#this honestly hurts to watch after being a fan of the franchise for so long | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

uselesslesbiab · 3 years

Text

Belated Bday post for best boy Ryuji!!! Here’s pretty much all my little headcanons/analysis/observations about his character because I love him!!!

(Yes some of these are me projecting onto him mind your business)

Ryuji has a teddy bear that he’s had since he was a baby. He used to hold onto it for comfort whenever he was hiding from his father and he still pulls it out if he’s having a rough day. The teddy bear’s name is Huggles.

Ryuji suffers from undiagnosed ADHD. His mother took him to a couple doctors as a kid but he never got a diagnosis because they either couldn’t afford to see a psychiatrist or they didn’t have time to follow up because his mother works 2 jobs

As a result of his ADHD he suffers from chronic muscle pains due to a lack of dopamine. He mostly feels it in his shoulder and pectoral muscles which is why he rolls out his shoulder a lot in idle animations. After Kamoshida broke his leg he suffered chronic pain there as well due to both the dopamine deficiency and him not being able to afford proper physical therapy after the injury.

His mood swings are another result of his ADHD. It’s difficult for him to control his emotions (i.e anger, embarrassment, excitement, happiness) so he tends to over-express himself to the point where other people are annoyed or put off by his behavior.

He works out because that’s often the only thing he can really focus on. The first time he noticed a hint of abs showing he was totally ecstatic and doubled down on his workouts for the next week but ended up hurting himself in the process.

He tried a bunch of team sports throughout his childhood but he had so much energy that he could never slow down long enough to think and cooperate with his teammates. This is why track ended up being perfect for him.

Ryuji loves hard. He’ll be willing to lay down his life for someone he’s known for like a week. You could call him at 3 am to ask him to help you move your couch because you’re in a manic episode and can’t sleep until you rearrange all your furniture and he’ll be on his way with energy drinks and your favorite flavor of chips at the drop of a hat.

Ryuji is very physically affectionate and gives great hugs. Futaba lets him scoop her up in a bear hug when she’s having a bad day and he’s happy to oblige. Ryuji and Ann will often just subconsciously be touching in some way any time they’re hanging out. Most of the time they’ll be chilling on the couch and she’ll be lazily draped across him or he’ll lay his head in her lap while she scrolls on her phone. They’re very comfortable around each other.

Ryuji volunteers to assistant coach a boy’s soccer team the summer after Ren goes home and discovers that he loves working with kids. Coaching quickly becomes his passion and he decided to work on making it a career for himself. The kids adore him of course and admire his hair and hang all over him while he tells jokes and encourages them to have fun and try their best. He brings the best snacks and if they lose he’s always there to cheer them up.

His mother has some moderate health problems that she really needs to take care of but she can’t because she’s always had to work to support herself and Ryuji. The reason Ryuji drops everything to go help his mom all the time is because he knows she needs the help and won’t ask for it. He feels incredibly guilty for all the stress he’s caused her and wants to succeed in life so she doesn’t have to take care of him anymore. He secretly saved most of the money he got from phantom thievery to help pay off her debts. She took the money out of necessity, but still doesn’t know where he got it all from.

Ryuji is actually partially deaf from the explosion in Shido’s palace. His hearing is getting worse and worse as time goes on and it scares him. He worries that one day hearing aids won’t be enough and he’ll have to learn sign language. However, he doesn’t regret his decision for a second and would risk his life again for his friends given the opportunity.

Bonus: Ship headcanons for each of the PTs with Ryuji (excluding Morgana of course)

Ren and Ryuji like to watch movies together. Ryuji’s a huge fan of The Cake Knight franchise and Ren loves to listen to him ramble on excitedly about the lore and characters. Ren likes renting the crappiest movies he can find at the rental store and laughing at them with Ryuji. These two are chaotic and dumb and in love and get each other into trouble a lot. Sojiro came to Leblanc one morning and Ryuji was stuck in the doorway in one of those fake sumo wrestler suits while Ren was desperately trying to push him out from the other side. Basically they’re perfect for each other. and then they kith

Ryuji and Ann in a romantic relationship wouldn’t be too different from their platonic relationship. They’re still super physically affectionate and they still tease the hell out of each other. They eat out all the fucking time because Ann can’t cook and she won’t stop cuddling Ryuji so he can get up and cook. Peak dumbasses together. and then they kith

Ryuji constantly compliments Yusuke and feels so damn lucky to have him. He and Yusuke try to just sit in comfortable silence together and do their own things but eventually Ryuji will get bored and want to run around. He drags Yusuke with him to get the boy some damn sunlight for once in his life. Ryuji makes sure that Yusuke eats every day and drinks enough water because he gets so in the zone when he’s drawing or painting. and then they kith

Ryuji and Makoto are the crazy workout couple. Honestly Ryuji likes a girl who will take charge and tell him what to do because he never knows what’s going on. Makoto will do the smallest thing for him that he’s been putting off forever like take that one shirt to the dry cleaners and he’ll just fall in love. They balance each other out well with their work hard and play hard mentalities respectively. and then they kith

Futaba and Ryuji go to each other’s houses just to nap together. They game together sometimes too but Ryuji always gets crushed anyway. Ryuji pushes Futaba to get out of the house more and actually makes her exercise because it’s good for her health. Futaba feels safest with him out in public because people tend to be put off by his looks and therefore won’t get so close to the two of them (delinquent looking bf go brrrr). and then they kith

Ryuji and Haru are the most wholesome couple you’ll ever meet. Haru’s very touch starved from her childhood and Ryuji is Ryuji so they match well together. Ryuji has a surprisingly good green thumb and loves hearing Haru talk about her plants and things she wants to grow for her future cafe. She thinks he looks really handsome in suits so she buys them for him a lot. Accompanying Haru to business events can be a little uncomfortable sometimes but he loves being a trophy boyfriend and takes full advantage of the free food. and then they kith

#persona 5 #persona 5 royal #ryuji sakamoto #this was really fun to make Ryuji is one of my favorite characters of all time #throwing in some ships for the simps out there #honestly you could ship Ryuji with almost anyone and it would work #the only one I don’t really see is Futaba but I wrote for them anyway because I don’t dislike it #me adding “and then they kith” at the end of every ship hc: ah yes peak comedy #long post #phantom thieves

90 notes · View notes

geekgemsspooksandtoons · 3 years

Text

The Mask 1994

*I finally wrote the whole thing. I finally watched the movie that involved something I’ve been talking about A LOT. I think this took about an hour since I finished the movie. Forgot to mention Charlie.*

I wanna make this clear, even before I watched movie or ever writing this. I am legitimately a stupid and lazy person. Because my mom told me about this, and last week, my dad rented A Quiet Place Part 2. When I was trying to go to sleep but was looking up movies...I literally forgot my tv can do that too...and that I can rent or buy a movie...I rented the movie this morning, and deleted it afterwards...after all that talk...I could’ve done that...wow. I should do that more considering some movies I wanna see or like. Not too much though. My tv has DirecTV. Just a heads up.

But a few or couple of minutes ago, I finally watched The Mask film from 1994. This post is gonna be filled with spoilers and it’s gonna get long. Gonna be kind of a review. My overall thoughts on it. This was my first reaction to the whole movie.

I’d just wanna talk about this too. I like comic books, I like comic book movies. Mainly my favorites are ones like all of Zack Snyder’s DCEU movies, Spider-Man 1 & 2, The Suicide Squad 2021, Wonder Woman 2017, The Dark Knight(Despite whatever issues I have with it), and Joker 2019. Yeah, those are mainly DC films and two Marvel related ones. I don’t even mind Spider-Man 3 as well. I also forgot Dredd 2012 is another one of my favorites. Along with Batman 1989.

I was hoping The Mask could make that list of favorites. Because I read the comics first. I don’t think I ever watch the movie fully as a kid MAYBE. I’m a fan of the comics, I know this movie was gonna be a lighter take on the series.

In a nutshell...I liked it. It’s possible it will be on that list of favorite CBM’s...but I want to talk about it. I’ll also admit I think what got me interested in seeing this film and this series was me liking Jim Carrey as Ace Ventura...now, let’s get to the point.

Yeah, I liked it. I thought the movie was genuinely entertaining. Despite seeing some clips before. But also Ryan Hollinger’s video about it. Revealing the ending, the twist, and other stuff. But I didn’t wanna watch more more that I haven’t seen yet.

I will be honest, it still made me laugh. Even some scenes I already have seen. I will admit, the Cuban Pete scene is actually one of my favorites. XD But what also surprised me is that at times, despite being a funny film. It can genuinely be touching in a way. And I am mainly talking about the developing relationship between Stanley and Tina.

I just wanna talk about the characters right now. I’ll just admit unless I haven’t already. I’m a Jim Carrey fan. Mainly because of his more goofier roles. Particularly his roles from the Ace Ventura movies, Liar Liar, and especially Sonic The Hedgehog. I also will admit this, Jim Carry nails playing Big Head or who they call...The Mask in this movie...I’ll nitpick about that later.

But yeah, Jim’s entertaining as Big Head in this film. He does make me laugh. But I think another role he does well despite there are some sillier moments, which is fine. I feel like in a way, Stanley Ipkiss in this version, is maybe one of his more normal roles. But I know I’m wrong considering whatever other roles he’s in. He portrays a likable good guy who’s sadly mainly pushed around. Which is quite the difference from the comics, except being pushed around. But that’s another topic. Yet for this story, even if maybe Stanley’s name could be changed. But him being a genuinely kind guy works for this story.

Even before I saw the movie, learning more about this version about the character. I can relate to Stanley in some ways honestly. Which is something that I like. He basically shines as a protagonist.

He portrays both sides well. Despite at times...honestly, this Stanley is wacky. I shouldn’t be judging. Jim does a good stuff with what he played, and he’s the highlight of this movie. He also delivers possibly my favorite Jim Carrey line of all time now. Sorry if I get this wrong. I was looking for a clip of it to help me.

“Daddy’s gonna go kick some ass”. A literal line from Jim Carrey in this movie and I love it. He even brings a pistol with him.

I also wanna admit Peter Greene as Dorian is pretty good as a villain. The dude can be threatening and he works with what he is given. And he’s effective as an antagonist. I just wanna admit that I swear, one of these guys. One of them could’ve Walter in a way and I just think that could’ve been possible. But I’m not sure. Just one of Dorian’s henchmen looked like a huge guy. It just got me thinking about Walter from the comics.

Will admit, I think Kellaway is fine. And I just found out Christopher Reeve was one of the actors considered for the role...damn. But again, Kellaway was fine. He’s more like a supporting character and again, this is like an origin story. I do feel bothered Lionel Ray wasn’t added but replaced with this Doyle character. I will admit that Doyle is silly, which is the point of his character. I guess the writers and director didn’t want two sensible cops or something. I like Kellaway alright, but I’ll always dig Lionel too.

I really wanted to get this point. I thought Cameron Diaz was good as Tina Carlyle and Amy Yasbeck as Peggy Brandt. I will admit, I do strangely like the subversion with Peggy in a way with it’s twist. I get the idea if that it was going for that theme of, “We all wear mask” and Peggy turning Stanley into the mob said a lot about her character. While Tina was genuinely the one that truly supported Stanley.

I think was surprised me more was the fact despite Peggy turned in Stanley for selfish purposes such as paying for her condo. Yet what surprised me more was she was actually concerned for Stanley being killed, and didn’t want him hurt...which explains even more why she stuck around in the cartoon. And honestly, it makes me glad the director took out that deleted scene of her getting killed. So she wasn’t that heartless.

Also...it made me think that...my ideas and changes towards her character...maybe hold some weight.

I’ll just put this out there too. Milo is great, one of my favorite fictional dogs maybe. Good dog.

Trying to think what else, the score was fine. But the licensed music was good or something. Overall, I think my negatives could be just...nitpicks. Such as the Big Head part I wanted to talk about. Listen, I understand this is a different version. I just feel it’s weird to call him, “The Mask” instead of Big Head. I know other characters mask in their name or something. But...some reasons, the name Big Head is there. I guess it’s because of the title or something.

Honestly, I think my negatives are more that it feels short. And maybe Stanley becoming Big Head a bit too early. I sound kind of stupid, I know. But this was the 90′s and whatever else. This was a different take on the comics. But I did genuinely like it. Maybe I’m just a bit attached to those comics. Despite knowing the changes they did.

But I will admit, considering the development for this film. And learning that it was meant to be a horror film. But the director Charles Russell found the violence in the source material to be off putting. So he made it less grim, and more fun. I’ve also read somewhere that trying to make comedy with that violence was difficult.

Back to the point, to be honest. I feel like for that time and age. A more light Mask film was maybe the best choice to go. And we wouldn’t have Jim Carrey in it. I do also wanna say, I feel like The Mask series, you can do a lot of it. You can have something dark with it, or maybe more lighter.

There are still some of those darker elements. Mainly considering the moments with the gangsters and all that. But I will admit, learning that Charles mostly directed horror films. I think it’s impressive he made a more family friendly film and it worked.

I liked it, despite my love for the comics. I thought when writing this, maybe some folks reading this may think I sound like fans who read the comics who first experienced this movie. But the film isn’t bad, it’s just a different take and a pretty nice one at that.

And to be honest, as much as I would of loved to see an actual sequel. And not that bad film known as Son Of The Mask. I understand why Jim Carrey dropped out, and I would’ve loved to see Peggy back because the director planned to bring her back reformed. But I feel like this film works as a one off in a way. And there’s also the cartoon, which works fine as a sequel despite some differences. Yet...I’ll admit, I would’ve loved The Mask 2 if we got Jim Carrey as Stanley again fighting against maybe someone like Walter.

The Mask 1994 is a good film. Despite changes from the source material, but the changes for this vision work. It’s cool this film has a cult following, and the fact I have used elements and story beats from it for The Mask Rebirth stuff I’ve been talking about. Even before watched this whole movie.

It’s a genuine fun flick. But I’m hoping down the line, if Warner Bros stops being fucking stupid with how they run things. Maybe we’ll get a reboot or how about an animated film that seems more true to the source material.

I know The Mask/Big Head doesn’t have a big legacy such as the likes of Superman, Batman, and Spider-Man. But I do think this series could be reimagined and expanded upon. Using elements not only from the original comics, but even the movie and cartoon.

And...despite it was because of Ace Ventura...I would like to thank @kaijuguy19 for being such a supportive dude, and talking about this franchise with me. Including wanting to talk about this movie long ago when I haven’t seen it. But I want to say...no...he’s one of the big reasons why I’m a fan. Because he’s one of the only guys I know who’s a fan. It started with Ace Ventura, but it was because of talking with Kaijuguy that I guess things started to escalate. So thanks man for talking about this stuff with me.

Also, Charlie was silly and he was fine as a character. I forgot about that dude despite wanting to talk about him. Gonna tag him too in case. Charlie schumaker

#GeekGem Rambles #the mask #the mask 1994 #jim carrey #stanley ipkiss #dorian tyrell #mitch kellaway #tina carlyle #peggy brandt #cameron diaz #amy yasbeck #peter greene #big head #charles russell #charlie schumaker

38 notes · View notes

thosch3i · 4 years

Text

The finale of Ultimate Note airs 12/9 (tonight in China) for VIP. Thank you to this drama for bringing me my favorite Iron Triangle ❤ Longer discussion of why I love it so much, and why I strongly recommend it to book fans (especially those upset with certain previous adaptations) below the cut, apologies if it’s not fully coherent at times because I haven’t slept enough and also it’s almost 1am. But your TLDR is basically: characterization, plot, pacing, relationships are the best of any DMBJ drama. Iron Triangle especially.

First, the pacing of this show is excellent. Pretty much all cdramas I’ve seen or heard of have been inundated with filler, and the previous DMBJ dramas fall victim to this as well. Ultimate Note took 36 episodes to cover 4 book arcs, whereas previous adaptations have taken more episodes to cover far fewer. There’s really not any content you’d be wanting to skip, as almost all of it is plot-relevant or character-relevant.

Second, the plot is the most cohesive out of any DMBJ adaptation. Frankly, this isn’t saying too much, given the novel plot can also be confusing as all hell sometimes, but Ultimate Note goes above and beyond in pulling in information from later books and, if I heard correctly, common fan theories, doing their best to fill in the plot holes left by the author to create a more complete story.

Third, the female characters are actually done well. (As well as they can be, given the source material’s unfortunate habit of fridging its women.) For example, A-Ning’s decision to go the Tamutuo wasn’t because she was ~in love~ with some man. She is a determined individual who has made her choice about her path a long time ago, and she is willing to risk death to achieve her goals. Even her death was done about as well as it could have been--it wasn’t drawn out to the point of it being sickeningly cheesy, and Wu Xie tried his best to honor her goals and bring her to the Palace of the Queen Mother of the West (even emphasizing to Pangzi, “if you died, I would carry you too”). In addition, Chen Wenjin wasn’t stuck in some ridiculous love triangle. She loved Wu Sanxing, of course, but her loving a man isn’t made out to be her entire personality. Her goodbye to Xie Lianhuan is poignant but not mushy. She’s steady and sure in her goals, and she knows what she has to do in order to save herself. Yuncai’s character, as well, I think was handled about as well as it could’ve been given the source material. Her relationship with Pangzi wasn’t overexaggerated and nauseating, and I think their relationship was more tolerable in the drama than it was in the novel overall. (In addition, I prefer how they handled her death in the drama versus the novel--instead of just killing her offscreen, they give her a redemption, and show how she’d grown attached to her new friends, Pangzi especially, resulting in her hesitation to deal the final blow.)

Related to the above point: no added forced romances that destroyed the female characters’ personalities and reduced them to just love interests for men, thank god. Pangzi and Yuncai’s relationship was already there in the novel, but nothing about their relationship was distorted in the drama to the point of being annoying, and Yuncai is shown to have her own goals for cozying up to Pangzi (at first, at least). If you want to get technical about “added romances”, you could honestly argue that it’s Pingxie. (And Hei///hua, but I’ll be honest and say they’re not my cup of tea, so I won’t really be discussing them. However, I do think their characters, while also exaggerated for humor at points, were also done well, and their relationship--while AFAIK was not a really a thing in the books at all?--was written in a way that the development made sense, and their personalities compatible.)

