#my writing process is basically writing a bunch of random segments

[lazybakerart]

Hi hi hi!! First of all, I absolutely love your writing. I think you do such justice to your characters and it’s always just so believable and poetic and beautiful. FFYIHI-F-A (quite the acronym) and Cherry made me cry multiple times, even on re-reads. You’re incredibly talented and I thank you for sharing your vision with the world!

I was wondering if you have any literary influences? Or perhaps how you developed your style of writing? I know that might be a difficult question; sort of like asking how your brain works lol.

I’m fresh outta university and my fiction writing skills are abysmal, but I have all these feelings and ideas in my head that I think I should get down on paper (if only for myself), but my taste is better than my skills atm so it’s frustrating. Beyond “write, write, write,” was there anything that helped you get to where you are today?

ALSO, your art?!?!?! Multitalented af!!!!!!

Thanks so much <3

oooohhh adskjghbsdf!!! thank you so much!! gosh!! T_____T!!!!

i didn't really start reading books until late in college (before that it was h*rry p*tter and garfield comics - i was obsessed - and manga. so much manga) then i got an ipod touch where i realized i could download the kindle app and get gay romance novels without anyone knowing~ (read all of josh lanyon at the time)

i didn't start getting REALLY into reading until i read kurt vonnegut. then i read most of his books. his idea of giving the reader all of the information up front was so interesting. he writes in a very approachable way. never too heavy with the details, but the details he does include are vital.

then i started listening to the moth podcast which helped me learn how to tell a short story, what the beats are, what makes a short story impactful.

there's a writer, emungere, who writes mainly hannibal fanfiction and original stuff too. i learned a ton from reading their stories. every word is needed and there's never any fat. they go straight to the heart for each sentence. succinct as hell.

i've gotten into megan abbott novels recently and she manages to balance between so poetic and brutally raw. i've never read an author who writes women like she does.

just write really is the best advice (i know, i wish there was a shortcut too T_T).

but!

write what you hate writing. for me, it was dialogue. i had a really hard time writing people talking. like, i'd avoid it all the time. and i really had to work on it before i got remotely comfortable and then you slowly learn the grooves of a conversation for whichever characters you're writing. (it was the same with my art, i never drew hands and now i'm, like, gonna fucking put a goddamn hand in this. all the hands. all of them.)

writing short drabbles is a great exercise. i rarely every wrote anything longer than 2k for years. even if its 500 words. if you can shape a story/narrative or just a scene! with 500 words, that's awesome.

and always remember, the 1st draft isn't perfect. it doesn't have to be. all a 1st draft is, is getting the information down. the 2nd and the 3rd and however many it takes, is where you start to carve out your story. so don't feel bad or give up when your 1st draft isn't what was in your head. you need to just keep working at it. give yourself and your story a chance to become what you want.

[justimajin]

In the Imajining of: It’s a Reverse Basket

We’re back at it again! For those of you confused, this is basically my behind the scenes segment where I share the ‘imajining’ process of my stories. 

For this series, I’ll be talking about: 

The Initial Idea 

The Characters 

The Baseline Story 

The Overall Series 

Let’s get it!

The Initial Idea: 

Would any of you believe me if I said this series wasn’t meant for Yoongi at all? Once again, another member was my initial choice but after furthur developing the idea Yoongi ending up fitting the storyline more. Let me explain. 

The first concept I had for this series is pretty similar to what it ended up turning out to be - girl dresses herself as a boy to get into a basketball team and falls for the captain. I got inspired after reading a lot of manga and noticing the gender bender trope was quite common. I decided it would be interesting to have my own take from it and so the idea for this series was born. 

However, the story would have been completely different if we had Captain Jeon instead of Captain Min and boy, would it have been really different. Jungkook was originally going to be this very rude and stoic captain and the mc would have feared him until he started to chill lol. It sounded like a good idea at first but I wasn’t really in love with how the main couple was turning out. Additionally Jungkook was going to be known for hating liers and that would have put the mc into a even worse position, which I wasn’t a fan of either. 

So the whole concept was scrapped and I started shifting gears over to Yoongi. I thought he would have suited the role as captain wayy better and watching a couple of video’s of him playing basketball confirmed this more for me. I was really surprised with how fair Yoongi is with playing the sport and that helped spark a better image for the team’s captain. I also thought changing his character would immensely help the mc’s character and in ways support the growth she goes through (oof a couple loving and supporting each other’s dreams? sign me up) 

The Characters: 

> Y/N: For any of my old readers, I think it’s obvious to say that the mc’s personality here is considerably different compared to past ones I’ve written. One trend I noticed through all the manga I read was that the mc’s were typically extremely naive and somewhat clueless. I did think traits like these would fit Y/N’s character since her position of being in an all boys school with this secret that can be slipped out anytime leaves her with a lot of ‘uncertainty’ in that sense, but I wasn’t up for her being too clueless. In an indirect way, I wanted Y/N to be strong and sensible to deal with everything she goes through and I think her character turned out exactly how I wanted. 

