#there's at least one episode where someone steals me on purpose and it's like a mission impossible escape mission

[welcometothejianghu]

Welcome to another round of W2 Tells You What You Should See, where W2 (me) tries to sell you (you) on something you should be watching. Today's choice: きのう何食べた? / Kinou Nani Tabeta? / What Did You Eat Yesterday?

Kinou Nani Tabeta? (which I'm going to abbreviate here to NaniTabe) is a live-action adaptation of a manga with the same name, which tells the story of two middle-aged Japanese gay men as they navigate their relationship, their families, and their professional lives, all while having some good meals.

Do you want something nice? Do you want a show that's just ... nice? Not saccharine, not cloying, not reductive, but just cozy and kind? This! This is what you want. Every episode deals with some events in their lives, and then the action will pause once or twice while someone demonstrates how to make a meal. There's no real overarching plot. You just get to peek in on them every so often and see how they're doing.

...Shit, I'm just going to steal the GagaOOLala second-season synopsis, it's perfect:

Shiro Kakei and his partner, Kenji Yabuki, live a life full of some hardship but mostly happiness together, with Shiro's speciality cooking affordable and delicious dishes. As they turn 50, they begin to experience different changes, but Shiro and Kenji are still gentle with each other as they move on to a new stage in their lives.

So here I am, a middle-aged gay who cooks affordable and (mostly) delicious dishes and treats my partner gently, serving you a five-course meal of reasons that you should watch this show -- especially if you too are a middle-aged gay, in which case I'd say this goes straight from "should watch" to "unmissable."

1. Help, my face hurts from smiling too much

Prepare to get your heart warmed whether you like it or not.

Kakei Shiro, the main character, is a closeted gay attorney in his forties whose main likes are cooking and saving money. He lives with his slightly younger boyfriend, Yabuki Kenji, who is a very openly gay hairstylist. They're an incredibly unlikely couple who somehow manage to make a relationship work, kind of to their mutual surprise.

I called bullshit on the show early on: This relationship is cute, I said, but this is not the behavior of guys who have been together a decade. But as the show unfolded, it became clear that I was so wrong -- their behavior is perfect, because these middle-aged boys actually haven't been together nearly that long. In fact, once you finally get the story of how their relationship started, yeah, it explains a lot of their insecurities and awkwardnesses about one another. Combine that with how Shiro's a neurotic mess who absolutely does not want anyone to know that he's gay, while Kenji lives on eggshells for fear of rejection, and it all starts to make sense.

It helps that the two leads have incredible chemistry. Not in a horny way, mind you (the show is incredibly, and intentionally, nonsexual, but more on that later), but where they genuinely make one another smile and laugh. Nishijima Hidetoshi plays Shiro as an anxious mess who slowly learns to become at least a little more comfortable in his own queer skin. I have a t-shirt that says Oh, Honey and I want to put it on every time he does something.

Meanwhile, it would have been so easy to make Kenji a caricature, but Uchino Seiyou skips right past the stereotype and plays the behavior that the stereotype comes from. He minces his way along as Kenji so perfectly, I was surprised to find out he's married to a lady in real life. He's got to be doing an impression of someone he actually knows, because his faggotry is just too accurate.

Their relationship is far from perfect. They're capable of annoying the tar out of one another, sometimes on purpose. They keep secrets and avoid talking about feelings. They get jealous over completely irrational things. They want things the other person isn't comfortable giving. They get into petty little arguments over petty little shit.

And because of all that, it feels real.

Also, if you're one of those Jane Austen bitches who swoons every time lovers scandalously brush knuckles, well, here you go.

2. Surprisingly educational about the state of gay life in modern Japan!

This is not incidental: Like the manga, the show uses this cute food-based story to present a fairly realistic snapshot of what it's like to be a middle-aged gay couple in Japan right now.

Like the manga it's based on, the show goes out of its way to be incredibly nonsexual, to the point where Kenji and Shiro barely touch, much less kiss or even hint at getting naked together. It is very consciously and deliberately attempting to counteract the stereotype of the hypersexualized, salacious homosexual by presenting two gay men who are delightfully mundane.

It is not, however, homonormalization. There's no attempt here to make an argument that gay people are just like straight people, only with incidentally matching genitals. Every time someone falls prey to the pressure to conform to cishet gender norms, it ends badly for them. While the first-episode conflict establishes that Kenji tops, he's also the fruity hairstylist who does the housekeeping. Shiro's the straight-passing suit-and-tie guy, yet he's the one who cooks and goes grocery-shopping. They have a division of labor based on personality traits, not gender roles. In fact, their relationship as presented challenges a lot of those norms by decoupling gendered expectations from the necessities of everyday living.

(This isn't even just me getting my queer studies goo all over everything! Allow me to be a good academic and send you to two people who've done even more thinking about this than I have: the unfortunately paywalled "Queer Cooking And Dining: Expanding Queerness In Fumi Yoshinaga's What Did You Eat Yesterday?" by Katsuhiko Suganuma, and the more freely available "Queering the Palate: The Erotics and Politics of Food in Japanese Gourmet Manga" by Keiko Miyajima.)

Every so often, one of the episodes' conflicts will have to do with how gay people in Japan do not have equal rights and protections under the law. This doesn't just mean they can't get married -- not having a spouse and children actually messes with a lot of legal stuff, including inheritance and government assistance. Sometimes the show will even take a beat to have one of the characters explain to another what a certain statute says. Changing laws about same-sex partnerships even get factored into the story!

And sure, I don't know these things, but I bet a lot of straight people in Japan don't know these things either. Well, if you watch the show, now you do!

It's important that no one is ever outright shitty to Shiro or Kenji. No one calls them slurs or hate-crimes them or refuses to serve them at a business or anything like that. In fact, the majority of people they encounter are perfectly chill and even outright supportive. The most serious challenges they face are bigger than individual people being dicks. They're about systemic barriers to equality.

That said, there are still plenty of instances of individual people being dicks -- just not maliciously. In fact, most of the homophobic sentiments in the show come from the mouths of people who are otherwise supportive of Shiro and/or Kenji! These nice people seem like they're way okay with the gay ... and then they let slip that, no, they're actually not as okay with it as they think they are.

And I love that the show includes that, because I know that feeling way too well. When these things happen, our boys don't throw a righteous fit or cut the offender off completely. They just ... absorb the blow, sigh quietly, and keep going with the belief that the person in question means well. It just sucks, you know? It sucks to have to know now that your straight lady friend who thinks it's great that you're gay would be uncomfortable if her daughter were a lesbian. You're not going to stop being friends with her, and you're not even going to hold it against her, but it lives in your mind now, and you're going to add it to the I Am A Disappointment To My Parents rotation of intrusive thoughts.

Speaking of parents, Shiro's incredibly fraught relationship with his aging parents is hands-down one of the best parts of the show. They love him, he loves them, but they don't always know how to love one another. As their childless only child, Shiro finds himself having to support them in spite of a lot of hurt they've caused him because of his sexuality. He would in many ways be justified in cutting them off -- after all, many other gay people in the show no longer speak to one or both of their parents! Shiro wants to keep them in his life, though. He'll just have to learn how, for his sake and for Kenji's, to lovingly set boundaries.

This, to me, is the most important lesson a show about boring gays can teach a straight audience: There's always a background level of suck. You can be as chaste and normie and regular as you want, but you'll never be normal, because there's literally nothing you can do to erase the background level of suck.

It's easy to reduce someone else's oppression to Big Bad Events, and then to assume that the absence of these Big Bad Events means that oppression has ceased. That's like thinking there's nothing left that needs to be done about racism because the US had a Black president and you've never personally seen a cross burned on somebody's lawn. Once other people's oppression stops being Big Bad Events, it becomes Everyday Stuff You Can Ignore. And that's worse.

NaniTabe pushes back against this in two directions. The first is to show gays who are not miserable, but are instead living happy, fulfilling, and exceedingly regular lives on their own terms. The second is to give reminders that what gay-related misery they do experience largely comes not from their being gay, but from society's giving them shit for being gay. This misery doesn't destroy the happiness, but neither does the happiness make the misery go away.

By the way, this is true of any non-normative identity! The gays do not have a monopoly here. There's always going to be a level of suck when you don't inhabit an area of privilege, and it's very easy to be unaware of someone else's background level of suck when you yourself do have that privileged status! One of the best ways to become aware is to listen to stories about people unlike yourself! Hooray for empathy and learning!

3. tfw your bffs are straight-up freaks

If you're queer, and especially if you're queer and the vast majority of the people around you aren't, you know all too well that sometimes you wind up being friends with people you'd never associate with otherwise, except that you're queer and they're queer, and buddy, if you thought the queer dating pool was shallow, the queer friendship pool can sometimes be even worse.

That's how you get Kohinata and Wataru.

When I said earlier everything about how nonsexual and normie the show is, I was intentionally glossing over whatever the hell is going on with Kohinata and Wataru, the bizarre boyfriends who become Shiro and Kenji's gay besties. You know that couple where you think, I cannot imagine how this relationship works because if you were my partner I would want you stab you every minute of our lives, but it clearly does, so I'm happy for you both? Yeah, that's these two.

The elder of the pair, Kohinata, is a butch, severe man -- except when it comes to his boyfriend, the much younger and worse-behaved Wataru. Then he's reduced to a complete simp, catering to Wataru's every whim. Wataru knows that throwing a tantrum and being bratty is the way to get anything he wants from Kohinata, so he's just a little shit recreationally. He loves saying bitchy things and pointing out people's flaws, while Kohinata chides him ineffectually.

And I love how much this is totally a sex thing for them, except that when you put it in the context of an otherwise extremely PG-rated show, the kink of it flies completely under the hetero radar. Ha ha, look how generally funny these two weirdos are! While Shiro and Kenji are over here doing the thing where somebody calls their partner "master" in front of you, and you're like, I wish you wouldn't.

Their presence is great for the acknowledgment that gay people can be maladjusted freaks in a whole spectrum of ways! They also make the point that a great deal of your ability to openly be a maladjusted freak is related to your job and your level of wealth. Wataru works from home and Kohinata works with celebrities, both of which bring in high incomes and allow for way more deviance from social norms. They're in positions of privilege that allow them to be themselves, but the price of being themselves is that they're always going to stick out in a society that values harmony in sameness.

By contrast, Shiro's good-but-not-great-paying suit-and-tie job means he has to behave. Because of this, he has plenty of angst about being Not Gay Enough, through which the show reinforces time and again that not all gay existence is about barfing rainbows. You're still a valid homosexual even when you're a dull one.

So just remember: When you feel like you're not queer enough, remember that there are always worse queers out there in the world. Oh, they're not worse at being queer. They're just worse in general.

4. Itadakimasu!

This show, like the Sleuth of the Ming Dynasty and Otoko Meshi, is a food-centered show that is very dangerous to watch if you're hungry, so be prepared! Snack first!

It's also got actually followable recipes! Unlike those other food-centric shows I've done recs for, this show actually gives pretty precise measurements, lists all the ingredients, and walks you through basically the whole process. Aside from a few "add the incredibly Japanese thing I bought premade at the store" steps, Shiro's cooking methods are replicable at home.

...It is here that I should probably put up a warning for the occasional bout of very Japanese-typical and gay-man-typical fatphobia, which can be a heck of a combination. I don't think it's a dealbreaker, but you should be aware of it going in. However, I will say that the show almost always comes down on the side of positive moderation: Sometimes you need to eat like you're an aging homosexual watching your cholesterol, and sometimes it's a special occasion so you should enjoy yourself without guilt. It also never once conflates "eating healthy" with eating disappointing meals. If anything, it's mostly just being honest about what happens to your body's relationship to fried food when you hit your forties.

The other nice thing is that Shiro's not some trained chef. He makes good food, but he's a dedicated amateur at best. There's not a single super-fancy technique in anything he does. Much of the time, he's just winging it, combining techniques he knows with what he's already got in the fridge. Sometimes he uses recipes he found on the internet. Occasionally he cooks alongside other, more experienced people and learns techniques from them. Once in a blue moon he just tries a thing to see how it works. (Of course, he does have the unfair advantage of being fictional to cover for how none of his meals ever turn out bad, which, you know, must be nice.)

Sometimes you even get to see other people cook when Shiro's nowhere around! Some of them follow instructions to the letter, while others just sort of wing it with whatever's on hand. And that's okay! For a show so much about cooking, it is very unpretentious about food. The manga drives home even more strongly the point that you don't need fancy meals and a million perfect side dishes to be content. It's great if you're perfectly happy microwaving a pork bun! What matters is that it works for you and your family.

...Now can we please convince subbers everywhere to translate "Itadakimasu!" as "Itadakimasu!"? Please? I think my favorite bad choice is "Bon appetit!", which, okay, good job, you took an opportunity to teach English-speakers a non-English phrase that has no good English translation, and instead you chose to bank on their extant familiarity with a different non-English phrase that has no good English translation. Just keep it what it is. It's just something you say before you eat. It's obvious from context clues. I promise.

5. Makes you, an aging queer, feel real weird about some stuff!

Over the course of the show, Kenji and Shiro go from their early/mid 40s to pushing/over 50. Their parents age, have health scares, and even sometimes die. They deal with losing eyesight and hair alike. They get promoted. They make household budgets and purchases. They worry about saving enough for the future. They work late. They go on vacation sometimes. They wear the same clothes they wore a couple episodes ago.

However, they do all this while also wrestling with their unequal status as gay men in Japan. All their discussions about retirement are colored both by Kenji's tendency to impulse-buy ice cream and by the fact that they can't get married. The choices Shiro makes about his job rest both on his desire for a good work-life balace and a fear that his profession would react badly to his coming out. They have to make all the normal decisions expected of men their age, and then they have to make all the extra decisions to compensate for how "normal" doesn't account for gay.

To pick one issue running throughout the story: Shiro is an only child who is himself childless. This comes up fairly often, in fact, as various circumstances make him aware time and again that he's not making his parents into grandparents, and he won't someday have someone to take care of him like he does for them.

The first time the show brought this up, I thought it would be a one-and-done thing, where the conclusion of the episode got to be that Shiro learns to be happy without being a parent, the end. Nope! It isn't a constant stressor, but it never goes entirely away. Shiro is happy with his life, but he's also reminded that he's failing to live up to social standards. He doesn't want to be a dad. Or does he? No, he actually doesn't. But he also doesn't want not to be a dad, if that makes sense. He doesn't want to disappoint everyone by not having a wife and children, but at the same time, that disappointment isn't enough to force him back into the closet. But it's always going to be seen as a failure on his part.

As a middle-aged queer with no kids, yeah, I feel that hard. I don't want kids! But I also don't want to not have kids. I know I'm always going to be a little bit of a misfit in my family compared to my siblings, who are all parents now. Besides, I think about all the things I do for my parents, and all the things they did for theirs, and yeah, it kind of scares me to know I won't have that when I get older. And we're just basic-ass white people! Japan takes filial responsibility to a whole 'nother level!

So I really, really like that this show doesn't resolve that tension. Shiro has chosen what's right for him. It just also sucks sometimes. The honesty of that narrative is refreshing. Sometimes your best choice still kinda sucks. Sometimes the only way to get closure is to say, you failed me and I failed you, so we're even.

It's a frequent thing for the show to present the realities of people's lives and choices, and to say, maybe this isn't everyone's perfect solution, but it's the right decision given what the circumstances will allow, and you are still allowed to be happy despite the imperfections. It's not that you need to settle for less than perfection because you're gay -- everybody settles! Everybody makes choices and then has to live with the consequences of those choices. You'll never know if things could have been better if you'd done something different, but that doesn't stop what you have right now from being able to be pretty damn good.

