#re:watcher

[youtubesweirduncles]

Hello, and welcome to 'Thoughts on the Try Guys streaming platform thing', by basically the only remaining try guys dedicated account on Tumblr (I think (Also ignore I haven't changed my pfp after the controversy))

So, as I've said before, I think the guys really managed this very well when you compare today's video with Watcher's announcement from a few weeks back. They seem to be using the new streaming service as a fancier Patreon that you can subscribe to if you like the content and want more of it, plus the exclusive vids or extra stuff, but it doesn't seem like it's meant to replace the channel and leave the people who can't afford it behind. They are offering a lot of new shows, many of which they teased on the youtube channel. The little pilots were used not only to give us a taste of what 2nd Try will be like but also introduced the new cast members! (I guess it's apropiate now to call Johnny Cakes, Kwesi, Marissa and rest as Try Guys too?). I'm so so happy to see them now as main talent; they helped carry the new era of the channel for the last year and a half and deserve the recognition.

Hooowever, I will say this.

I feel like the way they are handling this transition (and, let's be frank, the reaction from the audience) would not have been the same without the Watcher TV announcement and its fallout.

In case you don't know: Zach and Keith told us there would be a BIG announcement around this time of year way back in December. In early May (I think) watcher announced their own streaming service and literally everybody hated it. In mid-may, on a random Wednesday, the try guys channel just? don't post anything? and it seems like a very last minute decision to not post a video when they have posted videos every Wednesday for years? And now, a week later, they announce their own streaming service (with a video that references Watcher's announcement, so we know it was filmed after that was posted).

We can only guess, of course. Nothing is confirmed. But it really seems like they were going, if not the same, a very similar route that Watcher was. This is why I struggle to give them that much credit for offering a better deal that the Ghoul boys did, since I don't think they would've taken the same decisions a month ago. I want to think they are good guys who understand that most people can't afford to pay for this and they wouldn't put ALL their content behind a pay wall. But if you asked me a moth ago, I would have told you that Ryan and Shane were incapable of that too.

So I guess I'm not sure how to feel lol.

(Also I know many watcher fans are kinda mad that the try guys are getting a better response that Watcher did and also that Keith and Zach referenced the Watcher.tv vid because they think it was shady.

Calm down. They're literally friends. I bet they know what's okay to joke about and what isn't. I even bet they spoke about this in the last few weeks. Calm. Down)

[the-pea-and-the-sun]

actually i dont think duckman is mean/evil version of daffy i think thats just what daffy wouldve turned out like if he got comphetted into getting married and settling down

[quill-and-whetstone]

Deep Dive - Dragon Age: Absolution

Part 1 - Turnabout's Foul Play Part 2 - Gilding a Thorny Rose Part 3 - Blood Keeps Telling

Part 4 - An Unbreakable Broken Heart

There is one question, and one question only, that drives the central narrative of Dragon Age: Absolution.

“Will Miriam be okay?”

I’m not exaggerating when I say that literally everything else is either side plot or entirely not the point, and I can back that up fairly comprehensively...

One might say that the story is about the heist of the Circulum Infinitus. That would be incorrect. For one thing, we don’t start the story being at all aware of the heist or the Circulum, so it clearly isn’t the thesis statement. For another, we literally never learn what the Circulum is actually capable of. We learn a thing it can do, which makes it important to Rezaren and Miriam. The rest is vagaries. Cassandra Pentaghast—resident moral authority from the much lauded Inquisition—all but punches out the 4th wall to tell the audience the reason anyone outside of Miriam’s personal struggle should care about it in expositive flashback: “All you need to know is that it is an extremely dangerous artifact fueled by blood magic, and I—for one—cannot recall any good coming from something powered by murder.” Outside of that, a spirit of Wisdom tells Rezaren “you do not comprehend the full danger of this artifact” and tells us by way of a bite sized soliloquy to no one that “such power should never have been in mortal hands.” We also know that Hira wants it to give it to someone else in a plan that basically goes “Step 1: Get Circulum, Step 2: ???, Step 3: Tevinter burns.” So we know it’s… big and scary? Something something doomsday? But even from that angle… we don’t care about Tevinter! All we see of it is a series of reasons it stinks! So that big scariness isn’t the point of the story, it’s just establishing a MacGuffin to motivate the characters into action. Even the actual heist for the Circulum is effectively complete by the end of Episode 2, so… just objectively, not the point.

