and later there was really no psychology in it at all. KS made less and less sense to me over time. No offense but to me it feels like it’s written by a 12 year old teenager. It feels like Twilight all over again. I’m not trying to be offensive, just honest about what I think.

I still hope the fans can continue to enjoy the work but this was my POV.

[dcarevu]

DCAU #9: The Forgotten

“I claim this land…for Spain…”

This is an episode where you can get a pretty good idea of how you’ll feel about it from the title card sequence alone. With that music and all. Yeah, it doesn’t really feel like the show we’ve been watching, does it. But what says more about it than the music or that fence is the title. The Forgotten is right.

SPOILERS BEYOND THIS POINT

Villain: Biggis Robin: No Writers: Jules Dennis, Richard Mueller, Sean Catherine Derek Director: Boyd Kirkland Animator: Dong Yang Airdate: October 8, 1992 Episode Grade: D

The more I think about calling this episode forgettable as a pun on its title, the more I’m not sure if that’s really accurate. In some ways it is, especially when looking at cartoons as a hole. But when looking at specifically Batman The Animated Series? Well, it is certainly one of its kind, and it also has enough stupid stuff going on in it to stand out in my mind. Before watching this one, I was thinking, “Maybe this episode is better than I remember”, but no, I remembered pretty much everything as it happened. Bruce scouting the area dressed as someone a little more down on their luck, Bruce getting kidnapped, Bruce forced to be a slave, the villain, the mind segments, the Joker bit, the Alfred parts, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. Yeah, I don’t like this one.

Before I truly start complaining, what does this episode do right? Char and I agree, Bruce is a sweetheart. She brought up a great point, where even though Bruce Wayne might be a facade, his morality and generosity are not. He is very much doing what he believes in, despite how the city may see him. In the series bible, the writers mention how they planned on having Bruce hide his generosity through things such as dummy companies so that people would suspect him of being Batman even less. I’m not sure how I feel about this, but Char is glad that they didn’t so much go this route. I think that being a billionaire is enough of a spotlight, personally, and whether you act generous or snobby won’t really affect whether or not people think you’re Batman.

Also Alfred is again showing how great of a character he is. Alfred was in the Secret Service, so it makes sense that if he ever had to step up and take some things into his own hands, he would very much be able to. We see that here, with him sneaking around and placing a tracker on the villain’s truck, and then even managing to fly the Batwing (albeit not nearly as smoothly as our Dark Knight), finding Batman’s location and setting things up for Batman to kick some ass.

And then, overall, this was a really ballsy episode. We have a cartoon that lots of children watched, and we’re also not even ten episodes in, but they decided to do an episode that for much of it not only has our hero captured and not in costume, but also not even knowing who the hell he was. In a lot of ways, taking chances it was made this show so great. Not all of them are going to work, and I think that a few missed targets are worth the blindfolds sometimes. That being said, many times when the DCAU misses, it unfortunately really misses.

Onto what bothered us. The episode started with what seemed like a statement about no one caring about or even noticing homeless people, but that aspect was almost completely abandoned by the end. We think that they could have gone further with this. And while it is good that they weren’t trying to shove something down our throats and be really obvious about it, it still seems like a half finished opportunity. From my understanding there is an episode much further down the DCAU called Frozen Out which will deal much more with this topic, and I am looking forward to seeing how they end up saying what they want to say about that.

The villain was also just…well, unpleasant. I get that he was meant to be, I do. And I also know the backstory behind why he is how he is, at least in the context of writing. Writing one off villains can be tough, because you still want them to be memorable. To make this guy memorable, they decided to make him a disgusting, slobby glutton who, to quote Char, even sounds fat just by his voice. This is a problem because, one, we just had a villain a few episodes ago who essentially ran a group of slaves and feasted right in front of them. So this guy is already less unique. Also, if you’re going to try to make a villain memorable, maybe he shouldn’t be memorable for all the wrong reasons. I do not particularly like being reminded of some sweaty greasemonkey constantly firing off the deplorable sound waves of sloppy chewing noises. You add in the fact that this type of character has been done to death, and I just don’t really understand the thought behind Biggis, who’s name is even incredibly uncreative. Maybe Triple G would have been a better name. Generic, greedy glutton (Char came up with that). Geez! Let the character’s personality or something more interesting allow them to make an impression. This guy just makes a literal impression.

Then we have the memory factor. Having Batman lose is memory is not a bad idea inherently. Also, stripping him of his suit and gadgets is also not a bad idea. But it had better be written really well. And this just isn’t. Think about what makes Batman who he is. He childhood trauma that he went through at a very young age, and managed to swallow up his feelings, his morality, his purpose, and his overall being. You’re telling me a blow to the back of the head like that is going to erase all of it? And while his memory is gone, he’s not speaking in his Batman voice, he’s using his Bruce Wayne voice. Knowing that his Batman voice is the voice that he typically uses when he’s not portraying the playboy character, it bothers me a little. And there’s really nothing distracting me from it aside from some guy dribbling chicken grease down his chin, so it’s like, I’d better pick one of these to focus on!

We didn’t really go far enough with his backstory, internal conflict, or imagery to make the dream sequences very encapsulating either, as they went by very quickly, and we really just kinda skimmed the surface of things. Plus that Joker voice…yeah, that was no Mark Hamill. Maybe they were trying to go for an approach where Bruce Wayne’s voice was coming from the Joker to represent…I don’t know, something inside of himself, but I didn’t care for it, whether it was that, or just the fact that they didn’t wanna get Mark in for a single line (at that point he wasn’t the definitive Joker voice he is today). But the stupidest thing about Bruce Wayne’s memory or the dream sequences? As soon as he reaches the conclusion that he’s Batman, he manages to escape the trap that he’s in…by simply kicking it open. Like, what? He had to know he was Batman to do this? Remember, subconsciously, he knows he’s Batman throughout the episode. His mind keeps trying to tell him. But also, regardless of what excuse one may come up with for why he didn't (like that he didn’t realize how strong he was, or that he didn’t think he’d be able to fight his way out once he did escape), it’s lazy writing! The episode was inspired by the idea of taking away his gadgets and leaving Bruce to have to come up a solution that’s a little more down and dirty, but they did nothing with it aside from having Bruce kick and then fighting pretty much just as he would if he had the costume on. And pretty soon he does regain his costume anyway, so it’s like? Just another way that this episode was basically wasted. Not enough creativity or commitment went into it. As I said, this idea needed good writing, and thinking completely outside the box. Instead we get a pre-existing, lesser version of the book/movie Holes.

Char liked the episode a little bit more than me, but not a lot, and overall agrees. The side characters stood out to her, as did Alfred’s antics, Bruce’s values, and that incredibly gruesome brazen bull. She liked some things, but very specific things, and it didn’t exactly all piece together. So I think if this episode does end up as the forgotten, neither of us will complain all that much.

Fire count: 6 Char’s grade: C Major firsts: Alfred saves the day, an episode mostly featuring Batman without the costume.

Next time: Be A Clown

Full episode list here!

By the way, as of uploading this, it is Christmas Eve. To my fellow Christmas-celebrating readers, have a wonderful holiday!