#what the fuck is it with him and voicing the main characters of anime about the morality of cannibalism

[nerosdayinanime]

kny x tokyo ghoul au

was thinking abt following tokyo ghoul's storyline and making nezuko get organ donor ghoul-ified like kaneki but on second thought that seems a bit boring. the slayer marks (tanjiro's specifically- that one frame in the red light district arc where he looks like hes absolutely lost it) made me think of the sort of insanity thing with centipede kaneki when he started eating ghouls. (nezuko's bout of literally losing control of herself beating daki is probably a bit closer tho) dont know what to do with that. tanjiro being human and having to keep nezuko safe with her new life as a half-ghoul is pretty cool but i dont know. could make it different

[007reid]

request for reader having dated spencer (early seasons) and then she finds out what happened w lila </3

hi hi hi!! sorry this took a while hun :( you were vague with your req so i just wrote whatever i wanted to write and because of that i meant for this to be a drabble but it didn't work out that way... enjoy!

secrets. spencer reid

part 1 | part 2

pairing: spencer reid x jealous fem!reader, 1.8k

summary: spencer will never be able to escape the effortless wrath of derek morgan, not even when it's the weekends and breaking bad is playing and you're pulling on his hair.

warnings: no smut you filthy animals, though i did intend there to be smut im just in a fluffy mood rn :// tiny angst if you squint, spencer's blushin a LOT, morgan's evil, bickering and just cutesy couple stuff. me when.

spencer’s secret was the last thing that you were, and you know this.

you and spencer have been dating for three months now, not including the two months talking stage because spencer is deadly afraid of commitment, and between all that time, you’d say you’ve gotten to know spencer pretty well. you know him well enough to trust that he knows what’s best, anyway. it’s been three months, and spencer hasn’t uttered a word about you to his team, his family, and you understand why.

really. you do.

“they’ll never let me live in down,” spencer had whined, one person imminent on his mind. derek fucking morgan. spencer dreads just thinking about it, the teasing, the inappropriate jokes, the winks and the whistles. it’s dehumanizing. “when someone ask me or mention something about it, i will tell them. until then…”

the unspoken reason was there. spencer’s a talker, definitely a talker, but he doesn’t spend much time talking about himself. he never reveals a bit of himself unless he’s directly asked it, and he feels uncomfortable sharing otherwise. the team’s too used to spencer being physically and emotionally repellent to the female race to really ask about stuff like you anymore, and spender’s not too eager to share neither. not out of the blue. it’s unlike him. this you understand. 100%. locked safely in the noggin.

you never think much about it anyway. it doesn’t bother you. what bothers you, though, is secrets.

you know spencer has loads of those, tucked behind that carefree and open-hearted smile and attitude of his. you examine him carefully, searching his face for ticks—okay, maybe you were just looking really creepily because he’s pretty and you try to commit every feature into memory but you are, searching for ticks that is.

you know he hides things. somethings not worth bringing up again because it’ll only bring up bad memories. some other things, however, definitely worth mentioning again. you just have to find the right target questions. sometimes it feels like you’re dating a stranger, with how little you know about spencer’s life. sometimes it feels like you’re dating the love of your life. it’s all very relative.

you and spencer are cuddled up on the couch, breaking bad playing on the tv. it’s one of the shows spencer doesn’t like pointing out the scientific inaccuracies of because he’s too fond of the main character to really say that he’s wrong, and sometimes you miss his voice chiming in between all the movie’s dialogues, but you think the reason why he’s quiet today is because he’s not in the mood to talk. the last case’s gotten him pretty shaken up, and he’s still healing, head in your neck every night and when he pulls away your skin is damp with tears.

“you okay spence?” you say, moving your hand to tangle your fingers in his hair. he hums softly, and then you both suddenly hear the vibration from under your asses. spencer shifts around, digging his phone out from where it’s lodged in a random cushion of the sofa.

he groans inwardly, showing you the screen, not having to explain. in big letters, the caller says: bau--derek morgan.

“he usually never calls me on weekends,” spencer frowns, watching the phone vibrate. “you think i should answer?”

“he’s a friend,” you say, tucking a stray strand of hair under his ear. “answer him.”

“okay,” spencer says hesitantly, then swipes the green button on his screen. he clears his throat as the call connects. “you’re on speaker,” he warns, looking at you anxiously and then back to his phone again. morgan’s a wildcard, and spencer would have to hide his face everyday for the next three weeks in front of you if morgan happens to drop something embarrassing about him just out of pocket. spencer isn’t ready.

“not like there’s anyone with you to hear,” morgan scoffs, and didn’t let spencer answer before continuing. “the team’s planning on a bar night tomorrow—“

“the team?” spencer questions, suspicious. morgan sighs loudly.

“garcia and i,” he corrects reluctantly, “are planning for a team bonding night tomorrow. what do you say?”

“no.” spencer says immediately, looking at you and hope you get his unspoken answer. spencer never goes out on weekends, not unless it’s with you. with his highly demanding schedule at the bau, it’s rare that he has any time off at all, and it’s hard to maintain a healthy relationship that way. any time he gets to spend time with you he’d take.

“come on,” morgan says, enthusiastically. “when was the last time you properly went out, huh?”

“last month, when you and garcia planned another of these team bonding bar nights,” spencer says monotonously. he rolls his eyes. “morgan—“

“don’t be rolling your eyes at me now, genius,” morgan warns. you stifle a laugh, and spencer sends you a wounded look. you forget that they’re basically family, like siblings to knows each other to a tee. “listen, have some fun in your life. who knows, maybe we can find you another lila at the bar.” morgan’s tone is suggestive. and now, that got your full, undivided attention.

and spencer, predictably, looks like a deer caught in the headlights, looking at you in horror was you narrow your eyes at his screen. you prod at his leg, prompting him to answer so morgan can elaborate.

lila?

“i don’t think—“ spencer starts, but got immediately cut off.

“don’t lie and say you didn’t like it, lover boy,” morgan whistles and spencer cringes. “now that we’re talking about lila, actually—“ spencer’s mind is screaming, shut up shut up shut up! as morgan proceeds to feed you more information, completely oblivious to his sins. “do you guys still keep in touch? she looked pretty into you. never knew you had it in you til then, man--”

by now spencer’s beet red head to ears to toe and you can feel the heat radiating off of him, but also off of yourself. you’d say you’re a jealous woman. not too jealous but definitely not not jealous.

“morgan,” spencer starts again, voice a little wobbly and embarrassed and morgan laughs.

“seriously though, do you guys still talk? them eyes never lie,” and morgan sounds so casual, so nonchalant while destroying spencer’s life.

it’s not that spencer doesn’t want you to know about lila. he couldn’t careless if lila waltz into his life right now because he knows they would be nothing more than friends—you’re all he’s ever wanted and he would trade you for nothing. it’s just embarrassing, is all, him being exposed like this, and he feels smaller, feels like he’s actually 5’3 with the glare you’re sending him.

“anyway, that don’t matter,” morgan remains completely ignorant and in his own world and still on speaker. oh morgan. “i want to see you at our bar tomorrow. it’s a yes, right? good. i’ll tell garcia you said yes.”