The story is also, critically, not about the ensemble cast. Looking at the main antagonists, Rezaren’s goals are legitimately entirely Miriam-centric and Tassia exists as a foil to him to show the extent of just how badly he’d throw any shred of decency away to Get her. I’ve already discussed how Hira’s role in the story is to mess with Miriam, her every motivation and action serving the foremost purpose of making Miriam do or feel something. Fairbanks existed (for all of two episodes) to set up the plot dominoes, shove Miriam into them so they’d start falling, and then promptly die because his ontological role in the story was complete. I conspicuously haven’t even really touched the rest of the named characters until now: Roland, Lacklon, and Qwydion. That’s on purpose, because individually they don’t actually matter. Outside of cursory nods to where they come from in the setting, they have no backstory. They exist to provide a little bit of interpersonal filler for pacing reasons, and to be a little cohort that we care just enough about to be invested in their collective relationship with Miriam. Specifically with Miriam, too, because they all share exactly the same character arc: going from being involved for petty personal reasons (mostly a paycheck) to being there for her, facing down a problem that in the short term revolves around her entirely and in the long term only matters to them because she inspires them to care. It’s an arc that echoes, and follows, Miriam’s own.

Now as backwards as I've taken this, relating everything else that isn't Miriam back to her, let's talk about the woman herself.

It's Episode 1: "A Woman Unseen." The show starts, and it opens on… Miriam, being witty and callous and bucking authority while she does so. Roland is there mainly to react to her as she sets a bunch of unnamed mooks up to fail to serve her own ends, then tells her boss where he can stick it about her methods. Roland… waves pom poms, more or less. Hira and Fairbanks show up and we see the first time this cool mysterious rogue is thrown off her balance. We also immediately see her practical compassion. When it comes to real consequences--a real threat of getting caught by the law with a harsh sentence or getting murdered by her for threatening the ex she hasn't gotten over--she tells her fellow thieves to simply walk away. "Your children need their father." Even the boss she's been butting heads with so fervently gets off relatively light for attempting to kill her while her back is turned. We're shown that she's tough, smart, quick, caring, and potentially much deadlier than she's willing to be. The group gets their exposition and travel montage and she's thorny through all of it. We see what a sacrifice it is for her to even go back to Tevinter, never mind to do the job they are asking of her, and at the end of the episode her budding allies stupidly endanger everything she's done sticking up for her… but in doing so, they also show what is probably some of the only genuine care she's ever received. As she says, "that means something." We discover that she more or less knew a way in all along and was clearly hesitating to use it, searching for another option. What is it that motivates her and subsequently enables the plot to happen at all? A show of ill conceived friendship, and the first spark of real relationships. It's Miriam choosing to let these well meaning idiots in, just a little. The plot moves at the pace of her growth.

We come to the heist itself, and the rest of the crew takes off to do their various and sundry tasks, leaving Miriam alone so that she doesn't have to go any further into danger. Immediately, she is tested in a way that is a nearly comical level of moral hypothetical: tattle on a child to the person looking to beat them, or endanger her mission to protect them. Again Miriam chooses to let someone else take the fall to serve her agenda, except this time with immediate regret. As she attempts to rectify her mistake we get our first belly of the whale moment, with the heist going completely haywire without her. The rest of the story from that moment on is all involved--protagonists and antagonists alike--attempting to recover from the fallout, and it's telling that the moment of greatest chaos and failure stems from the crew's greatest disunity and Miriam's least involvement.

Except from a certain standpoint… the heist was a success, right? They did get the Circulum, serendipitously the unknown traitor was even trapped and unable to betray them further, and they were right at their exit. There was nothing actually stopping what was left of the crew from leaving with the goods, completing the job, and getting paid. Nothing except for Miriam and her better nature, because from then on it's her priorities that guide the protagonists' collective actions.