But anyway, while Ultimate Note does make Pingxie seem closer to each other than they were in the novel, we do have to remember that the novel is from Wu Xie’s point of view, and he’s a little bit of a blockhead when it comes to noticing how much Xiaoge cares about him. (IIRC, he wonders if Xiaoge even considers him a friend in Zang Hai Hua...after Xiaoge’s literally called him his “only connection” to this world in book 8.) However, from an outsider POV, it’d be natural for us to see Xiaoge worrying more over Wu Xie. Because from Wu Xie’s perspective, what did he actually see? Xiaoge dropping in to save him a few times and often vanishing or turning away right after, leaving Wu Xie with mixed feelings and confusion about his value to Xiaoge. Xiaoge being aloof before they set off to Tamutuo, claiming that he is a person with no past and future, and that no one would remember him if he disappeared. (Xiaoge smiles before telling Wu Xie that he’s on Wu Xie’s side--that’s a smile that the viewers see, but that Wu Xie doesn’t.) Most of Xiaoge’s visible worry for Wu Xie in the desert was also when Wu Xie himself was not there to see it. During the scene where the fungus was growing in Wu Xie’s stomach, he was entirely out of it while Xiaoge visibly panicked about hurting him, and after the fungus was dealt with, Xiaoge only stood off to the side--only to smile faintly to himself, relieved, after Wu Xie wakes up. (Again a smile that the viewers see, but that Wu Xie doesn’t.) But because from an outsider POV we can see all this, while Wu Xie remains partly ignorant, lines like “thankfully, I didn’t bring death upon you” and Xiaoge calling Wu Xie is only connection to the world seem that much more logical, now that we can see some of the depth and development of how much Xiaoge does care about Wu Xie.

That brings me to the primary reason why I love Ultimate Note, because the main selling point for me on any franchise is not actually world-building or plot, but rather the characters and the relationships between those characters. And for DMBJ, the relationship I’m always looking for--and the relationship that the entire franchise ultimately centers around--is the Iron Triangle. And the mutual trust and the strength of the bond between this Iron Triangle is unmistakable; no one is treated as expendable.

As much as we have joked about Xiaoge's double standards with Wu Xie versus Pangzi, the end of the Banai arc especially and the last five episodes have cemented the importance of Xiaoge and Pangzi's friendship. Their relationship is often the weakest leg of the Iron Triangle in DMBJ adaptations, but Ultimate Note has nailed it. Pangzi helps carry Xiaoge out of Tamutuo, and Pangzi's the one who primarily takes care of Xiaoge after he loses his memories. There's also Xiaoge's clear worry over Pangzi after Yuncai's death, and his assurance that Pangzi won't die as long as he is here in the later episodes when the two of them are separated from Wu Xie--showing that the Iron Triangle is a triangle; Wu Xie isn't the single connection that Xiaoge and Pangzi's relationship hinges upon.

Pangzi and Wu Xie's friendship doesn't need much explaining: the two of them bicker like they're brothers, and they could probably star in their own buddy-cop comedy together. Both Pangzi and Xiaoge are shown to be clearly worried for Wu Xie after the Xie Lianhuan reveal, and even though neither of them quite know how to handle it, they are there for Wu Xie. And of course, there's the scene where Pangzi pours out the water while they're waiting for Xiaoge to leave the meteorite. Wu Xie cries for Pangzi when they're in the Miluotuo cave and he chooses to carry out Xiaoge first, and once again, his worry for Pangzi after Yuncai's death is palpable. Even when Wu Xie has to leave Pangzi in Banai, he instructs Xiaoge to look after him (not that Xiaoge really needed the instruction, anyway--that’s his best friend, too).

Wu Xie and Xiaoge's relationship needs even less explaining: anyone who's watched the show can attest to how much they care about each other. From Wu Xie's frantic scrambling to grab the tapes upon hearing they were from "Zhang Qiling" and Xiaoge's introduction in the show being him stopping outside Wushanju to stare up (longingly?) at the sign, we see their relationship unfold in all of its quiet pining and lingering looks. When Xiaoge claims no one would know if he disappeared from this world, Wu Xie doesn't hesitate in promising that he, at least, will. Xiaoge smiles before telling Wu Xie that he's on his side, and Wu Xie vows to walk with Xiaoge until the very end. During the entire Tamutuo trip, Xiaoge is visibly worried for Wu Xie--when the parasitic fungus grew in his stomach, that worry was the most clear. But Wu Xie worries for Xiaoge too: insisting on going to save Xiaoge from the snakes that night when they all went blind; swearing that even if he faces death, he would wait for Xiaoge to leave the meteorite; telling Xiaoge that he will take him home. (Related: the soft, almost vulnerable way Xiaoge tells Wu Xie “take me home” in episode 31.) Not to mention--even when Xiaoge loses his memories, he still remembers Wu Xie. (And Pangzi smiles knowingly right after that scene.)

There are too many character/relationship moments I could write about, but one that stuck out in particular was when they were facing the spiders, and Wu Xie stopped Xiaoge from cutting his hand and using his blood to make the spiders retreat. At this point, Wu Xie and Pangzi don't know the extent of how Xiaoge was (mis)treated as a child (and used as a blood bag, apparently), but they know about how "A-Kun" was captured used as bait. Wu Xie and Pangzi would never ask Xiaoge to bleed for them, no matter what. Not now, let alone 10+ years later. (I won't name names, but if you know what I'm talking about, then you know.)

Which brings me to my main point: the characters in Ultimate Note are the closest to their novel selves I have ever seen in a DMBJ adaptation, and this is objectively the best adaptation of the DMBJ novel. (Whether you prefer another adaption or not is your opinion--I absolutely love the Time Raiders movie, even though that plot is literally all over the place, and Xiaoge is decently OOC--but Ultimate Note is the best adaptation of the novel, and the characters are the most true to what they actually should be.)

You can see the innocent and naïve Wu Xie, but you can also see the developing confusion, frustration, and anger he feels because he's been lead around by his nose his entire life. And he is angry in the novel; he is a bit of a hot-headed bastard; he's not just a naïve child. I remember seeing some complaints that Wu Xie felt "OOC" in the first episode for being so furious with his San-shu, but I think his reactions were spot-on with how he felt, and how he wanted to react. A similar point is the scene where Wu Xie slammed Xiaoge against the car--aside from just being some fun fanservice, in the novel Wu Xie really was furious at Xiaoge for vanishing on him and never contacting him after leaving the Heavenly Palace in the Clouds. A lot of the novel is Wu Xie's inner thoughts, which are difficult to portray in a live action adaptation, but he really did pretty much want to pick a fight with Xiaoge about disappearing, and Ultimate Note decided on how to express this frustration in a way that suits a drama adaptation. In addition, you can see how Wu Xie’s past experiences like the trip to Tamutuo has changed him in how he manipulates Panma into bringing him to the lake; and you can see how almost losing Xiaoge and Pangzi to the Miluotuo changed him as well, when he thinks he’s lost them for real in episode 36 (leading up to his decision to put on his San-shu’s mask by the end, despite the fact that “some masks, when worn too long, can no longer be taken off”).

As for Pangzi: even though he has scenes that were clearly exaggerated for comic relief, he has plenty of moments that build his character and the Iron Triangle’s bond. These include him pouring out the water while he and Wu Xie are waiting for Xiaoge, his grief over Yuncai’s death, his standing by Wu Xie during the hotel auction scene, and his almost mother-hen-like worry about Xiaoge while they’re entering the Zhang Family Mansion in the last five episodes. Not to mention, he’s really quite a smart and perceptive character, despite his goofiness: he sees through Xiaoge’s worry about Wu Xie, and he knows when to step in and liven the atmosphere (see: Wu Xie being all awkward about his gift to Xiaoge in episode 31, and Pangzi being there practically just for emotional support). Also in episode 31: Pangzi telling Xiaoge that he’s getting more and more humane (the implications about Wu Xie here are pretty obvious). All in all, Pangzi is a funny person; he is often comic relief, but he’s also a steadfastly loyal friend and someone who loves deeply and without regret. Initially we saw more of his humor, but we definitely got the depths to his character by the end of Ultimate Note.

Finally Xiaoge, who I’m discussing last because he’s my favorite character: for once, I can see the humanity behind the title “Zhang Qiling”, and in a way that isn’t OOC. Xiaoge isn’t treated as a free source of bug-repelling blood; he isn’t treated as some overpowered, untouchable idol; he isn’t treated as a rescue machine for whenever another character needs it. He is a human, not a god. For the rest, I think his actor’s words speak for themselves. (And now I really don’t trust anyone else except him with Xiaoge's character.)

Ultimate Note succeeded in capturing the nuances of its main characters: Wu Xie’s loss of his “tianzhen” and slow maturation to the man he will eventually become by Sha Hai; Pangzi’s outwardly humorous pseudo-caricature but inwardly deeply loyal and loving spirit; Xiaoge’s vulnerabilities, painful humanity, and the “heart” given to him by his mother, hidden beneath a seemingly impenetrable armor. This is an Iron Triangle that feels like the Iron Triangle, without needing say so much in words. This is an Iron Triangle with mutual respect and a friendship I can see and believe in.

In conclusion: Ultimate Note does the story justice; it does the characters justice; it does the relationships justice; and it did all this with a low budget and almost no promotion. You can tell the crew definitely cares about the source material.

My only complaint is that they couldn’t film the finale.

Rambling over! All my love to the Ultimate Note cast and crew <3

#dmbj #zjbj #ultimate note #pingxie #iron triangle #盗墓笔记 #终极笔记 #瓶邪 #the lost tomb 3 #shouting into the void #i was supposed to be writing my essay for grad school LMAO #got 2.5k words of whatever the hell this is instead #basically iron triangle superior is what im saying #this is the longer and slightly more grammatical version of what i posted on twitter a couple days ago #FUCK I FORGOT TO TALK ABOUT PAN ZI #you know what its 1am im not editing this now lol

89 notes · View notes

honeybomb4thebear · 4 years

Note

Nsfw alphabet for Nekomaru?? 🥺👉👈

I LOVE HIM SO MUCH YES MY HIMBO. WOULDN’T WANNA BANG HIM BUT I LOVE HIM

Other anon who asked for the smexy himbo, here it is!!!

NEKOMARU NIDAI N//S*FW ALPHABET

A=Aftercare - What they do/act like after sex. ⦁ So soft uwu! He'll be so caring and handle you so well, you'll melt. Nekomaru is a caring person already, and it only increases after sex. Let yourself get spoiled by the himbo....

B=Bondage - Are they into BDSM, and how far they’ll go if they have a green light. ⦁ hMMm i get experimentalist vibes from him. Don't get your hopes up though, he isn't into it much.

C=Cum - pretty self explanatory. ⦁ ...Good luck because he cums a lot, like, a lot ❤ but he takes his time too, so... It's sweet yet salty at the same time, idk how

D=Dom - Are they dominant, submissive, a switch? ⦁ Without a doubt, dominant! He is one of the most dom characters in the franchise imo aksjdakdjahdkj he is so mature and understanding........

E=Edgeplay - Similar to ‘Kinks’ except it’s a lot riskier than usual kinks (knifeplay, breathplay, etc.). ⦁ Why do I feel like slight breathplay..? AKJSAKJAHSKJAH he isn't really keen on hurting you so slight choking is the best he can do

F=Fantasy - A fantasy of theirs (ex: a teacher/student fantasy). ⦁ Mutual masturbation. I feel like he'd love to watch you touch yourself while your half- lidded eyes are looking at him. What a sexy thing to get himself off to! He likes it when you guys do it while you are sitting on his lap too. To tease you, he will grind his dick against your sex. Sheesh, now that's just unfair... Dw though you two end up having sex after that

G=Got Caught - How they react when they get caught having sex. ⦁ I... Feel like he would not notice because he is too focused on you. OR, if he did notice it he'd let out a laughter while still telling the other person to get out.

H=Hot Spots - A place that drives them crazy when stimulated (EX: neck). ⦁ Nekomaru doesn't have a hot spot, even tho he knows all of your hot spots like the back of his hand. But it does turn him on when you touch and compliment his abs, though.

I=Intimacy - How romantic they are, or can be, before, during, or after sex. ⦁ He is blunt during sex, but that doesn't mean he isn't romantic. Like he would make jokes even without intending to make them, which causes you to giggle a bit. It's alright though he likes it when you laugh so he will talk about how cute you look when you laugh- it's kind of a pleasant rollercoaster, really.

J=Journey - Their ideal way of leading up to sex. ⦁ Cuddling, while watching TV was supposed to be all innocent yet you know that Nekomaru likes it a lot when it's not. It always leads to sex, without fail.

K=Kinks - I’ll list a few of their kinks, be they the normalized ones or kinkier kinks. ⦁ Slight scent kink. He doesn't mind sweat, like, at all. Y'know what I mean? ⦁ Also, mirror sex?? Is so hot??? For him??? Like wow. He likes showing you how beautiful you look while pounding into you. The full view drives him crazy, his thrusts get even more intense. ⦁ And finally, biting kink. He likes marking you, especially with his teeth.

L=Location - Where they like to have sex at, do they like risky locations, etc. ⦁ Aside from bed, maybe some of the gym equipments? He likes combining sex and working out, so it'd very hot for him if he could take you from behind as you try to do some sort of a back work out. Is it too weird? Sorry lol

M=Masturbation - How they are when they get themselves off, what they get themselves off to. ⦁ His sex drive isn't that high so he does it when he gets random erections, I think. Like I said, he'd love to get himself off to your naked body, like right in front of him but if not he has to use his imagination...

N=NO - A few things that they will absolutely, under no circumstances, ever do. ⦁ Knifeplay. If something has to make you bleed, it will be his teeth so... Yeah.

O=On’s - Their top turn on’s that they have (things that’ll get them super horny super quickly). ⦁ Seeing you all turned on turns on him too. He just loves seeing you hot and bothered, he thinks you look so adorable and hot at the same time.

P=Position - Their favourite position to have sex in. ⦁ That position where it's missionary but you put your legs on his shoulders, or he pushes them all the way back to your shoulders. Anything that combines exercising with sex, basically. ⦁ I just feel like he'd be willing to do Kama Sutra positions.

Q=Quickie - Do they like it, do they prefer quickies over actual sex, etc. ⦁ Not a big fan of them honestly. He likes to take his sweet time with you, enjoy you fully and just have fun with you. So yeah, he prefers actual sex for sure.

R=Rough - How rough they are, or get, when in bed. ⦁ He gets too caught up in the moment... So you will have trouble walking. But don't worry, he can do "it" to you anytime so that you become more energetic!!

S=Stamina - How long they can go before they tap out. ⦁ Y'all... He is keeping you up all night KJSHKJAHSDKHAKDJAH He works out a lot, he has a healthy diet and is a healthy boy with a strong body overall, you do the math.

T=Toys - Do they use toys, do they own them, what kind, etc. ⦁ Why can I imagine him demanding you to work out with a vibrator up your ass/coochie? I just... Can. So yeah, he owns vibrators. He says it he uses them on you for "exercising purposes" but you know that that's not it, at all.

U=Unfair - How much they tease you, how they tease you, etc. ⦁ He doesn't like seeing you in pain, but what he does like is seeing you all turned on. This man knows everything about you. What turns you on, what turns you off, what pushes you over the edge... In other words, he has complete power over you. So yes, he WILL tease you, the exact way that will keep you up on your toes, the way that you will end up throwing your pride aside and beg for his sweet touch.

V=Volume - How loud they get when having sex, things they might say, etc. ⦁ He is quite loud actually, because he enjoys it fully. He is blunt during sex, I mean as always, but that just makes his compliments more geniune. Like you better believe him when he compliments your ass, belly and thighs.

W=Wild Card - a random letter for the character of your choice. ⦁ Nekomaru is the one most comfortable with his body, so I think he'd have absolutely no problem trying the costumes you bought for him. He is already super manly, so why would he be insecure? Buy him an erotic bunny costume he will laugh at first but will wear it nonetheless. It looks good on him too and he knows it---

X=X-Ray - How they look with their clothes off. ⦁ BURJ KHALIFAAAAAAAAAAAA. Seriously, be careful when you give him head, or you might just choke. It's 29 cm at length, 24 at girth. ⦁ Needless to say, he is muscular af. Himbo king of the Danganronpa, sorry Kaito

Y=Yearning - How often they need to have sex. ⦁ I doubt Nekomaru that is a horny boy, but I feel like he'd keep up with you. Like I said, you being horny turns him on as well so if you think about it, he does too. If you don't, he probably won't either.

Z=ZZZ - How quickly they fall asleep after having sex. ⦁ He is NOT sleeping 'til you, his little spoon, are sleeping peacefully between his muscular arms. Peacefully, so don't worry about getting crushed between them, you'll be more than okay.

#nekomaru nidai x reader #nekomaru nidai #danganronpa #sdr2

111 notes · View notes

o-w-quinlan · 3 years

Text

Digimon Adventure: (2020) Final Thoughts

Considering I stopped reviewing this series episode by episode months ago, they’re more positive thoughts than you’d expect, though still not all that positive.

To summarize, this is an entertaining series with plenty of individual good aspects and great episodes that nevertheless leaves me cold as a whole. Much as I enjoyed following it week to week, I can’t say I recommend this series to anyone but hardcore Digimon fans, or hardcore fans of the wider “monster” genre.

Action

It felt appropriate to start with this, considering a focus on action was what the initial interviews promised, and they delivered in spades. It wasn’t perfect or too consistent, there were several times when the Digimon not evolving when they could just broke any tension the fights had, but this series had some of the best fights in any Digimon anime. Anything in the first 3 episodes, Greymon/MetalGreymon vs MetalTyranomon, SkullKnightmon vs Greymon and Garurumon, Mugendramon vs DoneDevimon, Mugendramon vs WarGreymon, Millenniumon vs the dragons, Omegamon vs Abbadomon Core… all of them among the best things the franchise has to offer in terms of action scenes, which after so many series where fights were solved by having a protagonist Digimon evolve and one-shotting the enemy, comes as a breath of fresh air (to be fair, this series also had a lot of that, but it had actual great fights to compensate).

Worldbuilding

Another thing promised in interviews was the use of Digimon from all over the franchise, and not only did they deliver, but they also included plenty of references to the “null canon” to enrich the experience for the most hardcore fans. The series made sure to constantly emphasize the savage nature of the Digital World, bringing back the Tamers worldbuilding of Digimon consuming weaker Digimon in hopes of achieving evolution. Along the way we saw a lot of allies fighting back against this status-quo, from things as overt as Leomon organizing a resistance or Petaldramon protecting weaker Digimon from the all-consuming Entmon, to less dramatic stuff like weak Digimon settling down to live together, or the mere presence of a restaurant where everyone can rest for a while of the hardships of their world.