I'm not going to say you must be a middle-aged queer to watch this show, because did you read the whole part earlier where I talked about how you should consume stories from experiences that are not your own? Right? Right.

I will, however, say that if you are a middle-aged queer, a lot of it's likely going to hit real close to home, and often in uncomfortable ways. I've seen a couple people say they had to take breathers after some episodes. I know I've been left chewing over a few things in the days and weeks since watching. There are definitely parts where you're laughing because you know exactly what that feels like, and if you don't laugh, you'll do something else.

But you know what? I like that. It can be nice to see people go through situations similar to yours and emerge realistically happy. It's nice to be able to laugh about things, or to know that you will laugh about them someday. The world is fundamentally hostile, but there are people who love us and watermelons are on sale this week, so instead of despair, let's have lunch together.

bonus: porn!!

I want to make it clear that the mangaka isn't some erotophobic dishrag who fetishizes gay men so long as they don't have any of that icky nasty smex. Oh no. The proof that NaniTabe's sexlessness is intentional is how Yoshinaga Fumi made six fairly explicit pornographic side stories that fill in some of the sexy gaps in the larger narrative. You can read all six volumes scanlated right here! ...though if you want to avoid spoilers, I'm going to recommend you wait to dig in until after you watch the show and/or read the actual manga to the appropriate points.

Enjoy the confirmation that Shiro is a freaky size queen (at least in theory, as is the case with maybe most freaky size queens).

Are you hungry for this show yet?

Tragically, this one's a little hard to watch. If you're in Japan (or you have a VPN that can fake it), you can see the first season on Netflix. Otherwise, the preposterously named GagaOOLala is probably your best bet. The watch order goes like this:

Season 1

the New Year's Special

the Movie

Season 2

While the two movies and the second season require a subscription, the first season is available for free. So if you want to give it a try, you've got a whole twelve episodes to see if you like it!

Maybe it'll get a third season someday? We can hope! After all, there's still much more manga left to adapt! All I know is that I'm very sad that I've run out of new installments of it to watch, and I look forward to going back and starting again from the beginning soon.

...Boy, it's funny to see behind-the-scenes shots and think, wow, they're so much snugglier in real life! That's how not-snuggly the show itself is! You think I'm joking but I'm not!

[snaplight-anxiety]

Okay so here’s my piece on the lighting in alex rider

Alright. So s1e7 happens, you think everything went well and it’s all wrapped up. But at the end of it, they shows alex still in the school, looking roughed up and we realize that he ALSO had a clone (which, though hinted at through the episodes, I at least had forgotten about bc come on! everything is good now!) and you realize that you can’t tell, of the two (one left at the school, one taken home) who is the clone and who is the original.

What I found really fascinating was how they portrayed the two to play up that confusion. The one left at the school is consistently shown in well lit scenes. I'm pretty sure he’s always in bright lighting or at least with no obvious shadows. In the sequence where he goes from the rubble to the study, inside the school itself, there aren’t any ominous shadows or shots that stand out to me. Instead, there are big windows with lots of light from outside. It just feels eerie in the fact that he’s alone and all the evil inhabitants are gone (presumably). When he gets outside, he wears a bright yellow coat and the snow is bright white and makes the scenes themselves even lighter.

On the other hand, the Alex they brought home is shown consistently in darkness. In e7, he looks at the helicopter that comes to save them with a blank, confused and almost cynical look. When he gets back home Jack and Tom are there to greet him, but he ignores them, goes to his room, and closes the door in their faces. He is consistently facing away from the camera, or his face is entirely in shadow so you can’t see his expression.

It makes my brain go a little wild and I think it was a pretty ingenious thing to do, because one, if there hadn’t been a clone, it would be a pretty smart and realistic way to convey the idea of Alex coming home and not being able reconcile his old life and what he’s lived through bc they’re so conflicting and he has trauma and it’s like this veil has been lifted; everything about him is different but everyone expects him to go back to normal and he can’t.

But because there is a clone, because of the double that was left behind, those lighting choices cast doubt over whether or not that’s the real Alex. Is he acting closed off and different because he’s a different person metaphorically or literally?

Especially because we know the clones are evil, the choice to put one in darkness and not show his face and the other in bright scenes and colors (along with the scene where Tom informs Alex about the dance and the fact that generally the clone plot twist implies that the character you’ve mostly been watching isn’t who you thought he was), it adds up to making you think they got switched and Alex (good guy, well lit) has been left behind. The clone (dark, shadowy, motive unclear) has been taken in in his place.

But then you see the one who was left behind bash someone on the head with a rock and steal his car (still in the brightly lit shots) and you realize that you really cannot tell who is who. Because the storytelling of the lighting and shot angles is telling you one thing, but the actions are telling you something completely different. It forces you to confront the idea that maybe you didn’t really know Alex at all and maybe he always had that in him, because the one in England is obviously the evil one right? But Alex is the protagonist, he couldn’t have done that. And yet….

I go wild for the use of lighting as a physical plot device, because it isn’t really something I’ve seen before. Usually lighting in film (from what I’ve seen) only implies things about characters (dark=evil, unclear faces=hiding thoughts) or places (not well lit=bad things will happen/jumpscares/hiding things from the audience and characters) the way the music does. It’s all in the background. It isn’t particularly noticeable, because it generally fits with the direction the atory is taking. But the way it is used here as a purposeful misdirection is fascinating. Somebody thought we could use this and they did and it paid off. It’s a very masterful way to take advantage of the type of media they’re using to convey the story. Actually, I think that’s really it. It’s a brilliant adaptation of book to tv, because it conveys the same confusion in a new format in ways you don’t usually see in book adaptations.

Usually adaptations have trouble going from words to a screen because they’re two separate kinds of media and very different ways to communicate. They’re basically two separate languages. A lot of times, trying to get the book’s message through to film doesn’t work out because in books, you can read the actual thoughts and feelings of the characters. On tv, you have to figure out a way to convey that through pictures and dialogue. And this segment specifically of the alex rider show did it brilliantly, because they saw the options at their disposal and figured out a way to translate writing to film with specific components of film that make it make sense in a visual context.

[wooglebear]

Everything's Better with Triplets AU

Aka, a full rundown of my ideal Black and White anime, now as its own post on the Main Tag(tm).

-The first five episodes go the same as canon, but episode 6 has a twist.

-When Cilan decides to go on the journey, his brothers Chili and Cress decide to go, because they don't want to see their brother get up to shenanigans

-This annoys the Rocket Trio ("oh god, now there are FIVE twerps!")

-Cress and Chili's presence makes a bigger difference than one might think. There is a reason this AU is called Everything's Better With Triplets, after all

-For example, their presence effectively means that the events of any episode with Striation Gym as the focus don't happen.

-Cress and Chili get their aprons back, because they deserve it!

-My goal is to give Cress and his brother actual arcs and roles while keeping their core characters the same

-My version of Cress is basically my own headcanons (he can read auras) mashed up with elements of Cress in the anime, Cress in the Adventures manga, and the version of Cress we saw from Pokémon Black and White

-Cress can read auras perfectly, to the point that he can understand what his Pokemon are saying; this, in turn, has allowed him to come up with some pretty good battle strategies

-this will be relevant later when Team Plasma arrives

-Cress gets possessed by the Yamask in that one episode because… why not?

-Let's just say Cress took the aspects of Cilan's anime arc related to Burgundy, while Chili has a crush on Georgia

-In addition to his canonical Panpour, Cress gets a Floatzel, a Combee, a Lillipup, and a Manaphy (though this particular catch wouldn't be on purpose). However, said Floatzel ends up being killed via stuff in Elesa's gym. Thankfully, Cress replaces the Floatzel with a baltoy.

-Speaking of Cress's Floatzel, it… talks. It sounds like Sean Astin. He nicknames it Cash.

-Chili also gets his canonical Heatmor, but also gets a Cubchoo and a Litwick to mess with Cress due to his brother developing a phobia of the Litwick line during "Scare At the Litwick Mansion!". In Alola, he even catches a depressed-sounding Wimpod (which can talk) and an Alolan Sandshrew.

-Also, Cress grows a bit of trust issues. Because it wouldn’t be an AU of mine if someone didn’t have at least some angst, not even the water type gym leader is safe from me

-He also has a number one fan. None other than Faba from Sun and Moon. Yup, didn't see that coming?

-i imagine him as someone who's come from Alola to do research on someone (Cress).

-This Faba is basically an unholy mashup of both versions of him. Much like in the anime and USUM, he is a nasty piece of work without alien toxins. Don't worry, he isn't going to be a one-to-one carbon copy of his anime and USUM incarnations. Because I and many others don't like how Faba was depicted in the first few episodes of the anime, completely destroying any arc that he might have had in the post game of Sun and Moon, let's just say he gets his want for respect back.

-Also, his appearance would be similar to that one picture in the Sun and Moon anime of young Aether

-Faba is the reason why Cress tells Chili to tear off his sleeves.

-Cress and Faba then have a subplot where Cress tries to tell Cilan and Chili about his "fan" but gets interrupted by smth more and more ridiculous every time, until the episode where Faba steals Cress's body.

-Cilan adds a talking maractus and a Solosis to his team, because... why not? And then in Alola, he catches an Alolan Raichu.

-Not much changes with Iris and Ash.

-Team Plasma are closer to their Black 2 and White 2 characterization, but Ghetsis still wants to rule Unova with an iron fist.

--Ghetsis does get arrested at the end

-Also, there's a FOURTH triplet in this AU, called Crispin. Yup, that Crispin.

-He's their younger brother

-He used to cook for their restaurant. Used

-He ran away after he saw the Shadow Triad and had a freak out

-Team Plasma took him in

-He was raised as a member of Team Plasma

-His Team Plasma name is Major Blanc.

-He shoots his brothers with paintballs like a maniac

-He thinks Cilan, Cress, and Chili are secretly the Shadow Triad!

-He even has a bandolier

-Ghetsis's former right-hand man.

-As Major Blanc, he wears a gas mask. For clothing, he's wearing what looks like a standard uniform of a Canadian army commander, complete with the hat and dark uniform, emblazoned with the emblem of Team Plasma on the left. Over his hands he wears white gloves, and whatever his feet look like are obscured by boots as well.

-As Crispin, he probably looks mostly the same as he does in canon SV! Well since this AU more than supports the headcanon of Crispin being related to Cilan/Chili/Cress, he wears their waiter uniform, but with a peach bow tie. He tears off one of his uniform's sleeves so that he can look different

-As Major Blanc, Crispin has Cubone, a Banette nicknamed Chrysocollas, Dusclops, Chandelure and Zorua. When he eventually shows his true colors, he ditches his Pokemon in favor of a conkledurr, a heracross and keeps the Banette as a symbol that he is restraining himself but is free to act like a villain because everyone knows the truth about him. In Alola, Cress even convinces him to catch a passimian, shiny scizor, and alolan exeggutor.

-The brothers didn't get along at first, given that Crispin was a former member of Team Plasma. And because of this they would often bicker with each other. However, after a while, the brothers warmed up to each other

-I’d imagine he'd be voiced by Tom Wilson

-In Alola, Crispin gets recruited by the Aether Foundation! Too bad a certain someone has a rule that interns must be heard and not seen instead of the other way around. so Crisp just kinda slinks around Aether in the shadows a while until Cress eventually stumbles upon him one way or another

-His outfit as an intern is basically the standard Aether uniform, but with his bow tie.

-He wouldn't look like this for the entire Sun and Moon anime, though. He changes back into his waiter uniform in episode 64 of SM (yes, that episode about Ash and the Passimians is going to be skipped and replaced with one about Cress)

-Crispin is basically the sixth Ranger of the gang!

-and it wouldn't just be Unova these four brothers would be travelling with Ash in. They're going to be in the Sun and Moon anime. The triplets are gonna get a makeover in those seasons

-In Alola, Cress gets an Alolan Grimer (which evolves into an alolan muk later on). Contrasting with Cilan's Alolan Raichu and Chili's Alolan Sandshrew (later Alolan Sandslash).

-During the magical girl episode, inside of Lillie and Mallow and Lana, the triplets get chosen!

-Cress has a bit of a running gag where he face plants in the dirt

-During the haunted house episode, Chili ends up with Mallow's group, Cilan ends up watching the puppet show with Ash, and Cress gets stuck by the wayside with Lana

-Becomes friends with Lana. They bond over their shared love for water types and Cress is surprisingly adept at giving Lana advice.

-Plumiera debuts earlier this time. She debuts after the Mother Beast arc of the anime, during the Ultra Beasts Arc.

-Plumiera is even worse here than in the anime and games combined. She's basically canon Plumiera, if her bad qualities were amped up and the positives were removed.

-when Plumiera shows up, Chili and Crispin compete to ally with her (Crispin even develops a crush on her), and Cilan develops a rivalry with her.

-And hoooooo boy, would Cress cause all kinds of an uproar towards her.

-Plumiera's first battle with Cress basically destroyed any semblance of standing she has with Cress and Cilan. The latter, especially, has a long standing grudge against poison type Pokemon (his grass types are weak to them) and won’t hesitate to call Plumiera out on it when she’s around.

-Team Rocket and Plumiera end up forming an alliance later on. She isn’t a permanent fixture of the group. Too bad Plumiera is also trying to steal Pikachu, developing even more of a fixation on the mouse Pokemon than Jessie, James and Meowth.

-Plumiera is hellbent on seriously injuring or killing Cress.

-Many of her later battles with Cress incorporated her attempting to kill him right in front of his brothers and acting like there’s nothing personal about it much to Cilan and Chili's horror.

-Crispin still has his crush on Plumiera, even after she tried to kill Cress in their first battle and that knowledge was made known to Cilan, essentially driving her off from Cilan and Cress

-In one of their later battles, Cress gives one heck of a zinger to Plumiera.

Cress: You pigtailed demon! You're not a person! You're horrible! You're an irredeemable monster!

-Plumiera does get her comeuppance when Chili performs Inferno Overdrive, burning half of her pigtails off. Cress points out that her mile long pigtails wouldve gotten her ass yoinked from behind and killed long ago.

-Cress is part of the Ultra Guardians in this AU. His uniform's highlights are silver.

-His ride Pokémon is a Mega Gyarados.

-I feel like the idea of ​​Cilan knowing that Cress is part of the Ultra Guardians but Chili not knowing would be fun.

-Sadly, this means that Plumiera would find out about this and blackmail Cilan into an alliance.

-Cilan does not become a full fledged Team Skull member, but he's just under her thumb. Anyway, this is a horribly one-sided alliance.

-Cilan wants to leave the alliance but is unable to due to the fear of her wrath.

-Plumiera, knowing that Cress is part of the Ultra Guardians, intervenes if they start losing. She wants to take him to the "house", if she fails to injure or kill him.

-Chili finds out (later in the anime), and so does Crispin. And while Jessie, James and Meowth do find out the Ultra Guardians are a thing, they have NO CLUE that Cress is apart of them for a good while and (thanks to Faba) they eventially start realizing that Cress is a member of the Ultra Power Rangers, which throws them for a loop for a good while of the story.

-It's gotten to the point where Cress wishes where the UB battles were actually serious and there was no Team Rocket mucking it up.

-In the Necrozma Arc, Cilan, Crispin and Chili tag along with Faba and Kukui

-Cilan names three of his Pokemon after flowers. Chili names every Pokemon save for his Pansear after different gemstones (Ruby, Pearl, Jade…)

-Cress isn't the type to nickname his Pokemon, but nicknames his Floatzel Cash Networth and his Alolan Grimer Seashell.