“morgan!” spencer says quickly. “i have a gir—“

morgan hangs up.

spencer dreads looking at you, so he takes his time getting out the app and then clears all of the background apps on his phone. he doesn’t like seeing you mad and he can basically sense it, the fumes blowing out your ears.

“who’s lila?” you say casually and he looks up. he doesn’t mistake your tone for friendliness, your eyes are narrow and suspicious.

“someone on a case a while ago,” spencer responds honestly. because that’s all there was to lila. it’s not like he’s never had his first kiss before her, so she doesn’t even count as his first kiss (she’s his second) and other than that minute-long moment they shared there was nothing else remarkable. she just happens to the only girl the team knows about who’s spencer been involved with and they are encouraging to help him find another ‘lila.’

it’s all very complicated. and humiliating. he should’ve definitely told you the entire backstory beforehand, because it’s not scandalous or weird or anything. it’s innocent and harmless. but now the problem seems to be blown out of proportion.

“just someone?” you press. spencer hesitates. he hates lying, especially when he’s lying to you. his hesitation gives you all the answer you needed.

“we kissed once,” he says, and gawks at you for approval, for forgiveness. “but that was it. i swear.”

something awful bubbles in your stomach. you know spencer’s not lying, and it’s not worth getting upset with him about because it’s all in the past—it’s not like you go talking about your precious conquests to spencer anyway. but you can’t help the envy and jealousy boiling so hotly it makes you dizzy.

spencer feels obliged to fill you in, to patch up the little bump and to get back the sweet atmosphere that was before morgan called. he knew morgan would somehow manage to ruin his life in some kind of way. he knew it before he even accepted his call.

“she was an actress in this case we were working on and she just, i think, really liked me or something and she was in a pool when i came to see her just to ask some questions and she just pulled me—“

his rant got interrupted by you seizing him to a rough kiss, hands coming up to rest behind the nape of his neck and nails unconsciously digging into his skin. spencer remains mostly unresponsive and soft, surprised and don't know how to respond. you keep prying, teeth digging into the soft of his bottom lip and spencer starts nipping at you back, gentle like he always is.

it frustrates you, how hard it is to be frustrated at spencer. you pull away from him and spencer tilts his head curiously, lip shiny and eyes looking at you like he's never seen you before and he just looks so sweet, so innocent and eager, like a precious pup. you roll your eyes, swatting at his chest, annoyance and jealousy and anger evaporating from you like a cloud.

spencer licks his lips and you collapse back into him again, returning to the position you were before morgan so unmindfully interrupted your weekend. breaking bad continues to play on the tv. long limbs wraps around you and spencer presses a kiss in your hair.

"i'm not going tomorrow," he declares.

"you should," you say nonchalantly. you cuddle up closer to him, turning around until the both of your are facing each other, wiggling your way on top. you begin to trace stars on the exposed skin of his shoulder. "and maybe you should bring someone with you. just to act as a guard for future lila's. maybe you can introduce that person too," you flick your hair behind your back and shrugs at spencer's amused smile. "it's just a thought."

"okay," he says quietly, eyes so soft. "okay. who do you suggest i bring?"

"that's for you to figure out, doctor reid," you say flippantly, turning back to the tv. "now shush."

[campbell-rose]

Alastor Redesign

Omg there’s like over 70 people following me – guys I'm o///O flattered and flabbergasted. 

Anyway, onto today’s main event, Alastor. I hate Alastor’s og design, I hate his twig waist and his shoulder pads and the way you can’t see his antlers next to his ears, and his bow tie ugh viv please and his HAIR what even is that??? Not even mentioning that nothing about his design is really like a focal point. There’s no one thing that’s particularly interesting. At least before this he had that cathedral window looking cross on his undershirt that I found interesting. Nothing about his says he’s from the 1930’s other than dialogue. 

I wanted him to be in greyscale because that’s the coolest aesthetic, and colored photos weren’t a thing until way after the 30s. Recently I saw jjk, and Jogo’s teeth threw me because at some points I thought he was just straight up toothless. But then when I started this design, that colored tooth look spoke to me. Initially his teeth were yellow to look gross like he never brushes them, but then I was like ‘ayo wait, he’s literally a cannibal’, thus his vibrant red teeth to really pop against his greyscale. Initially his undershirt was white, but I feel like that was too much contrast and white is typically innocence, so by instead having a deep red it shows he’s just straight up bloodthirsty underneath his formal appearance. I also considered it being black, but then he looked like a pastor, and I wasn’t too much of a fan of it. The idea of the red on his design is that it leads your eye down his design to take it all in, with his face being the focus. I gave him glasses because I like the way it obscures his eyes a bit and I imagine they do the anime thing where they glow and hide his eyes. I liked Viv’s idea of sinners having marks where they died, and I slicked his hair back to show it off very prominently. His antlers are larger, I gave him cute lil deer ears. Also, under his suit he is lowkey buff. I feel like a serial killer should at least look physically capable of taking someone down not whatever the fuck viv’s nasty twig men can do. Like, in that comic with the cute sheep girl, when Alastor goes demon mode his body looks so snappable I just wanna like grab his waist in my hands and break it like a twig. I also tried to keep his design simple as if this were for animation, I know pinstripes are complicated and so are antlers but other than that I tried to keep his design basic. 

If I were to rewrite him based solely on the pilot, I honestly wouldn’t change a thing. Alastor is a decent character, his voice actor gives him life, the radio filter is cool, and nothing he did made me want to break my screen (ANGELDUST). The only thing I'd change would be his position in hell. Like, viv’s hell is so wack and I hate it, she’s got the princes, then the goetia and the overlords and then sinners and blah blah, it’s a lot to keep track of, not even mentioning the rings and circles thing. I think Alastor should have had dealings with hell as a human, maybe he routinely did sacrifices or something, and he made a deal with the archdemon Alastor and when he died like... uuhhhhhhh. Maybe through connections he’s gained more power? Idk, I just know I hate the idea of his dying and then having like the bestest most powerful demon powers despite not being hellborn. It’s got this mary sue stench. I’ll figure it out, maybe, who knows. 

I’m not gonna start rewriting since there’s nothing to go off of and alter yet, so that’s gonna have to wait until the show actually drops before anything concrete happens lol. 

Also the sheep girl is a sinner that reoccurs in the show now so sorry I don’t make the rules, you can’t give me a cute sheep girl and try to take her away, I’m gonna redesign her and shove her into the plot as someone looking for redemption at the hotel

[doubleca5t]

one of the lowkey funniest parts of Soul Eater is how one of the main running gags throughout the show is that Spirit is constantly trying to hang out with Maka and develop some kind of relationship with her, but he is given no opportunity to do so because Maka just fucking hates him and at first it makes sense cause he's a letch and he cheated on her mom so like yeah he kinda sucks but then as the show goes on you start to think "hey, Maka always talks so glowingly about her mom and Lord Death keeps talking about what a prodigy she was and how amazing she is, are we ever gonna actually MEET this woman??" and then after like ten episodes of wondering that Crona has a heart to heart with Maka and he's like "hey what happened to your mom anyway?" and then Maka reveals that her mom is just.... gone???? like she got divorced from Spirit and just kinda went out for a pack of cigarettes and never came back??? and THEN when Crona asks if Maka has a favorite memory of her mom, Maka replies that it's when she got the divorce??? and it's like holy shit Spirit might legitimately be the biggest faildad in all of anime like imagine being so cringe that your daughter will only spend time with you if she loses a bet and is constantly comparing you negatively to the mother who literally abandoned her in the middle of her childhood with no explanation what a pathetic little soggy donut of a man he is I cannot think of a more fitting character to have been voiced by vince lasagna

[so-this-is-hell]

Ok I watched the leaked episodes

Let’s start with the positives! I love positives!