> Yoongi: Oh my god. Not going to lie, I had the hardest time writing this boy’s character lmao. I’ve only ever written one fic for him and that was His First Love (shameless self plug here if you’re in need of some heart-wrenching angst) so you can say I’m not very used to writing about Yoongi. He’s the member that’s the most different in BTS and I really wanted to capture his personality perfectly in the story. This led to a lot of thinking on my part and I constantly had to ask myself: What would Yoongi do in this situation? I also have the tendency to observe the member I’m writing about a lot too, so you can say I did my fair share of “research” on him for his character (and by research I mean watching a bunch of compilations on repeat. #no regrets made). 

> The Four Weirdos Taehyung, Jungkook, Hoseok & Jimin: I was really keen on choosing characters for this and looking back now, I think I made the right call. My motive was to create almost a warm and welcoming atmosphere for Y/N when she first enters the school because 1. She’s already scared af from being there and 2. She’s aiming for competitive basketball, which means by default she won’t surrounded with what one would call the nicest of people. It was important for me to choose her roommates properly, because these two people would be the ones constantly around her and the ones closet exposed to her secret. After a lot of contemplation, I decide to go with Taehyung and Jungkook in the end. I’ve explored their dynamic a bit in His First Love and I found their duo was a bit iconic. I also discovered that there was more I could do with them in this story so I decided to go forth with them being her roommates. Hoseok and Jimin then became their neighbors and together, their group of five had a nice balance of characters that I was looking for. 

Also just a side-note about Jungkook’s character: he actually retains a lot of what his character would have been like as captain. I just toned it down more so he wouldn’t come off as harsh but just highly focused on playing basketball instead (which also ending up working because you know, Jungkook). He’s also very aloof because of this, which is why he never really tries to probe about Y/N’s identity and leaves it all up to the troublesome trio instead lol. 

> The Coach and The One You Wanted to Punch Namjoon and Seokjin: I was a little disappointed that I didn’t get to write Namjoon’s character in a more involved way since Yoongi took some control of the practices, but nevertheless I’ve always found that Namjoon is great to write in admin characters. I also wanted to expand an arc about him and Taehyung a bit, showcasing some of the struggles Taehyung has gone through just to be at the school as mentioned in Chapter 2. I decided to drop this because the story needed to be concentrated on Y/N more, but I thought I share this tidbit so you guys know where I was thinking of going with that segment of the story. 

Moving on to Seokjin - I freaking loved writing this guy’s character haha. And I’m not saying this because I’m biased, okay? I just think he really suits negative characters so well and he’s so cheeky that you’re left confused whenever he pops up. I wanted to write him in such a way where he retains that joking and charming manner of his but at the same time, he’s the type of guy you want to just maintain some distance from for precaution. His rivalry with Yoongi, his interest in Y/N, his playful banter with Taehyung and Jungkook - it all tied in so well. I also wanted to keep his character in the loop towards the end and that eventually his differences would become resolved, but Taehyung and Jungkook would still highkey be annoyed by his random presences lol. I also hoped his sudden appearance would spark a lot of attention in Chapter 10 (which it did, of course. It’s Kim Seokjin!) because he’s the only character that’s introduced mid-series. 

> Hyerin, Soyoung, The Jackass That Ruined It All: So these characters were thrown in during the planning stages and they’re all extremely important. I’ll start off with Hyerin. 

Hyerin was a character I didn’t know I needed until I figured out Y/N’s character. After coming to the understanding that Y/N’s going to be this timid and naive person that’s going to be hiding a secret from everyone close to her, I realized she would need someone to almost confide in when things got tough. I’m not saying that Taehyung and Jungkook weren’t great friends, that’s the complete opposite of they were, but Y/N needed someone that she didn’t need to hide from. Hyerin also helps with the fact that Y/N’s entered a new school, so she really isn’t sure when to let her guard down around people and if she didn’t have a friend with her, she could have ended up feeling lonely. Hyerin is also veryyy vocal too, so when Y/N needed a voice, I wanted her to take up the opportunity instead and express things Y/N had difficulty with saying herself (remember that flashback scene from Chapter 9?). So yeah, Hyerin wasn’t a character I didn’t originally come up with but more so needed in support of Y/N. 

Soyoung. This girl’s story is a lot more messed up than you would think haha. I conceived two idea’s for her and didn’t like either of them, so she ended up being the friendly but strict doctor that kept popping up lol. The first one involved Hoseok, in which she would be a close friend of his sister’s and they would grow up knowing each other. Later on, she bumps into him at the school and starts falling for him, but doesn’t say anything because she loves his sister a lot and doesn’t want to compromise their relationship. You can see hints of this story in Chapter 3 where Y/N faints and her friends go to visit her. Hoseok introduces Y/N to his sister in Chapter 11 where you would see this play out more, but I decided to scrap this after the chapter was really focusing on what Y/N was going through. I’d like to think this idea lowkey happened in the background, and in my mind I would still correlate Soyoung and Hoseok together. 

Now, the second idea I had was, well, bad. lol. Soyoung could have ended being Yoongi’s ex-girlfriend guys. Damn, I’m getting cringe from just thinking about this again. So basically Soyoung and Yoongi were going to have some unsaid moments between them and then later Y/N would notice and Yoongi would tell her the truth. Y/N wouldn’t really be bothered by this because homegirl has enough on her plate with school and basketball but Soyoung would be and would try to cause problems. I’m still not a huge fan of the “bad ex comes to ruins your hopes and dreams because of their unresolved problems trope” so I ended up rejecting this idea and I am so glad I did. 