-Crispin as Major Blanc does not believe in nicknaming supremancy, save for his Banette. Reformed Crispin nicknames most of his pokemon after playing card suits.

Cilan, Chili and Cress's teams (* designates Evolution):

Cilan: Pansage, Crustle, Stunfisk, Sakura the Maractus, Rose the Solosis*, Minty the Alolan Raichu

Cress: Panpour, Cash Networth the Floatzel, Lillipup*, Combee*, Manaphy, Alolan Grimer*, Baltoy*

Chili: Pansear*, Ruby the Heatmor, Sapphire the Cubchoo*, Pearl the Litwick*, Jade the Alolan Sandshrew*, Amethyst the Wimpod*

-Cress uses French, or words that at least sound French, sometimes. Revealing that off camera during all three seasons of the Pokemon XY anime, he briefly studied in the Kalos region, given that it is inspired by France (cut to Cress on the floor of the Santalune Gym frantically trying to finish his biology homework while Lysandre tries to obliterate Kalos)

-Hobbs, Lillie's butler, takes Crispin as a protégée after seeing his skills in baking. This was because the opportunity is so good. i mean, Crispin is a former member of Team Plasma and he is in need of a decent/solid adult figure in his life!

-Cress starts having nightmares about Ghetsis, Colress, Faba and Plumiera. He then starts having nightmares about a horrible alternate timeline where Ghetsis is ruling Unova with an iron fist.

-In at least one of these nightmares, Unova was destroyed.

-Cilan does try to help Cress get over these nightmares, but it goes sideways in some way

Feel free to ask about this AU!

[magnumdays]

Magnum PI 5.12 - Three Bridges review

Little bit late this week because I had trouble finding the ep and well this new mid-week airing time, it's at a pretty inconvenient time of the week for me.

Anyways...

The promo for this episode was misleading as (when is it not) but in this case it was a really good misleading. We did get funny sting-ray case but that was just a side plot for laughs.

And for me it worked so well because it gave us more Miggy scenes and man, do I love how they're doing Magnum and Higgins as a couple now. It's established, comfortable but still sweet with that hint of sexy they always had and IDK, why can't we just have 10 seasons more of this?

The Case

Seems like a semi-straightforward "trusted the wrong person and got my money stolen" case. But this being Magnum PI, there is of course a huge trafficking ring behind it and the bad guy is actually a good guy and everyone (except for the Triad) gets a happy ending. (Brushing over the trauma of trafficking and being used as a human sheild at and also sort of betrayal of trust and stealing lots of money from people, and all that jazz. Because goodness will win out and happiness reign supreme -that's just how we roll in Magnum PI land.)

I liked it, even if finding the hotel (which granted took the combined power of Kumu and Higgy) and then just getting walked straight into the heart of the Evil Overlords organization was a bit convenient. Like if I was a boss bad-guy I would have just told my underlings to walk potential spies and cops and other interested parties off the property. And then just moved my operation.

Just saying, a bit sloppy for a 97-million-dollar operation...

The end bit with findning Haun (Han?) after he'd been sold off again, maybe that should have ended sadder or more dramatic. Like Haun could at least have gotten shot in the arm or something... just a little suggestion.

Or Higgy should have gotten shot because she was just walking straight into the path of this guy's bullets...

The Miggy

What took you so long?

I was about to ask you the same thing.

They are so adorable and just maybe the ultimate modern battle couple of all time.

Seriously was there one Miggy moment when the banter was not on point?

"Get where it's going and intercept it!"

Side note: does someone on this show have like a drowning kink? I feel like waterboarding is the to-go torture method of choice for all bad guys. I mean Nuzo was water-boarded before he died, Higgy was, then she almost drowned and now we got TM getting all drown-y.

And love the look Magnum gives the guy when the bad guy is all "This ain't gonna work - go get his friend". Like from mildly smug (above) because hey, Mr. Navy Seal "I can hold my breath for five minutes" isn't worried about anything to 'not amused' in like a second.

(I mean of course Higgy being all kick-ass going to get her Hubby, also lovely.)

TC - Sometimes you just need your mom

So TC pushing everyone away after last week when he seemed to be opening up and doing a bit better with Shammy and Kumu felt like a step back, but also very real. Because rehab and progress is not linear nor does it "make sense" for most people in a logical way.

Mommy-TC showing up and both showing him that she not leaving because she loves him and wants to be there for him and talking to him about weakness and stubbornness, was the right play. Because when life sucks sometimes you just need your mom right?

It's also a nice call back to last "season" which they've been so good at during season 5. Like with Higgy and the Mandarin and just little references to stuff (still waiting on the tattoo though...)

Rick and Love

So I guess Piper was only in the picture to push Rick and Suzy together then? Maybe? I kind of hope she sticks around and has some other nefarious purpose. But if she's not in the next episode or 14, I guess she was just there to get the Suzy/Rick ship to sail.

Which, I mean, we did all want that and it is sooo very cute and I'd want to see happy-family feels! Let Suzy or Rick have a birthday and we can end with a surprise party or something this season (and bring a real baby this time).

Overall + I'm on a break next week

I enjoyed this episode so much, possibly a bit more than last week's ep even, and I'm a bit annoyed with myself it took me like 4 days until I could watch it. I guess, part of why I postponing watching is because each week means one episode closer to the last one. Urg, why did they end our show!!! It's such a freaking shame because it absolutely feels like they've found their groove with the Miggy relationship and just the whole vibe of 5a and so far 5b!

Next week I'll be traveling so I might not be able to get access to the episode at all before I return home, which sucks because it's my favorite plot-device: my faves going undercover.

But yeah, 13+14 might end up being a double episode for me (+ double review!) in two weeks but we shall see!

[scooby-review]

Scooby Doo Where are You? S1 E5-8

5. Decoy for a Dognapper

Decoy for a Dognapper feels like an episode that spreads itself too thin, grappling with ideas that seemingly don’t mesh all that well, shifting from unique settings and character dynamics to locations and characters built upon racist stereotypes, dating the episode insanely poorly, which won’t be the last time this occurs. 

Decoy for a Dognapper sees the gang use Scooby as a decoy to trick someone dressed as a medicine man who has been stealing prize winning dogs. 

The opening to this one is perfect, we get to see bright autumnal colours which greatly juxtapose the usual midnight and purple backgrounds, it’s a change of pace which makes it stick out against other settings they’ve used, which are generally far more varied than I had remembered. 

Beyond simply the setting, the opening works so well for me because we get to see Mystery Inc. simply spending time with each other, it adds a splash of like into these incarnations of the characters, detailing them as teenagers alongside being mystery solvers. Their relationships come across more genuine when we see streaks of this life within the characters, their friendships are something we care about far more as a result. 

Furthermore, the more open setting in the opening, again being this autumnal vision of a city, is so unique, it’s a completely different world than the other settings which are more often than not isolated, the horror of the episodes drawn from this inescapable feeling, there’s a claustrophobia which is exemplified by the dark colours, they make this world feel inescapable. Yet here we see daylight and the public, these crimes are therefore creepy because they could happen to anyone at any time, the villain scarier because they do not fear the public, which then entails the question of why? What makes them so fearless? 

Yet, quickly we see this fade, as the gang leave the city and find themselves at an old Native American camp. Here the racist stereotypes roll in. 

Unlike every other episode that has preceded this, the setting and characters feel completely incidental, the theme of dognapping contrasts with everything else going on. It feels to me like they came up with the idea of the medicine man, an admittedly striking and recognisable design, yet didn’t know where else to take it, which then clashes against the purpose of the dognapping. Ultimately, the purpose of the camp is the isolation, it treads back into what I was excited we had changed, the uniqueness of the episode then is lost and it grows dull to me from here on out. 

Despite believing this to be a favourite from the opening, it eventually petered out to my least favourite so far, it’s disappointing and uncomfortable to watch a lot of the time. 

6. What the Hex Going on? 

What the Hex Going on?, later changed to “What the Hex is Going on?” follows the gang arriving on an estate, finding one of the occupants frozen in stone. Quickly, this unfolds as more and more people are found as statues. 

For starters, this episode manages to captivate me from the premise of its villain. Petrification is such an interesting concept to me, and while it isn’t really expanded upon here - the gang simply find stone statues of people, that’s it - I still enjoy the idea. Yet, at the centre of the episode is something far more sinister, at least, initially, as we see the first victim, and ultimately villain, Stuart Wetherby, far older than he once was, all because of the ghost of Elias Kingston. It’s a haunting concept that can’t be pushed much beyond a single victim here, therefore the process of ageing is intertwined instead with the stone statues, a sort of immortalisation of the victims as opposed to any murder. 

Yet, the gang do believe for a short time that Scooby is dead, so does Scooby, joining in with Shaggy as he mourns before the gag is up. It’s an enjoyable sequence, but it unveils again a trope which I enjoy here, being the gang in peril, the fear of death is one way to do it, yet the fear is more so losing a friend rather than yourself - as Shaggy mourns Scooby, he never once fears for his life too, merely the life that he believes has been lost. 

In contrast to the previous episode, the themes, this time of family and heritage, are far stronger here. The villain is the ghost of Elias Kingston, his first “victim” found in the Kingston mansion, directly tying the ideas together. He is attempting to swindle the Wetherby fortune from his family, the ghost coming from a similar level of wealth, these rich families are fighting for more money. Here we get direct confirmation of someone having a large sum of money through the estate, we can see these people are rich and therefore this episode in particular champions the greed of the rich, sick of their families and searching only for more wealth. Even through disguises, the villain is unable to part with wealth, dressing as the ghost of a wealthy man, having owned a mansion. Sure, almost every episode thus far has shown greed as the motive, but here we get the best look into the villain’s mind, seeing his wealth, understanding his situation and yet still how he seeks further money. 

We also see a pretty classic Scooby setting, especially for the earliest shows, with this mansion being what I envision as the Scooby house, haunted and iconic to its core. In fact, the mansion appears within the opening sequence, like it’s the Scooby-Doo house, no exaggeration. 

Of course, we’ve seen this kind of setting already, we shall see it again, much like how we have seen this style of motive before, and we shall see it again, the villain too is very derivative and dull in design, yet the episode reigns as quintessential Scooby Doo in spite of its repetition and having little to stand out against its peers. Everything it does in these departments is done well, with the slight exception of the villain who I will get to. Yet, it’s also not my favourite episode in any of these categories; there’s better haunted houses, better greed motives and better played out “scares”. It’s a very standard episode, I enjoy it for sure, but there’s nothing that stands out about it beyond the iconic house. 

Again, I do enjoy this one for the most part, but structurally the episode is a little wonky too, with the mystery feeling like it’s extended to fill a run time, the characters leaving to have fortunes told and extended gags that feel disjointed from the mystery. With this being said, I do love the roller skates in this one. 

As far as the villain goes, his design and carboardness are the weakest points. He’s just a guy with blue skin, it’s dull in contrast to all who have come before, and I found him kind of unremarkable. However, the ageing idea is incredibly cool, not to mention the stone statues being interesting too, yet neither are fully realised, they feel half-baked to me, interesting just because of the concepts rather than the execution. 

Again, I only really disliked the previous episode, hell I prefer this one to episode four, but this all comes from atmosphere and the mystery at the core, which certainly is interesting - I love when we get to focus on the mystery and rich family at the centre of it! But too much of this one pales in comparison to the rest of the season! Maybe if it came before I’d like it more! As is, it’s fine! 

7. Never Ape an Apeman  

This series has such a weird continuity, like here we are introduced to Daphne’s uncle, a director, although I am certain that John Maxwell never appears again! We’ll see similar things all across the series, with a few parents acting as mainstays throughout a specific rendition of the series, but be left when we enter a new era. 

Never Ape an Apeman follows the gang as they become extras in a film, however soon the set of the movie is terrorised by the “real” monster the movie was about. It’s a fun one again just for this premise and setting alone! 

I will rarely bother to discuss the side characters here, there’s not much point unless they stand out specifically to me! Yet here I want to talk about two of the three! Going back to Daphne’s uncle, the character is fine enough, your average side character, they’re basic enough for you to quickly understand them, played fairly similarly throughout. However the familial ties are interesting, mostly feeling like an excuse to place the gang in this setting. But never do we get a real sense of the two being related, not through their actions nor motifs in their designs, and boy is Maxwell's design boring. Hell, they don’t even share a last name! Which just feels so… off? Clearly it’s unimportant to the story, merely acting as a device to get the gang here, yet it feels like the show is actively trying to make you forget their relations. 

The second character I wanted to mention is Candy Mint, the film’s main actress. There’s nothing too interesting about her, she gives far more than Maxwell and did stand out to me slightly, yet her design too is fairly bland, which is completely fine for who she is! Yet, for some reason, when searching “Scooby Doo Where are You? Characters” she is the sixth character listed? This is only part of the curiosity, where I find a few pieces of fan art for her (a few a.i, which sucks for sure, but it’s baffling that people are still thinking about Candy?). Not to mention that given Google’s current state there’s just headcanons about the character listed as gospel when you search about her. On a more interesting note, her name was originally used for a character in the 2002 live action movie, but ultimately she was either cut or renamed. 

The character of the ape man is interesting to me. We learn that the ape man is a character of folklore where the film is set, yet the director has ignored the warnings of the locals about filming despite the creature's believed presence. Honestly, this alone would be an interesting set up for the mystery! However instead the villain, Carl, is seeking to sabotage the production because he didn’t get the lead role. It works nicely still, I enjoy the way the mystery is solved, with Shaggy simply taking a picture of him while half in his costume, therefore exposing his identity. Also he appears in Trick or Treat Scooby-Doo which is fun, if not a pretty weird inclusion! Despite not being the most popular character he still appears over many more iconic ones, which I enjoy, but maybe it’s the result of the original series giving all a status above later villains. 

The film set here is so fun, I especially like visiting locations like the trailers and seeing all the costumes for the movie on display. It makes perfect use of this setting for me! 

I want to touch here on how different this episode is from the previous. Neither is a bad thing, I only enjoy this one a little more than the last, but they are perfect demonstrations of how the episodes differ. 

The previous episode felt like if you asked a robot what a Scooby Doo episode would look like. It was repetitive in setting and villain despite appearing early on, yet it still managed to be fun despite not being memorable. Yet here we see the shows very conventions broken such as having Fred be the character trapped, Scooby being courageous at points and the villain not being motivated by greed, not to mention how the setting is just unique, with the settings either being a haunted house/castle etc… or completely unique with them never retreading the latter within the series. 

I merely bring this up because both work, and I think it comes down to how the show wields its conventions. Of course, we all know the tropes the show bears, there’s traps, Scooby snacks, unmaskings, costumed villains, Velma losing her glasses, Daphne disappearing or being “danger prone” - every character has their own trope attached to them. Yet, they never use them all in a single episode, instead they apply whatever makes sense to the episode, here they build a trap, but the situation doesn’t always call for this! This allows the episodes to stand out more, while later iterations of the show will grow more self aware with these, sometimes to too strong of a degree for me, I think it’s important to note that they don’t fill every episode with these - hell, some episodes have none of these! But they are what makes the characters who they are in these earliest seasons, they are attached and would be irrevocably different without them. 

Despite not talking too much on the actual contents of the episode here, it’s a fun one! Similarly to the previous, it’s an enjoyable episode but nothing especially spectacular! I enjoyed myself and would consider it good, but it’s nowhere close to the best of the season. 