- Alex Brightman put his whole Alexussy into this shit oh my god, Pentious and Adam actually sound really good. Adam singing is also really really good. Alex can sing in character and carry things well and I’m glad now he’s part of the project. Because at least it’ll be bearable if I see the other episodes.

-Vox is actually weirdly really compelling? Like I actually ended up enjoying the vibe he’s got and his own voice grew on me, I know it’s not what people wanted but it works well.

-Nifty’s voice is pretty ok, so is Charlie’s. They’re some of the better voices of the cast, Alastor’s performance was uh. It wasn’t bad so there’s that!

-the opening exposition was needed but also a bit hamfisted- wait shit the positives- uh, I love the direction it went? Art wise?

-the songs are pretty good, they get you from point A to point B, and at least wasn’t Poison levels of cringe in writing.

-Charlie actually helping Pentious in episode 2 try to repent and be a better person actually feels nice, like a crumb of what the show should of be-

…

Ok let’s get to the point.

-the episodes clearly are trying to shove as much of the plot as humanly possible, to the point that you get whiplash.

-Angel Dust, Vaggie, Valentino, Husk all have voices that either do not fit, crack from the pressure to perform, or are trying so hard to mimic the previous voice that it’s actually worrying. The Angel dust one in particular I’ll get to when I get to the point.

-The plot starts with the main antagonist, literally telling Charlie that her plan is pointless and she should give up. There’s no actual “I want” song to counter this, unless you count the song where Adam mocks her for trying and tells her the exterminations will happen twice a year now.

-Pentious at least wasn’t a creep like i was fearing in the script, but he comes off too pathetic? Like I know he was pathetic and that’s the point but why the fuck does he want to be equal to the Vees now? Didn’t he want to rule over hell himself? I know the instagram had him crop himself into pictures with the Vees but remember those aren’t canon!

-I realized I was able to hop in because I had Wikipedia level knowledge of these characters to the point they click in my head (and enough to where Alastor, Charlie, Vaggie and Husk all felt a little off but that’s neither here nor there). But god I cannot imagine being a new person trying to jump into this show, this is bad. None of the characters get actually introduced outside of Charlie, the show references the pilot which isn’t part of the show so new audiences have no idea what they’re talking about, and the staff gets actually introduced in episode 2. EPISODE 2, TO PENTIOUS!? GIRLIE POP HAVE HIM COME EPISODE 1 THEN?

-Animation that’s either too floaty, too janky, too stiff or straight up traced. Which I don’t blame the animators for, Mammon was busy buying 10,000 dollars worth of peacocks to bother paying them more than a dollar per frame. There’s no charm here.

-Where did the fucking cat key come from? No I’m serious. Where did it come from? It just kinda exists now.

-Alastor’s commercial is just straight up MEAN and he’s often more mean than chaotic, which I know is ironic since he wasn’t a good person and I wasn’t expecting him to be but it’s to a point where it’s not even fun mean. He literally called Charlie’s endeavor “Daddy issues”. It felt like he was just there to slap Charlie in the face.

-Angel Dust rant is gonna be so long that I saved it for last.

I have to put it under the read more because of talk of SA! Fun!

Ok.

I’m saying this as someone who loved him from the pilot and was willing to excuse his behavior as “flaws he can work on” since Addict and everything else proved that there was more under the surface and he was a character that could change and grow and-

…

…

Angel dust, the rape victim… the guy running away from his abuser…

The Angel dust who has traumatic episodes so fucking graphic that he flashes back to them when he’s performing.

Saying “yeah no, fucking sexually exploit me! It turns me on!”

Viv, I know you’re not reading this but I mean this genuinely.

Fuck you.

As someone who’s family has experienced sexual abuse, as someone who’s family still has CPTSD because men in power decide to exploit them… how fuckin dare you make a character enjoy their own exploitation.

This isn’t me kink shaming a sexual character! He can be sexual and like sex! It’s never been the problem and hell it could of been liberation to have sex he deserves.

But no.

Let’s make the SA victim into the sexual harassment character, let’s make the SA victim the Stolas of the show where he wears down his love interest so thin that they have to give up.

Let’s make the SA victim still work under his shitty abuser, and make that into a joke as the abuser mentions wanting to rape everyone in the hotel.

Don’t pay to watch this show, I mean it.

Pirate it.

Hell don’t even watch it, find something better to watch. I’ve been binging anime as of late and I still like captain lazerhawk.

[unabashednightmarepizza]

𝐼𝑠𝑒𝑘𝑎𝑖'𝑑 𝐼𝑛𝑡𝑜 𝑇𝑒𝑦𝑣𝑎𝑡

Part 2

Life is strange.

You were in your world and doing godforsaken homeworks from your teachers and laying down idly while obsessing over maybe that game you started to obsess over... Then-

Now, seeing yourself in what appeared to be a godly attire in a gameworld that you barely knew wasn't on your list

Besides, how did you even come here?? You weren't actively trying to shift-

"Paimon thinks they are a bit pale..." she said while poking your arm that, surprisingly enough, didn't break or fall off during your fall. Hearing the familiar child voice of her, you widened your eyes and sat up on your hands and knees, letting out a high screech after throwing a comment.

"And Y/N can hear you, whoever you are." you groaned and they both screamed on top of their lungs much like you in fright, hugging each other thightly.

But... Why were you slapping your cheeks?

"This is insane... I didn't think those creepy and weird Isekai anime thing would happen to me!" you mumbled in deep shock, looking around yourself and seeing all the vibrant colors of Teyvat, the ones you were so used to seeing on screen...

Then came another startling thought: There were every kind of monsters, slimes, Hilichurls and even more dangerous and hard-to-kill ones.

Before you could freak out even more Aether, as the sweetheart he was, helped you, with Paimon finding something to burn to warm you up

They wondered how you were here, perhaps you also fell down like him and his sister and now were stuck? Since you looked, and still did, really horrified to find yourself here. But yet again, your looks was much different than anyone he had seen.

Shining bright eyes with sharp star shaped irises... They were mesmerizing, so alluring and so full of wonders, power as if they held the answers to all questions...

Where were you from?

But, apart from your obviously tall body, like really tall, and your star-like eyes which he found to be cute, there was another fact that stood out and made him realize how much trouble he would find himself in:

Your behaviour too which was becoming... concerning the poor boy.

Because who the fuck just kills an entire horde of elementals with just a quick flick of their... hand through sending golden waves singlehandedly with a cute smile and excited skip in their steps? Just how unhinged are you?

So, that was the first time you met the blonde who was way too pretty for a boy Aether and his cute companion Paimon, not that you didn't know them already.