Moving on, let’s talk about the jackass lol. This is the guy from Chapter 9′s flashback and who appears in Chapter 20 again. He’s basically the guy that ends up spilling the beans for Y/N. I didn’t give him a name because I wasn’t hugely fond about his character at all, but he’s important in the sense of reminding Y/N of the past, which Hyerin mentions wasn’t the greatest because she wanted to play competitively but was stuck being part of the girl’s recreational team. So it was important for this guy to pop up once again and for Y/N to confront him during a game in order to move on from thinking she couldn’t fulfill her dream of playing competitively. Her family also influences this, but we’ll touch on that soon.

The Baseline Story: 

Alright, so I added this segment as a way to highlight parts I wanted to talk about more, as well as add in some neat unknown facts: 

>> Chapters 1-4 are meant to set up the series and get majority of the characters introduced. The part to highlight here is Yoongi giving a second chance to Y/N in joining the team after she falls sick. This moment was extremely important for Y/N since now knowing what happens in the whole series (her family, the old boys competitive team) she was strongly discouraged to play basketball. In a way, Yoongi was the first person to actually support her and in return, he felt she belonged on the team and wanted to see her grow as a player.  

>> Chapter 5 was the shortest chapter but I wanted to highlight the end of it. It’s the part where Hyerin cuts Y/N’s hair for her. Although this was meant in a way to help Y/N not having to wear a wig all the time, this moment was also to show the lengths at which Y/N is willing to go just to play competitive basketball. Even though she doesn’t show it, Hyerin constantly reminds her of how much she’s going to miss her natural hair. 

>> Chapter 6-9 is where the reveal of her secret shenanigans begins. This ends with Jimin almost finding about her identity and how he completely falls off the mark with guessing what’s actually up. I wanted to highlight here that Jungkook was originally supposed to find out and I was so close with going through with that idea. He was also supposed to keep the whole ordeal along the way and secretly help Y/N, but for some reason I don’t think that suited his character very well. So I instead chose Jimin and it ended up leading into some awesome bits of comedy. 

I also wanted to point out that this was the part where Yoongi slowly begins to get closer with her. I really wanted Yoongi to find out her secret and for her to be aware of this early on in the series since this helps Y/N a lot in these parts. Yoongi covers for her when she can’t and in return, Y/N feels a lot more calm when he’s around. 

>> Chapter 10-11 is the part where Seokjin first appears and Yoongi x Y/N have some issues going on. I think this part was the hardest for me to right because I didn’t want to seem like either of them was wrong in any way, but at the same time show that they seriously needed clear out what was going on between them. I don’t think I’ve shown this kind of conflict between one of my duos and it was strange to write, but I honestly think it did a lot good than bad (maybe I should make my duos fight more, hm). 

>> Chapter 12-16 is the initial progressions of Y/N and Yoongi’s relationship. It’s cute, it’s sweet, and it’s just meant to highlight what they’re like being a couple. My personal favorite is actually Chapter 13, which is when they go out on their first date. I remember contemplating a lot for this chapter, since I wasn’t sure on what place would be the best to draw something more out from these characters. You have to think of this way - both of them get flustered easily and aren’t the most vocal people, so I have to throw them into situations that helps them feel comfortable and open up more. So ultimately, what did I end up doing? Got them to go watch a basketball game together because it’s their natural domain and Yoongi’s teaching side would instantly activate. (apparently I’m a first date consultant now so if anyone would like some assitance hmu).

>> Chapter 17-18 is the part where you get deeper into Y/N and Yoongi’s characters. After the cute initial stages of their relationship, things get tense. I start this off with Yoongi bringing Y/N over to his family’s house, a thing that seems harmless at first until Y/N’s visits and realizes something is up. From meeting his family to issues with his dad, I really wanted to show that there was stuff going on in the background with Yoongi as well, stuff he didn’t necessarily try to sort out and instead ignored. Y/N does end up noticing and helps him here, but in Chapter 18 it’s shown it’s actually because she understands it. She has a similar situation going on but it’s even worse on her side, so she doesn’t hesitate in trying to make things better for Yoongi as she doesn’t want him to get to the point of her situation. Later on in Chapter 18, Yoongi also sees the similar effects and comforts her about it, understanding her better in return. I felt this part in general was extremely for me to properly write and communicate, because it was a strong turning point for both of them and for their relationship, taking what the previous chapters started off and making it into something deeper. 

Chapters 19-20 and the Epilogue are basically just the combined ending, so there’s not really anything there for me to highlight. 

>> Random Facts: This just popped into my head as I was browsing but the dorm that Y/N, Taehyung and Jungkook live in is 613, which actually means June 13th, BTS’s debut date. Uhh Y/N was originally supposed to mistake Yoonji for Yoongi and there was going to be a lot of mayhem going on regarding that, but I didn’t like all that chaos going on during a game so I went for the opportunity of developing Y/N’s character more instead. Yoongi’s jersey number is 9 which correlates with his birthday and Y/N’s is 7, which correlates to their recent album + apparently as an angel number, is known for being unique and positive, ironically also good at being secretive and keeping secrets (yes, I actually did research about a number lol). That’s all that comes to mind right now for me in terms of facts. 