Miriam does not care about the Circulum. Not even a little. If there was any doubt about that she spells it out in Episode 5 with absolutely zero uncertainty, going on to state what is important to her and what she's looking for in the people around her who could be friends:

"I don't care about the damn Circulum! Look, whatever happened, we all risked our lives for each other, so I have to believe that we're at least trying to be decent people. Hira is out there right now, suffering, and I know how to save her but I can't do it alone. I need some decent people. Anyone who wants to help me has earned my trust, and forgiveness, and gratitude, and whatever else they're looking for. Anyone who wants the Circulum can take it and go."

This is the make-or-break moment for the protagonists as a cohesive unit, and to my mind one of two candidate scenes for the climax of the show. Miriam is showing exactly who she is, laying her cards out, and letting herself be vulnerable in asking for help from people who have earned just the smallest degree of her trust. When she asks for "decent people" she's appealing to the rest of the cast to put profit aside, but crucially she's not asking them to do that for a lofty ideal or the fate of the world or something either. She's asking them to be good to her. To help her not because it would benefit them, but because she's going into danger and needs support.

What is important to Miriam? What does she value? Friendship and love, all the way down.

This is a woman who has been dealt grievous familial trauma, and who lives in a world that is not kind to her. On the one hand, of course it then follows that some part of her is eternally yearning for connection. On the other, it's so beautiful to me the way she's still willing to actively seek it. Despite how her emotions go through the wringer with people, how brutally she's abused by Rezaren or betrayed by Hira, that core caring still comes through in ways that feel authentic and grounded. Miriam isn't some innocent woobie made infinitely sweeter and gentler by her pain, as I too often see in depictions of traumatized people. She's developed the skills to protect herself, be that her sharp tongue, her suspicion, her callous, or the ability to literally fight well that so often serves as an overt measure of the force of a person in the fantasy genre. It all makes her difficult and at times mean and makes her trust slowly. But she isn't broken, or past hope of recovery. Deep down inside, something in her still wants to trust. Still wants to connect. It's a little light inside her that refuses to go out, despite everything. It makes her eternally gullible, eternally vulnerable, and yet paradoxically the fact that she can still be hurt that way is also the sign that she still has yet to give up. To borrow a phrase: despite everything, it's still her.

I always want to cry thinking about Miriam, because I recognize myself in that struggle. I think that among the more vitriolic reactions I've seen to her character (the ones that aren't racism or homophobia, anyway) they come from a reaction to that same thing, because it's a painful place to be in. Nobody who's hurting wants to be able to be hurt again. An often revisited theme with my therapist is how much I hate "being a sucker forever" and it can be extremely hard to hear that being open to more suffering can be "good" for any reason. It would be easier, simpler, to hear that actually it's okay to just turn off the switch and match the world's energy. Return the hostility, and not be judged for it. To be given license by a story (as all stories are, to some extent, statements on how things "should" be) to be as bulletproof and shameless as the people who cause the hurt are to us. To me, however, that is all running circles around a fundamental truth of being human: that having a heart is painful, and seeing someone be brave enough to keep theirs open anyway is beautiful.

In the end, of course, Miriam is okay. I get to melt as the story rewards her for being true to herself even while presenting to real consequences of that. She gives Hira yet another chance, tells her that if they can just move on from the Circulum and Hira's hate of Tevinter "we can try again, free from everything." Tells her "I just need you to say that I'm more important than this." Of course, inevitably, Hira betrays her again. When Miriam wakes she opens and closes her hand in a way that both draws the audience's attention to the fact that the Circulum is gone from it… and also conspicuously mimics the gesture people tend to make when they're looking for another hand to hold. But she doesn't crumple or hide, that's her growth. Empowered by the new friends she's made, who vow to stick with her without promise of reward, she takes on the task of stopping Hira for the sake of the people whose lives she might destroy. Not for honor, or revenge, or for kingdoms, but for people who might suffer as she suffered at the hands of yet another Tevinter noble's agenda.

Miriam is cool as hell, with her backflips and her sneaky speedy style and her zillion knives. More than that, though, she's a bleeding heart. A cycle breaker. Someone who just can't stop caring, no matter what happens to them. I will never stop appreciating her for that, and if in writing this I've shared even the tiniest iota of that appreciation with you then so much the better.