The biggest flaw here was in how the series handled its antagonists. With very few exceptions, every single enemy Digimon in the series lacked dialog, whereas nearly every single ally Digimon could speak normally, and this disparity cheapened the whole thing, because instead of coming across as “this mentality is normal for this world”, it came across as just your normal “everyone lived together in harmony until the villains attacked”, which is very much not what the series was telling us.

Characterization

That brings us to the next point: the lack of personality for most villains. I joked elsewhere that Minotaurmon from episode 19 was the most compelling villain of the series, and that’s not completely a joke. Almost every single villain of the week was flat, plenty of the “main” villains were lacking in dialog (Algomon in the first few episodes, Nidhoggmon, Millenniumon) or turned mindless halfway through (Devimon, DarkKnightmon). Negamon/Abbadomon in the final episodes managed to benefit from this by being the embodiment of an “instinct”, but in general this meant a mook-of-the-week like Minotaurmon managed to be a highlight among the villains simply by having dialog and non-trivial desires.

But what of the protagonists? The popular opinion is that everyone is far blander than they were in the original series, and I agree. But rather than comparing it with the first series, let’s look at what it had to offer to us. Where in other Digimon series, the backstories and issues of the protagonists and their reactions to what’s going on around them make for most of the drama, in this series the drama comes from the villains trying to destroy everything, and for the most part that means the protagonists only need to be distinct and charming on their own, no necessity to create conflict between them. There is an overall character arc for all of them, though: accepting and interiorizing their new duties towards the world they had ended up stranded on, getting to know and love the Digital World. Was this well done? Not really.

Taichi and Takeru, for example, were so much the embodiment of the stock shonen hero that accepting their place in this new world didn’t really reveal anything about them we hadn’t already seen from their first few appearances.

Jou got stuck as an unfunny punchline 90% of the time, to the point of damaging his few “serious” moments in some of his focus episodes. His development of becoming assertive was compelling in theory, but it got muddled with so many unfunny and uncomfortable hotsprings jokes that the impact was lost.

Hikari started as an even more blatant plot-device “mysterious character” than she was in the original series, before unconvincingly changing to cheerful little girl afterwards (the whiplash between her in episode 33 and her in episode 34 was something else), and only really managing to settle into a compelling character in her last focus episode (58, defending the Digitamas from the Bakemon and SkullBaluchimon, which to be fair is a great episode and probably the best showcase for Hikari as a character in any product or continuity).

Koushiro was mostly fine, although we all remember the several times the series seemed to promise it might do something with him (his uneasiness when his family was mentioned, or that line about having to “face the darkness of his past” in the HerakleKabuterimon episode) that ended up being nothing.

Mimi is the fan-favorite, being charming in nearly all her appearances and having some of the best focus episodes, and it’s mostly deserved. If there’s anything I criticize from her, it’s that her focus episodes don’t really add up to anything.

Yamato was fine, started out as a stock shonen rival before becoming the single most chill “lone wolf” in any Digimon series, probably because of what I said before of the conflict between the protagonists no longer being the source of drama. He gets a slow development of caring only for his brother to starting to care for other Digimon for the sake of Sora and Gabumon to caring about the Digital World just as much as everyone else.

Sora was made fun of by a certain section of the fandom for having the worst focus episodes early on, and I agreed, but having finished the series I can’t get rid of the impression that her focus episodes, while perhaps not that good on their own, when taken as a whole explore her character the best of any other. Yeah, this mostly means exploring her compassion (these are not very multi-dimensional characters), but they deepen and deepen both her impact on the Digimon she saves and how she is impacted in turn by them, moving her away from saving others through her combat prowess to saving others by empathizing with the grief of another caring soul, and by the end I honestly ended up considering her my favorite character (despite none of her episodes making it to my list of favorites).

As for the Digimon… it’s following in the footsteps of other Digimon Adventure products by not really having much of interest for the Digimon themselves except for Tailmon.

Overall, for the most part the main characters were decent, but besides Mimi and ultimately also Sora, I don’t think they’re very memorable. All of them start out promising, but never really improved from that promising start (again, except for Sora).

Pacing

And now we get to the biggest problem of the series: Pacing. I’ve seen it stated elsewhere that this series was more episodic than most (any?) other Digimon series before it, and part of the backlash it got was from not being as serialized as fans expected it to be. This isn’t exactly true. From episode 16 (Eyesmon) to episode 24 (DoneDevimon), this series was as serialized as any other Digimon series has ever been, with nonstop escalation that demanded you keep watching it week after week. Then, from 25 to 35 (Angewomon) or 36 (BlitzGreymon), it pulled slightly back from that never-ending escalation, but was still pretty serialized. It was only afterwards that it became heavily episodic, and by that point it wasn’t expectations set up by previous series that hurt it in the eyes of the fandom, it was expectations set by this series itself in its first half.

Not that the episodes themselves were bad. Honestly, I found myself significantly more entertained by the episodic later half of the series than the serialized first half. Maybe it was because they didn’t feel the need to convince me they were the most exciting, tense thing I had ever seen when they were clearly not (hello, Mamemon episode), or maybe it was that there were more than just endless fights to them, but I normally ended up those episodes entertained and satisfied, whereas with a lot of episodes from Eyesmon to BlitzGreymon, I mostly just felt frustrated after watching them. I agree with the criticism that, when seen as a whole, breaking momentum so hard for so long after months of never-ending escalation wasn’t the right choice, but when seen week after week, I can’t see this change of approach as that bad of a thing.

Conclusion

I think that sums up the series for me. On a weekly basis, it’s pretty entertaining. It’s when seen as a whole that the problems really become clear. There’s been some speculation in the past few weeks of how much the current situation in the world might have impacted the series, but ultimately, I have to judge what actually happened, and I can’t help the impression that this series ultimately left me with nothing of substance after it was all said and done. Like, I enjoyed this more than, say, Appli Monsters, but Appli Monsters have things that stick with you after it’s over. Not so much here, unless you’re a hardcore fan that loves the Omegamon lore this added (which I am, btw; love that Omegamon lore). I don’t think I can recommend this series to anyone who isn’t a hardcore Digimon fan, or at least a hardcore fan of the wider “monster” genre.

One thing I’m grateful to this series for, though, it’s the commercial boost it has given the rest of the franchise. I’m not going to credit it for all the successes it currently has, after all the Card Game would have fell off by now if it wasn’t genuinely well-done and the Vital Bracelet happened because of years of the virtual pet division progressively building up its audience after it had nearly died off, but it’s undeniable they wouldn’t have sold as well without this anime advertising the franchise week after week. Next week, we’ll have the first episode of Digimon Ghost Game, the first time since 2001 that we have a Digimon series being immediately succeeded by another. If that isn’t a sign of how well the franchise is doing right now, I don’t know what is.

Favorite Episodes: 1 (Tokyo Digital Crisis), 6 (The Targeted Kingdom), 12 (Lilimon Blooms), 20 (The Seventh One Awakens), 32 (Soaring Hope), 42 (King of Inventors, Gerbemon), 49 (The God of Evil Descends, Millenniummon), 56 (The Gold Wolf of the Crescent Moon), 58 (Hikari, New Life)

#digimon #Digimon Adventure:#Digimon Adventure 2020

7 notes · View notes

trifle-of-doom · 4 years

Text

The Hawk X Demetri Manifesto

Okay, here is the thing. Despite being well past my teens, there's a particular ship of Cobra Kai that has drawn my attention, this ship being Hawk/Eli x Demetri. When I first watched the show, I was actually more invested in the adult characters storylines than the teens. I immediately rooted for Johnny and Carmen, and I was always hoping for more interactions between them. But then I saw episode 2x05, in which the atmosphere between the Binary Brothers becomes way more dense, and that's when I started to see some potential for them. Not because I'm a deranged person who fosters abusive relationships, but because I immediately caught the hurt/comfort dynamic of the duo, which is something that works really well when it comes to fictional relationships. However, it wasn't until 3x10 that I said, "Ok, that's official, I need to see more of these two! I totally support them!" And I was quite surprised to find a fairly large amount of people who are very committed to this pairing, to the point it's caught the attention of the screenwriters/producers as well. Honestly, I don't know if the showrunners will ever have the guts to make them an official couple, and chances are their supporters will have to keep reading between the lines of their bromance, but in any case, here is my take on why Hawk/Eli x Demetri is an option worth to be considered.

#1 - The Bromance

If there's something that many years of navigating the Internet taught me, is that the main driving factor for fan-made ships is the presence of either a solid relationship based on mutual brotherly love or a bitter rivalry that may or may not flow into hate/obsession. If you consider anime fandoms, there are thousand examples that fit into either of these categories: Yugi and Jonouchi from the Yu-Gi-Oh series (yes, that's how old I am), Yugi and Kaiba from Yu-Gi-Oh, Sakuragi and Rukawa from Slam Dunk, Light and L from Death Note, etc. And our Hawk and Demetri fit into both categories. When we first see them, they are the stereotypical nerdy friends (possibly childhood friends?) sitting at the losers' table, who have no one else but each other. When Eli is at his most sensitive and fragile, you can tell he feels comfortable being with Demetri by the genuine smile he has on his face as Demetri is joking with Miguel at the canteen table. Through his sarcasm, the mouthy kid acts as a catalyst to deviate the attention from Eli, speaking for him, reprimanding Johnny when he makes fun of his lip and trying to make him feel safe. Besides, you can see a certain degree of frustration in Demetri when Kyler and his gang are harassing Eli, and he's unable to do anything to defend him. And they even have a jingle for their friendship with a robot dance, I mean, how cute is that? But of course, a solid friendship between two helpless nerdy guys is not enough to spark a ship to be rooting for. In order for the magic to happen, another key ingredient is needed, i.e. a little bit of angst. Which brings us straight to the next point.

#2 - The Angst (aka the Hurt/Comfort Dynamic)

Even though I never liked the Twilight saga or any similar urban fantasy young adult works, I can easily see where the appeal comes from; the attraction to a charming, dangerous person who could either protect you from any harm or crush you like grape. Although with different franchises, I wasn't immune to the bad boy trope either (Yes, I'm looking at you, my teenage self drooling over Grimmjow from Bleach). If we can appreciate the genuine, brotherly friendship between nerdy Eli and Demetri, the shift that Eli makes as he transitions into Hawk and becomes more aggressive and dominant gives their relationship a totally different flavor. Attrition sparks a certain tension that, in the viewer's eyes, could either flow into a brawl or into passion.

During the mall fight, Demetri comes to the realization that his former best friend is actually someone who can crush him like grape. We see Hawk intentionally harming him for the first time, and Demetri's heartbreaking expression as he drops the line: "You'd actually hurt me?" And if that line gave us a pang in our hearts when we first watched Season 2, imagine rewatching it now that we know what happens in Season 3. Demetri is chased down the mall, running for his life, and then he's locked in a grip, as his best friend menacingly advances towards him. Demetri appears as the damsel in distress, however his friend is not the one who will fight to protect him, but rather his tormentor.

During the party at Moon's, Demetri manages to briefly go through Hawk's mask and reach out to Eli, thanks to a casual conversation about Dr Who. But then the beer incident happens, and Demetri defends himself with the only weapon he has – his loudmouth. The situation is reversed, and for a brief moment, he gets to be the dominant one as he discloses all Eli's most intimate secrets. Demetri is now actively contributing to the Hurt/Comfort dynamic; he's no longer just a target, but he's doing his part to enlarge that gaping hole that has formed between them. And Hawk didn't take it well.

From this moment on, Demetri becomes a sort of obsession to Hawk, who hunts him down the school, teasing him and taunting him sadistically, like a serial killer from a horror movie, during the big fight. Of course, in real life, this would be completely insane, and the police/a social assistant/psychiatrist should be called, but in ShipLand, these situations are pure gold. Okay, we get it, Hawk wants to get revenge for the humiliation at the party, and he wants to crush that nerd part of himself he sees in Demetri, but he does it with such an intensity that it borders on ridiculous. It's like this is his twisted way to acknowledge Demetri's presence. Eventually, Hawk ends up smashed into the trophy case, and I confess I felt a little disappointed when Demetri broke that hug to give Hawk a roundhouse kick. I mean, it was a great comeback, but I was sincerely hoping for a "No hard feelings man, let's get outta here!" scenario.

Getting back to the sick and twisted way Hawk acknowledges Demetri's presence, he destroys his science project after he got jealous due to him being confident in his nerd self and laughing around with his ex girlfriend (whom the writers insist he still has a crush on). Speaking of Moon, I have a feeling she likes Hawk mostly based on his badass appearance. Remember when she goes "I like this (mohawk) and I love these (muscles), but I'm not dating a bully"?

Then the football match happens. Okay, let's break this down. Demetri trips Hawk and acts all sassy, and a fellow Cobra Kai is immediately ready to take him down, but Hawk stops him. "Fight smart, he says". Too bad that literally 5 seconds earlier he had shoved a kid to the ground just because his ex girlfriend (again, duuuh~) ignored him when he winked at her. And then, as he's trying to intercept the ball, BANG, Hawk hits Demetri, sending him to the ground, pretending it was an accident. So, what does this tell us? That Hawk has some serious anger management issues? Yeah sure, but also that he cares about fighting smart only as long as it serves as an excuse to leave Demetri for him, because he's his designated target. Again, this is all but romantic, and it doesn't necessarily have to be interpreted as him lusting after his friend, but it's undeniable that this dynamic offers a lot of ship fuel.

The arm breaking thing is just too painful to even analyze. We see a completely helpless Demetri begging for mercy to his ex best friend, who has made No Mercy his life motto. And that scream, oh that scream. All I wanted to see was Hawk realizing what he had done and throwing himself on his knees while begging for forgiveness. But I'm glad that at least we get to see he feels awful for what he's done, and I like to think that, as he got home, Eli cried out all the tears he had in his body thinking about poor Demetri at the hospital, with a swollen broken arm, all because of him. Of all the situations, this is undoubtedly the most deranged and extreme, and if something like this happened in real life, the wrongdoer would deserve to be punished and would definitely need to be sent to therapy. But in ShipLand, this opens the road to many, many different scenarios, in which the bully understands his mistakes and shifts back to the good side, or the two share a tender moment after they reconcile, or the traumatized character has to to learn to trust the other one again, or the bully becomes overprotective of his former victim, etc.

#3 - A Rewarding Reconciliation

Finally, we come to the reconciliation, in which Hawk makes his heel-to-face turn. While we've seen him torn with doubt for an entire season about his sensei's teachings, his actions and the people he wants to surround himself with, the key factor that drives Hawk's redemption is the sight of his best friend being held down for him to beat. And with an epic stunt and his awesome KEEEH screech, Hawk jumps to the rescue of his friend. Like many of us, Demetri thought this was still part of the "Only I Can Torment Him" dynamic I discussed earlier, as he steps backwards a little concerned, but then he understands that action was actually meant to save him, and the two begin to fight side by side, in sync, watching each other's back. You can see Demetri's eyes sparkling at the thought of having his friend back.

Also, not only Demetri stands up to alpha bitch Tory in defense of Eli, but he also speaks for his friend when he's faltering, just like he used to. So kudos for Demetri.

#4 - The Red Oni, Blue Oni Dynamic

Binary Brothers are two sides of the same coin and complete each other with opposite character traits, visually expressed by the color red and the color blue. Being the color red typically associated with violence, rage, passion and irrationality, as opposed to blue, which is associated with calmness, melancholy and rationality, red is clearly the dominant color. Again, this opens many interesting scenarios for shippers.

#5 - Body Language

Besides the situations I described above, which may or may not be read from a romantic/attraction standpoint, there are also a collection of small gestures I noticed when rewatching the series with a more attentive look on their relationship.

- Demetri's heart-broken expression when Eli shamefully covers his lip during the anti-bullying announcement.

- The smile Demetri gives when Hawk responds "Hell yeah!" after Aisha proposes to crash Yasmin's party, implying he's learning to embrace this new wild side of his best friend

- The astonished look with which Demetri watches Hawk at the tournament and the way he's pissed no one knows his real name.

- How deeply hurt Demetri is when Hawk belittles him by saying: "Five against three. More like two and a half." He even tries to reply, but he's caught so off guard that words die in his throat.

- How Demetri takes a step towards Hawk during the mall fight, before Sam makes him back off, and how sadly he looks at Hawk's nearly unconscious body after Robby defeated him.

- How Demetri smiles and nods when he briefly connects with Eli at Moon's party, despite the mall incident.

- How Hawk watches Demetri juggle with the cleaning product from behind his bike helmet (how did he stuff the mohawk in there by the way)?

- Hawk's psychotic/sadistic faces when he smells Demetri's blood, and how he likes to hunt him down like he's his prey.

- Hawk's secret impulse to comfort Demetri after the arm breaking (I hope you get nightmares of Demetri's howl of pain for the rest of your life, Hawk).

- The way Hawk twitches his upper lip when he sees his friend Demetri in danger.

- How Hawk and Demetri are so absorbed in their new-found friendship, that they're caught off guard, and Demetri swings Hawk to allow him to deliver a kick using their handshake as a lever. And how they keep fighting together, shaking each other's hands even when they're out of focus and the attention is on Miguel vs. Kyler.

- How they're standing so close at Miyagi Do, in comparison with the other Red/Blue partners.

In conclusion, this kind of relationships are engaging and entertaining to watch, and they make us wish the best for the characters. They make us hope that, in the end, as Miguel puts it, love really conquers all (and what is friendship if not a form of love?), despite all the hurt they did to each other.

So this is it. I hope you enjoyed my Ted Talk. Feel free to share it with whomever you want, especially if you need some solid reasons why this ship has got some good potential.

And remember: the ship is in the eye of the beholder.

#HawkMeat #Hawk x Demetri #Cobra Kai #Eli Moskowitz #Demetri #binary brothers

42 notes · View notes

thebad---catholic · 4 years

Text

My problems with AOS

Well here I am, 10 years late with an opinion no one asked for, but I have to write this down and throw into the void so that I can be at peace. I’ve been salty about this film franchise for a very long time now. This will mostly focus on Star Trek (2009) with the other two movies sprinkled in.

1. Starfleet

Honestly where do I even begin? In TOS, Starfleet was modeled after the navy (idk how accurately, but Roddenberry was in the air force so I’m assuming he’d know how all that works). You can get a feel for the chain of command, and everything feels natural with character ages and things like that. There’s a procedure for everything.

AOS Starfleet feels more like a high school club than an interplanetary exploration organization. Jim is supposed to be twenty-five when he gets the rank of captain- after he was almost expelled for cheating. He has no idea how to operate or run a starship. TOS Kirk moved through the ranks of Starfleet and was promoted on merit and leadership skills- he worked for his position.