The Overall Series: 

My lasting impression of this series is a very good one. I think I was genuinely surprised around this time since I was able to write 21 chapters without getting exhausted (something that often happens when you write for too long) and really enjoyed every part I wrote. This series ended up turning out a lot better than I initially would have imagined and in a way, I think I actually improved a lot as a writer through it. 

[violetsystems]

#personal

I’m not in a terrible mood this week although I am completely exhausted with everything.  Home is great when you have internet.  Not so great when people try to disrupt it by setting up service on top of your address.  People can be terrible communicators especially when they are focusing only on themselves.  We live in isolated times I understand.  The idea that people ‘project’ all the information you need is incredibly exhausting to have to read into all the time.  Especially when no one bothers to read what you project back.  I often wonder if it will get exponentially worse when people feel safer returning to a public facing world.  I’ve been public facing throughout all of this and for many years prior.  You can’t travel the world alone and develop some sort of toughness.  The real trick is being able to turn your defenses on and off.  It’s a reflex.  Like how in one breath I can tell somebody to fuck off then turn my head and help a kitten from the sidewalk.  If it were called acting then I would have a job already.  I often have to look back at how I’ve grown over time to figure out the headspace.  I’ve always been sort of awkward.  Mostly because I was sensitive to what others thought of me.  I’ve always been bullied as long as I can really remember.  I grew up in an Irish Catholic suburb filled with white people, white pride and whiter drug problems than they cared to admit to.  Most of my friends were losers and rejects.  I kept to myself and listened to hip hop on a broken yellow sony walkman.  People would call me the n word every morning on my way to school proudly claiming I was going to hell.  I was a shy and nerve racked honors student.  I grew up an only child who wrote poetry and science fiction.  I played pen and paper role playing games by myself because nobody shared the same interests.  At times, the friend groups that I did find had group agendas that dwarfed my social needs.  This never really changed.  I spent most of the last ten years revisiting this sort of solitude.  I travelled Korea, Japan and China by myself.  I stayed in hostels in group situations where I still felt uncomfortable.  I developed skills to talk to people.  I met a lot of weird people.  I met a lot of nice people too.  In Seoul particularly, I found a normal that I’d never really understood before.  I’d go out and actually do things with people I didn’t know.  I went to a guitar cafe once in a basement in a small neighborhood called Hyehwa.  The group was myself, a hostel owner, a soccer fan from Dalian, and a random guest.  We sat in silence as a small old man played “Goodbye to Romance” on a small guitar as silent Pink Floyd concert footage played out on the tv behind him.  I escaped to Korea for a long time.  I’d go every six months for two to three weeks on vacation.  At the time I had the vacation from my job to use with impunity.  If I stayed home in the states, people would follow me.  I realized this later when I switched my trips to New York.  My boss and my CIO would stop at nothing to contact me on my vacation to write emails they couldn’t formulate.  Ask questions about things they already knew the answer to.  Looking back on it, there are so many times people made my life miserable enough to make me quit.  I never really got the message because I’ve been so bullied over my life that I learned to ignore it.  My CIO famously cornered me in a hall once and asked what was wrong.  He told me point blank I didn’t have a good poker face.  I replied I wasn’t aware we were gambling.  It was so subtle I don’t think he understood I wasn’t bluffing.  I lost that hand six months later when he fired me over video chat.  Nine months later I’m dead to an entire twenty years of friendships and professional connections.  If I don’t look surprised or scared, it must be the poker face I’ve been working on.

This is to say I understand or process none of anything that has happened to me anymore.  It hurts beyond hurting.  And I’ve become an expert at dealing with it all alone and in silence.  So much so that people follow me around like lost puppies thinking I can offer them clarity.  Or treat me like a practice dummy in their attempt to haphazardly attack the real problems in society.  I’ve never been so tired, done and particularly bored with everything until now.  And yet the bitterness never really gets me anywhere except physically sick and depressed.  Throughout all of this as the situation in society starts to worsen, I see people looking to me for leadership or guidance.  This is often without even asking or having consent.  They think I’m part of some revolution that they’ve never asked about.  Nobody has ever asked my name.  They just know me as the guy they see around all the time.  That I’m some wise and silent protector of things when I’m just some regular person suffering just like everybody else.  If you really added it all up and put these chapters I write together, you’d see an alarming trend.  That for whatever movement people include me in, I’m expected to fight all of this alone.  And me knowing full well how well movements and revolutions have left me completely insignificant and invisible after the things I have done is disheartening.  People enjoy getting a reaction.  Pushing all the buttons every time you step outside your door.  Sometimes it’s a hundred yards before someone starts trouble.  Sometimes it’s the minute you step outside either porch you share with your neighbors.  The lack of dignity and respect is something I deserve because of my supposed position of power.  America is like that.  There is so little to go around that everything is a Hunger Games glorification. Classes need to provoke each other not identities.  And yet we measure each other’s value by our differences and not our common strengths.  America has always been a paradox in this way.  The magical chaos of Anarchy that allows everyone to be free at the expense of others.  The real way to be free in America is money.  And money locks us out from the dialogue more often than not.  It’s a great narrative that people can start their own businesses here in America when all the contract work is locked behind corporate recruiters, headhunters with signing bonuses and worse.  That somehow at the end of a pandemic I’ve survived almost completely alone in I’m supposed to give in at the end.  It’s like the clown in It gnashing it’s teeth as it shrinks into a harmless baby.  I feel a bit sorry for America right now.  And yet that clown has become less menacing to me and has been forced to feed on others.  After all I’ve seen and been through I have no luxury to be afraid of anything or anyone.  I have completely lost my innocence in that respect.  And the face I put on for society when I walk out the door is one of stone.  It is futile to expect that anyone can engage me with respect, humility and courage.  Nobody can ever say my name.  I have not heard my name spoken in forever by people I know well.  I hear it spoke when I get Korean food down the street.  My neighbors simply tell things to me.  Or give me a longing glance like I’m supposed to read their mind, their agenda and trust their nosy intentions of being there at exactly the right time.  We’re all in this together.  We’re all connected.  And yet after all of this I’ve realized no matter how well and good that may seem, it’s a liability to be social without a proper level of respect for your right to be human.  Acting like the neighborhood secret police is not revolutionary. Acting like I owe anybody anything in this city after what IT has put me through is subliminal torture.  I’ve told it like it is more than often about my life here in America.  So much so that it echoes around the globe at this point as an anomaly.  Is it really true that this guy clearly does not give a fuck about what anybody thinks of him?  Yes.  This is how I stay the fuck alive out here.  I need you to understand just how desperate that sounds.  Then I need people to realize that the only thing I’m desperate for is to be left alone at this point.  