" I think I will die very young, like very young..."

"Nah, you are the main character in this game. If you die, the game is over."

*Cue tripping into the lake headfirst but still managing to breathe with a thumbs up*

You just gave the biggest spoiler to anyone who would understand you but poor Aether, tho he tried to understand your words, didn't know shit about what you said.

Now, obviously, you couldn't tell them everything... That would, what, fuck with the order? The Heavenly Cosmic Rules? Whatever their names were, you really didn't want to anger anyone but also really wished to fuck with people.

Not now tho, you had to stay alive for that one.

But Aether had his own suspicions. He had been around long enough to know that he couldn't trust everyone but yet again... He needed another actual human who he could seek comfort when needed, be sure that they would have his back...

Poor, touch-starved boy ಥ⁠‿⁠ಥ

And he couldn't lie: You were funny as you tried to grab Paimon and squeeze her thightly to your chest, and even managed to kill a few of the hilichurls that came out of nowhere from behind your group...

Then there was the red tint of his cheeks, when you turned to look at him excitedly( not knowing that this was what you always wanted to do) and seeked his approval as if you needed it.

I mean, you were strong and pretty, a little bit too odd and obsessed with death and never took something serious, always praised him( God knew he needed that) and patted his head, even cooking delicious food that he never heard of before...

....

Exactly what he needed in another company!

"Hey,um, since you also came from another world probably... Whose language and words I absolutely don't understand, how about we stick together? I mean, I-I wouldn't want a woman to be alone, not that you can't take care of yourself, I just saw you-" he stammered nervously, absolutely not wanting to make you uncomfortable. But as you stared at the boy with a blush as his golden eyes looked at everything but you, there was only one single thought:

Hehehe cute ｡⁠◕⁠‿⁠◕⁠｡

"No problem, it would actually be amazing since I know nothing about this world!" (⁠ ⁠╹⁠▽⁠╹⁠ ⁠)

Lie, not completely but still a lie

But come on, his stutter was cute and besides he needed to have... a human sized companion in case things got so very wrong

Whether you were the human companion or not... Well, was unknown.

The poor, still-innocent Aether was eager to know your story. Where you were from, whether you came from another world like him too, how you used that power you obviously had but you had no idea of having it in the first place...

Poor boi was just so touch-starved, and had been so lonely until he stumbled upon Paimon two months after he woke up and one month later, you.

Besides, Paimon was not affectionate in the way he wished... More like, she was an emergency food~

"For the last time, Paimon is NOT AN EMERGENCY FOOD!"

Oh how you always loved watching her get riled up so easily

You three were each other's everything from now on.

So that was how you started to have adventures while trying hard to not to die. Paimon would offer her funny thoughts while sometimes giving really useful info, Aether would often cook for all three of you until you learnt how to make most of the food known here to help him.

He was already doing a lot by protecting you and making sure that none of the hilichurls were eating you

Though soon, his protection contract you did between the two of you unofficially came to an end when an excited young scout named Amber found you three and brought you to-

"Holy shit, Monstadt is even more beautiful in real life!" you exclaimed excitedly as Amber watched you three run happily, looking at everything in astonishment as if she was the one who created the city, nodding her head proudly at what you said. "The rumors don't do enough justice to us! Of course the real thing is much better!"

Poor girl... If only she knew that this world was actually a game and you were talking about that by saying "in real life".

Or whatver concept it was.

Even though the quality of the game was *chef kiss*, nothing could have prepared you for the gentle breeze that flew past you, how it made you shiver pleasantly as your hair danced around, the air of wine and... freedom filling your every cell.

This was definetly what home felt like.

You might not have enough knowledge about them, with being a new player and all and not having that obsession to know everything about them yet... But there was one thing obvious as your attention was on a certain florist: Her... obsession(?) over a certain redhead was very fucking obvious- was that a jewelry store?

Meanwhile, as Aether was left with a blue haired-cyro user who also had the same star eyes like you, trying to dodge all the flirty and suave comments... He searched for you desperately to get out of the situation he found himself in.

Because even if he was the fighter, you were the talker with a sweet voice and surprisingly very convincing when you wanted to be. Whether you were always like that was a mystery to solve another day.

"Paimon could always ask them! Y/N likes Paimon the best after all, they said so!"

"wHaT? Y/N! IS THAT TRUE, AFTER ALL THE TIME WE SPENT-"

That was the other side of Aether you didn't see much through playing the game. He was more excited and more lively, always running around and helping people while making new friendships whereas Lumine was more well-kept and calm.

Though to him, your and Paimon's friendship meant the most and he would never let you, her or him forget about that.

You three were quite the Trio after all!

Besides, your talent of negotiation worked wonders with him since you decided to use it to braid his hair and force him to sleep.

But if there was one thing he despised about you, which was also the only one, was the attention span of a baby you had whenever you saw something either shiny or cute.

Or someone attractive and hot...

Which showed itself again when he was called upon Kaeya's, the Cavalry Captain's, commands for a "super secret mission" and he wasn't able to flee out.

"The other knights can't know about it! I can't ask for help from any other than you... Please, help me." Aether swore he saw the hint of a smirk on his face-

"What kind of secrecy is this?? And what's with that eyepatch?"

"Well, to be honest my little friend... My great grandfather was a pirate!"

Yep, he better find a way to get out of this soon (⁠・⁠∀⁠・⁠)

[writingmia]

i really liked your pjo headcannons post. i thought it was interesting, since most people always put physical touch as some of the main ll for the characters, esp leo n percy. do u have any other headcanons for either of them? it can be generic things, like what they would do with a s/o, or it can be weird shit idc? i swear ive read lit every single post to exist on tumblr n i need more

Oh my god thank you so much! This is so sweet. I'm surprised my first ever post is doing as well as it is. I expected to pass as pretty unnoticed in the beginning. I do have a lot of headcanons for the characters, but I'm going to do Leo in this one since he's my absolute favourite

Note: I haven't read the HOO books in a while, but I just finished my reread of PJO, so if any 'headcanon' is actually canon, please just pretend that I'm Uncle Rick himself.

Warnings: none

Leo Valdez Headcanons - loves sweet&spicy. If that's an option in the menu at the restaurant he went to, he will absolutely get it. He's kind of obsessed with it to the point where one might get worried about his taste buds

- if he had to choose between sweet and sour, he would absolutely pick sweet any day. That's not really the best considering he's very ADHD, even for a demigod and his intake of sugar doesn't really help much, but he just loves sweet. He doesn't care if it's chocolate-type sweet or sugar-sweet, he just likes it. You can bet that when he comes out of Bunker 9 after a long day, his tongue would be all types of colours because his 'meal' for the day was whatever candy was in his stash of sweets

- now if you made the choice between sweet, sour and spicy, he would struggle to pick

- he hates coffee. he's simply not a coffee guy. he thinks it tastes nasty, since we established he loves anything sweet and coffee is definitely not sweet. and he doesn't need it anyway, he's hyper as is. if anything, coffee makes him more tired

- i feel like he would get pretty into anime if he tried watching it. from the trending shonen, chainsaw man would be his fave, but in general he would be such a fan of one piece imo. he is that person who has unironically watched the whole thing like three times - he feels guilty when he isn't doing something productive since he feels this need to constantly be creating something, but he also loves to just get distracted by something and do his own thing for hours, even if there's no 'productive' outcome. so he 'wastes' his time and feels guilty the entire time, but the enjoyment he gets out of it evens out the guilt (what do you mean i'm not projecting on my favourite character... at all...)