Why was Jim the only person who knew what was happening when Nero showed up? Was there any requirements to joining to Starfleet other than get on the shuttle? Why did the linguist not know the difference between Vulcan and Romulan when they’re the linguist? How did Pike bypass the chain of command to appoint Jim Kirk as First Officer which was an obvious show of favoritism to someone was about to be thrown out of the academy? Why the fuck was he allowed to keep the title of captain? What the fuck?

Speaking of Jim.

2. Jim Kirk’s Character

I...don’t like Jim’s character in this film. It’s not terrible for a younger version of Kirk, but like I said though, there’s no reason Kirk should be this young. And in this one he’s just kinda a douche.

We know from TOS that Kirk gets around, but he genuinely cares for his exes, and in general respects women. He uses sex appeal as a strategy, but more than anything this comes off as a subversion of the femme fatal trope bc Kirk is a man. In the movie, he’s just a standard action movie protag who has lots of sex just because.

The scene when the Orion woman says she loves him and he replied “that’s so weird” is just...so weird? Like I can’t imagine Kirk doing anything in that situation than backing off and explaining that he doesn’t feel the same way. The scene continues with him hiding under the bed when Uhura walks in. Watching how the camera angle makes Jim out to be a voyeur made me uncomfortable then and it still does. It could be explained that Jim is trying to figure out Uhura’s identity or that he’s listening in and people look at who they’re listening to but like...she was in her underwear. You shouldn’t look at people while they’re getting undressed, especially when they don’t even know you’re there? Is that a hot take? Apparently.

In TOS there’s this really nice scene in This Side of Paradise(S1E24) where the whole crew is high (again) and has abandoned ship, leaving Kirk to tend to things. We see Jim move around the ship with a little clip pad and make the proper checks. This is a captain who knows his stuff. That is the Kirk we should have seen if we’re going to see Jim become captain.

AOS kirk goes through a standard “stop being an asshole” arc commonplace for male protagonists, but this happens well past the point he should stop being an asshole. Either the AOS series should’ve been a prequel with Jim becoming captain at the end of the trilogy, or he should’ve been older with a completely different arc- maybe coming to terms with his rank? Imposter syndrome? Learning to trust his crew and building trust with them? Building a friendship with Spock and McCoy? There’s a lot to work with here.

3. Spock and Uhura’s relationship

Why. Like why. For what. Por Que.

I like giving Uhura a bigger role, I don’t like making her a love interest to do that.

It doesn’t make sense for either of their characters. Lieutenant Nyota Uhura, linguist expert who handles all transmissions to and from the enterprise- an icon of black women’s representation is now demoted to Spock’s nagging girlfriend. This bothers me more than a little bit.

It manages to make even less sense for Spock. A hallmark of Spock’s character is his duality. He struggles to combat his emotions and the human half of him. His repeating character arc in TOS is coming to terms with humanity while upholding the Vulcan way of life. Having him in an established romantic relationship before this arc is supposed to happen just makes for a boring romantic subplot about a relationship that shouldn’t happen and that I don’t care about.

TOS Vulcan culture is kinda shitty. Explicitly patriarchal and stuff, and also kinda racist against humans. The source of Spock’s inner conflict is not himself but a society that views him as lesser for being half human. However, one thing that I can certainly understand from a “logical” (logic in quotations bc racism and sexism is fucking stupid) people is ritualized arranged marriages. It just...makes sense to me that Vulcans would simply have their mates chosen for them and then marry that person and be done with it. Neat. Logical. Conformity.

This makes Spock and Uhura’s relationship even stranger. Why would Spock go so against conformity that he dates someone before he truly comes to terms with himself? Even if they throw out ponfarr and arranged marriage, it still doesn’t work but now it especially doesn’t work.

My personal theory is that Spock and Uhura’s relationship was established purely to make shippers shut up. It’s no secret Spirk is the most popular ship from TOS. I have no doubt they knew this while writing the movie. So to quietly wrap a no homo on Spock and Kirk’s friendship, they use Uhura as a prop to do so.

The teacher/student dynamic should only be relegated to fan fiction and the throwaway line about oral sensitivity makes me cringe. Every. Time.

4. McCoy

Karl Urbans performance is easily my favorite part of this movie. He captures DeForrest Kelley so well it hurts. He made Leonard Nimoy cry. His chemistry with Pine made McKirk go from the most underrated triumvirate ship in TOS to rival Spirks popularity in AOS. His scenes with Zachary Quinto are just *chefs kiss*.

So why doesn’t he have more of a role? The triumvirate is missing a third.

In particular, there’s a scene where Uhura, Kirk, and Spock make their way down to a planet to talk to a Klingon. I can’t remember which movie it was or why, but Spock and Uhura were bickering and Kirk remarks “can we do this later?”

The line was funny. It would’ve been golden if it was McCoy and not Uhura.

A fantastic performance by an underutilized character in a movie where that character should’ve been at the forefront.

5. Representation

I am skeptical of any movie that advertises diversity. Nonetheless, it made me happy to know Sulu was going to be gay. This is Star Trek after all, known for its diversity and large LGBT fan base, and an homage to George Takai who’s a gay man irl. So whatever.

The fact that I wasn’t expecting much says a lot about the current state of LGBT rep in media but this blink-and-you-miss-it shit is really starting to get to me.

I mean he jus- he doesn’t even give his husband a KISS. Like why.

6. Destroying Vulcan

WHY. Oh god why.

This isn’t Star Wars, JJ. We don’t do that here.

Imploding Vulcan was the most god awful shock value bullshit plot device I’ve ever seen in a movie and it was done entirely to make Spock sad. Besides the gaping plot hole of “why did Nero go back in time to destroy Vulcan when he could’ve just saved Romulus” I’m just grasping to find a purpose for this particular event. New fans don’t care at all about Vulcan while I was enraged that they would do Amanda that dirty.

It’s not just that they did that, it’s more that they did it like that. Vulcan’s destruction should’ve caused a federation wide meltdown as the biggest catastrophe in the entire franchise. If they were gonna make the stakes so pointlessly high, they should’ve treated the destruction of Vulcan exactly how they would treat the destruction of earth. There a million ways to treat that event with more gravity and million better plot lines that don’t involve G E N O C I D E

7. Miscellaneous petty bullshit because I’m a baby

-lower the fucking stakes Jesus Christ

-Don’t like the set. It’s bright and white and boring and gives me a headache. You don’t need a remake of the old set but like have fun ya know? Shit looks like an Apple store.

-Christine and I are the same in that we are both soft and are thirsty for Spock. Imagine my surprise to learn she wasn’t fucking there. Same with Janice but I’m more pressed about Christine. I don’t even remember the name of that blonde doctor lady who is Not Christine but i didn’t want her.

-The costumes in AOS look boring but still don’t feel like a uniform either. I deadass think Chris Pines outfit in the SNL skit looked better than the actual movie (minor adjustments needed)

-I didn’t notice this at first but someone pointed out that women’s uniforms don’t signify rank and now I can’t not see it. I don’t...think this movie treats women good? Or McCoy? Or just people who deserve better?

-Lens Flare

-I get why they did it but I don’t like that they misquoted the opening theme to say “no one” instead of “no man”. I probably wouldn’t have even notice except they gave the line to Uhura. Comes off as just a touch too “yay feminism” which is really rich coming from that treated Uhura like an object to be looked at when she wasn’t too busy being Spock’s emotional support gf, and completely cut two women from the main cast.

8. Conclusions

If I could describe these movies in one word it’d be generic. Which sucks because Star Trek far from generic.

They’re fun to watch but not think about. It was nice that I got to see a Star Trek movie in theaters. I just wish it as the same Trek I saw on TV.

#star trek the original series #star trek tos #star trek aos #star trek alternate original series #jj abrams #jim kirk #captain kirk #dr mccoy #bones mccoy #spock #mr spock #lt uhura #nyota uhura #hikaru sulu #star trek #star trek headcanon #trekkie #trekker #star trekkin

129 notes · View notes

muthaz-rapapa · 4 years

Text

HealPre Final Review: Not terrible but not entirely laudable either...

*sigh* Where do I start?

Well, one thing I’m pretty sure of is that COVID definitely affected production somehow. By that, I don’t just mean the show needing to go on hiatus, resulting in a shorter run compared to previous seasons. I’m also talking about any possible changes that might’ve been made to the original narrative, if there was one.

Much like how Suite’s story had to be altered in the wake of the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami disaster, I believe Heal underwent a similar treatment in response to the pandemic becoming more widespread as 2020 went on.

Especially since it dealt with health and nature, HealPre is probably the season that has come the closest in relevancy to real life events.

Frankly, that can be quite scary because this virus was and is still a fucking nightmare on a massive global scale. From that view, I can understand why the writers/producers would be concerned of the anime hitting too near home. At least for their main demographic’s (children) sake, maybe they were compelled to shift to something lighter and less edgier so that the kids could find some comfort and enjoyment in the midst of the world’s current crisis.

So I can’t fault Toei for that, if that’s really the case. Going through a pandemic is terrifying, infuriating and exhausting and UGH. We could use something that can help ease our worries or momentarily distract us even a little bit.

Though would it have killed them to dedicate one episode to the importance of wearing a mask or washing hands? (-_- ;;)

HOWEVER! Seeing as I am not a fragile child, I’ve still got several (oho~) criticisms to air out before I put this season behind me. This review isn’t particularly scathing but...there is a lot of discontent so you’ve been forewarned.

But first, let’s tediously review what structure means in Precure.

We all know that there are certain things that will forever (?) remain fixed in the series formula.

The plot is always going to be “magical girls fight evil doers threatening to ruin the world”.

There are plot points to indicate story progression but in reality, are put there to correspond with toy releases which are usually marked by these five: introductions, first power up, midseason Cure, second power up, and build-up to the climax + finale.

There is usually a specific message (a theme) to be told with every season and motifs (narrative tools) to aid in getting that across. For HealPre, the theme is “living is fighting” and its motifs are “health” and “nature”.

I left out “animals” b/c 1) it didn’t hold as much significance as the other two did, 2) animals are part of nature anyway and 3) let’s be real, it’s just a synonym for “mascots” which we already get every year. :P

Right. I’m probably forgetting something but for the most part, these are immovable pillars of Precure.

Story, on the other hand, has more variables you can work with.

Story is how you tell the plot, how you convey the message.

Precure, as a tv series, is unarguably carried by its main stars, the Cures. So it only makes sense that a huge percentage of a season’s success owes itself to how much of an impact its characters had on the audience as well as how effective their individual story arcs were as sub-plots tying back to the bigger picture (the message/theme).

Ideally, these arcs would shine the brightest in the filler episodes, where the plot (“good guys vs. bad guys”) is less of a focus so there is more space for personal development and growth.

Also, not all character arcs have to be directly related to the plot but they ought to be written well in order to support the overarching message (the theme).

Now, has HealPre done that? Has each girl’s story demonstrated a good example of what “living is fighting” means?

...nnnnnnyyeeee... look, even I can’t give a straightforward answer on that because while technically they did, by virtue of Nodoka’s observance in ep 44 recounting it as such, there’s also actually not enough to make it feel substantial from a viewer’s standpoint.

At least, that’s what I thought while watching HealPre.

With the exception of Nodoka’s, there was a lot of saying but not much doing to convincingly back the other girls’ arcs up. The fillers themselves were very weak, loosely composed in relation to the motifs and, if I may be so blunt, downright boring that if Nodoka didn’t phrase those episodes as things that counted towards the theme, I probably would put up more of a fight on disagreeing. so shoot me, I’m soft for her :P

And I know that sounds confusing right now but I will elaborate as I continue.

Before that though, to be utterly fair, some seasons keep their respective themes shrouded in vagueness until they’re given a more concrete form in words around the finale. So it’s not like we can do much except make educated guesses on what they really are. Most of the time, we’re just measuring everything against our perception of a standard in the fog. Or maybe that’s just me?

Nevertheless, you can just tell, y’know? By simply watching and observing the whole show, you can tell if the characterization, the development, and the outcome (essentially the content given) really live up to what the season claims is endgame.

So let’s go through that first then. The characters, starting with our lead Cure...

Nodoka being the only Cure in her team to have an arc deserving of the praise “exceptional” should come as a surprise to no one.

She was the most solid in terms of direction on how her story was going to proceed. Out of all the girls, her journey had the greatest connection to the subject “health”, repeatedly delved into it every time the spotlight was on her and fulfilled everything it seemed to promise from her debut in episode 1.

Her struggles on the road to recovery from a long-term illness and the strength she’s drawn from that traumatizing experience as well as her time as Precure did more than establish her as the strongest character in HealPre.

She has also rose to become one of the most memorable Pink Cures in the entire franchise (personally, I rank her in the top 5).

And it’s not hard to see why she’s earned such high regard in a lot of fans’ hearts.

The writers clearly worked a lot on her character composition to the point where she can pretty much embody the theme of “living is fighting” all on her own.

She came into HealPre fresh out of the hospital and full of earnest desire to make the most of her newfound freedom but she also wasn’t without knowledge on what hardship is. From there, she only got stronger, even when she was stumbling and trying to figure things out along the way. She grew more fortified in her beliefs on what it means to be truly live a healthy life.

She bravely defied the ones who attempted to take advantage of her and twist her cause against her. And she learned that taking care of herself is equally as important as wanting others to be safe from harm.

It was never about winning or coming out on top. It was about protecting a fundamental yet precious truth. That one thing any decent human being should never have to concede: the right to live well.

Honestly, Nodoka is absolutely inspiring all around, as a fictional character, a heroine and a normal everyday person.

Everything about her arc went satisfyingly right like it was meant to and the best thing is, we don’t need to question it because we saw how it all happened with our very own eyes.

I sincerely wished I could say the same for the others but sadly, they were just too flawed.

And Pegitan can throw flippers with me all day if he wants but as undeniable as the above statements are about Chiyu, her arc failed to leap over the increasingly mounting disappointment I had with every episode that’s been assigned solely to her.

Two of which weren’t even about Chiyu. One centered on Pegitan’s admiration for his partner and the other focused on her brother, Touji. Which, while nice to give to supporting/secondary characters, is a fat waste of valuable screentime and not what I’m here for.

It also didn’t help that the conflict of her arc (the indecision over choosing between two dreams) started really late in the game and was resolved so quickly within two episodes. There was no time for me to get invested into it, there was no powerful sense of conviction like how Go!Pri or Hugtto handled theirs and really, it just felt like Chiyu was only following what the script dictated for her rather than genuinely awakening to her own competitive passion towards track and field.

It was almost like it didn’t matter. Almost as if the writers procrastinated in thinking up something worthwhile to further her development...but then settled on grabbing an old idea off the shelf without refining it to suit Chiyu when they ran out of time.

This happened similarly with Minami in Go!Pri and Elena in StarPre, both of whom left me angry at how their arcs were executed. Yet theirs don’t compare to how pissed off I am about Chiyu’s. Because while Minami’s took a while to arrive, it wasn’t done poorly and linked back to Go!Pri’s theme well enough. And while Elena’s was over crammed last minute, at least it was unique to her character and had lots of potential ways to play out if they actually started it earlier on in StarPre.

Chiyu’s arc is like a discount version of the former with hardly any of the intriguing qualities of the latter. Sure, she had two early episodes that laid out the two most important aspects of her life (her family inn and her dedication to her sport) but after that, they weren’t brought up again until we were only weeks away from the ending. Y’know, just to fill up episode slots and meet the minimal requirement of saying they did give Chiyu some issue to resolve.

It was not engaging at all.

Furthermore, the fact that her arc had very little to no relation with either “health” or “nature” hurt my appreciation of her character somewhat. I just...don’t think her kind of story really matches with the central topics of HealPre?

...but maybe I’m being bitter about this all wrong and that’s screwing up my rational thinking on this matter.

Because Chiyu’s arc is valid under the logic of the overall theme, I would never say it isn’t. And again, character arcs don’t have to be close to the plot nor is it necessary to employ the “suffering builds character” method to make them interesting.

Chiyu always does her best every day. That’s sufficient argument on why her story does fit within the frame of HealPre’s premise.

Guess I’ll just have to wrangle my resistance into acceptance somehow.

...still, her arc could’ve been done so much better than what we were given. Chiyu at least deserved that much.

Next, Hinata.

Since the beginning, I knew she was gonna be runner-up to Nodoka for having the (for lack of better term atm) “best” arc because it was heavily implied that she has ADHD and therefore, immediately checked off the “health” trait. She was even more obvious about it than Nozomi was.

Difficulty paying attention, hyperactivity, impulsiveness. Hinata didn’t just display all those signs, she also showed how hard it was for her to deal with the downsides to them on a regular basis.

She kept apologizing and put herself down excessively for inconveniencing her friends even though they never blamed her for her condition. Got them annoyed a few times, yes, but didn’t stop them from staying friends with her and definitely didn’t make them hate her either.

Everybody was understanding of Hinata...except Hinata because she always took her failures to heart and considered quitting several times to avoid the crushing dejection of making mistakes over and over again.

She got better, though, and no one could have summed it up more heartwarmingly than Nyatoran with the encouraging words he gave her at the conclusion of her arc.

But it still feels like there’s a huge chunk of development missing between the start and finish. Or rather, it seemed like all of it occurred offscreen and we were only informed later that it did in fact, happen.

To recap, iirc, Hinata had around 5 episodes that focused on her (ep 9, 13, 23, 35 and 40). Ep 18 doesn’t count because that was a Nyatoran-centric filler more than anything.

Ep 9 and 13 did their jobs of introducing and highlighting the details of Hinata’s troubles while also suggesting she will eventually learn to overcome her insecurities. The ones after, though? They pushed those issues to the backseat.

In Ep 23, she had to share the (uneven) spotlight with Asumi. Hinata’s improvements were briefly mentioned but the majority of the ep went to teaching Asumi what “cute” meant and how to get along with puppies. I mean, I get that Asumi recently joined the group and bonding with her was mandatory by tradition. But since each Cure only gets a limited number of eps to herself, it would’ve been more beneficial for Hinata if she didn’t have to split screentime with someone else’s growth schedule.

Ep 35 is slightly better but not by a whole lot. Sure, Natasha was able to reconcile with Elizabeth which was very sweet and heck, it was the goal for that episode. But again, nothing was really done or addressed about Hinata’s main conflict. She tossed it back with the rest of her homework to deal with later. ahaha, a TroPre hint

Then ep 40 came to formally close the curtains on her story and apparently, Hinata screwed up lots of times since...whenever but she picked herself up every time after and kept on trying. Awesome. So WHY didn’t we get to see that?