8. Foul Play in Funland

I would consider this episode to be among the best of the series, maybe the entire franchise. Coincidently, I would say across the four blocks in which I am writing about season one, there is at least one episode I would place on this perfect pantheon. Previously it was Hassle in the Castle, here it’s Foul Play in Funland.

For starters, we open on the beach that I loved so much in Decoy for a Dognapper, already setting the episode up with a more relaxed tone, once again giving the characters a semblance of friendship that therefore makes what follows all the more interesting. Here we see the gang stumble into the mystery in such a natural way that it makes me forget how frequent this is the set up for the episodes! Yet here they’re just on the beach, watching out the corners of their eyes as a theme park glows with life. 

Already we get such a sudden juxtaposition, there’s no comedy to be derived from the illuminating background, the life rising from the lifeless funfair. From their own fun to the thrill of a mystery. Yet, when they get to the funfair, the fun doesn’t end - just as the name suggests, they stay there and have fun, they play the carnival games, ride on the rides, and again, moments like these flesh the characters out as friends. One moment in particular sees Fred knocking down milk bottles in front of Daphne and Velma, it gives him this brash sort of feeling, unable not to partake, it alludes to the pretty restrained depiction of him as a jock here, which really isn’t too expanded upon. Not only does this moment flurry with a creepy aura afterwards, but perfectly it demonstrates these characters, Fred’s forgetfulness not to return the bottles to their original state, having to be reminded by Velma, shows both their characters perfectly even if the main intention is to return the bottles off screen for a scare. But the scare is developed upon by how the characters act and interact with one another, Fred forgets, it adds this thin layer to his character showing an abrasiveness to him, that he can forget to return things to the way they should be, he can meddle and leave the damage as is, in contrast, Velma much correct these wrongs, unable to move until they are fixed. 

Also the scare is just great. The entire sequence sees the split up gang wandering around the carnival, watching as everything works by itself, which of course, leads them to assume there’s a ghost. Things like the milk bottles returning or the rides running by themselves give this eerie atmosphere, only exemplified by the setting of the funfair, a usually bustling location, yet here it’s empty, a ghost town. 

All this builds up to the reveal of Charlie the Robot, a humanoid character lurking within the park. Weirdly the design has never stuck out to me much, it still doesn’t, but it fits its purpose pretty perfectly, the design is humanoid, yet not human, a perfect balance between the idea of machines atomizing jobs, and humans. Because at the core of his character is this debate - should robots replace humans? 

Of course, the episode merely offers a simple answer - not around children. It works perfectly for the episode, giving an answer to their question without any need to expand, it fits this very specific piece of the whole discussion. Yet, the episode shares more than this, because ironically, Charlie is not the villain. We see that he’s not a man in a suit, he’s not controlled by anyone, he’s a robot simply doing his job. In fact, the gang really aren’t in any harm here, the harm is that which they perceive for themselves, simply, they are only in harm's way in the sense of their beliefs of justice, right and wrong. To them, whoever is doing this must have ulterior motives, seeking to put an end to the villain's scheme. Yet, there’s nothing to end, no crime to punish. Instead, it unveils this bleak assumption of the world and humanity that ties back to the creation of robots and the idea at the core of the episode. The robots aren’t the problem, it’s the creators that are. 

Come the end of the episode, we see Charlie repurposed, now an attraction for the park rather than running it. He’s not dangerous, neither were the owners, yet the position they gave him created a dangerous silhouette, one where children have no interactions with other humans, their lives surrounded by perfect, streamlined automation, never knowing who real people are, hidden from forced discussions. 

Also his theme is so good. Actually, it wasn’t even created for Charlie, instead being ripped straight from The Jetsons. Many side-character’s designs and motifs etc… can be related to other Hanna-Barbera cartoons, it cuts budgets a whole bunch, less people to pay for new material. I mean here the caretaker literally wears the Miner Forty-Niner’s outfit. 

Also the character dynamics here are super fun, I love the Scooby and Velma stuff, an elongated gag of her glasses lost while they’re on a dodgem that won’t stop. It’s suitably silly, a real perfect cartoon gag that keeps adding to itself, but their relationship is cute and funny, I like these lesser seen pairings when we get them. 

A real great episode! Like so good! Everything Scooby should be, creepy, silly and fun. 

Also that damn mouse is back! For some reason they don’t reuse their mouse assets? They always look different, it’s kind of baffling to me that they keep drawing new mice for weird little mouse jokes, but hey, I won’t complain! Number one mouse fan here. 

Episode Rankings:

Foul Play in Funland

Never Ape an Ape Man

What the Hex Going on? 

Decoy for a Dognapper

Villain Rankings: 

Charlie the Robot

Ape Man 

Elias Kingston

Native American Medicine Man

Thank you for reading! :)

Previous Review: SDWaY S1 E1-4

Next Review: SDWaY S1 E9-12

[phantomoftheorpheum]

are they clues, or are they plot holes?

and other thoughts

I skimmed through the first 6 episodes of school spirits, and here are some things I noticed.-

Xavier claims that the police cleared him because Mr. South gave him an alibi for the time of Maddie's disappearance (we know this is a pretty small window, because we know that Maddie died in the afternoon, based off of how much time she's missing in her memory, but the police don't know she's dead, so this is a little confusing on how they cleared him for anything based off of Mr. South seeing him). Obviously this is now a problem because they have brought in Mr. South as a person of interest. Either Xavier lied to Nicole about his alibi, Mr. South lied about seeing Xavier, no one lied but the police had the window of the crime wrong, or both Mr. South and Xavier were where they said they were.

Very early on, we hear that Maddie's phone is still in the school. We have no idea how that's been determined. Either her phone had not yet been destroyed, it's never been destroyed, or this was someone using Maddie's accounts (we know someone has been).

Xavier lies to Claire about how he heard about Maddie's backpack. I'm really not sure if this was on purpose (like I think the writers possibly just forgot), but he tells her that "being the son of the Sheriff has perks," but we see him supposedly first learn this information from Maddie's mom, not from his father.

Ms. Fields tells Mrs. Nears that Mr. Anderson handed over the money he stole to the police. How/why did he move it after Simon & Maddie discovered it in his classroom? The police claimed it was not there when they searched, so either he moved it before they searched for it and then later turned it over, or they lied about it not being there. Or is Ms. Fields lying?

Mr. Anderson tells Claire that he has an alibi for "that night" when Maddie disappeared and that he was with his father. This is weird, since we know Maddie was killed during the day, and likely while everyone was still on campus & Mr. Anderson should also have been there. Xavier's alibi is that he was seen by Mr. South, so how can Mr. Anderson's alibi for the same stretch of time be that he was with his father? The Sheriff later tells Mrs. Nears that Mr. Anderson's alibi is solid. Mr. Anderson's alibi and Xavier's alibi cannot both hold up. This one is just really weird to me and doesn't line up with anything and I'm genuinely not sure if it's a clue or a mistake.

We know that Xavier skipped gym (maybe 6th period? this was before study hall, when he stole the phone) and Simon mentions that he also skipped Bio (which Simon calls 8th period) which is presumably when Maddie was killed/her body moved. I think he later explains this away as having to do with stealing/trying to get into the phone, but we don't actually know where he was during this time. (For the record, I do think this one is totally on purpose and not a plot hole).

It really bugs me that Claire's stepfather is tied to everything- his money was stolen, his money is donated to the Sheriff's campaign, his property is where evidence surrounding Maddie was left/planted... It feels weird. But it feels even weirder how connected he is to everything, but we've never met him. I dunno how I feel about this, tbh.

I really wish we knew why Claire and Mr. Anderson were convinced Maddie was the one who was blackmailing them. Did the blackmailer actively claim to be Maddie, or were there things said/done or evidence that pointed that direction & they just assumed? When did they supposedly pay her? If it was after Claire stole Maddie's phone, then how did this person who they think is Maddie contact them?? I assume that they paid "Maddie" at least initially before she "disappeared" because if not, then why would the cops think Maddie had a lot of money on her at the time of her disappearance? This belief points to the timeline Mr. Anderson has provided indicating that "Maddie" was paid off before she vanished. But if that's true, why did Claire say that Maddie's disappearance freaked her out & she told Anderson to just pay Maddie whatever she wanted? If Xavier is innocent, he needs to ask Claire more questions because jfc. This timeline is going to drive me up a wall.

I am pretty much convinced that Nicole is the actual blackmailer, but probably not the killer- We know that Nicole needs money if she wants to attend the arts schools she's applying to, so we have motive for her to blackmail. Nicole is very wary of the grief counselor who has been brought to the school & seems to feel she is being watched. Nicole tries to dissuade Simon from suspecting Mr. Anderson of anything and seems freaked out when Simon says he knows Mr. Anderson gave Maddie his number. She asks how he knows that and then specifically says maybe he gives lots of students his number. "Maddie" likes Nicole's photo on social media. Nicole's reaction to this seems genuine & she says "where are you?" quietly to herself while looking for Maddie and before Xavier is there with her. Technically "you" could be whoever is using Maddie's accounts, but Nicole's hopes do feel genuine to me here. Nicole tells Xavier not to show the blackmail video to his dad. She claims this is to protect Xavier and because they "don't have time" for the cops to suspect him again, but this could easily be because she's trying to cover her own tracks. Nicole acts shady when putting stuff into her trunk. She also says she "likes to think we can be forgiven for anything if our heart's in the right place." Nicole tells Simon there's no useful metadata on the video they were sent, which he accepts without questioning her. She also says "it doesn't matter who took the video, what matters is that Claire thinks Maddie took the video." Nicole remains seemingly very hopeful the Maddie is alive, but after the Sheriff tells her and Mrs. Nears that they have found a potential murder weapon and that they believe the motive for Maddie's possible murder was that it was believed she had a lot of cash on her, she immediately goes and digs in a remote location in the woods. To me, this all points towards the idea that Nicole is the person who was blackmailing Mr. Anderson and Claire and she either intentionally posed as Maddie, or maybe accidentally indicated it was Maddie, and she is terrified she may have gotten Maddie killed.

The Sheriff is definitely raising some eyebrows. It bothers me that he's running for re-election. But we don't have much else to talk about with him.

Xavier has gotten slightly more suspicious to me again. He's spending a lot of time with Maddie's mom & I'm not sure if that's from guilt or because he wanted access to Maddie's stuff/he knows she'll give him info. I'm suspicious of the text he got in study hall & of the fact that he lied to Claire at homecoming (still not sure if that was meant to be a lie or not). I felt pretty confident that he was too suspicious early on, and it's still not my favorite twist (if you can't do full Billy Loomis, don't try to do kinda do Billy Loomis) if he's the killer, but he's more suspicious to me right now than he was a couple episodes ago.

Finally, some random, probably not helpful bits of info:

Assuming we're in 2022 or 2021 (which I think we're either in 2021 or 2022, because Maddie's essay is dated as November of 2021, and though it doesn't feel like fall, homecoming/football season in the US is in the fall. that being said, tv shows are not known for consistent timelines surrounding sports.) the homecoming game said it was the 67th annual homecoming, which could mean the school was founded in 1954 or 1955. This means nothing to me, except that it probably means Mr. Martin died sometime after 1954. EDIT: it has been pointed out to me that the school signs say 1956 on them, meaning the events of the show are presumably 2023. TBH, I have questions about that & like... what season we're supposed to be in, but anyway, thanks for letting me know!

Mr. Martin mentions his family owned a Dodge Coronet when he was a kid. These cars were manufactured between 1949-1959 and 1965-1976. So this also points to Mr. Martin's death likely being in the 60s or 70s, at the earliest, as he is an adult. I think the oldest date he could plausibly have died would be 1959 or so, and that's pushing it.

The ghost band kids' yearbook photo was dated 2004.

Mr. South tells Simon that the fallout shelter has been in the school "since the cold war" which is a really unhelpful timeframe, as the cold war is defined as 1945-1991, but if we assume the school wasn't founded until the 1950s, then I suspect he's either referring to the period of time (several years) following the Cuban Missile Crisis (late 1962) or possibly to the increase in tensions in the early 80s. But, if I had to guess, I'd say he's referring to the Cuban Missile Crisis because we see Rhonda in the fallout shelter and we know she died in the 60s, so it's likely she may have more knowledge of that area of the school & possibly who died down there.

Maddie has a Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter poster in her room. I assume this is just for fun because Paramount owns that property & I don't think there are any real parallels between this story and that installment of the franchise.

[tellthemeerkatsitsfine]

A few months ago, I watched the new season of Alan Davies: As Yet Untitled, and made several posts about one thing that happened in this one episode. Because it was so weird and it bothered me so much, mainly that no one pointed it out. I didn’t even need anyone to get in trouble, I just needed to know that I wasn’t the only person who had noticed this incredibly obvious weird thing that everyone seemed to think was fine. That thing being someone stealing a story that is well known as a stand-up story by another comedian, and this other comedian is very famous and that story is one of his favourite bits that he told all the time for many years, including telling it on TV and on the radio. So you can’t steal that. Especially not for one minute of attention on a panel show. Aside from the fact that I wouldn’t think Isy Suttie is the kind of person to engage in plagiarism, even if someone were that type of person, I don’t see why they’d steal a well known stand-up story that a famous comedian has told on TV, for one minute of attention on a panel show. Surely that isn’t worth it.

This was so confusing to me that I wrote several long posts about it, here and then here. That’s where you can find my original confused and overly long ranting about this strange phenomeon. But the summary is: John Oliver had this story about something that (apparently) happened to him on a train once, I know he was telling it at least as early as 2003 (since he told it in a Radio 4 appearance in January 2004), he told it on his New York TV show in 2010, I’m pretty sure it’s on his stand-up DVD, and I’ve heard him tell it a bunch of other times, including during TV interviews. It was a go-to story for him for years. And on a 2023 episode of Alan Davies: As Yet Untitled, Isy Suttie told that story as though it happened to her. Which I’m pretty sure it didn’t (it is possible that it really did happen to John Oliver and Isy Suttie together, but I don’t think so because I’ve heard her refer to the story on her radio show as a thing that happened to someone else, it’s a whole big thing and I already went into it in far too much detail in those earlier posts), so someone’s lying, and something strange has happened.

I spent a fair bit of those previous posts speculating about absurd scenarios in which maybe no one is lying and it’s all fine, and said at the end that I do realize all that happened is that Isy Suttie made the bad decision to tell someone else’s story, probably thinking it wouldn’t be a big deal and wasn’t even likely to make the edit, which it probably wasn’t, until Alan Davies named the episode after it. However, I’ve heard something recently that’s made me realize there is a genuine possible explanation that does not involve Isy Suttie stealing stuff on purpose.

I’ve had cause this week to re-listen to After the Beginning, Before the End, which is Daniel Kitson’s stand-up show from 2013. It’s available on Bandcamp and of course everyone should buy it along with everything else. It has this throughline where he recounts something a friend had said to him, a little at a time. At the end, there’s the bit that I cut out and uploaded above, where he finally tells the entire story, and we find out that the whole time, none of it was true. His friend Isy had taken a thing he’d once joked with her about how messed up it would be if someone did that, and later on, she’d recounted it back to him as something he'd actually done.

After the Beginning, Before the End is a show with all these themes around the unreliability of memory, and that story as a throughline is meant to be an example of that. The way someone can hear a joke, remember the thing that was joked about but forget all its context, and end up storing it in memory as a thing that really happened. That would be a good way to illustrate that, except that – I’m not sure the human brain normally does do that. I mean, it’s not unheard of, that someone would make that sort of error. But that’s a pretty big error. I’m not sure that’s a normal thing to do.