The reason I’m invisible to many people is that I’m not worth shit.  We are all technically not worth shit.  This might be news to all of you who read these.  Because I generally feel the most care from people on this platform.  I’m baffled by my own thoughts on this.  How a click can mean more than the world to me than a bunch of people in real life shouting or glaring at me with hidden intentions.  A glare and a hidden message on the internet is most likely spam.  A glare in the streets with a knowing look is basically an invitation to fraud for me at this point.  If you’ve seen me all over the place maybe you should ask my name or introduce yourself.  And yet in Nazi Germany, you wonder if the secret police felt the same.  The overall effect of having people follow, watch and keep tabs on you has this lofty narrative.  Don’t you feel important now that secretly you are being watched?  Don’t you feel special?  I have travelled all over the world by myself at this point.  I paid off the credit card bills to prove it.  Do you think I don’t know what it is like to be surveilled and followed?  Do you think in an era where white people actively target people and hurt them I feel any safer than anyone else?  I am appalled at what I’ve heard in the news.  And yet it is always the same root.  White extremism.  White culture.  White people.  Power abused.  Defenseless broken down worthless trash in rebellion.  Poor me for having a bad day.  In my admonishment of my mother’s call for information for Ancestry dot com, we had a conversation about family.  There are huge segments of my family I stay away from.  My cousin who I have not spoken to for years lives out west.  I learned last night that he sells guns for a living.  My mom told me a story of his father who was an avid gun supporter.  My parents approached him about being godparents.  He replied that he would only accept on one condition.  That when I came of age he would teach me how to shoot a gun like a real man.  I’ve never touched a gun in my life.  I’m a registered conscientious objector.  I swing a hammer in game more often than not though I’m known to creep around with a sniper rifle in Cyberpunk.  That’s a fucking game.  My cousin is out there somewhere at a gun show with a Trump flag and an internet connection just like every other right wing troll on the internet.  And I have to deal with the Fallout just the same.  Everyone bangs away at their status messages and twitter feeds and accomplishes more of the same.  Fear.  It froths over.  It never goes away.  It burns into hatred.  It becomes a righteous cause for which to stand behind.  My rights to be free.  As if holding a gun protects you.  As if wasting your prayers on causing harm to others really heals the world.  As if playing power and mind games on people you don’t know is somehow an act of liberation.  As if boring me the fuck to death with how cool you think you are by thinking you on anywhere near my fucking level helps my situation.  I have a right to be exhausting with all this performative bullshit.  And yet the world keeps upping the ante.  Like we’re in some high stakes Hunger games casino and the reward is your freedom at the expense of others.  We are not all in this together until we can look each other in the eye and understand the cause of each other’s pain.  The pain is that we do not communicate like human beings.  We skitter and prey upon each other like animals.  Animals remember when you feed and protect them.  Humans are worse.  If I know one thing about Planet of the Apes is that not even Mark Wahlberg can save you now.  Just let me exist outside the dome and forget I’m somebody important.  I’ve got my own life and loves I have to protect.  You don’t know what I go through daily to honor that.  And that secret is nobody’s business but mine.  Since there are no jobs left in America, I’ll settle for that one. I don’t need a letter of recommendation.  I write one every week.  Yeah we all float down here.  You’ll float too.  Better than sinking.  <3 Tim

[deltaengineering]

Winter Anime 2019 Part 3: High on Concept

If you wait long enough, you’ll find something good to say.

Doukyonin wa Hiza, Tokidoki, Atama no Ue / My Roommate is a Cat

What: Misanthropic mystery author picks up tough stray cat, both get healed.

✅ The cat acts like a cat, the misanthrope acts like a misanthrope.