I’m not asking for the impossible here. I’m not asking for Hinata to be cured or anything miraculous like that. There is treatment available for ADHD but it is not curable.

Also, forcing Hinata to find a way to get better at studying, the thing she struggles with the most, is not the solution either because that would only make her more stressed and anxious over her own disorder.

What I want is to see how she moved from wailing “I can’t do it! I don’t wanna! I’m so scared of failing so why bother?!” to determinedly declaring “So what if I failed 1 or 100 times? So what if I fail another 1000 times? What matters is that I don’t let that stop me!”

That confidence is not something that can be built up overnight. It’s gradual and it takes numerous tries to reach from where Hinata was to where Hinata is now.

Telling me she grew emotionally stronger can only allow me to believe so much. I need to actually witness the changes as well.

If it weren’t for that, Hinata’s arc would have been a lot more impressive. Shame.

Finally............... Asumi.

Asumi, Asumi, Asumi, Asumi, Asumi, Asumi, Asumi... *sighs & drums fingers*

...she has no arc, ok? Seriously, what story is there to speak of, much less write a hefty analysis on?

A spirit born for the sake of Latte who just went along with the Precure ride because Latte didn’t want to abandon her duty. She made friends with those who aren’t Latte, extended her knowledge and understanding and gained valuable human experience during her stay on Earth. But ultimately, she will always define her entire existence around a puppy.

Nothing is more important than this puppy.

...... to be honest, Asumi not having a storyline isn’t what bothers me. It’s her lack of depth that does.

Hell, even the giant burger she ate had more depth than she did!

Oh, Asumi does have a personality alright. She’s consistently and unfailingly polite, utterly devoted to her raison d’être and in crucial moments, gives pearls of wisdom when the girls are in a pinch. She’s good.

But if that’s all she is, then she’s also painfully dull.

She has nothing to contribute to the discussion of health or nature, despite being created through an element of the Earth so you’d think she’d have an opinion of her own. At least worry about the planet that gave life to her as much as she frets over Latte all the time. But nope.

She shares the exact same face as Teatine’s past Precure partner so you’d think we’d explore that connection to see if it would influence or affect her in any way. But nope.

90% of the time, her role was just being Latte’s constant, fawning satellite.

Not only did that irritate the hell out of me but it just reinforced my stance that this type of character is one of the worst you can ever insert into any narrative.

Because if someone keeps reiterating how much they’re obsessed with this one thing and seldom talks about anything else without bringing their obsession into it... then what’s so special about them on their own?

You’ve practically surrendered the different qualities you could have had for worship of something else. That’s not a fair trade-in.

Asumi’s character is so packed with Latte-related stuff that there’s not much space left for anything that can be considered uniquely Asumi.

I mean, maybe it’s because I can never see myself or any normal person comfortable with living like that.

Living for the sake of being together with the one you love? Okay. But living with your whole universe revolving around that one thing? Making most if not all decisions based on this one thing?

No. That’s absolutely crazy, alright? Nobody with a healthy amount of awareness and self-worth would live like that.

And you can counter that Asumi’s just born like that. That she can’t help her origins because Teatine’s wish to protect her daughter is essentially what brought Asumi into existence so of course, her biggest concern would be Latte. At least, she wasn’t forced into it, right? As long as Asumi chose of her own will to follow Latte, it should be fine, right?

You can even use the fact that Asumi isn’t human. That she’s a spirit and we shouldn’t apply our human standards too strictly to her.

Yea, but those are feeble defenses in the face of her being a good main character, a good main heroine.

There are many ways to make a decent MC. The way Asumi was written proves she certainly does not possess traits that can classify her as true protagonist material. A protagonist has to be more than one amplified feature, which Asumi is not.

For the record, I don’t hate Asumi (she’s not interesting enough to generate a feeling that intense). I'm just severely let down because even if I don’t end up loving the midseason Cure for whatever reason, I can usually count on them to bring something intriguing to the table to dissect and analyze. At least I should find something to care about them.

Didn’t happen with her. :(

Oh god, I’ve been working on this post for days now and I’ve got a headache and with the baton pass happening in less than a few hours as I type this, I just really need to get it done and over with so please forgive me for speeding up through the rest, I’ll try to keep it as coherent as possible. NYARGH! (@_@ ;;)

Mascots.

Would you be surprised to hear that I’m not surprised that they were actually written very well?

Like I said early on, I suspected the return of fairy partnerships were going to improve the mascots’ significance in the story and, well, I was right.

This time, they didn’t just fill in the usual expectations of relaying exposition, serving as the Cures’ transformation devices and looking cute for the merchandise. The Healing Animals had to make progress on their own training to become doctors as well.

And they did through their relationships with their human partners.

It was a refreshing take on the mascot aspect of the series because the friendships felt really symbiotic. When the trainees arrived on Earth, they relied on the girls to help them perform their jobs as well as provide them with shelter, food, the occasional peptalk about their trainee status, etc.

Then as the story continued and they got to know each other better, the mascots were able to return the favor by giving support when the Cures needed it. Rabirin when Nodoka was frightened and confused about how to deal with Daruizen, Pegitan when Chiyu was having trouble choosing between two dreams and Nyatoran who made sure to always lift Hinata’s spirits up when she got upset at herself.

In short, they achieved their objectives of learning what it means to be good doctors by being there for their friends! How wonderful! :D

My memory for Latte is hazy, unfortunately, since she’s coddled by everyone all the time (can’t blame them, she’s friggin’ adorable! <3) but I’ll never forget how she stood firm on the battlefield to see things through, to fight for the Earth like she promised her mother. She started out so babie but showed us all there was enormous bravery behind her cute face and ugh, we should all be very proud of her! <3

The only major issues I had about the mascots were these:

1) Too many irrelevant fillers went to them. They only needed a maximum of two for their entire mascot group.

2) Latte kept getting sick even after she acquired a Precure partner of her own. I was hoping it wouldn’t hurt her as much as it did before Asumi arrived or that she would build up a stronger immunity but noooo, they insisted on torturing the poor pupper! T_T

Villains + Finale Battle

Not a lot needs to be said for the first part. We’ve had mediocre antagonists before. HealPre’s just happened to be extra annoying as they were despicable.

Which is worse because jerks you can just leave in the trash but assholes won’t stop harassing you unless you pummel them into their graves, set fire to their corpses and leave no trace of them behind! >:(

Y’all know who I’m talking about. Opinions on him continue to vary depending on who you talk to and if they’re avid fans of his face or not but whatever. The son of a bitch served his purpose and is dead now. That’s all that matters to me.

Anyway, the King was flat like his two lesser generals. He was neither intimidating nor distinguished enough in the brand of evil to really make us think of him as a serious threat and because of that, it ended up making the boss fight look like any run of the mill boss fight.

I know, they tried so hard with all that shiny animation but it just didn’t have that glorious sense of vindication that previous seasons (or ep 42) gave and I blame it all on this Rumiko Takahashi reject.

Also, this strategy was pretty useless?

They built it up like Earth was gonna sacrifice herself and die or something (she wouldn’t and even if she came close, deus ex machina would’ve kicked in to prevent that and COVID-induced caution too I guess).

But there were no signs of pain (well, that’s a relief) after absorbing Shindoi-ne and they really pissed King Byogen off more than they did any damage with the absorbed byo-gen power.

...so yea, this tactic was just to kill some time and budget, nothing more. Meh.

By the way, did Asumi eject Shindoi-ne’s pathogen out of her body yet or did they just leave it in there to bounce around until it eventually dissolves on its own?

Because that’s eww. I mean, it’s obviously not gonna hurt Asumi they can both relate on hyperfocusing their affection for someone so maybe the compatibility helps :P but still, ewwwww.

Fillers + Underused Motifs

In hindsight, perhaps HealPre didn’t exactly promise the content we I wanted about “health” and “nature” if their objective was to teach that any manner of “fighting” can count towards “living”.

......but fuck you Toei, you’re still cowards! >:/

Fillers will be fillers but it’s always better to try and make some of them as meaningful as possible. And they wasted the opportunity to inform an impressionable audience (during a very crucial period of our time, I must add) on a lot of things related to the HealPre’s motifs. Especially about the environment which for some ridiculous reason, they chose not to touch on for the main stretch of the overall story.

Proper hygiene, good diet plan and sleeping habits, regular exercise (already done by the girls a few times but could use another example), meditation, counseling/therapy (especially for mental health!), etc.

Real life pollution, climate change/global warming (IMPORTANT!!), deforestation, preservation vs conservation, endangered species, recycling, volunteering to clean up your community, etc.

These just came off the top of my head but yes, there’s more and no, I’m not saying that the writers need to cover all of them in extreme detail or replace the slice-of-life episodes.

But they should be able to mesh both serious and light-hearted together in harmony somehow. Like those fillers where the mascots saw people cleaning up littering at the park or that interaction with that arborist who taught them about wild animals and trees when the group went to visit a lake.

For health, maybe let the girls visit patients with chronic illness in the hospital or have them converse with a medical professional on some matter. Particularly if it’s got something to do with mental illness because stigma in Japan on those who are afflicted with such conditions is still prevalent and has caused a number of sad and shocking tragedies that could have otherwise been avoided if people didn’t have such outdated, judgmental mindsets.

That last part might be too dark for a children’s anime but there’s a lot more out there that is doable.

Do that without reducing it into a footnote, Toei. It is so necessary for your target audience to be aware of these issues at the age they are now. You have an almost 20-year old franchise to serve as a very effective platform. Make better use of it if you truly care about the message you’re conveying through your show!

Also, what the fuck.

The last episode was a mess. Why are you only mentioning this now when the season is already over?

This should’ve been brought up months ago!

All the things we could’ve seen the Cures done to protect the Earth without magic.

The excuse of “I didn’t know humans were so horrible!” is a shit one because everybody knows humans are deplorable trash when it comes to abusing the Earth. All the more reason why you have to persistently drill it into people’s heads that they should not be like those who don’t care or choose not to care.

One crack episode isn’t going to cut that.

God, I so want to unsee this ep just so I don’t have to end HealPre on a more sour note than it already was. *big aggrieved sigh*

Lastly (and this really is the end of my long ranting, I promise), the missing undisclosed lore.

There are few Precure seasons without a past lore of its own in the recent years. Is it a wonder, though?

Lore is mysterious and fascinating. If it involves a past Precure, even more so.

Sometimes fans might just hang onto a show because they’re curious about what happened before the main story. We’d never get the full tale of those adventures but at least, it’s fun to imagine the “prequel”.

Also, past Precure are just badass. Fact.

Strangely enough, we didn’t get that for Heal. All we know is that she was called “Fuu” and was very close to Teatine.

Hmm. Probably one of those changes caused by COVID interference cuz I can’t imagine the writers choosing not to tell her past in the original draft.

With all that finally off my chest, I’m ready to part ways with you girls until the next All Stars (Nodoka, I’m gonna miss you so much! T_T)

HealPre wasn’t the worst and it was nowhere near the best that it had the potential to be. But it’s passable. At least for those who loved it even with its flaws, I’m genuinely glad it was good for you.

For those who are thinking about picking it up (although why you would read this spoilery post before watching, I have no idea), if you’re looking for a standard magical girl anime to enjoy casually, then this is a safe pick. If you really want to invest your attention and heart into it, though? Then perhaps it would be in your interest to ask someone who saw it already to help you filter out the episodes that are worth watching. You don’t need to worry about the rest, they’re inconsequential. :P

Ok then! Thanks for reading as always, brave souls who have reached this point.

Stay healthy and safe out there and I’ll see you at the beach next week! Tropic underwater paradise here we coooooommmmmeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!! xDDD

#i rage quit two drafts and an outline before i got anywhere with this #now if you'll excuse me i gotta catch up on my workout and play pokemon and eat pho later #and catch up on the ccs manga #livin' the healthy life oh yea~#healin' good precure #cure grace #cure fontaine #cure sparkle #cure earth #hanadera nodoka #sawaizumi chiyu #hiramitsu hinata #fuurin asumi #rabirin #pegitan #nyatoran #latte

10 notes · View notes

lokislytherin · 4 years

Text

euphoria // vampire!jungkook

pairing: vampire!jeon jeongguk x human!reader summary: you’re scared of vampires - until one saves your life one night. word count: 1988 + 1808 +

chapters: prologue / chapter 1 / chapter 2 / chapter 3 / chapter 4 / chapter 5 / chapter 6 / chapter 7 / epilogue

The next few days are mostly uneventful.

Taehyung visits and shamelessly beats your ass at Mario Kart when he steals Seokjin's DS, only to have his older brother return and beat his ass in an act of revenge. Taehyung begs for rematches, and the amount of times Seokjin wins is alarming. That day, you learn that your roommate is surprisingly competitive when it comes to Mario, games, and Mario-related games.

You also meet up with college student Kim Namjoon, who has kindly volunteered to tutor you in math. In the span of your one hour-long session, Namjoon manages to misplace both his wallet and his phone while rambling on about trigonometry and Greek mathematician/philosophers. Thankfully, he finds both in the cafe booth you've been studying at. You bear him no offense, but you're glad for the distraction your new friend's disastrous luck and tendency to babble offers you, if only for a short while.

Even though he tries not to show it in front of you, you can tell that Seokjin is still suspicious about what happened - or rather, didn't happen - the other night. You shut your own worries down, telling yourself firmly he's better off not knowing. If he found out that you met a vampire, he'd flip out and pitch a fit, or have a heart attack. Perhaps he'd do both, and proceed to lock you in your room and never let you out without him being by your side. He's never been good with horror films, but again, neither have you.

The next time you find yourself alone, it’s night-time again. All your friends are busy – most of your friends from school are already asleep or being insomniac gremlins; Taehyung is doing some last-minute studying for a test the next day; you're not desperate enough to contact Namjoon, and not familiar enough with him either; and surprisingly enough, Jin is on a date. Despite your initial irritation at him ditching your movie night, you’re happy for him – he needs to get out more, and his good looks deserve much better than to go to waste with him being a bachelor for the rest of his life.

You sigh as you attempt to brush out the tangles in your damp hair, envying Seokjin’s effortless beauty. No matter what he does, he's flat out gorgeous, and he knows it, even if nobody else notices. But you? You're not exactly society's image of 'drop dead gorgeous'. All your previous relationships have gone to shït, even though you will admit that it was not your fault. You glare at your reflection, and the girl in the fogged-up mirror glares right back at you.

You turn around, sick of looking at your messy, knotted hair – and scream.

There’s a boy. In your bathroom. A boy with dazzling blue eyes and gleaming white canines, a boy that doesn’t appear in the mirror. A boy that clearly can't be human, no matter how much his other features almost lull you into a false sense of security.

He grins. “Hi.”

Did I mention the boy is in your bathroom? Had he arrived a few minutes earlier, you would've been naked.

You scream again, right in his face. It’s the bloodsucker from several nights ago! You quiver upon realizing that his fangs are even sharper up close. He cute though, the voice in your head supplies helpfully. It's not wrong. He winces, immediately clamping a hand over your mouth. His skin is cold, cold as ice, whereas you are warm, face flushed with terror and mild embarrassment. Enclosing you in his arms, he carefully pulls you away from the mirror, setting you down on your bed. Your eyes are wide, brain frozen in fear, body unable to move of your own free will. You seem a little less scared of him than he is of you as he pulls his hand away from your face, but reflexively presses a finger against your lips to shut off another scream from you. You go cross-eyed at the contact. Is he trying to kill you, or flirt with you?

Boys are confusing, you decide.

“Sorry if I scared you,” he says quietly, almost bashfully, “I keep forgetting I’m not a human anymore.” If he were human, he’d probably be blushing, but he’s not, and his face is pale, without any sign of a flush. He looks a little paler than he should be, but that’s it. He carefully sits down beside you, leaving a large gap in the middle.

“Thanks for calling me cute, though,” he says, incredibly forward but somehow even shyer than before (and shït, Y/N, you realize belatedly, he’s not supposed to be this cute! He’s dead!). He doesn’t meet your eyes. “You’re not too bad yourself.”

You finally gain control of your tongue (and your brain). “I don’t mean to be rude, but who the fück are you and what the fück are you doing in my house?”

You know it’s probably unwise to swear at an undead being who could drain you dry of blood and life in less than a minute, but right now you’re too angry, scared (and honestly a little turned on) to care about that. Besides, the vampire boy doesn’t really look like he could hurt you. “I’m Jeon Jeongguk, and I’m a vampire. I won’t hurt you; I swear.” You narrow your eyes. The primal instinct inside your head still screams at you to run, even as you see how he looks a little lonely, a little sad. “You’re still scared of me, aren’t you?” You nod, and he pouts. Eyebrows knitted together, he closes his eyes in intent focus, and you watch in fascination as his fangs retract into his gums to reveal normal human teeth. “Again, I’m really sorry for scaring you the other day.”

He cracks a wry smile. “I’m not me when I’m hungry.”

To your surprise, a giggle escapes your throat. “You’re a vampire. How do you know about Snickers?”

He looks wounded. “Why wouldn’t I know about Snickers? I'm not too big a fan myself, but I still know about them.” He sighs. “Believe it or not, I was human too.”

You resist the urge to hug the stranger upon hearing the sadness in his tone, instead just softly patting his arm. “How old are you?” You blurt curiously. The question’s been on your mind for a while. He looks young, not much older than you are. But how old is he really?

Jeongguk pouts. “I hate it when people ask me that. I’m so shït at counting.” He tries anyway, counting with his fingers and looking confused. “I was turned a year ago? I was twenty-one, but I haven’t physically aged since then. So, does that make me twenty-two, or am I still twenty-one? Am I supposed the years I’ve been alive for? But I should be biologically dead, because my heart’s not beating anymore and I'm fueled by blood and magic-”

He stops and sniffs the air. “Actually, I think your roommate’s back.” He closes his eyes, sniffs a little more and promptly looks disgusted. “He doesn’t seem very happy.”

You cock your head. “Emotions have scents,” he explains, “irritation and self-deprecation smell the worst.” He wrinkles his nose with a small pout. “Werewolves can distinguish scents better, though. They're like dogs, especially near the full moon.”

You coo inwardly at the pouty look on his face, and jump when you hear Seokjin's key twisting in the lock. Your room is further away from the door than Jin's, and if Jeongguk can smell Seokjin from here he must have one hell of a nose. Briefly, you're tempted to pull out some garlic bread.