- secretly a good singer. piper once caught him singing in the shower and then dragged him out and forced him to sing out loud because she was not expecting such an angelic voice to come out of him

- his go to karaoke song is 'cake by the ocean' by dnce

- i feel like he would learn how to play the guitar and he will be shockingly good at it. like he learns a song so fast and because his fingers are always doing something and tinkering with things, this is the perfect way for him to get his energy out while also having lots of fun

- i also feel like he would purposefully not tell anyone he learned the guitar and one day he just whips out this new talent of his and everyone's like '????'

- honestly, leo is just good at everything. if he wasn't a hephaestus kid, he would be a son of hermes, because he is such a jack of all trades. he is incredibly intelligent (which is canon, btw, and if it's not yes it fucking is have you seen the guy, he is borderline as smart as Annabeth, if not smarter, just in another flavour), but also anything he attempts to do, he succeeds in. he can draw, he can play the guitar, he can sing, he absolutely is a great dancer. you would expect he sucks at cooking but nope, there he goes, making a gourmet meal like it's nothing. he isn't much of a fighter, but if he needs to hold his ground, he can. he's just so versatile, you can barely catch him off guard with something he can't master in a few hours

I fucking love Leo, can you notice this from my post?? Anyway, I got too lazy to edit this after I wrote it, so if it's not grammatically perfect or things don't make sense, apologies and please let me know. I will post more headcanons because I frankly have too many. And a lot of AU ideas. I'm preparing one rn actually so... stay tuned? Maybe follow if you're interested in seeing more shit by me. - mia

[uninformedartist]

So the new helluva boss episode 💀

The Millie arc was nice, but felt forced in. After the numerous complaints about her this episode's arc of her felt shoved in like to say "there see we giving you something about Millie now shut up". Idk it was nice but forced at the same time.

Barbie was really bìtchy like all of Viv's female "villian" characters she felt like Versosika 2.0. And I'm sorry and no offense to her VA but Barbie's voice sounds like Nails on a chalkboard, was really annoying to me personally especially since she has the stereotypically bitchy personality too.

Now my main gripe with the episode was how she didn't want to see Blitz again, with good reason he ruined her life in whatever way but ABSOLUTELY HATED how Blitz was painted in relation to this. How *he* now wants to help her, how *he's* remorseful and sorry after what happened between them and it clearly hurt Barbie to the point she resents him so much she doesn't want to see him but the audience must feel sorry for Blitz regardless of the fact that HE hurt her, like fuck off I don't feel sorry for him.

I don't feel sympathy for him. He stalked her at the rehab, came in illegally through the window of the rehab, berated the staff there threatening to kill them, harassed and assaulted other demons to give him info about her/access to earth via asmodean crystals and stalked her online via her socials.

I don't give a rats ass how much he wants to make amends with her, he's a disgusting being thats abusive/destructive, knows no boundaries and invalidates Barbie's feelings and desire to not be associated with him at all. That's not caring about someone so fuck off with this narrative the writers are trying to paint about him being so sad 😔 Barbie is this way to him, he's just trying to help he is a good brother see he's remorseful and tried everything to get through to her even though she doesn't forgive him nor wants him anywhere near his life. I just know the fans are gonna hate on Barbie, doesn't help Viv gave her a bitchy personality and have the VA give her a bitchy voice.

Whoo, anyhow positives. The animation was nice, good backgrounds and such.

Closing negatives. Millie and Moxxie didn't need to dress up as different genders, or have Moxxie in drag/millie in butch clothing. Which lead to 🙂🙂🙂🙂 ANOTHER FUCKING INCEST JOKE, like I'm done I'm tired, wtf is it with the incest jokes, 1st it was weird vines between Stella and her brother and now this. I just know the fetishists in this fandom are going to have a field day with this episode because 😀😀 Viv is handing them this disgusting content on silverware.

Horrible episode in general 3/10

[nonhumanhottie]

The bad batch season 3 premier reactions

Ep 1 - confined

I fully forgot about this premier until I was eating lunch and it hit me oh I'm so intrigued

Palps being front and centre in the D+ poster delights me

Not them starting with tech's death lol

Why is it so fucking dark it's animation you have the ability to make it visible so easily

Omega baby I'm so sorry yeah it sucks to be a star wars main character huh

That's some sweeney todd coloured blood lmao

While palpatine cloning nonsense in ep ix is... a Choice, and this justification in other shows doesn't fix it, I just love palpatine shenanigans

Oh Omega has a pony tail... she's been there a while

'I wouldn't think twice about leaving you behind' he lied

The way this season starts with a child prisoner just going through it is brutal

Episode 2 - paths unknown

Isa is spreading her legs so wild on that throne what a power move

The boys!! Oh they look like fucking shit these poor bastards lol

Child clones out in the wild nooo poor babies

I love their little kiwi accents omg and they sound like actual teen boys this VA is great

Again with the bad lighting

Okay but why are space ships apparently so easy to steal in this galaxy?

Oh hey the writers remembered Hunter's abilities

Okay this plotline was a little predictable but the boys are charming at least

Episode 3 - shadow of tantiss

I hope this episode has something real juicy in it

I'm not really a fan of Crosshair's character so I kinda love seeing him miserable lmaoooo

Feels like Emerie doesn't have the best hygienic practices. A blood sample without cleaning the the skin???

Omg Nala Se telling Omega to leave oooohhh

PALPATINE!! SLAY!! What's this cheeky bastard up to?

Project necromancer???

I do love Crosshair's mean little voice

I live for how unphased Omega is about the Emperor

Oh Palpatine... God love him even his backup plans have backup plans

I do miss his slay outfits from when he was chancellor

Not Crosshair shading Tech like that

Omega murdered those troopers lmao

Does Omega have a high M-Count???

Oh bitch Omega is force sensitive

Overall a... fine premier lol

My favourite part was Palpatine but story beats were kinda predictable

[quitealotofsodapop]

One thing I don't think is mentioned enough is the fact that during the journey, a lot of Celestials took the opportunity to just... outright FUCK around with Wukong. Like, they'd send all sorts of demons their way intentionally just to intervene and say "Oh hey! You found my favorite pet!" Even Guanyin hadn't been innocent of this considering she had this huge fit over her pet goldfish. And if they weren't using their pets they were finding other methods to delay or otherwise force the Pilgrims off the beaten path and into danger out of some sort of test, spite, or pettiness.

Now, think about how in the both JTTW and Slow Boiled au Wukond actually was pregnant or not during the journey, and in Century au, the Heavenly Court BELIEVE he was pregnant. So imagine how those guys feel after they decided to fuck with Wukong put of spite and found out they unknowingly were stressing a pregnant monkey out!?

Yeah! Characters like Gold Star hide their identities to aid the main characters, while some are just... doing it for fun? Are they LARP-ing? And Monkey has Gold-Vision; why does he always not recognise these people even from his Celestial days?