✅ The approach of telling the same simple story from the perspective of two characters that can’t really communicate effectively is interesting.

✅ This is very basic, but it works. I like both characters, and it's generally inoffensive. Pretty much Barakamon with less of a focus on telling you exactly what to feel. Might watch more of this.

❌ I see we’re now at the point where shows get localized titles that sound like lazy translations of bland Japanese names even when the Japanese title is not that bland to begin with. Lovely.

Dimension High School

What: A bunch of kids press XXX and YYY and are sucked. Wooow.

✅✅ The wraparound segments look extremely realistic. If there was more lensflares and shots of feet I’d almost say someone has finally beaten KyoAni in making anime look like a cheap, egregiously overacted J-Drama.

❌❌ Sadly, the puzzle dimension they end up in just looks like homemade MMD animation, because it is. I mean, at least it’s mocapped, but apparently with a Kinect.

❌❌ E.g., they make jokes about clipping and they kinda have to because everything clips into everything else all the time.

❌❌ Did I mention that all they actually do is solve lame puzzles and fail to be funny about it? It’s really getting to the levels of the dreaded “barely animated voice actor improv podcast” at these points.

♎ Suwabe’s in it, and that’s never an outright bad thing. He’s voicing the quizmaster, in the process proving he’d do anything for a paycheck. I wonder if he has a fiverr acocunt.

Domestic na Kanojo

What: Highschooler loses virginity to one night stand, finds out that it was the sister of the teacher he has a crush on. Incidentally, the mother of both also just married his father. Zany!

✅ This is presented like a low-key, slow drama, and it’s not even bad at that. Some good directing going on here, at least in the beginning.

❌❌ Really just too bad that it’s impossible to take seriously with a setup as contrived as this, not to mention taking it as seriously as it apparently wants to be taken. It’s also not exactly original.

❌ I’m not gonna say that sketchy relationships can’t work (it worked fine for KoiAme, for example), but embedding your suddenly also incestuous pupil-teacher affair in the setting of a harem comedy, complete with other sister walking in on attempted drunk blackout kiss, is not giving me confidence that this has the chops to pull it off.

❌❌ The show this reminds me the most of is Love and Lies, and that’s a real bad calling card to have.

Girly Air Force

What: Girl-shaped fighter jets fall in love with a dude.

❌❌ It’s just another military-hardware-is-cute-girls-actually show in the vein of Strike Witches, the kind where they think that having a few plane CG models is already thrilling content.

❌❌ But then it doesn’t even turn out to be that in practice, because most of the episode is taken up by lame “worldbuilding” (i.e., coming up with excuses for why your fanservice show has to be the way it is) and trying to make your bland harem lead interesting, which is a futile endeavour.

❌ The most interesting part is still the CG dogfighting, such as it is. It’s not great either. Also, girly planes are pink.

♎ Honestly got a laugh out of them randomly picking a Gripen as heroine unit  in addition to actual JSADF hardware, because that’s a sleek-looking plane. The biggest prank the JSADF ever pulled on the otaku industry is buying the chubby F-35, which is nowhere to be seen here.

Go-toubun no Hanayome / The Quintessential Quintuplets

What: Empoverished highschooler is hired as a tutor for some rich quintuplets with large breasts.

❌ This is a blatant harem setup that would make a 2003 bishoujo VN blush.

✅ However, in practice it’s much better than it sounds. It knows it’s a wacky romcom with a dumb premise and it does not pretend otherwise.

✅ So it’s lighthearted, but it’s also surprisingly classy. In fact, it’s classier than Domestic no Kanojo, which is a show that’s actually trying to look respectable and failing.

✅ The relationships are also very feisty, with an energy that a comedy needs. There’s a lot of sass to go around here. Probably the best of these I’ve seen in a while, so I’ll give it three eps.

Kemurikusa

What: After getting pulled off the sequel, the Kemono Friends crew made their own version. Presumably there are blackjack and hookers in this show’s future.

❌ If you are a fan of KF’s “charms”, fear not, you would not be able to tell these people made another anime before. It's still total amateur hour.

❌❌ It’s not even the “looks”, though those certainly are not a highlight. The design is okay and the animation is bad, but I’m not incapable of enjoying shows with bad animation. What really kills it is the editing. I usually don’t comment on editing because that’s almost always competent and only very rarely great, but Kemurikusa has uniquely lazy and badly timed editing. Every shot being seconds longer than it needs to be is already an annoyance in low-key dialog scenes, but the alleged action is laughable and allows you a long, unblinking stare at every frame of bad animation. I really do wonder why they even bother with it when it’s so terrible.

✅ The setting seems alright, even though it’s just a reskinned Kemono Friends. At least it’s not gijinka nonsense this time (which makes one wonder where the gimmick characters are supposed to come from, but I digress), and it’s more upfront about what it actually is too. I’d call it mildly intriguing.

❌ I don’t mind mystery and certainly prefer it to exposition bombs, but instead of that this episode quickly establishes the most basic facts... and then repeats them over and over and over some more. Combined with non-editing, this makes for horrible pacing. 

♎ I had no opinion on KF’s longer-term qualities, because the first episode was so boring I never got any further. I won’t have an opinion on this show’s long-term qualities for the same reason.