So, new theory: It’s possible that Isy Suttie just has some sort of cognitive quirk where she doesn’t remember context for stuff. Keeps stories in her head, but forgets crucial details like whether they really happened and who they happened to, and even whether or not they happened to her.

If that’s the case, it rather undermines Kitson’s central point, because that’s not a normal thing. He can’t use Isy Suttie as an example for the fallibility of human memory, because most human memories don’t function like that. Maybe the occasional error, but not one bad enough to take a story that gets told by a person you know, that you heard him tell for many years in various contexts, and end up believing it happened to you. But doing that probably isn’t any weirder than stealing someone else’s well-known stand-up story for one minute of attention on a panel show, so it's a reasonable theory. And I’ve now heard something in a different show to suggest she is prone to this sort of thing, so that's my working theory at the moment.

What a strange thing, all around. I still consider the whole situation an unsolved mystery, but I think the Kitson clip gives me the first remotely plausible explanation I've heard so far.

[pagesofkenna]

bananadumbledore: When @zzzendica and I saw they did a revival we jumped right on that lmao it's still so goofy but it still feels like the classic show. Also who are your top suspects 👀

i was SO excited for the revival, and then they just dropped like the entire season in 2 weeks which kinda bugs me lol, which is why i'm catching up late lmao

ok spoilers up until the last two episodes obviously

they're down to the final four and currently I think it's Kesi tho it could also be Will? I was certain it was either Kesi, Sandy, or Jacob until Sandy left and then I was certain it was Jacob and then they spent the whole episode before he left trying to increase our suspicion on him, so

The people who I thought were trying too hard to LOOK like the Mole are Joi, Greg, Avori, and I think Will? Except looking back, Will not so much, it was just him 'stealing' the cargo in the first episode that made me decide it couldn't be him—but now I'm realizing he's done a great job of evading suspicion since then, and that could have been a play to gain everyones trust?

I've actually been flip flopping a lot on Will but now I actively don't like him and really hope he at least doesn't win oops. He has too much alpha-dog energy, 'im always right and everyone is stupid for not listening to me', and every time he messes up he manages to shift the blame onto someone else. if he's not the Mole then he's at least kind of a pushy egotist

I knew it wasn't Greg and was kinda OK with him going home (he had too much cocky business major energy lmao). Jacob I was sure of because he seemed so genuine and kept screwing up, it had to be an act... and then it wasn't oops

Avori's whole 'im gonna intentionally look like the Mole here' thing seems too obvious and intentional for it to be her, but maybe that's what the editors want me to think? I won't be too shocked if it DOES turn out to be her, you'd think a pro-gamer would be better at puzzlesolving

If Joi turns out to either win or be the Mole I will be happy actually, she kind of went the opposite direction as Will where I didn't really like her at first, but in the last few episodes I realized she's doing that on purpose? and she's still in the game, which says to me she's either the Mole, or way smarter and more calculated about what she's doing than she wants anyone to think. she basically perfectly set herself up to be the least-liked person this whole season, and I'm pretty sure more than one person has gone home voting for her. and if she IS the Mole then she's done a great job of causing a lot of damage ($25k!?? really?!!) while throwing shade elsewhere

then Kesi... I think it's her mostly because I haven't had much reason to pay attention to her for most of the season. the only things I actually remember her doing are big 'oops I didnt notice' screwups in the last few episodes (not noticing the boat during that plane flyover when the editors were focusing on Avori not noticing the boat, not reading out the names in the gold lockboxes, all of the 'those pigeons arent flying in a circle, im confidant this is the pigeon we're looking for' stuff). i think she's done a good job staying out of everyones radars and now that its down to the wire she's really playing into the 'im stressed and tired and just missing things' thing. if it's not her... i'mma feel bad for this stressed out girl lol

[jollyreginaldrancher]

Yellowjackets S2 E9

Holly shit the song is different.

The procession gave me goosebumps

The recap kind of implied that Misty's going down for murder which I'm not exactly happy with but would prison be any worse than whatever everybody else is headed for?

I can't believe Shauna is the one going along with this

Ok, nevermind. She's just bullshitting.

They gotta leg it. Please tell me Van is not gonna go along with Lottie's thing.

"we all moved on" even you didn't believe that Taissa

Lottie is doing remotely better.

"we're gonna eat Javi, but it's cool, we didn't kill him" 🤣 Misty, never change.

Misty's got several points. Lottie did start it. Or at least she let it go on and maybe relished in it a little. I'm guessing now she realises how heavy the crown is she'll want it gone. And there's hints of Nat wanting it. It's ceremonial though cause Van and Misty hold the real power. The crown may lead but they're the ones that choose to follow.

You don't need to bump into Shauna, Travis, it's not like she wants to do this

The way they have to dust their equipment because it's been so long since they had something to eat.

Everybody sort of awkwardly hanging around. Van moving Javi's head so Shauna doesn't have to look him in the face. Then cutting blind? Oof.

Poor little Javi. We barely saw him but he was just a little guy from what we did see.

Misty sneaking around on her own. These guys would have made the perfect dungeons and dragons party. They could have had an awesome podcast/YouTube channel.

Oh crap, tell me Van's not buying into Lottie's thing. It's sweet that she wants to help Lottie but I think she's beyond helping, and she has been for a long time. The problem is that Van and Lottie are looking for some sort of purpose and they're looking to the old ways for fulfilment because they just can't cope with everything having been for nothing, whereas Tai has tried to make her own meaning by ignoring the past and it's all just jumbled and nobody is 100% right but hunting one another is definitely wrong.

That's twice we've seen Nat with a Queen card in as many episodes so the symbols are definitely symbolising something here.

Where the fuck are Callie and Jeff going? Are they gonna pick Shauna up?

Callie is so impressed by her mom 🤣

Jeff left the gun in the car, didn't he?

Nat trying to save this girl feels like Shauna trying to save Javi or Javi trying to save Nat and I'm positive one if then is dying tonight.

Well I guess that's another piece of the puzzle squared into place. Nat and Travis's self loathing and guilt stem from Javi's death.

Van could sell ice to an Eskimo. You'd be a fool to think her financial troubles ever stemmed from lack of sales skills. Jeff could learn a lesson or ten from her.

Honestly though I'm proud of her for not feeling shame. That's literally life or death, you can't afford to add self loathing onto that. And Nat is the perfect example of that. She spent the rest of her life letting the guilt eat away at her. They all did in some way but Nat gave her ghosts so much power they choked the life out of her.

Anyway this Walter guy always seemed like he's too good a match for Misty and that's why I don't trust him. It almost seems like he's imitating her and he feels very performative and not at all genuine. He comes across as someone who steals personalities and seems maybe a bit psychopathic on his own. He's giving Hannibal, just a tad...or some trained assassin. Either way it spells trouble and I think he's using Misty.

He really wants to be the Watson to Kevin's Sherlock.

If they're gonna warn Shauna and actually be helpful maybe I'm a little glad Callie and Jeff are here. But knowing them, they'll probably screw things up worse.

Oh he poisoned Kevyn.

What the fuck does this guy want is the question then. Cause on the one hand he's obsessed with Misty and on the other he keeps making shit worse for her. Is he into her or trying to capture her? Either way he's shady af.

Props to Jeff for trying to save Shauna though. Like he may be terrible and terrible with her, but he really does fucking love her.

It'd be funny if Jeff was short for Jefferson and not Jeffrey.

Ben went from doing literally nothing to thinking he could start a fire on his own.

I started watching this episode some days ago and for a moment I forgot whose body they're chopping up.

They're just raw-dogging that shit? 👁️👄👁️

Nevermind, he started cooking it.

For a moment though...

I don't know why eating raw meat freaked me out more than the cannibalism.

Lottie's pity party is lowkey pissing me off.

Nobody gives Misty enough credit.

Like we, collectively owe her so much.

Lottie Nat stans are sleeping on Lottie Misty

Misty helped Lottie piss blood. Can you say the same for Nat?

Didn't think so.

If it wasn't for the captions I would have thought that song claimed that god is a foot.

Taissa nodding on the phone 🤣

But then again someone WAS watching her (Van, like a hawk)

That song is very Lottie btw. It feels very Lottie.

And I guess Van won over. Though there's really no doubt she would, Taissa is still completely whipped by her. Van really is the little instigator setting things aflame.

Did I rewatch this tiny segment like three times because of the way Van is looking up at Taissa? Yes. Her little half smile there 🫠

How are these 40 year old women so baby?

Nat and Misty wearing purple but Van not is so wild. Symbolic, probably too. But funny Van is not wearing it when she's by far sucked in the deepest, while Nat -always sceptical- and Misty -way too much of an opportunist to ever really commit to one thing- were the ones wearing the indoctrination colours there.

I guess it says more about Van hiding her true colours than anything else. She hid her sexuality even in the woods for example, until Taissa was comfortable with coming out. So maybe it's like she doesn't feel confident enough to show that vulnerability by wearing those colours. She HAS been avoiding talking about her illness too. It could be her avoidant personality too. Not just hiding but avoiding it all together.

Oop, there's a knife. And there's emphasis on the knife so somebody is probably gonna get stabbed.

Lottie looks more like an addict than Nat does right now.

But she's been looking more and more unhinged since the gals came.

Callie took the gun?!

I hope somebody shoots this asshole cop tbqh.

Team dad ftw.

Is that the same deck they used back then or just a different tarnished deck that is possibly missing three queens?

Also if nobody gets the queen do they just keep going until somebody gets it or is the hunt called off?

Shauna take the queen out of the deck, I beg you. Please tell me she trained as a wizard at some point and can do card tricks and shit.

Taissa really thought she could delay or stop this. Has she not been paying attention? At all? Van is essentially the big bad right now, not Lottie. I still love her and she's still my daughter but let's be real, she's the one pulling the strings.

Maybe Van wants to die. Like maybe this is her way of claiming back her power. Like she doesn't want a disease to stop her, she wants to be in control of when she dies. Maybe that's why she's so reckless and why she's doing all this. Maybe she wants to get that card. Istfg she better not though.

Her card didn't burn either. The symbolism is symbolic today, fellas.

What DOES happen if you refuse the draw? Do you die or get abandoned like Ben? Or are you the default prey?

Tai looked like her dark self for a moment. Is this a sign she'd merged the two?

Also I didn't miss Van almost passing out with relief when Tai drew a card that was not the queen.

Closer to the fire but her card didn't catch fire either.

Also there's gay sex and then there's Tai and Van's eye contact in this scene and of the two, the latter is more titillating.

Weird that they didn't show where Misty's card landed.

Why do I have a feeling Nat is gonna get the queen?

Oh, phew, nevermind.

They keep going?

From the looks on their faces, it's not the usual way they do things.

Shauna got the queen

Fuck fuck fuck

With all the parallels to the first hunt, is someone gonna die in her stead too?

Oh they all did arts and crafts too.

At least Shauna is showing some self awareness.

Oh, Lottie figured it out too, she just didn't care.

At least we know where we stand now. They're all fucked up and they're all self aware and they all should be hospitalised somewhere. Like at first I thought they were just in denial but nah, they know. I guess that's why Taissas's fractured self merged with her again. Because she stopped fighting it.

Great, the cops are coming now.

Thanks a lot, asshole.

I wonder if the guy with the rapey moustache will go along with it. He seems to lack moral fibre enough to be willing but you never know. He might be dumb enough to try something.

Callie really came through?!

One minute they're going along all wild eyed and intimidating and the next they're acting same and I'm just lost at this point.

Also I think Gen is pit-girl. I rewatched the scene again and it seems more like her than Mari.

Van was their television 🥺 oh this is all clicking together.

She was a really good storyteller too. She should have been a writer. Maybe she would have been one too...

Lottie shut up, I wanna hear Van's story.

Also tell me that dickhead coach isn't gonna do something stupid.

"it chose me" girl there's no 'it', Van chose you. And it was only because she attributed being alive to some unknown force rather than just insanely weird luck.

"I can't hear it anymore" Shauna punched the wilderness out of her. She punched her so hard she lost her sixth sense.

I wonder if for a moment, Misty thought Lottie meant it was her that the wilderness chose, since she was the one that saved Nat and condemned Javi.

Is it possible then that Shauna was chosen as their leader in the future and not their prey?

Shauna's looking around like she still thinks this is stupid but maybe Nat leading them won't be as bad so maybe that's what brings them together; mutual dislike of Lottie's rule.

Yeah I'm not so sure they bought into it, Lot. Van definitely seemed to. Hell, she convinced Tai not to have her committed so she must still believe on some level. The others not so much. Especially not Nat, who's been so desperate to distance herself she turned to drug and alcohol abuse.

Lottie's daughter brought a bigger gun than Shauna's did 👁️👄👁️

"How else do we explain what happened out there?" You guys are just allergic to accountability, huh?

"We tried to kill you and it wouldn't let us"

Bitches will invent deities to avoid giving Misty any credit.

Javi too I suppose but it was really Misty's call in the end there.

Ben is looking a lil homophobic there.

Bro is just pissed he's not invited to the orgy.

Van will either be the first or last to bow down to Nat.

Akilah's cute little bounce. Mari's regal bow. The other blonde (I wanna say Melissa but I don't rightly know for sure) taking her hat off. Where have I seen that before?

Oh god, my little MistyNat heart is about to explode 🥹 that was the cutest thing I've ever fucking seen! Misty is Nat's little knight in shining armour, I can't deal with this. Somebody MUST have ficced this!

She actually made Nat laugh! In all this...

Van curling up like a cat against her hand.

Taissaaaaaa!!!!!

And Travis was there as well I guess.

Bro just made her sadder though, fuck him.

Shauna acknowledging Nat as her leader too though was what really tipped her over the edge. Like fuck this is for real now. I can't imagine the pressure she must be feeling.

This was honestly pretty sweet.

I couldn't imagine having a moment this bittersweet in the the midst of all this.

MISTY WAS READY THE WHOLE TIME, I CAN'T 🤣

She did NOt hesitate with that needle to save Nat!

Nat was not gonna let anybody else die in her place 😮

No no no no no

Tell me that was just a tranquilizer

This is a joke, right?

She may have got her with the needle but she didn't push it in, right?

The fact that in her death dream she's in an airplane?! Alone?! Is torture

Javi was there

And so was Nat! And Lottie providing her support. I guess it really helped her in the end.

Fuck that got to me

They really have brilliant death scenes.

I had to stop for a while because I was in physical pain from the crying

Every thing was a blur. Lottie is getting help though, maybe. Walter might not be complete trash. Shauna really doesn't have a single maternal bone in her body. Like instead of comforting her child she's being comforted by Jeff.

Taissa was walking in front of Van. I sense conflict there. Maybe deep down she blames her for what she's done when she's around her. It was almost like he was walking away from her or trying to put some distance between them. She did say they would visit Lottie and perhaps she meant the group but perhaps she meant the two of them.

I don't expect their relationship to have been fixed. I certainly didn't think they'd magically get over past resentment offscreen but they only have a very limited amount of time and I am terrified of what's going to happen next season between them.

Misty breaking down that she killed her best friend though absolutely destroyed me. I'm just absolutely broken right now. I can't imagine how it could possibly get worse, though I'm afraid it will. There's way too much time left in the episode for shit to not hit the fan at least one more time.

Meanwhile past Shauna is just casually blogging about their most recent murder on her diaries. Well, she's writing about Jackie really. How Jeff read these and didn't realise she was in love with her is beyond me. Or maybe he did and he considered staying with her his repentance for his role in all of this.