“Well, that's my cue to leave.” Jeongguk smiles so brightly you're a little dazed. He looks like a bunny - adorable - and it's so cute that you're squealing and dying on the inside at the same time. “Bye!”

That said, he jumps out the window.

You almost scream and throw yourself out after him, only to remember he's a vampire with far better reflexes than you. You see him downstairs, a blur of black in the shadows. He stops and waves goodbye, like an energetic puppy of sorts. With a light blush on your face, you wave back.

You flinch away from the window as the door creaks and swings open, hearing a disheartened looking Seokjin stomping in. You hope he doesn’t notice the lingering blush on your cheeks. You'd feel bad if you snagged a cutie and he didn't, after trying for so much longer than you have.

“I take it that the date didn’t go too well?” You ask, testing the waters as you walk out to greet him. An angry and heartbroken Seokjin is never a good Seokjin to deal with.

Seokjin mumbles something unintelligible, and you hum to get him to clarify.

Seokjin throws himself onto the couch. “She ditched. She didn’t even call, or text! I waited for an hour. Alone. In the dark.” He sniffs, pouting. “These dates are so stupid. I feel so stupid. Why do I even bother anymore?”

You sit down beside him, patting his shoulder reassuringly. “Oh, darling.” He’s a little older than you, but he’s used to your fond nicknames. “You’ll find the perfect one for you soon enough.”

He huffs. “You say that every time,” he retorts bitterly. “Well, maybe you’ll find someone who appreciates you.” He sighs heavily, barely giving you time to move your arm before he flops backwards dramatically, almost boneless. “I hope so too, Y/N.”

Seokjin switches on the tv, mindlessly flipping through the channels.

“Still up for movie night?” You suggest.

Your roommate nods gratefully. “Hell yeah.”

You take the remote from him, laughing. “Good, because I’m picking the movie.”

He groans dramatically. “Oh, what a nightmare.”

You move to flick his forehead, but he ducks out of the way. “Just for that comment, we’re watching Twilight. Now get the chips.”

He obliges, albeit grudgingly. Neither of you are big fans of the vampire movie franchise - or the books, for that matter - but your sassy jabs at the characters never fail to make Seokjin feel better.

You won't tell him about your ulterior motives - after a vampire named Jeon Jeongguk barreled into your life, you've never related to Bella Swan so much.

70 notes · View notes

carlatsukinamistolemyhamsandwich · 4 years

Note

9, 12, 14, 25, 28, 30, 31, 34, 37, 40, 41, 42 and 50 for the Diabolik Lovers Ask Game please! By the way, I love your blog SO MUCH. ♡♡♡

From this ask game.

Thank you for the ask anon, I’m really glad you like my blog :)

This got kind of long so I’ve put my answers below the cut.

9. Do you hate anyone in DL?

Hate is a very strong word, but if you saw my recent post on Shuu’s CL route then you’ll know that I am not the biggest Karlheinz fan. Richter and Cordelia are also fairly awful but I can’t help but feel some sort of pity for Richter as it seems he had a pretty miserable life and while some of the things Cordelia did are just horrible, my negative feelings towards her have somewhat lessened since we got a bit more of a glimpse at her backstory in DF. Menae must have died before Cordelia could really remember her, and we have to remember that she was heavily manipulated by Karl. Like yes, Cordelia is dreadful, but I still think Karl is the big bad of the series. He does so so many awful things and no matter which game you look at, I can’t help but feel that his reasoning is always pretty bleh (even if that probably is just due to not great writing).

Also after that Subaru LE ending Seiji Komori can eat dirt.

12. What do you think of the fandom?

Hmm... While I know some people hold negative views of the DL fandom at large, I don’t think any fandom is entirely unproblematic. My personal experience has generally been pretty good but I will admit I have seen some fairly terrible behavior in the 3 and a half years I’ve been seriously into DL. Then again I also haven’t been this deep in any other fandom and, sadly, I think that is just the nature of the internet.

Still, there are some amazing and very talented people in this fandom, and I feel extraordinarily lucky to have been able to interact with them, so I prefer to focus on that over anything else.

14. Sub or dub?

Sub all the way. When I first started watching anime, I initially just watched dubs, but after I started learning Japanese, I switched to subs to try and pick up some more vocab and now I can’t go back. Also I really like a lot of the Japanese voice actors in DL ^^

25. What do you think of DL haters?

I generally hold the attitude of “live and let live”. If someone doesn’t like DL because of the triggering content (and the way it deals with it) or the sometimes questionable plot then fair enough, it’s not like I think the series is without its problems. The only time I will have any issue at all is if they actively attack fans of the show. If someone is just minding their own business and not hurting anyone then under no circumstances is it okay to blindly attack them over a work of fiction. So yeah, you do you as long as you’re not being a twit about it.

28. Would you ever show your parents DL why/why not?

For anyone who remembers some of the random stuff I post, you’ll know that my mother is indeed aware of Shin’s existence (and Carla’s) which perhaps would have been difficult to avoid given that he’s plastered all over my bedroom wall and I talk about him A LOT (I am just as bad irl folks), but I’ve never gone into the details of the series with her as I feel like she’d be fairly disturbed at some of the content (and it’s for this reason that I would never show her the anime).

You will understand then, why I was slightly horrified when she told me she’d read the wiki because she wanted to know more about the characters I loved so much (like bless her, but also O.o). Apparently Carla is “a baddie” but she thinks Shin is okay.

My parents are also aware of the existence of this blog but, fortunately for me, have no interest in reading it.

30. What do you think of Yui?

I like Yui (I mean what is there to dislike?), she’s a lovely character and has a really good impact on the boys. I’m not as invested in her as perhaps some of the fandom but that’s because I am unapologetically here for the dumpster fire that is the boys.

I prefer writing reader inserts over Yui x diaboy fanfics, simply because it’s fun to see the boys in a slightly different relationship dynamic to that we get in the games (like if you look at my most recent Shin drabble, Yui would never tease Shin like that but I would so reader insert it is).

31. What is your favourite Dialover song and why?

What do you mean I have to pick just one??? Gahhh I love love love Kessen no Dies irae, because it features the Tsukinami bros and it’s just my sort of music but I think my favorite might actually be I.M.I.T.A.T.I.O.N.G.A.M.E. I’m not the biggest Kino fan but Maeno’s singing voice is phenomenal and it also brings back happy memories of when I finished Shin’s LE route for the first time.

34. Tell us your top three routes! Why are they your favourites?

Hooo boy, this is a tricky one because we all know my bias at this point ^^;; I’ve limited myself to one Shin route because otherwise this list would just be me waxing on about Shin and goodness knows I do that enough already.

1) Shin’s Lost Eden Route

While I like his DF route, I love that Shin’s LE route pays a bit more attention to his feelings towards Yui than his complicated relationship with Carla. I love that it really stretches him as a character and we get to see him relying on Yui, like I don’t know who came up with that plot but BLESS. I think the pacing is very good and the bad endings are just so tragic (and I love really angsty bad endings). And some of the scenario chapters from this route just make me melt.

I also love this route for personal reasons. I’d only just fallen into Shinhell when LE was released and I remember seeing the CGs for his route but there was no information on the plot in the English speaking side of the fandom and it was driving me nuts because I just wanted to know that he was okay. It was at this same time that I had a bit of spare money so I... bought a PSVita and a copy of Lost Eden so I could find out what happened (I was planning on getting a Vita anyway just maybe not THAT soon). I’d only been learning Japanese for 6 months (I am nothing if not horribly ambitious) but I didn’t let that stop me and played through the route. And I loved it (even if I struggled a little with the language) and I was so happy to find out what happened to him. So yeah, I just have warm memories of it.

2) Carla’s Dark Fate Route

While I like Carla’s LE route, I think the pacing and plot of his DF is just a bit better. I love that it gives us the best glimpse at the backstory of the founders (I will take any and all Krone and Giesbach tidbits I can) and I think the progression of Carla and Yui’s relationship is really well handled (even if he is dreadful towards her at times). Also I like Carla, I think of all of the diaboys, he’s one of the ones I’m most similar to so I find it easy to empathize with him.

3) Subaru’s Dark Fate Route

It’s been a while since I played this route but I remember having a really good time when I did. The Vampire Ending is incredibly sweet, as are some of the scenario chapters and I thought the plot was fairly well structured. Plus Carla and Shin are in it so bonus points there.

37. If you could change one thing in your favourite Diaboy what would it be?

I never want to answer questions like this because I love Shin as he is, I don’t want to change him.

I mean I would like for him to see more value in who he is than just his bloodline and get it into his skull that he is not inferior to Carla but only as gradual changes based on environment (or just idk talking to Carla but goodness only knows that won’t happen unless Carla’s on his deathbed again).

40. Your thoughts on Karlheinz?

See above. But yeah, not a fan, would not be sad if he became the victim of a bizarre fishing accident and never again appeared in the DL franchise but I think that’s a bit too much to hope for. Sorry Karl fans but I can’t get over the stuff he’s done (and also I have had enough of “and it was Karl’s fault all along” coming up in the games).

41. Would you buy the games if they were released in English?

I’m a little torn on this one because I love supporting Rejet and otome game localisations but I own all of the games aside from VC already so there wouldn’t really be any point. I think if I had a LOT of money to spare then I would, but as my finances stand at the moment then it’s a no.

42. If you got to design the 14th Diaboy what would he be like?

Oh this is a difficult one, ideally I’d like to see someone who was a member of one of the other demon races but I don’t think you can really have a diaboy without the blood-sucking, so I guess I’d make them half vampire half adler (as I think they’re the race we know the least about). As for personality... It’s tricky because I feel like the diaboys already cover a pretty wide spectrum. I’d probably make him a cocky jerk because I love cocky jerks and I’d make him fairly witty too but more logic than feelings orientated. I’d have him kidnap Yui because he wants to use her as a pawn against the diaboys in some nefarious plot (that I’m not going to think too much about because this post is not meant to be an OC planning session) and not because he has any interest in her or plans for her himself. I guess he’d sort of be a cross between Kino and Carla?

I’d give him a vendetta against Karlheinz too because I can :D

I had to cut this short because I started coming up with a backstory an everything but I think that’s too much ^^;;

50. Do you think Richter should have a route of his own?

Honestly? No. It’s not that I wouldn’t be interested to see the story of Richter with someone who is not Cordelia (even if he is not my favorite dude from the franchise) but more that I can’t see Rejet dropping Yui as a heroine and RichterxYui? No thank you. After all the stuff he’s done in the games and his obsession with Cordelia? I just don’t feel comfortable with that pairing, sorry.

#reply #ask game #I'm always super happy/surprised when people say they like my blog #because I feel like it's kind of chaotic but if you guys like it then I must be doing something right #character hate #?#I feel like I've been relatively polite but just to be safe #I have half tried to proofread this but it's so long #bless you if you made it to the end

28 notes · View notes

theseerasures · 4 years

Text

Conspicuous Media Consumption, 2020

it’s that time of year again! *saddest toot from the party horn*

for those of you just joining us: it’s a “consume a different content every week for 48 weeks of the year” challenge. for a longer explanation, check out last year’s write-up here, and as always, feel free to pop in and ask questions about any and all of this content.

(same disclaimer as last year too: content for this project ONLY here, and not certain...*looks at my billion Sad Cop Lady posts*...hyperfixations.)

(man remember when i was big into X-Men comics earlier this year? better times than these, if only because no one's discoursing about Emma Frost’s woobie/war criminal ratio anymore--her w/w, if you will)

(...i swear at one point i didn’t exclusively like platinum blondes but alas)

Bitter Root (comic, 1 issue finished 1/1/2020): still very cool on a basic concept level, but runs into the Image Comics problem of just not having enough content to keep my interest beyond that. part of that is on me, for picking it up again BEFORE the second arc rolled out, but the first five issues didn’t really follow (or resolve) any cohesive story either, so...meh.

Immortal Hulk (comic, 3 trades finished 1/17/2020): still not gonna be something i care deeply about (maybe one of Bruce’s Hulksonas dyed his hair???), but i do want to give kudos to Al Ewing for sheer consistency in terms of sustaining this level of quality storytelling month by month for more than two years now. working with the dense archive of the Hulk mythos and managing to make it interesting and thoughtful is impressive even if i personally would not expend the same effort.

Disco Elysium (game, finished 1/18/2020): honestly i should have twigged onto what this year was gonna be like when the third thing i drew from the barrel was pure uncut Eastern European flavored depression. i faintly recall people ragging on it for being pretentiously cynical, but i actually thought its core slid more towards idealism than people give it credit for. also gratified that i haven’t heard anything about Robert Kurvitz using slave labor to finish it, which is a thing we have to say about our video games now!!! fun.

Watchmen (TV, 7 episodes finished 1/27/2020): i am a fool who wants to believe in Damon Lindelof and I WAS RIGHT!!! honestly still cannot believe that he pulled off this highwire act with such deft aplomb. might be my favorite TV this year, which is a pretty high bar given how much TV i ended up watching.

On a Sunbeam (comic, finished 2/1/2020): Tillie Walden rightly deserves all the praise for inventive queer storytelling, but i will say that on reread--since i first read this as a webcomic--there ARE some issues with pacing here that clearly come from the foibles of its original intended medium. still just excellent, even if after some plot significant haircuts i was having trouble telling a few folks apart.

Lazarus (comic, 1 trade finished 2/8/2020): it’s so good and i want moooooorrrreee--though obviously Rucka and Lark have the right to take all the time they need. the newer longer issues work really well with the epic prestige drama vibes of the story! i’m into it.

The Good Place (TV, 4 seasons finished 2/18/2020): i’m gonna be super honest: i actually wasn’t a big fan of the finale, nor the last season as a whole. it felt like all of Eleanor’s flaws vanished for a majority of the season, and the Chidi-centric episode where they tried to give a legible justification for why he’s Like This was...i didn’t care for it. still, it’s so good and unique on the WHOLE that we’ll literally never get anything like this ever again, and that counts for a lot.

The Old Republic (game, finished 2/21/2020): it’s an MMO so it will never actually Be Finished so long as the servers aren’t shut down, but i caught up on the content i’d missed in the intervening months. Onslaught thus far has mostly been...kinda bland tbh; going back to Imps vs. Rebs after all the shakeups in the previous expansions feels like a waste.

High Road (album, finished 2/22/2020): someone should tell Kesha not to say that word!! otherwise i was very happy with this album, and happy FOR her even though we don’t know each other. being able to find joy again in the same genre of music you made while you were being horrifically exploited is very cool.

Young Justice (TV, 13 episodes finished 2/28/2020): given how much the middle stuff dragged--STOP KILLING YOUR HIJABI CHARACTER IN HORRIFIC WAYS--i was...actually kinda mad by how the end managed to stick the landing anyway. the day being saved by Vic’s self-acceptance and Violet’s sublime compassion was A+, and even the Brion/Tara switchup was a pleasant surprise, though it relied on me caring about Brion MUCH MORE than i actually did.

Manic (album, finished 2/29/2020): do people still care for/about Halsey? i feel like even That One Song that was on every tumblr gifset ever has kinda faded into obscurity at this point. this album was...okay. i feel like people give Halsey a pass for extremely obvious lyrical turns that they wouldn’t for other folks because of her subject material--which is fine. not really my cup of tea, but i also listened to lots of Relient K this year, so that’s probably a good thing.

Jade Empire (game, 3/10/2020): the only 3D-era Bioware game that didn’t franchise out, and for good fucking reason!!! the Orientalism and appropriation really haven’t aged well, and even beyond that the story was...standard Bioware faire. even my usual “my wife’s a bitch i love her” Bioware type didn’t do it for me, and i just ended up romancing no one. it did make me think a lot about what level of cultural borrowing is accepted nowadays, and why: people still look fondly at Avatar and talk about how ~accurate and respectful it was, for example, despite it being staffed almost entirely by white folks, and the Orientalism ALL OVER the monk class in DND is still fine for some reason.

Alif the Unseen (book, finished 3/31/2020): interesting to have read this AFTER reading The Bird King last year, because it highlights how the intervening years have shifted G. Willow Wilson’s thematic interest and improved her craft. i’m actually quite fond of how her characterization work is rougher here--Alif is extremely flawed to the point of being insufferable, but it makes his development by the end more satisfying. Dina is also just good and i love her

Baldur’s Gate (2 games, finished 5/31/2020): well, having finally finished the series i’m happy to say that it...still doesn’t really do it for me, sorry. any awesome story moments were overshadowed by the EXCRUCIATING inventory management system and the combat (i still don’t know what a THAC0 is and at this point i’m afraid to find out). these games crucially lack the Home Base that later Bioware games were so good about, and that (coupled with the huge cast of characters you can drop off and never see again) really hurts the intimacy for me. by the time we finally did get one it was the Hell Dimension in Throne of Bhaal, and i was just...trying to get through it. (yes, i did just say that about one of the most beloved expansions ever to one of the most beloved games ever.) THIS particular iteration of “my wife’s a bitch i love her” was very good, but the game wouldn’t let me romance her :(

The Underground Railroad (book, finished 6/19/2020): honestly what is there even left to say at this point! it was exactly as good as every critic on the planet said it was, even with my usual aversion to hype. draining and horrifying in turns but still insistent upon a future for Black folks.

Steven Universe (6 seasons and a mooooooviiieeee, finished 7/11/2020): yes, i DID finish the show and almost immediately begin a rewatch. this series is now one of my top five most formative things, and the amount of love and respect i have for it is incalculable. that said: i once again did not love how the central conflict of Future was resolved (just the resolution--i loved the finale just fine). for all of Steven’s breakdown was built up, resolving it with “EVERYONE HUG HIM UNTIL HE CRIES” felt...cheap, especially since up until this point the show had been so good about treating trauma and mental illness with the respect and nuance it deserves. it made me wish some of the earlier, less substantial episodes had been cut so we could spend more time at the end.

What It Is (comic, finished 8/19/2020): y’all i love Lynda Barry SO MUCH. for the longest time i was worried that One Hundred Demons was more a lightning in a bottle situation but every book of hers i pick up makes me feel obscure emotions i didn’t even realize existed. the compassionate way she’s able to describe her child self and how weird and fucked up she was (and still is) is honestly aspirational.