Guanyin set up a whole honey trap knowing that half the squad ain't into it, and dropped the gang on their way home cus they missed 1 story event. The abbey with the Ginseng tree were pretty rude af. The Buddha's own servants tried to fleece the gang of the scriptures. Multiple kingdoms suffered cus King Who-Care shot somebody's bird-cousin, or knocked over a table of offerings. And the 28 Lunar Mansions took almost 13 years to realise that the Wood Wolf was missing.

Lao Tzu's lab assisants literally run off with his stuff and become demon lords for lulz (or they were the assisants that let the Rhino King/Buffalo out and were scared that they'd get in trouble). And lets not forget RHINO KING. Bruh, you somehow lost track of a gotdang celestial Bull-Rhino!?

Guanyin's not immune from this; TWO of her pets became horrific demons (Goldfish and Sai Taisui) and are arguably the most irredeemable of all the villains faced.

Lady Earth Flow/Albino Rat/Bat spirit is even described as Li Jing's adoptive daughter - how the f that happen?? How did he lose track of a whole kid so bad that she became a vampire-esque demon?

Manjusri let their cat (Azure Lion) out TWICE. And they cursed the Wuji kingdom for tossing them in a sewer for preeching.

After a point, I'd imagine Wukong in the stone egg aus would just throw his hands up and start yelling at the gods directly. He's even bolder in the Jttw Stone Egged au given that he has Macaque as back-up.

You know that chapter where Rhino King steals all of the Heavenly Army's powers and weapons, and the immortals are all infighting so hard that Wukong has to be the voice of reason?

Imagine a tiny hormonal monkey just going nuts at these gods. He's screaming in their faces. He's demanding Nezha lift him up so he can look General Li Jing in the eye. He's telling them what good are they as fighters if they only feel safe with their weapons and powers? Wukong has a *damn* good reason he ain't taking on Rhino King in a 1-v-1 rn, whats all these gods excuse?!

The gods are too surprised and intimidated to argue back. And you better believe a certain alchemist is getting a smack for letting a whole animal loose from his lab.

[starrclown]

☆ Have Tea With Me: Hazbin Hotel's trailer ☆

Welcome Matey's to my new series:

Have tea with me. 🫖🍵

Fancy ain't it? Matey's it's time we talk about the Hazbin Hotel trailer. I watched it recently and it has... problems. Look, Vivziepop dickriders stans if you have a problem with this post then kindly leave because I will be complaining quiet a bit. Okay at first let's get my complains across and how I would modify it.

☆PROBLEMS:

Alastors broadcast. Why the hell did THE RADIO DEMON make a TV commercial? Wouldn't that be a Vox type thing? Shouldn't he be making ya know, a radio commercial? Isn't his whole thing that he doesn't know modern day technology? Also, what the hell was the porn studio thing? Like that was part of the commercial. Was Alastor just looming over Angel while he was at work? Did Angel send in that footage? Why is Travis there? That commercial is so confusing and it's only 30 seconds.

The voices. Look I'm not gonna beat a dead horse, some of the voices are bad. I only really liked Charlie's and Vaggies. Vox's voice is just bad for his character. Alastor's sounds odd. What was so cool about Alastors voice is the radio type voice filter and the personality Bosco put in the character. Now the filter is weaker and he just sounds weaker. Angel's voice actually makes me wanna tear my ears off. Cherrie, (wiki confirmed by the way.) was made Australian after the pilot and was supposed to have a Australian accent. Maybe I'm just stupid but I did NOT hear a Australian accent. (This is NOT a dis at the voice actors. God damn they are trying their best.)

The Pride City is too purple. You can tell on multiple occasions that Vivziepop is trying to respond to criticism. If you don't know Pride's original color is purple so they turned up the purple in the city. Ya they did that to much.

The Angel's. Bro Adam and Lute are so fucking ugly. Why spoil the main antagonist of the series early? Like that's if Centerword (bomb show by the way) had The Nowhere King playing in the background for the trailer. (We will TALK about The Nowhere King when I talk about rewrite Alastor.) It makes no sense to show the bad guys NOW.

The animation. Oh my GOD. Dude at some points the animation is so fucking bad. The anatomy is odd and the values make me upset. My most hated scene is where that green skinned demon is being chased by the exterminator. The animation is so off and I can't explain it. The line art looks thinner. (Speaking of which why do both Angel and Andrelphus have diffrent outlines? It looks off.)

The premise changed. WHY DID YOU CHANGE THE PREMISE?? WHY ARE WE FIST FIGHTING HEAVEN NOW??? I will talk about this in a diffrent post cause it bothers me SO bad.

Huskerdust is cannon. Look, I LOVE Huskerdust but they should have waited man. I feel like they will be rushed and I'm scared for how they'll handle them. I also want to make a post about them cause I love this ship and I wanna explain their dynamic in my rewrite.

Both Charlie's and Alastors "demon" forms are so fucking weak now. Always so cool in the comic, now he just has black eyes. Wow, so scary, don't let the tenticals get me.

Luicifers wings. Two things. 1. They should have waited. Having the Lucifers wings being shown should have been a bigger deal. 2. HUSK HAS MORE DETAILS ON HIS WINGS. Husk has more details on his wings then the King of Hell, fallen angel. Just maul that over.

☆TOUCH UP? I DON'T KNOW:

Make Alastor technologically dumb. Have him make a radio broadcast and not a TV commercial.

Let the voice actors do their own thing. I think the issue is that the actors have to live up to who used to play the characters. Let them be fun! Let them be their own thing!

Spread colors around. Make diffrent building different colors to show different demons own the buildings.

DO NOT SHOW THE ANGELS. Make them ominous and something that should be feared. If ya wanna make some Angel's bad fine, but keep them ominous. Like instead of showing the extermination, show the bodies and destruction of Hell. Show small scenes of demons hiding, show Chalie crying over bodies, show businesses destroyed. Make it seem like a problem needing solved.

Okay I don't own a animation studio yet so I can't say much. Maybe donate some of the money for Broadway actors to the animation? Just a tea time thought.

KEEP THE PREMISE. YOU CAN MAKE A GOOD SHOW ABOUT BAD PEOPLE GETTING BETTER I SWEAR. KEEP MAKING THE SINNERS GET TO HEAVEN THE PREMISE VIVIANE PLEASE-

Keep Huskerdust. Just slow down. Oh my God make it seme like it would be a actual relationship. Like make them warm up to each other, talk about their both human and demon lives. (Fun fact: Husk is from Vegas and worked in a Casino. Mafia's actually messed around with Casino's back in the day. I know this cause one of my stories has a mafia member and a La gambler fall in love.) Have them help each other with their addictions. Just slow down.

This go for all tye characters. MAKE THEM LOOK LIKE DEMONS. (Wonderful advice I know. Just you get the general idea.)

Make Lucifers wings bat like. Biblically they became bat like. If ya don't wanna go down that route then make them more royal like. Just make them prettier.

I know this advice is messy but this was basically just touch ups and the potential for this show. This trailer is disappointing :/

Well Matey's tea time is over. Come back next tike and bring your own delicate little pastries.

1. I only came up with Have Tea With Me because if anyone ever asks a question I just wanna draw a scene of us having Tea.