Magical Girl Spec-Ops Asuka

What: Magical girls are tragic, shoot gun’s.

❌❌ Yo bro, what if magical girls but dark? Surely such a thing has never been attempted.

❌ The particular source of grim here is that these girls are war vets and fight with semi-realistic weaponry, so there’s a fair bit of the ol’ milwank in this one as well.

❌ The best part of the entire show is that the enemies they originally fought looked like cute teddy bears. Of course, this is dropped in favor of just slicing and dicing some random terrorists in the main narrative. I guess “dark magical girl” is still too outlandish a concept, gotta go with ripping off The Punisher again.

❌ The characters so far are nothing special, you got your PTSD Rambo and the generically cute tomodachis she swears to protect. Such contrast!

❌❌ If you must make these 80s action movies with some otaku gimmick pasted on top, would you mind making the action look good at least? Because I don’t care how many gallons of blood you paint in your dramatic but conspicuously non-moving pans.

Meiji Tokyo Renka

What: Spiritually sensitive lonelygirl gets kitsuned to the Meiji era, which is full of delicious beef and some handsome men too I guess.

✅ This isn’t an outright comedy, but it goes all in on everyone’s fabulosity level to a degree that it’s really already three quarters to Dame x Prince.

✅ Similarly, the lead is not quite as unimpressed with these hams as Ani was, but she certainly has a lot more interest in roast beef than in these guys always trying to pull her into sparkly chin-holding poses &c.

✅ Meiji Tokyo Renka doesn’t seem to be anything special, but it gets the tone right and is expressive enough to not become boring.

♎ While certainly watchable right now, with these there’s always the chance that it decides to launch into real drama in the long run, which in turn almost always goes wrong.

Yakusoku no Neverland / The Promised Neverland

What: An orphanage’s happy daily life gets upended by the realisation that they’re just pizza rolls for some demonic entities.

✅ I watched this right after Kemurikusa and let me tell you, it sure helps if you’ve got professionals on the team. This is a highly competent show as far as cinematography and editing is concerned. While there isn’t any reason to go all out on the action sakuga, this show looks real good.

❌ I’m not feeling the character design, to be specific I think everyone’s chin is too big. This sounds like a real assholy nitpick, but be aware that this will impact around 90% of the time you watch this. 

✅ The premise is workable for a shounen manga, even if hardly original (remember Owari no Seraph?) At least it’s not kids with superpowers spamming beams at each other while discussing the nature of heroism, and seems to be going for a more mindgames-based approach in the vein of Death Note. The characters are just barely good enough so far. In the end it’s not so much the premise, but how well the production values are able to sell it. And that’s what Neverland is good at.

❌ It’s specifically a Weekly Shounen Jump manga, and that is huge red flag. Sure enough, while the visuals and mood deliver, the dialog writing justifiably assumes the reader is a moron. Almost every line in this is either straight universe exposition or someone reading someone else’s character sheet back to them. It’s insane and not even necessary because their actions establish all of this just fine, but hey, WSJ readers amirite?

❌ Also, since it’s a successful WSJ property, don’t expect an ending or be prepared to watch this show for years. Most likely both.

♎ This seems like it could be entertaining once the exposition is out of the way and the real meat of the narrative starts. Then again, at that point pacing would come into play, which is yet another achilles heel of WSJ-style shounen manga. Against my better judgement, I’ll probably have a look how this develops, but I don’t expect much.

[reverseracism]

Hey, bruh, do you have a minute?

Of course, I do. You look concerned. Is something wrong?

I was just about to ask you the same question, bruh. Are you OK? I just saw a bunch of tweets that didn’t make sense. They were calling you racist, and they mentioned Toyotas, and something about The Tonight Show band and the place where you work. It really didn’t make sense, so I thought I’d come directly to you.

Oh, that? Yeah, Tucker Carlson is beefing with The Root as being racist against white people.

Wait, who is Tucker Carlson?

Tucker Carlson is a white man.

That’s all you got; he’s a white man?

I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to minimize Tucker Carlson. Tucker Carlson is not just a white man, he’s the white man.  

When you hear black people say, “the white man is a motherfucker,” they’re probably talking about Tucker Carlson. If you looked up “white man” in some dictionaries, there’s just a picture of Tucker. He’s such an unremarkable white man, the universe named him after a penis-hiding process. Tucker!

Everything about him screams white. He thinks he’s smarter than he really is. He pretends he’s not racist, but everyone knows he is. His face is always adorned with a Lord Petyr Baelish-like smirk that is a mixture of evil, arrogance, and bitch-ass-ness. He has a show on Fox News even though he’s not especially interesting, good-looking or talented. He’s perfectly mediocre. There’s only one way to describe him:

Tucker Carlson is a white man.

But what does that have to do with you? Or The Root? Or racism. Or Corollas? I’m still confused.

That’s what I’m here for.

On Wednesday at 11:09 a.m., I received a perfectly mediocre email from the head booker at Tucker Carlson Tonight (notice the perfectly mediocre name of the show). They requested an interview, saying: “We often see your pieces in The Root, and we’d be interested in discussing many of the themes relating to race in our country that you often analyze.”

That seems perfectly mediocre. So you told them “yes”?