[the-bitter-ocean]

Re:watching madoka. HI. NO I HAVENT. I KEEP GETTING IT RECOMMENDED TO ME and I KNOW I'd love it but also it was pmmm or isat and (gestures) you know. Also I am. a little scared of what its going to do to me like, it feels exactly the type of thing Id like. But yes sometime soon, maybe,

THATS OK!! Take your time, I was mainly just shocked that you were able to not have been spoiled on accident given how it came out in 2011. If you ever do decide to watch it dont hesitate to dm me your live reactions/ thoughts on the characters etc! I like seeing new people get into formative media I liked as a kid/teenager. Thank you for the question and have a lovely day @kimdokjafan

[karlachfan86]

re:watcher what was the update im in class and cant watch the vid

[mellow-holes]

gonna re:watch fires of love tonight and make penne alla vodka with extra red pepper. spicy :)

[worldwake]

That two-headed calf thing is sort of frustrating because I DO like anthropomorphism for the sake of art, as a way to describe an inherently human experience through an animal (which we inherently see as innocent and pure; especially re:watching animals die in movies and TV versus humans), but anthropomorphism - in a very broad and real sense - is a major issue. Euthanasia is often the right choice. Animals do not understand Why they are suffering, only That they are suffering. Our human conceptions of pain, ability, etc are not understood by two-headed calves. All that animal knows is pain and all that animal will ever know is pain. That poem is beautiful, but it anthropomorphises its subject in such a way as to speak to a human experience and does not reflect the actual experience of that animal. Or something like that

[sippinggossip]

Re:Watched Dove’s live show on instagram a lot of her new album references Damiano , Italiano , Freddie Mercury. I hope for her sake they ever break up.

And what is wrong with writing songs about your partner? Many singers do that. Love and break up has influenced many songs.

As for the part you hope they break up, I am sorry but wishing bad upon people, you sound like you got a sad life yourself. Maybe go find a hobby.

I think they meant “never break up”.

[goblincleavers]

17/? of RE:watch - Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971)

WILLY WONKA: But, Charlie: don't forget the tale of the man who got everything he wanted. CHARLIE BUCKET: What happened? WILLY WONKA: He lived happily ever after.

[the-pea-and-the-sun]

episode ONE and theyre already calling him daffy

[quill-and-whetstone]

Deep Dive - Dragon Age: Absolution

Part 1 - Turnabout's Foul Play Part 2 - Gilding a Thorny Rose

Part 3 - Blood Keeps Telling

One of the most common criticisms I see of DA:A is with its big bad: Rezaren Ammosine. He's a Tevinter Magister, a white slave owner, a man at the top of an awful and oppressive power structure, who indulges in that privilege and directly, intentionally perpetuates its horrors even while doing the mental backflips to convince himself that he's a Good Person...™️

That last part is always where the issues I hear come in. Rezaren, like most awful people, is the hero of his own story and he portrays himself that way. He's a consummate sadboy with a conventionally attractive waify face and every single thing he does he has a rationale for. Some conflate this with authorial intent, or what the tone of the narrative has to say about him. I've heard claims that he's too charismatic, too sympathetic, all sorts of versions of "not awful enough" as if he's being portrayed as any sort of a good person. Except that's an incredibly surface level read. The way he acts and portrays himself is a greater condemnation of how awful he is, and amongst that being signaled again and again through his actions and others' commentary on him, there's one line from the man himself that is the lynchpin of his entire character:

"Only if she doesn't cooperate."

Every single time he's challenged, Rezaren's veneer of civility lasts only until the moment he's told "no." It happens over, and over, and over again the whole story long. It starts with little things. He doesn't want to stop researching his obsession, so he reasons and complains until the Templar who loves him caves in. He doesn't want to stay in his room, so he mind controls his corpse puppet "brother" out of his way. He wants to contact Miriam, so clearly blood magic is justified. It's only a few drops. Miriam refuses him, so he switches to "a language she'll understand" and tortures her. In the end, when he decides to "take back what's mine," he turns to murder, blood magic, enslavement... there is no depravity too low for him if it stands between him and what he wants. For all his talk of family, of purpose, of a greater future, the nice guy act is a carefully crafted persona. When the chips are down he will commit any atrocity because to him it is a restoration of the natural order.