It seems like she's maybe hitting some breakthrough when she notices something's amiss. And there's fire and stuff and I'm guessing Ben put those matches to use on the cabin.

I'm glad I never rooted for his ass.

That's homophobic.

Can't let the lesbian cannibals have anything!

Misty should have let him jump tbh

I wanna know how the diaries survived. Are you telling me in an emergency, the first thing Shauna grabbed was her diaries? Because that's valid actually. When my house caught fire I just grabbed a pair of socks...

Did that asshole lock them in or is the door hinge/knob melted?

Van really said "move" like she's immune to fire, and just tried to kick the goddamn door down?

At least Tai has some working brain cells right now. Honestly trust Tai to save your life with the closest blunt instrument she can find.

Thank god they saved the piss bucket. I was really worried about that. But fr I appreciate them showing they saved this and this and that.

Van is no longer flirting with death at this point, she's pushed her up against the wall and started tongue-fucking her because what do you mean she was the last out the door, as the house was caving in? She really fucking thinks she's immortal stg.

Who was the one who let their blanket catch fire though? That was kind of funny. Like the whole thing is on fire and you thought it was a good idea to lean up against a post? Like the wooden outside of the house that was on fire couldn't possibly be alight.

Anyway, fuck, the next season is gonna be hard.

They just lost the one shelter they had. In the middle? Of winter? And if the meat shack is attached to it then all their food is also gone as well and they're gonna be hunting sooner rather than later.

Fuck Ben, I hope he's next up on the chopping block.

Anyway I know the other girls are irrelevant but this shit kind of implied that only nine of them made it out alive. I'm sure the rest are just not in the shot, right? A good chunk of them did not just perish, right?

Fuck they look distraught. I mean who can blame them but Van's actress is eating that up.

I had some questions but I forgot them.

The music is fire. Pun not intended.

Fuck.

What a hell of an ending.

[globalanigoods]

This may be as good a time as any to introduce myself and what I’m about.

Fair morrow. My name is Shag, or at least that is what I’ll be going by online. Sometimes you’ll see my myself by other names on my blog posts as well, all beginning with A. Adolt is dumb and excitable; A-Hole or Ace is villainous; Assault is likely to make you cry; Attack is smart.

I am a huge fan of stories. Animated movies, short films and TV series are my go to when it comes to relaxing in front of the TV. Whether it be an interconnected series that builds upon itself as it goes on or more episodic with individual stories with little to no consequence, I love series in particular. And it doesn’t matter what the target demographic is, I can find something for any age group. It usually needs to make me laugh at some point but that’s not a hard rule.

At some point several years ago (2014 or 2015 I think?) I started to notice the difference that series and even movies got in merchandising between the U.S.A. and Japan. Anime and its merchandise made over a trillion yen in 2021, while the world was still in the midst of covid. Those are some impressive numbers if you ask me. And that covers most of the shows and films that came out at the time, or had come out in previous years. In the U.S.A., there may not be any merchandise available for a show ever.

So eventually I started keeping a list of things that I would like to see made that strangely wasn’t. But, like most things in life, making merchandise costs money. And in no way am I wealthy, so I’ve had nothing but a list to show for years. About a year and a half ago, I decided to look into easy things that could be done around the house: posters, stickers, calendars, shirts, et cetera. And I’ve finally gotten the funds to start doing that, in some capacity.

Which brings us to why I am here on Tumblr and its obviously for marketing purposes. But I don’t like the idea of boring old marketing so I’m trying for a fun blog instead. I should probably be doing a YouTube channel but speech isn’t exactly my strong point. So here’s a  breakdown of what you can expect to see here on any given week:

What I hope to be a fun collection of topics surrounding animation, some of which are just think/opinion pieces.

So, That’s Gotta Hurt Sunday: a look at weird poses in animation.

Monster Monday: a look at movie monsters within animation.

Too Bad You Did That Tuesday: a look at failures and blunders within the animation and comics industries.

What I’d Like to See Wednesday: things I am worried or excited to see in animated shows or movies if there were to be more of the IP.

Think They Survived Thursday: a look at characters that almost certainly died but it was left ambiguously undeclared.

Feels Like I’m Kinning: a look at a scene that makes me relate to a character.

Social Commentary Saturday: a look at what the writers seem to be saying about society without coming right out and saying it.

Science in Animation Sunday and Saturday: a look into gadgets, gizmos, inventions, and inators in animation and whether they would work or not with today’s technology.

Short fan fiction from different shows and movies:

Stealing Socials Sunday: think posts on Reddit and Bored Panda but written by cartoon characters.

Maybe Make it More Mature Monday: an effort to make a mature joke or write a scene that wouldn’t usually slide within the show or movie.

This Show/Movie/Episode/Season Needs a Song Tuesday: an attempt to insert a song where there isn’t one in a place where it feels like there should be.

What Should it Look Like? Wednesday: Flat out fan fiction, taking place over time.

Think They Just Need a Hug Thursday: characters that just need to let it out or are just so wholesome.

Face it, They’d Say Fuck Friday: name says it all

Someone Get These Two Together Saturday: think Cartoon Network’s Cartoon City but more on the scale of a modern day Roger Rabbit.

I don’t plan on this being an everyday thing for all of these because I may not have that kind of time. But I do plan on doing something daily. Hope you have fun on this journey.

Until next time, be well.

Ttfn

[casliveblog]

Custom Toonami Block Week 116 Rundown

Kaguya-sama: Love is War: This episode’s a cute little trilogy about Kaguya getting sick trying to give Miyuki a ride in the rain, I mean she kinda fucked up his phone, she deserved it a little. Second bit the show briefly becomes Higurashi again but this time it’s not the murder side of Higurashi but the insane level of Machiavellian cheating in a normal game with a weird punishment game prize to getting to go to Kaguya’s house while she’s sick since apparently when she’s sick she basically becomes Chika because no thoughts head empty. And last but not least we have the trip over where Miyuki brings Kaguya her shit and shenanigans ensue where they sleep in the same bed. Considering how cagey the two of them are to each other this should change their whole dynamic but I’m guess it probably won’t.

Inuyasha: Renkotsu’s on his shit again, Koga wakes up and Renkotsu’s ready to steal his jewel shards again to hopefully get enough jewel shards to fight Bankotsu so he won’t kill him for hoarding Ginkotsu’s shard. There’s really two problems with this, 1: Renkotsu legit could not move after Koga’s attack and had to juse Ginkotsu’s shard to get out of there so I don’t think Bankotsu would be super mad if you were like ‘hey I had to use the shard for a bit to make my escape but I can give it to you now if you want’ but Renkotsu’s just like ‘no, gotta get more shards and kill him before he kills me’ and 2. Renkotsu buddy I don’t think you could beat Bankotsu even if you had a dozen more jewel shards than him, like he’s able to facetank the Wind Scar and you breathe fire and shoot bazookas, not sure how jewel shards are gonna help even that gap any. Anyway he leads Inuyasha away and the fight and shit but Renkotsu just fucking has dynamite and is hoping to use his zombie status to kamikaze everyone in the cave but Koga and Inuyasha get him out of the cave so he has to throw away the dynamite and yeets himself down the river while Koga and Inuyasha see who is the more immature. Miroku and Sango’s sidequest gets them to Naraku’s lair in the mountain core so Kagura and the reject demons are ready to intercept, honestly that sounds like a good fight since Sango/Miroku and Kagura are both characters that haven’t been relevant power-level wise after their introduction.

Yu Yu Hakusho: Yusuke vs Toguro is still in full swing and Toguro is stomping ass, like legit the only reason Yusuke’s still alive is because Toguro is actively trying to pull the Super Saiyan out of him for entertainment purposes. He just kind of… grows vents and starts sucking the souls out of all the mook demons in the crowd to fuel his 100% form which will eventually grab Keiko through Puu’s barrier and Koto almost gets it but Chu helps her out (I still ship it). Toguro barely misses Keiko in order to piss of Yusuke enough to go but it’s not enough so Genkai possesses Puu to tell Toguro to kill one of Yusuke’s friends to get him to go Super Saiyan. That should feel like a lot more of an asspull than it does but since it’s something Yusuke did as a ghost it makes sense that Genkai could too and it does kinda turn the whole fighting for Genkai thing on its head since now she’s being a bitch and encouraging Toguro to kill someone despite him kinda heading in that direction anyway. Also Sakyo put up iron walls around the arena so… yeah guess he just installed those in case this exact sort of thing happened so now it’s funny watching the audience cheer for Yusuke because if he doesn’t win they literally die. So long story short Toguro kills Kuwabara and Yusuke goes Super Saiyan but in a neat little twist he doesn’t look pissed off, he looks epically sad, like that’s kinda neat that the area just turned really blue and he’s just so broken and depressed with grief that he can’t hold anything back anymore.

Fate/Apocrypha: The battle’s still going full force and we get a lot of little skirmishes that don’t add up to much, Semiramis vs Astolfo, Mordred vs Astolfo, Chiron vs Achilles, Spartacus vs Atalante, Shirou vs Fran, most of them are the standard ‘Ha, so this is your hero thingy you hero’ that early Fate fights are so they can have some light shows without putting anyone in mortal danger before season 2. Sieg is evacuating the Homunculi because he… asked nicely I guess? Like I get why the ones fresh out of the tubes are following him but the normal guards and shit apparently have NO loyalty to Team Yggy and are just ready to dip out with him as soon as he says anything despite the main Homunculus girl being pissed at him for saving her last episode. Fran gets a vision of Dr. Frankenstein from Shakespeare and it… takes some liberties to say the least. Like it kinda takes the hackneyed ‘the doctor was the real monster’ approach that most middle school professors will give you when if you actually read the book the doctor was a dude that didn’t deal with shit well but also the monster murdered five people then demanded to claim a woman that hadn’t even be made yet as property because someone of equal physical unattractiveness wouldn’t reject him which is kind of a huge dick move, but that would be weird to put in Fate so in this case Fran is just a sweetheart that got confused and pushed around so she murders the Frankenstein doll and has to be Command Seal’d out of her rage. Last but not least Sieg comes to save his boyfriend Astolfo from Mordred and bro is gonna get his ass fucking punted because Mordred’s just way stronger.  

Nisemonogatari: So we’re halfway through Tsukihi’s arc and we’re still on Karen… like Karen’s arc took up two thirds of the season to begin with but we’ve mentioned Tsukihi like once so far in her own damn arc. Anyway at least we keep the incest shit to a minimum this time and there’s weird linguistic shit and bets that result in Karen cutting off her ponytail and letting Kiyomi ride her… shoulders. Also a sexy girl is looking for Oshino’s old hideout so after implying Hanekawa is spying on Kiyomi they get here there and drop Karen off at Suruga’s so they can go be best girls together. Meanwhile we resume Sexual Harrassment with Kiyomi Araragi as he goes on for WAY too long about molesting Mayoi before they get jumped by a girl who narrates her life like a book except she only has one line and can both she and the other girl can read the past apparitions of the girls he’s with while looking for Oshino’s place and they just kinda make a play on the fact the same thing just happened twice.

Speed Grapher: This episode is basically a character study of Kagura’s mom which is odd because she’s barely in it. Basically Mrs. Tennouzu was a model who married a super rich businessman but almost eloped with this doctor dude she liked before they got separated and he got murdered either by people trying to keep her from marrying him or BY her for making her think he jilted her. Also we find out that her mom, Kagura’s grandma basically has Alzheimer’s and thinks her daughter Shinsen is still a teenager which makes her point out how old she looks whenever she sees her which can’t be doing much for her age complex that makes her abuse Kagura even harder out of jealousy of her youth and make herself feel desirable by blackmailing people into fucking her brains out with money. Kagura and Saiga let go of their doctor buddy who says he’ll have DNA results for Kagura in a week that may help analyze the whole giving people superpowers thing and may help with the tumor that’s killing Kagura. So they’ve got a week to bum around with and go to the hot spring where they find out the whole story about her mom’s affair and Kagura starts to take great solace in the fact she may be the product of an unmarried but loving affair instead of a cold business arranged marriage which whether she is or isn’t explains why her mom hates her so much in addition to the youth stuff either she’s a reminder of her late husband that she hated or a reminder of the guy she almost eloped with but jilted her/was murdered. Also Hibari is still on Saiga’s trail and is leading around a CSI dude having him be her Watson despite him being way out of his depth and she gets laughed out of the room when she tries to blackmail/bribe Suitengu despite him being worth the net worth of a country. Suitengu then resolves to go to the hot spring himself to crash Kagura’s party right after fingering her mom into unconsciousness. (Also for some reason he’s still faking injury to her despite being up and about a few episodes ago so idk why he has to pretend to have bad legs for her) meanwhile Tsujido and the team rocket gang are on the trail literally following Kagura’s scent and contemplate the idea that the 30ish old photographer may be banging the fifteen year old girl which Tsujido dismisses because apparently Euphorics need some kinky shit to actually get off I don’t think I wanna know what he’s talking about and then Saiga refrains from taking a picture of a half-naked sleeping Kagura which… good, I don’t know why that was a dilemma but I’m glad that’s not a thing that happened.

Durararax2: Shit’s really starting to go down now, Kasane infects Shinra with Saika and Celty goes BERSERK and chases her while she spider-man’s her way through the city, basically becoming a ball of shadows and bees while chasing her down before she hands Shinra and a box presumably containing Celty’s head to Varona to drive off with because apparently Kasane’s goal is to just push all of Celty’s buttons at the same time for some reason. Masaomi and Chikage escape Izumii who says he’s hunting down Masaomi on Mikado’s orders which may or may not be the whole story but they’re good for now. Meanwhile Celty’s horse comes up to Shizuo and takes the form of a children’s bicycle so we get the hilarious image of a grown man wearing a bartender suit riding a bicycle half his size that’s actually a horse belonging to a rampaging dullahan embodied as a dust cloud chasing a woman that grows swords out of her fingers. Shizuo’s just like ‘idk what’s going on but I’m sure it’s Izaya’s fault’ which… kinda? I guess? Like Kasane seems to be pulling more stings here and Celty’s head getting out seems to not be against his plan but not directly in line with it either so who the fuck knows.

[my-thoughts-and-junk]

I'd like to be a character in a science fiction adventure show but not like as the main character that shit's too stressful. I'd be like the human version of a trucker cat

[just-being-leonest]

My Review of Helluva Boss season 1

Disclaimer: Yes this is my opinion. No I’m not forcing you to agree with it. I am ignoring the pilot episode for this review

Episode 1: Murder Family

Plot Summary: When the I.M.P get hired to take out a heroic homicide survivor, things sure do happen.

Review: It... was okay. It showed off how the personalities and characters were going to be treated during the season. For example, Blitz is a complete asshole with no regard for his employees, Millie has no personality except hot murder wife, Moxxie is treated like shit and has no spine, and Loona has a bad attitude and is largely forgotten.   Some things that bothered me the most was how the hell Mayberry knew Martha survived and got all the cash. Like... in this hell isn’t it impossible for the average demon to know what the fuck is happening on the surface? Also the ending. The ending was complete shit. First with the police bombing the house. It was... very abrupt? Like yes police brutality is very much a thing but there are better ways to illustrate it. Also the laughing and “lesson learned” part felt very forced and awkward. It wasn’t natural, Helluva Boss itself doesn’t parody children’s shows so why at the end have it parody that? The humor doesn’t hold up. At all. It’s all shock value stuff and it’s only funny on the first viewing. Rewatches just don’t add up. There’s no good build up for most of the gags imo, nor is the follow through very strong. 