2. I GOT MY AO3 ACCOUNT!!! I'm writing my first fan fiction!! Will post when it's out. My account is StarrClown 😘🫶

- ⭐️StarClown⭐️

[minniethemoocherda]

TRANSFORMERS ONE TRAILER OPINIONS UNDER THE CUT

Cons: 

I love Bumblebee! He is one of my favourite Transformer characters! But even way back when this film was announced, I don’t think that he should have been in this particular movie. Hasbro said they were hoping to make a trilogy and I always thought it would’ve made more sense to introduce him in a sequel. I always thought it would have made more sense for Ratchet or Jazz or Dion to fill the role that he appears to be playing in this movie. And in general I feel Bumblebee is played a bit too OOC and kinda annoying. 

I am not a fan of the robot designs for the main four. I feel as though their silhouettes are all too similar. Remove the colours and I could not tell them apart. 

Also why is Elita-One a motorcycle? That’s Arcee’s vehicle! Why can’t see be truck like she usually is! 

Neutral:

The animation is definitely good quality, but after Spiderverse and Mutant Mayhem, I was hoping for something more stylised

I need to see more of Megatron before I form opinions of his portrayal here. 

I would prefer Orion to be a librarian but I’m interested to see him as a miner. At least they didn’t make him a fucking cop again. 

I was not expecting the Quintessons to show up. I like their designs but it makes me wonder what the overall plot of this film will be if it is going to be about the revolution at all? 

I hope we get a lot of cameos even if they don't get main roles!

Not sure how I feel about the lore changes of the Transformers not being able to transform until Alpha Trion gives them what looks like T-cogs (I hope they are not Matrixes).

But again a lot of the lore changes I can’t fully form opinions on until I see them fully explored in the movie.

 I liked what we saw of Orion and D-16’s dynamic so far but I can’t really have more of an opinion until we see more footage. 

Pros: 

I surprisingly really liked Chris Hemsworth as Orion both voice wise and what we’ve seen of his personality. 

Similarly I also really like ScarJo as Elita-One and her personality from what we have seen so far. And I love Elita so even having her here at all is fantastic!

I think the Starscream, Soundwave and Shockwave designs are great, much more distinctive! 

It is also cool to see Arachnid get a spotlight in the trailer! It would be cool to see her play a main role in the plot! 

I am interested to see how they explore Cybertron here! Especially with it having more integrated organic life than i was expecting as well as the fact that our main four have never been to the surface 

Overall I am very excited for the movie! I am aware that I am probably being too nitpicky. I think I have to accept that how I personally would have told this story is probably not how they are going to tell it. And its probably not going to be as mature as I had hoped. 

But regardless of the trailers I will be seeing this on opening day anyway lol

[ponett]

I have now finally seen the Mario movie. It was Pretty Good. Here are my wordy thoughts on it. (I am going to spoil the entire movie. Duh.)

In many ways, the Mario movie does what I wish the first Sonic movie had done. They just took the characters and the premise and the world from the games, and made it a straightforward animated adventure movie. It's bright and colorful and remixes things JUST enough to include fun elements from multiple games, and it doesn't make Mario get adopted by James Marsden or whatever. It even has the music!

That's all you really need, right? Right...?

I'll get this out of the way up front. Chris Pratt was fine. He's fine

If anything, it really feels like they did the movie a disservice by letting us hear so little of the Mario voice in the previews. It took one scene for Pratt to disappear into the role for me. It was totally fine. If anything, I found Charlie Day's normal voice coming out of Luigi WAY more distracting, even if I did like him in the role.

Everyone else was pretty good, for the most part. Jack Black was obviously very good as Bowser, but I'm biased. Seth Rogen does the Seth Rogen laughs as Donkey Kong, but I thought DK was fun, too. (I liked his little rivalry with Mario where he was just constantly giving him shit.) The only casting choice I truly hated was Fred Armisen as Cranky Kong. I hated every line that came out of his mouth. He sounds atrocious. Just the worst. I swear to fucking god if they do a DKC movie and we have to hear him for 90 minutes

I did think Peach was lacking, but that was on the script, not Anya Taylor-Joy's performance. It's cool to see Peach fight, but it's one of those all too common instances where the writers put so much effort into making the main girl kick ass and be an effortlessly confident girlboss that they forgot to give her an actual personality. Not that I'd point to Super Princess Peach and its mood swing superpowers as positive representation or anything, but there's a happy middle ground, surely. Shrek was 22 years ago, just having the princess do flying kung fu kicks isn't enough.

Okay. With the voices out of the way, let's talk about the big picture:

It's way better than the words "Illumination Mario movie" implied, and I mostly enjoyed my time with it. The spirit of Mario is there 100%. But I'd also describe it as "ruthlessly efficient."

This was perhaps the main complaint critics had, and they were absolutely right. People have responded to these totally average reviews with "Well, what did you expect? Shakespeare?! It's MARIO!!" Like, yes, I would prefer it if the movie I paid to see had writing that was good instead of bad. What a shocker. My issue isn't that it's not "high-brow" enough. The problem is that it feels mercenary. It feels like an editor went through and deleted almost every line of dialogue that isn't some form of exposition, at the expense of the pacing. Any scene that's not a montage or some sort of action is kept as short as they could make it, with barely any room for embellishment, character interaction, or anything other than the bare minimum word count to hit all the typical Save the Cat Hollywood screenwriting 101 story beats to the letter. There aren't even as many jokes as you might think (and the ones that are there are extremely hit or miss, including a lot of the slapstick with Mario himself).

Mario and Peach's little arc together in the front half of the film is probably the worst example of this pacing. Even having read reviews that complained about how fast Peach goes from meeting Mario (by her admission the first other human she's ever met) to deciding to train him as the new savior of the Mushroom Kingdom, I was SHOCKED at how fast it was. They don't even lampshade it.

Peach takes Mario straight into the big training sequence where he learns how to use mushrooms and jump over platforming obstacles. Peach is apparently already a hypercompetent platforming pro and a great fighter, so there's no clear reason why she's taking the time to train this random guy to be half as good as her when the world is in danger. Then they set off on their adventure, Toad joins them, and we get a VERY brief travel montage. It's about thirty seconds total - just long enough to give Peach a line about how she wants to protect this beautiful world of hers to try and give her some stakes. We get the genre-mandated nighttime campfire heart to heart, which is exactly long enough to have Mario say he misses Luigi and to have Peach give the two sentence summary of her origin story and not a second longer. Then they reach the Kongs, and their big journey is complete. (They barely interact for the rest of the movie.) So much of the movie is like this - always ready to get on to the next scene as soon as a new one starts.

I'm not criticizing the script because I expect The Super Mario Bros. Movie to be a prestige drama - although there are certainly halfhearted attempts at a dramatic arc. The stuff with Mario's family was a fun enough idea, but again, ruthless efficiency. We get one quick scene with them at the start to give Mario some pathos, because I guess Save the Cat said he's gotta have some pathos. And then Mario gets his dad's approval amidst the action of the final battle in Brooklyn to resolve his arc, just so the movie can end as quickly as possible once Bowser is defeated. (Despite now having the approval of their family and their community back in Brooklyn, Mario and Luigi move to the Mushroom Kingdom off-screen without a single word dedicated to this decision, because that's where they live in the games.)