This is what makes him so... upsettingly real and visceral. I've got conservative family, I grew up with them, this is exactly how they act. Oppressors don't wake up in the morning twirling their mustaches scheming about how they're going to hurt people. To exist as one you need a justification, you lean on your own persona to keep yourself going. Civility, manners, "niceness," how things should be: those are the things oppressors need to believe to perpetuate their social order. But in the end it always comes back to a threat. Defiance is met with violence in equal measure, to keep the oppressed in check. That truth is what Rezaren's whole character revolves around. It doesn't feel like much of an analysis to say any of this, to be honest, so much as pointing out the obvious and textual... but it gets overlooked enough that it feels worth highlighting. More importantly though, it also informs Miriam's particular brand of trauma. Ripped away from any family except her brother, growing up under abusers who told her in one breath that she was surrogate family to her "owner" and in the next that she was property, it's no wonder she struggles so much with community and finding a place of belonging. It's no wonder she's such a mark for Hira, another Tevinter noble who lured her with the promise of love and care. It's no wonder that even a stupid showing of unequivocal care from the team touched her the way it did, and no wonder she sticks with them after the adventure is over. Belonging and personhood was ripped away from her, and dealing with that pain was the basis of her story. ------------- But I'll save that can of worms for my last post, where I finally get to Miriam herself in...

Part 4 - An Unbreakable Broken Heart

[youeverdreaming]

can we just...see what happens before we start being negative and complaining please

(edit: also this is not directed at all of you I’ve seen enough people be rude/unkind that I got upset but some of you are being respectful and informative without being mean and for that I thank you)

[inahochi]

Nurarihyon no Mago #02 ✰

毒羽根は竹林に舞う 〖 Dokubane wa Shikurin ni Mau 〗

[heifolkens]

i’ve been watching and rewatching and re:watching idolish7....i love re:vale’s story so much........

[atomicblasphemy]

I’m re:watching re:zero for the third time. (re:re:re:re:zero, but i also read the webnovel up to half arc 6 so its really re:re:re:re:re:zero. Anyway, getting off track here.)

I’m starting to realize something very important and I cannot believe it has escaped me up until now: there is no heterosexual explanation for Barusu and Reinhard’s relationship. I mean, seriously. Like, okay Reinhard is an aight guy, sure. His kidnapping of Felt and how he didn’t even consider giving Rom a heads up that “hey, you know your granddaughter? yeah, I’m gonna yeet her head first into this whole geopolitical stand off. That cool with you?” is more than a bit insane but overall this seems to be mostly atoned for and all.

But how he just goes ridiculously out of his way for our boy Barusu pretty much unprompted from day one, how he gleefully overlooks all the crazy shit Barusu pulls off (I mean, seriously, can you just imagine how batshit crazy our boy must sound to the entirety of Lugunica like half the time? Like, yo, this kid larping as captain Ahab over there, showing an uncanny understanding of all the different factions underhanded plots and masterfully traveling through all of them... isn’t that the same kid that made an ass of himself in front of this nation’s entire ruling class because he - allegedly - knows jack shit about our culture, customs, history, social structure and all that? That’s the guy leading us into battle? Oh, ok just wanted to clear that out.), how he gets that wee glint in his eyes whenever Barusu is near... Reinhard wants Barusu. As far as I’m concerned there’s no two ways about this.

So yeah, my point is Rem (the blue haired comatose one) has competition from more than just Emilia and I can’t believe I am only realizing that now. And I’m not even counting pretty much all the witches and the other candidates in the royal selection. (I am, however, very much NOT counting Petra).

[no-longer-tainted]

Screentime Chuuya

Okay, small warning first: I logged in after a whole while here again and I was looking through my drafts and found this sweet piece and I can’t tell why I did this and how long this was waiting in my drafts but I guess it doesn’t hurt to publish that now! :D

- We all know Chuuya is just a side minor character in the main story of Bungou Stray Dogs and because I’m re:watching the Anime I noted down the Episodes where he appears because useless knowledge is important c:

S01E09 (Episode 09): 00:15:53 - 00:17:56 [meeting Dazai after 4 years] S01E10 (Episode 10): 00:01:47 - 00:08:22 [fight against Dazai] S01E12 (Episode 12): 00:21:25 - 00:22:10 [meeting with Mori]

So in the first half of the anime, he has a screentime of 10 minutes and 23 seconds c’: I’ve the feeling the less a character appears the more I love them :’)