Well, as soon as I read the email, my “nigga senses” started tingling.

Your what?

My nigga senses. You see, there are many black people who possess a superherolike sense of detecting white fuckery from afar. Whenever I smell Caucasian shenanigans, I feel a tingling at the tips of my fingers and toes. Some people, including my doctor, think I should be tested for the gout, but trust me, it’s a superpower. It’s like Spider-Man’s spidey senses. When I first discovered them, I put in an application with the X-Men, but they haven’t called back. I know it’s because Wolverine be hating on me.

So what did you do when you felt the tingling?

I did what any smart black man should do: I asked a black woman—specifically my editor in chief Danielle Belton. I knew she would give me a thoughtful, well-reasoned, educated response.

And what did she say?

“Don’t do it. Issa trap.”

Those were her exact words. So I emailed the Tucker Carlson show with a keenly worded email detailing my hesitation to appear on the show. I think my response illustrated my feelings that I don’t think productive conversations about race can be had in 4-minute segments. Furthermore, I know Fox News tries to include black people so it can make it seem like it’s not racist to its racist audience. I’m not saying that everyone who watches Fox News is a racist. I’m just saying that all racists watch Fox News.

I also think I perfectly outlined my recollection that the last time I was asked to appear on Fox News on Laura Ingram’s show, I was replaced by Tariq Nasheed after I declined. I believe my email succinctly summed up my apprehensions.

That’s dope. It must have been a long email. Can you read it to me?

No problem, I know it by heart. My email to Tucker Carlson Tonight read:

“Nah, Fam. I’m good.”

Wow. So that’s why they’re mad? Because you didn’t come on the show?

No, it gets better. It turns out, my nigga senses were right. It was a trap. They wanted to lure me on the show to talk about why The Root hates white people so much.

Basically, they wanted me to explain why it’s OK to be white.

Damn, that’s cold. But I still don’t understand what this has to do with Questlove, Black Thought or Priuses.

Well, Tucker Carlson decided that his viewers should boycott The Root and our sponsors. One of our sponsors is Toyota. So Tucker decided to do what Sean Hannity did when he convinced the dumb whites (my least-favorite flavor of vanilla) to smash their Keurig coffee machines. But Fox News viewers are the people who voted for an alleged pedophile who rode a horse to the polls, so they aren’t as internet savvy as you would think.

Somewhere I imagine Black Thought is checking his Twitter feed and wondering what the hell is going on.

So are you upset that you are being painted as a racist?

Here’s the thing: Some people will say I am a coward for not going on Tucker’s show to face him and defend myself. I have no need to explain me, my writings, or anything on The Root to a bunch of people whose minds won’t be changed in 40-second sound bites by a black guy they invited on so the host could paint him as anti-white anyway.

And why would I smear Tucker Carlson’s mediocre whiteness as racist?

I have written a lot of incendiary things about white people. I won’t shy away from that. I have called white people racist and made fun of their dancing skills, their potato salad and how often they shoot up schools. I created the Wypipo Awards and held an entire Wypipo Tournament to find the worst of the worst. But none of the articles Tucker Carlson listed were written by me!

He literally called a random black guy to explain why the works of another black guy were racist. Which. Is. Racist. But you know ... I guess we all write alike.

But is The Root racist against white people?

Dammit, man! You’re going to make me reveal the secret to our sauce. OK, I’ll reveal it, but make sure you don’t tell anyone. Here it is: No one at The Root hates white people. We hate racism. The reason we are often called racists is because of an old Southern saying: “A hit dog will holler.”

What the hell is that supposed to mean?

It means if you throw a rock into a pack of dogs, only the one who is hit will let out a yelp. The rest just go on about their business.

A woman once took umbrage with my portrayal of white people, called me a “black gangbanger” and asked me how that made me feel. I told her it did not bother me because I am not a gangbanger. I went about my business. Yet, some white people are so racist, that when we throw rocks at racism, they think we are targeting white people. They are hit dogs. That’s why they holler.

The white people hollering at Questlove and driving their Rav4s back to the Toyota dealership will never be killed because The Root racially profiled them. The Root has never sent Fox News viewers’ children to underfunded white schools. The Root doesn’t subject Tucker Carlson’s fans to longer prison sentences because they are white. The Root has never issued a travel ban against mediocre white boys or tried to deport the Caucasians who come to our country and take our jobs. But, to be fair, the entire staff at The Root wouldn’t mind if someone built a wall around Fox News, but we don’t have the funding.

And some of them, we suppose, are good people.

So how will you settle this?

We probably won’t. Historically, white people don’t have a long record of taking shit back. Plus, the idea of a hip-hop beef between Fox News andThe Root seems like fun. I don’t know if Tucker is P. Diddy or Suge Knight in this scenario, but I bet Tucker won’t be talking that shit when I roll up with The Root staff and the X-Men in my used 4Runner.

So you don’t feel bad at all?

I’ll be honest. There was one small part of the clip that made me feel a little bad about this entire Caucasian kerfuffle: when Tucker Carson, looked into a camera and said:

“Attacking people on the basis of their race is wrong. That was the standard, and for a long time almost everybody in America believed it.”

I won’t lie. My stomach is still sore from laughing so hard.