Rating: 5/10

~

Episode 2: Loo Loo Land

Plot Summary: When Stolas hires I.M.P as bodyguards on a trip to Loo Loo Land, things sure do happen.

Review: It was better than the first episode but still shows off very early problems in the story. First of all, it highlights how selfish Stolas is, completely ignoring what Octavia is saying to go and flirt with some asshole she probably doesn’t even know. A minor issue I had was with Millie’s character, or lack thereof. Why did she act like an idiot in this episode, hell even missing a shot she could’ve easily made considering her background in being a literal assassin.  And this episode, when compared with all the others just doesn’t add up. It shouldn’t have been released that soon.

Rating: 6/10

~

Episode 3: Spring Broken

Plot Summary: When Blitzo's ex girlfriend steals his parking spot things sure do happen.

Review: Disclaimer. Yes I’m asexual. Yes I find an abundance of sexual themes uncomfortable. But I also know someone who isn’t asexual (and a very sexual person) who found the abundance of sexual themes in this episode uncomfortable.  Now, I will give the show some credit, the scene with Blitz saying “I love this song” and then fucking up the lyrics is hilarious.  I’m going to be honest... the part where Moxxie got sexually assaulted rubbed me the wrong way. In episode 1, Blitz threatened to fuck him and Millie, in a way that didn’t seem so keen towards consent. So right now that’s at least two rapey jokes in a show that’s supposedly sex positive.  Also the whole part about Blitz stealing Verosika’s credit card and maxing it out while Blitz just dismisses it (maxing out a credit card is a very valid reason to be pissed at somebody-) makes me wonder “why the fuck am I supposed to care about this asshole?”  In episode 1 Stolas mentioned that he was letting Blitz in the human world illegally. Why is Verosika allowed to go to the human world and run around, probably becoming very popular, which we can assume by that one dude with her name painted on his chest, and I.M.P isn’t? Also what purpose are they serving by being on the surface? They’re fucking humans big whoop. Are they damning them to hell? For having sex outside or marriage or some shit?? Because if that’s the cause then it’s not really that sex positive lmao.  Also how old is Loona supposed to be? Because the show and Blitz treat her kinda like some emo teen but I’ve heard that she’s in her twenties??? Also the “I adopted you so you should care about me” angle Blitz is trying to push on Loona reminds me of parents who tell their kids “I birthed you therefore you should put up with my shit”. Also funny how none of the songs seem to be catchy at all or stick in my head, and I’m usually one to get songs stuck in my head easily.

Rating: 3.5/10

~ 

Episode 4: C.H.E.R.U.B

Plot Summary: When Cherubs and Imps clash over the life of a shitty old man, things sure do happen.

Review: Full disclaimer. I hate this episode. I hate this episode with a passion. Like first of all, why the hell are people even questioning where the billionaire is gonna end up.  This episode contributed nothing. All it did was show me how little Viv cares about her source material. And how needlessly crass she can be. The unneeded gore, the uncalled for pedophile joke, the frankly childish pessimism... it all contributes to showing how horrible that episode is. Also that fucking ending grinded all my gears. Honestly, it proves that Charlie is wrong and that demons can’t be redeemed.  I need to pray after this episode.

Rating: 2/10

~

Episode 5: The Harvest Moon Festival

Plot Summary: Blitz sees a horse. Things sure do happen!

Review: Ah love how not even a full minute in, Stolas talks down on Blitz. And Blitz invades the privacy of Moxxie and Millie. Why are we supposed to like him again?  I wish we saw more of Moxxie nerding out over weaponry. I also wish they talked more about how it’s supposedly impressive that an imp started his own business?  Also why is Millie acting childish??? Sallie Mae is the only character I like and that’s because she only has like three lines. (and I’d like to mention how she gets so little screen time and yet Viv pumps out merch of her). Why is Striker even singing? There’s no need for him to sing at all, it adds nothing to the plot. I kinda wish they had kept Striker for on longer, have him slowly gain the trust of everyone and get closer only to stab them in the back. But oh well. Then that would mean actually writing a character arc. Also that Loona entrance was dumb as fuck, it genuinely felt like the writers had no idea how to get out of killing Striker. For a show with a lot of death, they seem hesitant to kill off characters we give a shit about. Although I will give credit where credit is due, it’s an okay episode. Better than most Helluva Boss episodes even if it is mediocre. 

Rating: 6/10

~

Episode 6: Truth Seekers

Plot Summary: Characters talk, and things sure do happen!

Review: Ohhh boy this episode has some major issues. First of all, saying they are killing specifically targeted people is just wrong. It doesn’t look like that at all. They killed (from the PUBLIC’S point of view) a heroic woman, a bunch of college students, and an old billionaire. That doesn’t look like they are killing specifically targeted people. Again, giving credit where credit is due, that scene where Moxxie and Blitz annoy the shit out of the agents (especially Moxxie’s fake drink order) was genuinely funny and enjoyable, even if it went on a beat too long. Why do the agents in the hallways have swords???? Also during that whole truth serum drug trip, the agents didn’t ONCE ask them any questions! It’s almost like this was a way to force character development onto Blitz.  The song was okay at best. Blitz saying he gives Moxxie a hard time because he believes in him is bullshit. All Blitz does is insult him over usually nothing. That’s not pushing him to be greater, that’s Blitz being a dick. Also, genuinely, that scene where Stolas pulled Blitz by a chain to come to him, with Blitz’s expression? That disgusted me. Helluva Boss is fetishizing a toxic relationship. I don’t care if a show has a toxic relationship on screen, especially if it’s an adult show, but to pretend it’s healthy? It ain’t nowhere near healthy.  Blitz was given character development without having to work for it. Are there going to be any consequences for the imps literally killing a bunch of people on the surface? For being caught? Millie has no personality except for “badass wife” as per usual. Stolas literally calls Blitz his “impish little plaything”. How is that a healthy uwu gay relationship again? Also he’s being a condescending asshole, joy. Just kill the agents why didn’t they kill the agents-

Rating: 4/10

~

Episode 7: Ozzie’s

Plot Summary: Things sure do happen!

Review: Any character development from the previous episode? Gone! He’s full on stalking and crossing boundaries that Moxxie explicitly set. And he’s using Stolas to help with the stalking. And why was Stella insistent on killing off Stolas if she’s going to take Octavia away regardless? (Which really should’ve been shown on screen) Having Blitz and Stolas being called out was sorta satisfying but there are better ways to have them face the consequences of their actions.  Nothing much to comment on mainly because I want to be done with this review lmao.

Rating: 5/10

[craigiloveyou]

Adrienette is toxic, it's true

When I first started watching the show, I thought adrienette was cute. But as the show went on, and I saw more episodes, my opinion on the ship and Marinette change drastically.

First, I have to get this out of the way because it's been bothering me since I've seen it, Puppeteer 2. Jesus Christ, Puppeteer 2. Where do I even begin? Marinette sees what she thinks is a wax statue of Adrien and what does she do? She tries to kiss it. She tries to kiss a wax statue of Adrien. I get her character is deeply in love with Adrien, but holy shit. I've met some adrienette fans who love that moment, saying things like "Adrien didn't pull away." or "That was a cute moment." How the F*CK is that a cute moment???? Literally how?? I never cringed so hard at anything in my life. Does Thomas think that was cute? Does he think that's okay???

Second, Marinette is a stalker. There is plenty of proof and defending her actions saying shes a teenager or she's the main character is stupid. What teenage steals their crush's phone, gets overly jealous when any other girl stand to close to their crush, knows their entire PERSONAL schedule, and tries to sabotage someone else's chance with the crush? Did you answer none? You're correct. Not to mention when Lila went to Adrien's house, Marinette stacked trash cans on top of each other to watch them. And when the a fireman saw her, he helped? He helped her be able to watch Adrien in his own home. Thomas, did you think that was funny? That people would laugh at a fireman helping this girl be able to watch her crush?

Third, Chat Blanc. She abused her super power to break into Adrien's house. Her ancient, powerful, super power, to go into Adrien's house and do what, you ask? She smelled Adrien's pillow. I'm sorry, I don't know about you guys, but if someone broke into my house and sniffed my pillow, I'd call the cops. I don't care if it was a f**king super hero or not, that is creepy. You can't even say it's just for comedic purposes because that's not funny. It's weird and uncomfortable to watch. And when she left, Adrien saw her. Her reckless behavior caused Adrien to get akumatized and nearly caused the end of the world. In the episode, we saw Adrien and Marinette get together. People love that episode, saying it as the best, but it wasn't. It basically showed how bad adrienette is. Adrien only asked Marinette out after he saw she was ladybug. He loves ladybug, and aside from one or two(?) moments in the show showing he had feelings for Marinette, not many for Marinette. The episode just showed Adrien's love for ladybug, and whoever is under the mask, not Marinette.

Fourth, Lila. Marinette didn't trust Adrien alone with Lila because she thinks Lila will lie enough and get Adrien to date her. Marinette didn't trust that Adrien could take care of himself. Adrien could tell when Lila's lies, and it perfectly capable of not falling for her tricks. Another moment she abused her power as ladybug was Volpina. (I think that's the episode.) Lila said to everyone that she personally knew ladybug and what did Marinette do? Instead of just ignoring it, or using her brain, she decided, "Hey, it would be a great idea to go humiliate Lila in front of Adrien so Adrien will never date her!" Lila is a character I still don't know how to feel about, but what Marinette did was a jerky thing to do to anyone. Also using her power to make sure no one can date Adrien is a sh*tty thing to do no matter how much you defend it.

Fifth, Luka and Kagami. I love Luka. I don't love Marinette. I don't particularly care for Lukanette. It's less toxic than adrienette, I'll give it that. And at least Marinette can have a decent conversation with Luka, without stumbling over her words and making a complete fool of herself. And Marinette never stalked Luka so that's good. Also, why does NO ONE TALK ABOUT HOW MUCH OF A B*TCH MARIONETTE WAS TO KAGAMI? She talked bad about her, behind Kagami's back, she tried to sabotage Kagami's chances with Adrien, she tried to lose the challenges so Kagami wouldn't see Adrien, can ANYONE at least acknowledge how much of an a*s she was that ep? And how did the episode end? Did Kagami become Marinette's enemy? Did Kagami tell Adrien the stuff she said and did? Nope. Nothing happened. Marinette got of scott free, and once again, her sh*tty actions had no consequences.

Conclusion. For now, unless Marinette becomes less creepy to Adrien, adrienette is my least favorite ship, not just in the series, but out of all the shows I've seen.

[astrella-writes]

prompt | @ssoftlydreaming​ asked: nfjsja ok from sweet home can you do lee eun-hyeok and basically he has to decide if he should risk the danger of everyone in the apartment complex or save reader who is outside and struggling to survive.

warnings | female pronouns, angst, spoilers for episode one of the netflix adaptation of sweet home, if you haven’t watched episode one complete then this won’t make much sense, panic attacks, the general horror of sweet home, eun-hyuk being a logical pain in the ass, somewhat of an open-ending.

word count | 1.7K

author’s note | i hope this satisfies your masochistic desires! i’m honestly so happy to have angst as my first request, and that isn’t sarcasm at all.

The sound of his descending footsteps echoing throughout the concrete stairwell became background noise to Eun-Hyuk as he stared at the unanswered messages he had sent you well over an hour ago. This was strange behavior coming from you, considering you usually responded back within minutes. Not wanting to jump to conclusions, he tried to think of a logical explanation to calm his increasing worries. Perhaps your phone died on your walk home, or you had to work over-time without a chance to inform him.

He was certain some minor inconvenience caused your abrupt absence, although he couldn’t shake off the unnerving feeling settling like a burden of tense muscles upon his shoulders. Realizing there wasn’t much more he could do, especially since all the calls he gave you went straight to voice mail, he decided to wait patiently for a reply from you and try to keep his thoughts clear during the meantime.

Eun-Hyuk stuffed his phone into his pocket as he finally reached the half-open double doors that led out onto the first floor, his ears immediately picking up on the commotion before he looked over at the front entrance that was blocked by the shutters. A group of people stood dispersed nearby, talking amongst themselves and watching one resident in particular as he tried tugging on the metal bracing that barely budged. The man sighed, dropping his arm and admitting defeat as he walked away from the shutters, mumbling to himself.

‘First the elevators aren’t working, and now this?’ he thought to himself, unimpressed with the current situation, especially since he had work that night. He wasn’t the only one annoyed by the circumstances as the surrounding people openly expressed their vexation. Although, unlike most of them, he remained calm and simply observed the scene with his hands in his pockets. Multiple residents spoke loud enough for him to catch on to the fact that the security guard was missing, which made little sense considering this was an issue for him to resolve.

“Excuse me?” a feminine voice sounded from behind him, causing him to turn around and look at the woman. “Do you have any service on your cell?” Despite having just been on his phone, Eun-Hyuk was so preoccupied with his thoughts regarding your whereabouts that he didn’t notice the minor detail of whether he had any service.

Pulling out his phone and unlocking it, he immediately dialed your number, taking the possibility to hopefully connect with you and find out where you were. When his ear met with a high-pitched ringing, Eun-Hyuk lowered the phone, lost in thought for a second before looking at the woman.

“I guess not,” he said, watching as her face dropped in disappointment and she turned to walk away, but he stopped her with a question. “What’s going on here?” 

The woman hesitated, wondering if anything was even worth sharing considering she would give him more questions than answers. She went on to explain how every main exit had been closed up, locking everyone inside. Although she speculated someone was behind this, she had no idea who it was and for what purpose it was done. 

The explanation caused Eun-Hyuk to swallow thickly before turning his gaze towards the concealed entrance. He stared for a moment, silently wishing for your safety.

                                                          ―――

A shrill ringing penetrated your ear, causing you to jerk your head away from your phone and hang up on your attempt at calling Eun-Hyuk. With a frustrated cry, you threw your cellphone upon the ground, hearing the shattering of the screen as it smacked face-first against the concrete.

On the verge of tears, you made yourself as small as possible in the alleyway's corner, pulling your knees up to your chest as you rested your forehead on top of them. Your breathing grew increasingly more labored as the sensation of dread and pure hopelessness consumed your mind.

Eun-Hyuk’s words repeated in your head during times like this, when you were at risk of having a panic attack. Stay still. Take slow breaths. Think of something nice.

You squeezed your eyes shut, allowing the gathering tears to flow freely down your cheeks as they gathered at the tip of your chin. Forcing yourself to take in deep breaths, your trembling body gradually stilled. Eventually, your thoughts morphed as you focused on your breathing, rather than the surrounding chaos.

Think of something nice.

Eun-Hyuk’s face filled your mind, the sight prompting a ghost of a smile. You recalled your first meeting which occurred almost a year ago, when you had just moved into Green Roof Apartments. Someone had suddenly removed the towering stack of boxes you were carrying from your hold, and just as you were about to thank the person for helping, you realized you recognized him.

It turns out that you both used to attend the same high school, although you weren’t in the same class, your friend group interacted with his friend group quite a lot. Seeing his face brought back all those times at lunch when you would sneakily try to steal glances at him without your friends noticing. They noticed, of course, and teased you relentlessly about your crush but they were nonetheless supportive. They even proposed setting you two up on a date, because a ‘little birdie’ told them he had been crushing on you too.

Unfortunately, you were in such denial that someone as handsome as him had feelings for you, and rejected the offer. He was simply unobtainable, the extent of your relationship never surpassing polite greetings and friendly smiles until you both graduated and never saw each other again. Or at least, that’s what you assumed would happen.