She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (TV, 5 seasons finished 9/26/2020): so here’s a reversal of what i’ve been complaining about with other shows: i was mostly lukewarm-to-warm about She-Ra, but the later seasons and the finale made me much more into it as a whole. more shows should improve in stakes and overall quality as they age tbh!! i still don’t actively love Catradora (my sole quibble with season 5 actually has to do with the way Adora kept backsliding as a character to make certain Plot/Relationship things happen), but i’m very happy for them nonetheless. i can certainly appreciate a show that will go for High Feeling over tight plot. dark horse standout moments: trees growing everywhere proving that Perfuma Was Right, and Hordak and Adora seeing each other--that weirdly intimate moment of recognition.

Fetch the Bolt Cutters (album, finished 10/7/2020): again i find myself not having much to say that no one else has said. it’s good! once again love it when an artist reclaims something they’d attached with negative affect (anxiety, depression, disordered eating) for better and brighter things.

Solutions and Other Problems (comic, finished 10/25/2020): i was very into Allie Brosh’s ambition with this book, which feels weird to say but i stand by it. it’s cool to see an artist try to make a new medium work for them instead of just sticking to what already works. not all the experimentation was 100% effective, but it was still delightful and occasionally devastating to read, so.

Legend of Zelda (3 games: Ocarina of Time, Majora’s Mask, Link Between Worlds, finished 11/1/2020): this was the third time i’d played Ocarina of Time, which made it the nice, comforting groove i settled into before Majora’s Mask blatted me in the face. i’m not usually a completionist Zelda person because...the gameplay in Zelda is bad, do not at me it just is, but i really felt like i HAD to be one for Majora’s Mask since the whole point is to get attached to the banalities of the town. i’m sure nobody’s surprised that i loved it, even if it gave me an existential crisis about how life goes on in the game for NPCs when you’re not there to save them from it, and there’s not enough time to save them all all the time (also not a surprise to anyone: Romani and Cremia gave Personal Feelings). Link Between Worlds...bad. not like in a “this is a bad story by every measurable gauge” way, but i was already struggling with the 2D playstyle shift enough that for the whole story to end with some “yes it’s v sad that Lorule is Like This but trying to steal Hyrule’s privilege is Even Worse Actually” noblesse oblige bullshit left a VERY poor taste in my mouth, this year of all years. i did audibly gasp when Ravio took off his mask, though. i’m currently playing Breath of the Wild in cautious increments; it’s the first time i’ve enjoyed early Zelda gameplay, but if they wanted fully voiced cutscenes i wish they got voice actors who...knew what words sound like.

folklore (album, finished 11/6/2020): my belief that Taylor Swift is Just Fine continues, i’m afraid. i LIKED this album, don’t get me wrong, and respect her constant drive to innovate, but i didn’t love it substantially more or less than any other Taylor Swift album. mostly i’m just tickled by how she thinks leaning into the indie aesthetic means borrowing Vita Sackville-West’s entire wardrobe, though i will admit to feeling Something when she swore in a song. i think it was like. savage vindication?? you go ahead and swear, Taylor Swift. you deserve it.

Shore (album, finished 11/19/2020): do people still care about the Fleet Foxes? i think there was some Drama with Josh Tillman a while back but i don’t remember where the discourse landed with who was being more problematic. it was nostalgic for me to listen to their new album--made me remember being an undergrad who exclusively listened to men who mumbled and played acoustic guitar all over again.

Star Wars (3 movies: original trilogy, finished 11/27/2020): there is So Much bad Star Wars these days that every time i rewatch the original trilogy i’m afraid that they will suddenly be bad, but guess what! they’re not. i love these children and their hot mess stories, i love that Lando doesn’t know how to say his best friend’s name. what stood out to me this time was the way Obi-Wan described the Force in A New Hope, which strongly implied that ANYONE can be Force Sensitive; that obviously faded with each subsequent movie, but part of me does wish they’d kept it.

X of Swords (comics, 22 issues finished 12/5/2020): i am enjoying Hickman’s X-lines!!! not so much here for the Grand Conspiracy or whatever, but the character work and highkey weirdness is fabulous--they FEEL like X-Men, despite all the shakeups in-universe. this crossover is a nice microcosm of all that: grandiloquently all over the place, but still full of cool standout moments and genuine hilarity. ILLYANA DOESN’T KNOW HOW TO SPELL MAGIC.

Fire Emblem (4 games: Sacred Stones, Path of Radiance, Radiant Dawn, Awakening, finished 12/14/2020): this was the thing that i was closest to giving up early on, but i ended up hyperfixating on it instead. that’s a credit to what the gameplay does to my lizard brain more than anything else, because the story and character writing is...insipid. it was very bizarre to witness this franchise blunder around with its animal-people racism allegory around the same time i was getting back into RWBY, and ITS animal-people racism allegory blunders. Awakening was the first time i felt anything for the franchise beyond “teehee red units disappear make exp bar go up and brain go ding,” so i’m excited for more mature storytelling in subsequent games (they MUST get better. they MUST). the child husbandry thing is...very bad tho, and Apotheosis being “challenging” entirely through the game changing all the rules is also bad.

once again no vidya games that came out this year--i’ll probably pick up Spiritfarer or Hades after the New Year, though (or maybe TLOU II! but probably not. sry Laura and Ashley). more TV and franchises this year, which made me feel In Touch with the Children but was also kinda exhausting. nothing was so egregiously terrible i dropped it without finishing! in a year like this that feels almost like an accomplishment

#conspicuous media consumption

6 notes · View notes

surveys-at-your-service · 4 years

Text

Survey #322

“you will hear it when your god cries / you will see it when the sun dies / upon the altars of change”

What is your favorite nickname that you’ve had? "Bee," from my old best friend. I don't want others calling me it, though. Where did you go on the best date you’ve been on? A big arcade. It was a super fun double-date. Have you ever gotten a professional massage? No, and I don't want one. It'd be so awkward. What’s your favorite milkshake flavor? Chocolate. What act would you be most likely to perform in a talent show? I got nothin'. If you had braces, do you wear your retainers still? I don't. If you had braces, have your teeth moved since you got them off? Yep, because of the whole "not wearing my retainer" thing. Whose was the first baby shower you remember attending, and for what baby? I'm unsure. Possibly my sister's for her first daughter. Do you know anyone personally who’s lost a child? Many people. When was the last time you did something that felt like rebellion? So every now and again, I get a massive craving for soda at night, so I grab one from the kitchen and can hear my sleeping mother rightfully nagging me about it, haha... What is one present you got for your last birthday? Ashley got me this really cool skull bank that says "tattoo fund" on it, aha. I love it. What is one thing that you took to show and tell as a kid? I have a clear memory of bringing a Snorlax plushie one day. Do you remember losing your first tooth? Not my first, no. Are you afraid to pop a balloon? Not really, but it's kinda easy to make me jump just a lil bit when one is popped. When was the last time you laughed when you shouldn’t have? I don't know. Which was better: the first The Lion King or the second? That is fucking HARD. I adore both, but I think the original is slightly better. Do any of your grandparents have a tattoo? I'm pretty sure none of them did. Do you believe that your pets feel love towards you? My cat, definitely. As for my snake, I'm aware that snakes' brains simply aren't developed enough for love, but she clearly trusts me. Are you proud of your body? Fuck no. I'm humiliated by it every waking moment. Watermelon or cherries? I don't like either, but if I had to pick, watermelon. Favourite brand of cookies? I don't really have a favorite brand. Have you ever stuck gum under a desk/chair? No, that shit grosses me out. When shopping at a grocery store, do you return your cart or just leave it? Return your goddamn cart. What is one thing you’d never want your parents to find out? Uhhhh. I guess places I've "done it." When you were little, did you like Dr. Suess books? I did. Do you like eating out at restaurants? Yeah; at least, before Covid. What was your least favorite year of your life so far? Fuck 2016 into the next millenium. Do you like fried bologna? I haven't had it in so long that I don't really remember the taste. I think I would. Have you spent money on a game online? Yeah, very briefly with WoW. Mom was nice enough to refresh my subscription after the breakup (Jason paid for it prior), but from then on, I was rich enough in-game to use monthly game tokens to "pay." Do you put a line through your "7"s? Yes. What about your "Z"s? Also yes. Do you like cold pizza? Yeah, yummy. Do you like broccoli and cheese? Yessss. Toaster or toaster oven? We've always used a toaster oven. What are you most known for? Being artsy, I guess. Do you have any reputations? What are they? *shrug* What was the last thing to leave you speechless? No clue. What is the curviest part of your body? Well, I'm overweight, so it's difficult to tell where I'm naturally curvy... but I guess my hips. Even when I was at a perfectly healthy weight though, I don't think I was exceptionally curvy anywhere. What is your opinion on sex change? You are entirely deserving to feel comfortable in your own body. If you’re still a virgin, how important is your virginity to you? I'm not, though I thought I was when we were together, when we were really just using a loophole. It was a denial thing BECAUSE my virginity was so important to me. If you have lost it already, do you regret it? No. Would you take a break after graduating from high school (like, postpone going to college for a year or so)? I didn't. What regret keeps coming back to haunt you daily? Things I said to Jason. If you could cure yourself of one allergy, what would it be? Pollen. Would you ever post a picture of yourself crying on social media? No. Have you ever held a newborn baby? Yeah, my most recent niece I actually held. I don't THINK I held Aubree or Ryder as newborns because I was so afraid of not doing it right and hurting them. Do you know anyone who has twins? Yeah. Are you following in the career path of any family members? No. What is your favorite country in Europe? Germany. How many times have your comments been top comments on YouTube? A few times. I rarely ever comment, but if I do, it's because I feel like I really have something worth saying. Would you ever wear a wig? I'm not opposed to it. Do you like the moon or sun more? The moon. Do you like turkey or ham more? Ham. Have you ever slapped someone’s butt? Yes. Do you think dimples are ugly? I think they're cute, actually. Have you ever deleted Facebook friends for a significant other? No. Have you ever spent the night in jail? No. Do you consider yourself a good kisser? I assume I am from experiences. Do you watch Pewdiepie? Not anymore, no. His current content doesn't interest me. The most recent thing I watched was his playthrough of The Last of Us 2, because I adore the first game and definitely wanted to see him play the sequel. I think he's pretty funny and have no personal issues against him, though then again I am so uninvolved in the fandom that I have no idea if he's done something stupid again. Do you like "Despacito?" Haha, my mind went to The Dark Den's bearded dragon before the song... I'm not a fan of it, no. Did you ever color your hair pink? No, but I absolutely want to dye it pastel pink one day. :( I even edited a picture of me "testing" different hair colors out, and pastel pink looked suuuuper pretty. Do you drink energy drinks? No, they're too strong for my taste. Do you have any subscribers on YouTube? I don't now how many I have, but I know it's below 100. Do you have a Steam account? Yeah. Have you ever played Five Nights at Freddy’s? No, but I enjoy the franchise. I'm not totally clear on all the lore, though. Do you like religion? Quite honestly, no. Do you swear in front of children? No. What is the next craft you are going to make? There's no telling. I don't really do crafts. What was your favorite Backstreet Boys song? Maybe "The Call." Favorite *N Sync song? I don't remember enough of them, at least not right now. Which of those two bands did you like best? The BSB, baby. Do you learn choreography easily? When I danced, I'd say I learned at a fairly average pace. What’s your favorite candy to receive on Halloween? Reeseeeeeee's. <3 Do you have a bobblehead? No. Have you ever had a lead role in a play? No. Have you ever been insulted or called names by a significant other? No. I wouldn't tolerate that shit. What’s your favorite movie battle scene? Oh man, idk. Maybe something from Troy, though I honestly barely even remember the movie by now, haha. Have you ever been to a same-sex wedding? No, actually. Who takes care of your pet(s) when you’re out of town? Hypothetically, one of my sisters would come to feed and water Roman and clean his box. I'm certain I couldn't talk either into spraying Venus' cage, though... What was the last thing you wrote down on paper? Some group work during therapy. Did you have a Walkman when you were a kid? No. What’s your favorite recipe you’ve come up with? Oh dear, I don't make those. Do you like celery? Yuck, no. By what age could you swallow pills? I dunno. A normal age. Do you like to drink alot of water? I need to drink more. :/ I've gotten better, though. For years, I literally never drank water. How I even survived, idk. How many times have you gone fishing? Countless times. Ever been to a roller-skating rink? Yeah. I loved having bday parties there as a lil'un. What do you refer to your mother as? (Mom, momma, mommy) Mom, Ma, and Mama. Have you ever swam in the ocean? Yeah, multiple times. What is the last movie that made you cry? I think the remake of The Lion King. What would you like to swim in other than water? Nothing? If you could uninvent one thing what would you chose? Damn, just one? Maybe cigarettes? Have you ever read someone's diary? Absolutely not. I respect people's privacy. Have you ever played in a waterfall? No, but that'd be dope. Who has inspired you the most in your life? Probably Mark. Is there a place where everyone who lives near you tends to hang out? Idk. Teens sure do love to hang out at Sonic, though, reving their stupid fucking trucks. Does your alarm clock wake you with music, or with an annoying buzz sound? Music. Did you make it all the way through the Oregon Trail game? Yes; I was obsessed with those as a kid. Lions and tigers and bears, oh my! Which one are you more scared of? I feel like being alone with a tiger would scare me most. Though let's be real, I'd probably try to pet it. Have you ever changed your favorite color? From what to what? It was originally red, but then became pink when I actually understood it was its own color. Then it was maroon forever, and now it's back to pink. On a scale of 1-10, how competitive are you? Eh, 4-6? It depends on the situation, I guess. At what age did your have your most memorable birthday? My 21st, because I was in the psych hospital for it. Yes or no: Guys in skinny jeans? Yeah, man. Yes or no: Girls with dreads? Some people can pull it off. Have you ever attended a themed b-day party? What was the theme? Oh yeah, plenty. Do you have any Eminem on your iPod/MP3 player? I do. Has anybody ever given you a promise ring? No. What do you think about putting ‘spinners’ on cars? So long as they're not too distracting, I don't care. Do what you want with your car - again, so long as it is not disruptive. What celebrity do you wish would have a big comeback? I wish poor Britney Spears could catch a goddamn break and be happy again. She's a legend that doesn't deserve to feel like a puppet. Were you outdoors or indoors more as a kid? I'd say there was a pretty even split. Do you or have you ever owned a horse? No, but I LOVE horses. Have you ever had a relationship that began via text? (weird, I know, but it happens…) Most of my relationships started through a text message. Did you believe in unicorns as a small child? I don’t think so. Would you ever date a guy with longer hair than yourself? Yeah; I have short hair anyway, and I also like long hair on guys. Do you watch the show Wizards of Waverly Place? I used to love that show. Have you ever been to the rainforest? No; humidity aside though, that would be so amazing. Bats are not spooky or are they? I think they're precious. Do you like the song "Womanizer?" I sure do, actually. Do you like ice cream cake? Not really, but I'll eat it. Do you know how to change a tire? Nope. What kind of headphones do you have? Just cheap earplugs. Do you experiment a lot with new looks on yourself? No. What were some fun experiments you did in science class as a kid? Dissecting a frog was my favorite, and doing the same with an owl pellet was also very cool. What was the last strong emotion you felt? Guilt. I lied to get out of group therapy early because I was just NOT feeling it whatsoever that day, and I hate lying. Do you use dry shampoo between washes? No. Have you ever lived with someone you didn’t get along with? No. What types of animals have you had as pets? Jeez, what haven't we had... We've had cats, dogs, snakes, rats, gerbils, a rabbit, hamsters, lizards, fish, guinea pigs... Hell, I'm probably forgetting one or two. Can you name three good things about your most recent ex? She's so creative, a real advocate for proper reptile education and appreciation, and very kind. Name three bands/artists that you hate. Uhhh The Talking Heads, Bob Dylan, and The Police. What’s the best memory you have of your father? Playing softball with him in the front yard, and when he taught me to ride a bike. Should tattoos be meaningful? You get a tattoo for whatever reason you damn well want. I don't plan on all of mine to be meaningful. Some stuff I just want because I think it's cool. Are you afraid of the dark? No. Have you ever been through a trap door? No. What's the most recent good news you’ve heard? Hm. Who was the last person in your family to have a baby? My older sister. When’s the last time you used the microwave? Last night. What’s the worst thing in your life right now? Financial struggles. Have you ever owned a tire swing? No. Does anyone you know own a bird that can talk? No. Have you ever been someplace tropical? Yeah, Florida. Have Jehovah'ss witnessess ever called to your door? Yep. when was the last time you went to mass/church? I have no idea. It's been many years. Have you ever experienced sleep paralysis? Thank heavens no.

#survey #surveys #questions #lyrics: ''altaer" by 3teeth

2 notes · View notes

zerochanges · 4 years

Text

2020 Favorite Anime

I am sure I don’t have to exactly spell it out that 2020 was a different year, we all know the spiel now. It was in particular a bad year for me for a lot of personal reasons on top of the whole world wide pandemic thing killing millions and shutting down business and and all our hobbies--so I really was straight up not having a good time. It’s because of that I honestly didn’t really keep up with a lot of my hobbies this year so when it comes to choosing my favorite anime and games of 2020, I don’t have as much as I usually would.

So this year I decided to just say screw it, there are no rules. I usually try to impose some on myself every year for my lists: rules like no sequels, no long running shows, no shows that technically started last year, only new content from this year and not older stuff I watched/played this year but came out from a prior one. This time, there are no holds barred. I am just going to list my top whatever the hell I feel like listing. So starting with anime and in my usual alphabetical order; here we go.

The 8th Son? Are You Kidding Me?

Maybe a guilty pleasure? Maybe I just enjoy some trashier shows? It’s hard to say. There is nothing that great about 8th Son, it’s very bland and doesn’t stick out amongst the million other isekai (another world) power fantasy series that are all the rage now and yet there is a strange draw to it. Perhaps it’s because almost all the isekai elements in the series feel more forced than anything else, like they are just tacked on to appeal to modern audiences.

8th Son honestly feels more like a good old fashion fantasy series from the 90’s that just had to add isekai elements in it to appeal to kids today. I really enjoyed it for that aspect. The power fantasy isn’t too out of control (although the protagonist is quite strong), and there is no real end goal or attempt to return to your previous life. The protagonist Wendelin is more or less just cool with how things are now. Instead it focuses on his growth as a mage and how he tries to navigate the political intrigue of this feudal world being one of the youngest born in a noble family with no clear line of succession to take over yet being the most talented and magically gifted child of said family.