It seemed fate gave you two another chance, unsatisfied with your prior silent pining and not acting upon anything. Considering you both matured immensely, talking came easy, and it wasn’t long before a much deeper connection began blossoming between the both of you.

His sister reacted indifferently when she walked out into the hallway one day, only to witness the both of you moving suspiciously away from each other, as if trying to conceal something. She caught on immediately, especially since her brother had been mentioning you quite often.

“Seriously? He’s the best you can do?” She scoffed, eyeing her brother disapprovingly before pushing between the both of you and walking off. You stared at her retreating figure in shock, oblivious to the smile on Eun-Yoo’s face as she disappeared down the stairs.

Once his sister found out, Eun-Hyuk became increasingly more open in terms of your relationship. And eventually, after a long week of his sister degrading him for not moving to the next step, he asked you to be his girlfriend. It wasn’t the most romantic of set-up’s; he had knocked on your door and asked you so casually that you wondered if he was joking.

When he assured you he wasn’t, you almost knocked him off his feet from the abrupt hug you gave him, accepting his simple proposal.

The memory faded, and the realization hit you like a truck. Eun-Hyuk was waiting for you, and you couldn’t give up on him. Taking a deep breath, you got up from the ground, trying not to focus on the screams and sounds of destruction in the distance as you lightly jogged towards the entrance of the alleyway. You peered behind the wall and looked both ways. The coast was clear; it was now or never.

                                                           ―――

You raced around the corner, narrowly dodging the attention of a nearby monster as its head popped up from one of the many dumpsters lining the brick wall of Green Roof Apartments, the location you had been trying to reach from when this all started.

The sound of metal creaking, which you quickly recognized to be the shutters descending, urged your aching legs to run faster as the darkness before you faded the closer you got to the entrance. That’s when you noticed Eun-Hyuk struggling to keep the shutters open as a distraught woman crawled towards him. He reached out a hand towards her, just as he looked up and made eye contact with you. His eyes widened at the sight, although bloodied and bruised, you were very much alive. You smiled at him, relieved, feeling safe already.

That was until you heard a rustling coming from your right, along with animalistic groans, as if something was just stirring back to life after being immobilized and ready to lash out again. A flurry of panicked voices came from the lobby of the apartment, everyone watching in horror as the hunched-over silhouette of the monster with a snake-like tongue began recovering to its full height.

Luckily for you, the monster disregarded your presence as it ambled towards the entrance. You stood frozen in fear as the shadow of its body passed over you, the sound of its languid steps lulling you into a trance as your body trembled lightly. 

It was perceptible that trying to run past it would end in your demise, leaving you stuck on what to do. Your pleading eyes drifted towards Eun-Hyuk, hoping he would come up with a plan to distract the monster long enough so you could make a break for the gap underneath the shutters he had been holding open - a perfect enough size for you to slide under.

He stared you dead in the eyes as he dropped the shutters; the metal clanging loudly against the tiled floor. You blanched, staring back at him in disbelief. A semblance of guilt took over his features, and you shook your head in denial. 

Your eyes stung with tears, and you wondered whether to cry and beg for him to help you or keep the remaining bit of dignity you had left. The monster suddenly shot its tongue within the gaps of the barred metal and Eun-Hyuk disappeared from sight as he dodged; the trance you were in instantly dissipating as you came to terms with the situation.

He left you to fend for yourself, surrounded by a horde of monsters. You weren’t sure whether to give up or keep going, considering nothing seemed worth fighting for at the moment. 

Did he regret it? Of course. Would he do it again? Without question. Eun-Hyuk would sacrifice anyone to keep his sister safe, even you, and even himself.

[strange-lace]

Macaque

I was in the mood to make more content for Inverted AU, so here’s a short-ish fic of how episode 9 would go in this AU with Macaque, Wukong, and MK! Enjoy the shadowpeach!

Another demon defeated but still no sign of Sun Wukong. Macaque let out a sigh before rolling his shoulders to bring relief to tense muscles. Oh well, he'll just have to keep looking, not like he hasn't been at it for years now. At least this city he wandered to was quite nice with pleasant people, nothing too out there aside from demon attacks.

"Hey! Hey you! Shadow monkey man!" Macaque wouldn't deny that the sudden voice made him jump, considering he was on top of a pretty tall building. Apparently not tall enough to stop the young man from climbing up the side, somewhat out of breath yet that didn't deter from the determined look on his face. He simply brushed his messy hair out of his eyes and adjusted his teal backpack, which looked surprisingly heavy. Macaque couldn’t help but be somewhat curious as to what was in that thing.

Wait was that the Monkey King's staff in his hands?

Indeed it was, he'd recognize that weapon anywhere.

“Ah, you must be the Monkie Kid I’ve been hearing so much about, am I right?” That got him a look of suspicion before the young man also seemed to remember the staff in his hands, causing him to let out an amused huff at his own paranoia.

“Yeah, the staff kind of gives it away, don’t it? Name’s MK though. Now whomst is you? Most of the time, demons who ask me who I am are five seconds away from trying to kill me.” Macaque couldn’t help but chuckle at that, already finding that he was starting to like this little guy and his attitude. Perhaps if a person like MK was chosen to wield Wukong’s staff, then perhaps that meant his love had finally started turning things around for the better. Maybe it meant he finally stopped being someone he wasn’t all for the sake of keeping a memory alive.

“The name’s Macaque, though, the Six-Eared Macaque is actually my full name. But what brings you up here exactly bud? I doubt you’d climb up this high just for anybody.” MK’s face showed that he wanted to argue that point out of principle before remembering his purpose for coming up here.

“Simple, teach me.”

Wait what?

“What what?” MK scoffed at the question.

“I want you to teach me to fight, like how you fought that demon back there. I don’t intend on leaving you alone until you do and that is a threat!” Macaque didn’t doubt that he meant it that way and could very easily follow through on that. Sensing he wasn’t going to get out of this, he let out a sigh before giving MK a smile.

“You sure your mentor won’t have a problem with me teaching you?”

“Bold of you to assume Wukong’s disapproval will stop me.”

“Well alright then, I think we’re gonna get along just fine, bud.”

---

“I see what you’re trying to do, you’re afraid of holding back and giving your enemy the opportunity to win. But the first strike isn’t the most important one. Every strike counts. Other people may tell you that patience and focus don’t matter but a fool allows himself to rush without restraint. While you have power inside you, you have to use it carefully. Take the power to defend others, not just destroy those who stand in your way. You’re not a weapon kid, you wield the weapon above all else.”

---

It started with a fairly innocent question from MK after one of their training sessions, him slowly going through a water bottle given to him by Macaque while the monkey made them something to eat. He needed a distraction to stop himself from taking over the cooking, years of feeding others making him feel guilt the moment someone else took over.

“So Mac, how exactly do you know the Monkey King?” To his credit, Macaque only fumbled the slightest bit at that sudden question and was able to save the plate before it crashed to the floor.

“Oh um well… funny thing about that is, well… we used to be together actually. Like y’know… together-together,” he explained while he plated their food, wincing internally at how awkward he sounded. With his back towards MK, Macaque didn’t notice him go tense and grip the couch arm so tightly that the wood underneath cracked at the pressure.

“Used to be together, huh? What happened?” Macaque couldn’t help but shiver at the chill which traveled down his spine. MK’s voice was perfectly even and calm yet he was filled with an overwhelming fear that warned him to not turn around and remain perfectly still until the danger passed.

His ears twitched at the sound of sparks behind him, magic power permeating through the air.

“I… I messed up honestly. We had an argument about something, I don’t even remember what it was so long ago. But I had to leave to just get some space and air before I said something I’d regret, something I couldn’t take back. It was only meant to be a couple hours but some stuff out of my control happened and by the time I got back… Wukong was gone. I had been looking for him for centuries after that and then… well then you found me.”

“What, you hoped getting on my good side would mean that you’d win the Monkey King back?” His tone promised nothing good if Macaque kept digging himself a deeper hole.

“No! No, nothing like that at all. I don’t expect Pe-...Wukong to take me back or anything like that. I just… wanted the chance to apologize to him is all. If he wants anything to do with me afterwards, then I want that to be his choice. Nothing more, I swear.”

MK remained silent behind him before the sudden tension in the air dissipated as quickly as it appeared. Macaque let out a sigh of relief, slowly turning around to see MK still sitting on his couch, placing the staff back in his ear nonchalantly.

“Fair enough, sounds like you both were just idiots who don’t know how to communicate. If you actually intended on using me to get to the Monkey King, you’d have actually mentioned him during our training and yet you haven’t. And you can’t lie to save your life anyway. Just don’t be an idiot again alright? Monkey King… Wukong, he’s a mess and I don’t think he could handle thinking he’s been abandoned again.”

Macaque could feel his heart break at the idea that his Peaches, his love, thought that he had left permanently. He wanted nothing more than to run to him now and make things right. But that was Wukong’s decision to make, nobody else’s.

The two ate their food in silence after that.

---

Sun Wukong may have supposedly “lost his edge”  but he was by no means dense or oblivious.

And while he was certainly happy about his successor’s vast improvement over the past couple weeks, a part of him sensed something was off. Like his successor was hiding something from him. And those moves he watched MK use to absolutely demolish the old mural, the Monkey King swore he had seen them before.

But it couldn’t possibly be. He hadn’t seen him in centuries. Not since he… left, like everyone else.

“I’m impressed, my boy! Tell me, how did you do that? Have you been seeing another mentor perhaps?” Wukong asked, his typically serene smile straining the slightest bit at the idea of his son student learning from someone who wasn’t him. The sensible part of his brain was gently poking at him, reminding him that it seemed silly to get upset about such a thing as, if anything, MK had appeared significantly calmer during their training compared to when they started. This could be a good thing, it told him.

Yet it was silenced by the majority of his brain which ran on fatherly protectiveness and had immediately been plagued by images of the worst case scenario. A demon had approached MK, promising him to make him stronger while also poisoning his student as a bid to turn him against the Monkey King before stealing his powers or, Heavens forbid, harming him.

No, Wukong refused to even allow a chance of that happening, logic and reasoning be damned.

“Hey, you’re the one always going on about ‘patience and focus’, I’m just finally putting what you said into practice,” MK answered, the picture of being casual which only set off further alarm bells within Wukong’s head. But before he could question him further, MK’s phone dinged to tell him of a new text message which he quickly read over, his eyes widening slightly at the message.

“Welp, looks like I gotta cut things short for now Wukong, something came up and I gotta head out. See ya later! Don’t forget to eat something tonight and sleep, I will know if you don’t.” And with that, MK was off through the hole he had created in the wall where the mural was before the Monkey King could get a word in edgewise. 

Wukong waited long enough to allow MK to get a reasonable distance away before transforming into a bird, flying after his successor.

Something fishy was going on and the Monkey King was determined to find out what it was.

---

“Why exactly are we climbing up to this giant mountain again Mac?” MK wheezed, hating to admit it but this hike had genuinely winded him despite all his training. He had immediately gone to Macaque’s place the moment he got his text only to be told to follow the six-eared demon, leading them to where they were now.

“Well, consider this your ‘final exam’ bud! I want you to use everything I’ve taught you to fight against me, no holding back. Think you can do that?” MK couldn’t help the twitch at the corners of his mouth at the sight of Macaque’s genuine excitement as he explained, all six ears twitching while his tail was wagging like a dog. A demon who was centuries old and had fought countless powerful demons had no right looking that endearing, but here MK was looking with his own two eyes.

MK gave a chuckle before straightening himself out, wordlessly pulling the staff out his ear.

“You sure you’re comfortable getting your ass kicked by me, Mac?” With a smirk, Macaque summoned his own weapon in a flash of purple with the beginning of two shadow clones pooling at his feet. They shyly peeked from the ground from behind their master.

“Oho, a couple training sessions with me for a month and you think you have what it takes to defeat me, bud? Well then, bring it Monkie Kid!” MK didn’t hesitate to charge forward with Macaque mirroring him, weapons at the ready and adrenaline already running through their veins.

“Enough!”

A sudden force landed in between them with enough force to send them both flying backwards.

MK and Macaque recovered in time to see who decided to interrupt their duel.

Both of their hearts nearly stopped at the sight of the enraged Monkey King but for vastly different reasons.

“You have 5 seconds to explain yourself for trying to harm my-” Wukong’s rage quickly deflated as the dust cleared enough for him to truly see who it was he had thought was attacking MK. “Mango Flower?”

“Um… hello again, Peach Blossom. It’s been a while, hasn’t it?” Macaque joked, voice weak as he restrained himself from acting out of bounds even if he wanted nothing more than to gather the other into his arms. It had been so long, far too long. 

He nearly broke at the sight of tears beginning to form in Wukong’s eyes.

His resolve finally shattered as the Monkey King ran towards him, arms outstretched, and before Macaque knew it his legs were moving on their own. The wind was knocked out of him at how tight Wukong squeezed him yet he returned the embrace back with gusto, ignoring the groaning of his ribs. He simply buried his face into the other’s fur, the smell of peaches still there even after all these years. Faintly, Macaque realized he was also crying once he felt a wetness on his cheeks.

Macaque let out a squeak in surprise as Wukong picked him up in the hug and spun him around, the sound of his laughter echoing throughout the mountain. The sight of such unabashed joy on his face was enough to make the six-eared demon to start laughing too, joy contagious in the best of ways. 

MK would deny it unless under the threat of death but he couldn’t help but smile as he watched the two monkeys get lost in their own little world. It made the guilt which nagged at his chest at having to manipulate the two to make this meeting happen ease up, seeing how happy the two were.

“It’s been so long…” Wukong whispered as he placed Macaque back on his feet, gently cradling his face as if afraid that if he stopped touching the other, that he’d disappear again. “But, why are you here? I had thought that you hated me, isn’t that why you…” Macaque went stiff in shock before taking the Monkey King’s hands into his own.

“What? No! If anything, I thought you hated me for leaving instead of talking things out and that’s why you were gone when I came back. I always intended on coming back to you Peaches, I swear on it.” Wukong’s eyes went wide at that, extremely close to crying again a second time that day. “I had been looking for you for centuries now to apologize.”

And now the warm feeling was gone, leaving MK to bite down on his staff to stop himself from screaming at how much those two had failed at the simple of communication.

“We’ve both been absolutely foolish, haven’t we?” Wukong couldn’t help but laugh at it all, which only worsened as he noticed all six of Macaque’s ears turn red in embarrassment.

“Yeah, I guess we have been-” His words were cut off as the Monkey King grabbed his scarf, pulling him into a sudden kiss that made Macaque jolt in surprise before he practically melted into the other’s arms. A purr rumbled in his chest and neither noticed their tails wind around each other.

The sound of MK clearing his throat, loudly, was enough to get them to break apart in embarrassment.

“If you two are done being romantic idiots, I have to beat the shit out of Macaque to prove that I’m better than him. I mean ace my ‘final exam’.” The grin on his face showed that he was lying through his teeth.

“Don’t think I forgot about all your trash talking, young man. How about it Peach Blossom? You willing to go all out with me and the kid?” 

Wukong’s face was the epitome of ‘Every part of my body wants to say yes but I shouldn’t.’ He was already terrible at saying no to MK and now with Macaque’s endearingly earnest face, he knew he was done for, at least with these two working together now.

“...Oh alright.”

The two mutual cheers at his agreement made Wukong feel slightly less guilty in letting his lessons go for a brief moment. But not completely.

But that was okay, Wukong was used to living with constant guilt.