Ascendance of a Bookworm

Proving that not all isekai series have to be a power fantasy, Ascendance of a Bookworm plays out more like an educational take on medieval times, think something among the lines of Spice and Wolf, if you will. One day Motosu Urano wakes up in the body of the small child Myne in a fantasy world much like medieval Europe but with a few other elements like magic and sorcery. While at first that may sound like a high flying adventure it really isn’t. The series is more about following the average life of a peasant in this world and how far out of reach literature is to them, given the lack of printing press and the like. Urano now Myne tries her best to create books for the common people and spread literature, a herculean task considering the insane douchebaggery of the higher caste in this world. But armed with modern day knowledge of the 21st century Myne is able to create modern conveniences and wow most people around her.

Black Clover

So I am going to include long running shows now this year, get over it. Black Clover has been a favorite of mine in recent years. Out of the modern Jump battle series I find myself more and more drawn into Clover (and also my one true love, the ever underappreciated World Trigger) than the other more popular ones that seem to rule all the anime conversations today. Since I was following the series dubbed as it aired on Toonami this year brought me the end of the first part of the series; finally seeing the epic conclusion of Clover Kingdom’s long standing battle with the Eye of the Midnight Sun and revealing some pretty great and shocking twists behind the war of elves and humans along the way.

This finale was fantastic and honestly while I am glad to see the series continue on and grow from there, and look forward to seeing more of this new second part of Clover that focuses on a war with the Spade Kingdom, I absolutely would not have complained if the whole thing ended right here with this story arc. It wraps up so beautifully and is a compilation of three great years of episodes.

BOFURI: I Don’t Want to Get Hurt so I’ll Max Out My Defense

Bofuri is not a series I thought I would enjoy as much as I did but it really won me over. Essentially just a ‘cute girls do cute things’ kind of show but with a twist of it being in an MMO game, there is something about it that made it so comfy and easy to watch. There’s always something enjoyable about watching the protagonist Maple, an absolutely clueless newbie at video games continue to be the bane of existence to the developers and admins of the game as she constantly breaks it and becomes insanely overpowered on a regular basis all from her own cluelessness.

As the title suggests she is the only person in the world to get scared of taking damage in a video game and puts all her stats into defense and literally nothing else entirely. After so much grinding the girl is such a tank she can just walk through enemies to kill them. It’s fun little things like this that make the show always worth a chuckle as her legendary player status continues to rise while in reality she just has no clue how to play RPGs whatsoever.

Boruto: Naruto Next Generations

If you think Black Clover had a great run of episodes this year in 2020 just wait until you see what Boruto had to offer. While not a perfect year, the series did take off for about 2 months thanks to a pandemic hiatus, once it came back it was stronger than ever. We came out of the gates running and kicked off the return of Boruto with a fantastic 20+ episode long story arc centered on introducing the main group of villains in the series, the Kara. The world of Boruto became much bigger and much darker, and the series in the last year has started to bring in a lot more manga content and moving at a brisker and faster pace, changing the status quo up quite a lot. Watching the New Team 7 grow so much and rise to these challenges was rewarding and I am so excited for the vessel story arc teased at the latest Jump Festa this December.

Ultimately though their first encounter, crushing defeat, and subsequent rematch with Deepa; a new anime only member of Kara meant to introduce the organization to anime viewers was an insane show de force of animation and one of the best battles in 2020 anime, dare I say. These kids are growing into great warriors and the stakes have been raised so much.

Cardfight!! Vanguard Gaiden IF

The 2018 reboot of the Vanguard series saw not only the card game get refreshed but the television anime as well. Dubbed the V Series by fans thanks to all the new card serial numbers starting with a V post reboot, these last two years have been fun and full of fan service for long time viewers of the anime. Gaiden IF is the final season of this reboot before the fourth entry of the franchise Overdress begins in 2021, and was a very strange and experimental one at that. Gaiden IF holding true to its name was a gaiden, or spinoff of the series that wasn’t necessary in the same canon as the regular show and more fascinating had zero card fights during the entire show--instead being one huge parody of card game animes in general and the beloved cast of characters the series has built over its ten year run.

It’s quite hilarious and a great round of fun, especially since there isn’t a main character in sight. Gaiden IF is carried entirely by a cast of side characters and former villains now taking over the role of protagonist. I’ve never seen a show go for an entire season with such minor characters playing such a huge role and that is one of the best aspects of it. Every week watching Ibuki Kouji, one of the most feared and powerful villains in the series being tormented and kicked around as a would-be hero now honestly carries the entire show.

But really, this was one of the first anime to air post pandemic hiatus and it was so refreshing to have Vanguard back. Every week it reminded me how much I loved the franchise and anime in general, it was such a delight to finally have something enjoyable back in my life after such a grueling pandemic hiatus of nothing.

Dragon Quest: Dai no Daibouken (2020)

Never in my wildest dreams did I ever think there would be a modern adaptation of Dai no Daibouken, or The Adventures of Dai as it is being called in English now. This was one of my all time favorite Jump manga growing up and I always thought the original unfinished 1991 anime was the best we were ever going to get as far as animation goes, so to see this beautiful new series with its fantastic storyboarding and animation, great use of CG mixed in with hand drawn, and what seems like an outright declaration from the series itself that it will adapt the series in its entirety this time, it’s all too much.

This new Dai adaptation is like a dream anime that was made just for me. Every Saturday morning I giddily log on to watch the new episode just like being a kid again with Saturday morning cartoons. If you are sleeping on this show, don’t! You won’t regret watching it, Dai was one of the all time great Shonen Jump properties of the 90’s and is ready to show kids today what that era has to offer!

Gundam Build Divers Re:rise Season 2

Rerise was hands down one of my favorite shows last year when the first cour aired, and this year is no different either, dare I say once again this was probably my favorite show of the whole year. It’s hard to really go into what made this second cour so good without flat out spoiling all the best parts, and all the character development, and all the amazing battles, but suffice to say, this may be one of the best Gundam shows of the entire decade, Build series or not. Hell I ain’t afraid to say this kicked G-Tekketsu (Iron Blooded Orphans) ass this way to Sunday, I don’t care that this is a toy commercial for a much younger audience. Basically, watch Rerise, it’s going to be a great time.

If My Favorite Pop Idol Made It to the Budokan, I Would Die

This was another series that I expected very little from but ended up really enjoying each week. The basic premise is pretty simple, a super fan obsessed with an idol (singer) goes to insane lengths to support her and thinks her love will never be reciprocated but maybe it just might be. It’s kinda strange and an unusual romance series that isn’t really all that big on romance. In fact it seems to be much bigger on being informative about idol fan culture and nerd culture in general and poking fun at that while never being too mean spirited.

I think that’s the charm of this one. These are by all extent weird kinda creepy people that are obsessed over young girl singers but it never demonizes its cast for that nor does it ever go too far in the power fantasy of them ‘getting the girl’. It’s about the struggle of fan life and the tightknit and utterly bizarre groups of friends you can make in a fandom--and also maybe some love might happen along the way.

Jujutsu Kaisen

Another big modern shonen jump battle manga got its chance to be animated this year, and this time courtesy of studio Mappa who are the real stars of this party. Everything about Jujutsu Kaisen feels like Mappa throwing down the gauntlet and trying to one-up the highly praised and beloved Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba from last year that wowed everyone with UFOtable’s signature beautiful animation. It’s very fascinating to see the insane levels of gorgeous jaw dropping action set pieces between these two series, both raising the bar to ridiculous levels in their own ways. On top of the animation front though are some very easily lovable characters, a much darker feeling supernatural story than one may expect, and probably Crunchyroll’s best dub produced in 2020.

Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken!

Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken is another series from beloved auteur Masaaki Yuasa. Bringing with it his signature style and wonderful animation, his hardworking compatriots at studio Science Saro deliver something truly special, an anime about why anime is great and just how the heck it is made to begin with. I think one of my favorite aspects of Yuasa’s work is just how sincere almost his entire output is, and how you can really feel a certain kind of emotion and vision behind each work that is unique to it. For Eizouken it is definitely the joy of creation and what it means to pursue something creative. Easily one of the best watches of 2020 for both its visuals, sound design, characters with great chemistry that have to deliver very heavy and technical dialogue but do so in a really natural and enjoyable way--and hey the shows within the show that the girls make are also usually pretty interesting and good too.

MAJOR 2nd Season 2

I think my favorite aspect of this new middle school arc of MAJOR 2nd was seeing just how much Daigo has changed over the years since we last saw him in elementary school in the first season. No longer in little league and now trying to save his school’s baseball club, Daigo has grown into a strong leader and really feels natural with everyone he talks to. It’s a huge departure from the bullied and reclusive selfish kid he was in the first season. Seeing the kid grow up into somebody reliable and caring like this almost brings a tear to my eye.

It’s an old cliché but saving the falling apart club in your school is a classic underdog story and the fact that Daigo built his own team from the ground up really sells it. The team is largely made up of girls too which brings a really great girl power aspect to it as well. With just 3 boys and the rest of the positions being filled with females, the haphazard team Daigo put together not only has to show that nobodies can make it but that girls are just as good as the boys.

Rent-a-Girlfriend

I love trashy romcom harem anime, I will be the first to admit it. I am not even their target audience, in fact I am probably the exact opposite of their target audience yet I can’t get enough of this kind of garbage, and Rent-a-Girlfriend brings in the garbagest of garbage it can! The name says it all right there, our hero is literally so pathetic he has to pay girls money to go on dates with him. And he just continues to ruin everything around him with his constant lying and all around patheticness. He is like a blackhole of suck that will drag down any and all that go near him. What more can you even want?!

I am half facetious here of course, but to an extent what I said about Kazuya isn’t wrong. He’s the biggest loser around, and I love him. It’s fun to watch him squirm, and it’s nice to learn more about him and see he has a good side deep down too. In a lot of ways he’s probably one of the more relatable leads in these kinds of shows as he’s just as pathetic as all the rest of us who watch these kinds of shows are. But besides Kazuya there are plenty of nice leading ladies too and probably most surprisingly a fairly well fleshed out circle of friends that he hangs out with. Usually these kinds of shows will sideline the male friends of the leads and only focus on time between the lead and the girls, so it’s refreshing to see so much time spent with other boys in the show too.

Also as an addendum to anyone who watches the series dubbed, Aleks Le‘s performance as the lead role is maybe some of the best casting in modern anime dubbing I have ever heard. He kills it in this show. It’s a performance that carries the entire show.

Shadowverse

You might say, I saved the best for last, but honestly this was a coincidence. Shadowverse is a by-the-numbers card game anime. It starts very slow and very bland, and offers nothing new to the genre instead sticking entirely to the classic tropes and clichés of sports anime and Yu-Gi-Oh clones alike. That is for the first 12 episodes or so. It begins to evolve and gets a little more interesting from there, then something happens. Something I cannot explain. Something that makes no sense. Something that the production committee probably should not have allowed to occur. The show just goes absolutely, positively, certifiably, fucking insane.

Out of nowhere, the plot suddenly turns into a straight Neon Genesis Evangelion knock-off, complete with plugsuits, random nonsense mysticism from exotic religions, and soul crushing nightmarishly harsh treatment of the child protagonists. Suddenly time freezes for everyone but the main characters, and the totally original not Kabbalah, Tree of Woe, begins to end the world. Now armed with their new psychic powers (that they just have now out of nowhere!) the kids have to fight brain washed former enemies and loved ones alike that seek to destroy the world via assimilation into the darkness.

Suddenly we have moments like the above where Luca, the coldhearted and cool Shadowverse player who only ever began fighting in tournaments to earn money for his younger sick sister’s treatment has to face off against a possessed evil version of his sister who bemoans all the isolation he put her through, never being there with her, always away trying to earn money. She berates and destroys the young man’s heart for his well intentions. Luca with no other options has to put her down for the good of the world.

You know, for the 12 year old kids in the audience that signed up for a show about a cellphone app.

I haven't even gotten to the best part yet, the show isn’t over! There’s still 12 episodes left in the series and do you wanna know the best part?! The heroes already failed! The world blew up and everyone got sucked into a blackhole and died! That’s not a joke. The bad guys won. And there’s still another season worth of episodes to go! I am not kidding, this is how the show ended the year 2020! This is legendary, no fucks given status if I ever saw it. The best way to end 2020 if ever there was one:

Every week I anxiously log on to watch Shadowverse after it jumped the shark just to see what insanity happens next. This is Tommy Wiseau The Room energy levels of pure insane dribble. Shadowverse might be the biggest disaster of a card game anime of all time, and I simply cannot get enough of it now.

BONUS THOUGHTS For 2020

Random Anime Collecting: This year saw Discotek release three Case Closed/Detective Conan movies on blu-ray. Detective Conan is a series near and dear to my heart, and one I spent a lot of my college days obsessed over. This is a franchise I really went to great lengths to collect after Funimation reprinted many of the long time out of print volumes of the series back in 2013, and I bought them all back then. Buying new Detective Conan movies in 2020 felt super surreal, and also wonderful. I really hope I can keep buying more in 2021.

Hidive for these hard times: I didn’t include anything really from Sentai, I am not sure why, maybe none of what I watched this year would count as a favorite of mine, maybe I was just lazy and didn’t want to add to my list anymore. Honestly though I watched a lot of series this year on Hidive. I think my favorite has been the new dub of Pet Girl of Sakurasou.

A Lost Classic: Nobody is talking about God Mazinger finally getting released in English from Discotek and that kind of bums me out. The series was one I obsessed over when younger, especially because it was rare to find even raw footage of it lead alone subtitled. It was never subtitled in fact, so Discotek’s release is the first time it has ever been in English.

#anime #The 8th Son? Are You Kidding Me?#Ascendance of a Bookworm #Black Clover #Boruto #Boruto Naruto Next Generations #Bofuri #Cardfight!! Vanguard #Dragon Quest #Dragon Quest Dai no Daibouken #dragon quest the adventure of dai #Gundam Build Divers Re:rise #JuJutsu Kaisen #Keep YOur Hands Off Eizouken #MAJOR 2nd #Rent-a-girlfriend #Shadowverse

2 notes · View notes

rivalsforlife · 4 years

Note

38 & 49

38. Capcom suddenly announces that the Ace Attorney franchise has ended for good! Your reaction?

... Disappointed, but not surprised? I’m kind of going to assume the franchise is done if we don’t get any sort of announcement for TGS in September for the 20th anniversary. Like I genuinely do not know where the series is going at this point, because they kind of wrote themselves into a corner with the SOJ ending (despite the reason they chose that ending being the opposite?) Like... Phoenix has nowhere left to go as a protagonist, I don’t think he developed as a character at all over SOJ. (It has been a while since I played it, so I may be wrong, but still.) Apollo still hasn’t had a proper follow-up to AJ, but any shot of an Apollo-centric trilogy akin to the original trilogy was essentially dashed with DD, going back to those characters now would be weird, so either they’d have to retcon the SOJ ending and plan something for Apollo or have a Khura’in-focused trilogy (which wouldn’t make any sense because the central conflict of Khura’in was solved in SOJ.) Athena has the most room to grow, but Capcom hasn’t developed her enough so having her lead the next game would be a poor move financially, because lots of people don’t like Athena and wouldn’t want to buy the game unless Phoenix is in the title, whiiiich would be very bad story-wise for them because unless they do something radically different, Phoenix has nowhere to go!

And of course the DGS duology is wrapped up, and I don’t think it sold very well iirc (and the lack of overseas sales probably doesn’t help.) So I don’t think it’s likely they’d continue making stories in that universe, since DGS2 neatly tied up everything from DGS1. Similarly the AAI games have pretty much wrapped everything up, unless they want to do a disbarment-era Phoenix+Miles team-up game (which I would LOVE, personally, but that would mean going back to disbarred Phoenix which I doubt Capcom would do). Otherwise they could try to fit another game in the nine days between the end of AAI2 and disbarment but. they really shouldn’t. (Plus since AAI2 wasn’t localized I doubt an AAI3 would either, further hurting Capcom’s sales.)

They can continue to try and force their way with mainline but I hope they’re realizing they’ll have to shake up the formula a bit (I recently watched a video discussing different ways they could do this, like with a “campaign-style” game where there’s a Phoenix plot, Apollo plot, and Athena plot and each of them have like three cases and they’re linked -- I believe this is the video?) or it is going to get very dull. I’m not a fan of these completely isolated stories that they had for 456 where they pretty much drop plot threads as soon as the game ends. And I don’t think they can continue having Phoenix-centric games for long.

They could try to do another spin-off like the AAI games but with a different character, since AAI2 wrapped up Miles’ character development so there’s no point continuing with him unless they decide they’re brave enough to tackle disbarment era, or they could try something like DGS again... like maybe “skip a hundred years into the future ooh” but that could have implications for characters in mainline reproducing which would probably upset a lot of fans by retroactively confirming/denying ships.

... And wow I think I went far off topic on the question here hahaha oops. Uh overall I’d be mostly disappointed in myself for never playing an ace attorney game blind. I kind of sped through youtube playthroughs so I’ve never had the thrill of figuring things out myself, and since I only got into this franchise in 2018 I’ll never be able to feel the excitement of waiting and theorizing on a new game. But that’s all personal stuff. Honestly right now is about as good an ending point as we had since T&T, I think, with the AAI and DGS duologies done, SOJ having a relatively open ending, and I’ve long since given up on any AJ plotlines being tackled again... so. There’s definitely issues that I would like resolved but I’m not sure if a new game would ever resolve those, so fanfiction it is.

49. Opinion on recurring witnesses? (Wendy Oldbag, Lotta Hart, Larry Butz, etc.)

On the one hand, I like the idea of recurring witnesses so that we get to see people we know again and know that our actions had an impact (like bringing back Adrian Andrews in T&T, it was so good to see that she’s grown!) and there are definitely characters I wouldn’t mind coming back as smaller witnesses so they don’t take over the plot but also we know they’re okay. ... I just wish they weren’t so often the most annoying characters in the world or made into complete caricatures!

Ugh. Oldbag, admittedly, had a little bit of a character in Turnabout Samurai. After that every appearance of hers is basically there just to harass Miles, and for everyone to go “haha! Oh, Oldbag!” so, she can die. Lotta returning always means “look! There’s a photograph that looks like something supernatural but really isn’t! Also, have ya heard my southern accent?” and admittedly she’s one of the less annoying of the bunch but still. Larry has pretty much been made into a caricature after AA1, where his role is to hit on women and absolutely refuse to testify about anything to the point of absurdity. ... Like there’s “here’s Larry he gets into trouble all the time and he left out this critical detail because he’s forgetful, but he means well!” and there’s whatever the hell went on in AAI where he deliberately refused to testify honestly under threat of being arrested for murder?

I guess overall I don’t hate the idea of recurring witnesses, but I do hate how it’s often executed!

#asks #this one got long oops

7 notes · View notes