Look. I am not comparing it to The Godfather. Don't give me that shit. I am not asking for an extra half hour to explore Mario and Luigi's childhood trauma. I am not asking for the complex inner workings of the Mushroom Kingdom monarchy. I know this is gonna be a basic Hero's Journey adventure for kids. It just feels like it's turning down so many opportunities to have a little fun with the characters, to let them interact and play off of each other, to let there be some adventure on this adventure. This is the first time we've gotten to see these characters interact with fully voiced dialogue in a very, very long time! "Yeah, it's not High Art, but it's FUN!" Stories are fun! Character interactions are fun! The script could be having so much more fun!! It is adamantly against making the Story parts of this story-driven movie any more Fun than they functionally need to be!!!

Mario, Peach, and Toad's journey to find the Kongs is shorter than the training montage that precedes it. After the opening, Bowser mostly just sits in his castle and waits for the third act to start. Luigi's there, too, but he only gets one scene with Bowser and then the movie mostly forgets he exists until the climax. He doesn't even get to try and sneak out of Bowser's castle and get up to hijinx. He's just there to be a motivation for Mario, so he sits in a cage for half the movie. It's the bare outline of a script with action scenes added in.

Aside from the fact that it's Jack Black singing as Bowser, I feel like this overly-efficient script might be part of the reason why the "Peaches" scene stands out so much. It's a moment that didn't strictly need to be there to keep the plot moving or to provide an action setpiece. It's not even a reference to another Mario thing. It's just a fun and memorable little character moment that's there for its own sake. That's what the movie needed more of. To stop and smell the roses more often. To play in the space.

To be clear, this isn't a unique problem with this movie. Critics have been noting for years that second acts are disappearing from big Hollywood movies in favor of the Act I plot setup and the Act III action, even though Act II is supposed to be where you get to explore your actual premise. And lots of animated movies give me this exact same vibe of being too "screenwriterly," or feeling like they had an executive breathing down their necks and demanding changes based on focus testing. But these common issues are why I come away mostly feeling like the movie is on the better end of "average," rather than totally blowing my mind. You have seen this movie many times before, just not with Mario in it.

And, of course, there's the music. The score by Brian Tyler based on various classic Mario and Donkey Kong tunes (frustratingly all attributed to Koji Kondo) is absolutely beautiful, but it's unfortunately frequently overshadowed by the licensed music. Everyone already complained about things like the use of Take On Me in place of a lovingly arranged DKC medley, but it feels illustrative of the tug of war the movie is caught in the middle of, between wanting to be a lavishly faithful Mario movie and wanting to be a generic tentpole animated adventure movie. Every single licensed song used is the most obvious, overused song they could have picked for the scene. It reeks of cynical executive meddling and it took me out of the movie every time.

But there really was a lot of care and love put into this movie - more than probably any other video game movie ever made, not that that's a high bar. I don't want to underplay that too much amidst all my complaints spurred by the absolutely insane response to the reviews.

Aside from the countless background references that people will be picking apart for years, touches like the Captain Toad tune playing in the background of Toad's introduction or the Mario Kart 8 menu music playing in the kart garage really help bring it to another level of authenticity. I also enjoyed seeing some more obscure Mario enemies that felt like they were picked more for being fun to animate than for being nostalgic and marketable. No matter how many times I sarcastically pointed to the screen and deadpanned "reference. reference." I am not immune to noticing these things and smiling. I am not immune to the DK Rap. These alone don't make the movie good, but it's nice to have a video game movie that feels like it was made by people who like video games.

Most importantly, the animation is great throughout. It's leaps and bounds ahead of other Illumination work, and it's the best the Mario cast has ever looked. They even made Donkey Kong handsome, somehow. They're all so squishy and expressive, and they move so fluidly - especially in the action scenes. I particularly liked the more kinetic ones like the aerial Banzai Bill chase and the Mario Kart sequence. Truly, the Mad Max-inspired car battle on Rainbow Road where Mario literally does the speedrun shortcut is this movie firing on all cylinders.

Other, more hand-to-hand fights nail the Popeye-esque vibe Mario should be going for. He's an underdog who gets the shit kicked out of him by bigger, stronger opponents until he gets his signature powerup and turns the tables on them. My favorite animation of all probably came from the use of Cat Mario to turn the tide in the DK fight. They had so much fun making Mario move like a cat. Again, it feels like a choice made because it'd be fun to animate rather than just a nostalgia move.

It's that animation and that attention to detail that carry the film, really. They elevate it from mediocrity into being a fun watch for a fan like me, albeit one I couldn't help but pick apart with Anthony as we watched it at home. I'm glad I saw it, but there's a lot of room to improve with the inevitable sequel. I hope they do. I can't deny that I had fun with the movie, but I hope next time that fun is partially because of the script instead of in spite of it.

Stray thoughts:

Overall, I would say I enjoyed the movie a lot more than Sonic 1, but probably not as much as Sonic 2. Not that these movies need to be pitted against each other.

I hated the Luma. I hated how hilarious they clearly thought the Luma was. They have the fucking Luma break the fourth wall to end the movie and start the credits. This is going to be a deep cut for fans of bad animated films, but the whole time I was just thinking of the little fish from Romeo & Juliet: Sealed With A Kiss who's just the director's kid saying random nonsense. You know I'm right

I rolled my eyes at the "our princess is in another castle" joke and several other jokes that would have been dated in a gamer webcomic 20 years ago but I guess they had to be there

How much of Brooklyn did Bowser's giant floating castle take out? We know 9/11 happened in this universe because the Freedom Tower is there, hasn't New York been through enough

I can't believe there's a Diskun easter egg

The dog is the most Illumination character design in the movie. It felt like it wandered on set from The Secret Life of Pets

Mario being a gamer and playing Kid Icarus of all things just made me remember this tweet:

Yes Anthony did get mad at me for being thirsty for Bowser

[cerastes]

The more we watch crappy high school romcoms or high school wish fulfillment shows where the ostracized-slash-lonely main character is actually a super genius and never misses with the gang, the easier it becomes to appreciate Oregairu, which even without the context of being in part explicitly a parody of the genre is already a good show, but it becomes even better the more you understand what genre it is mercilessly ripping to shreds without coming across as a *anime youtuber voice* deconstruction high on the smell of its own flatulence. To put it in other terms, while it is in fact a parody of the usual High School Loner Genius Romcom/Harem formula, it also actually cares to deliver a good story with its own themes and depth beyond “parody”.

Hachiman’s 4-D chess seemingly works at first, but it’s explicitly shown to be simple stopgap measures that don’t fix anything and may even make things worse in the long term, and throughout the story, it takes actually realizing that he’s burning bridges that he desperately wants and that he’s not some Loner Genius high schooler The Joker that has it all figured out, and only then does he actually start working his ass off to properly solve the problems in front of him through what is a refreshing combination of sheer humane, considerate solutions mixed with his inherent cunning, with the long term in mind. Yukinoshita is the genius hot girl that is good at academics and sports, but she is so utterly incapable of making meaningful connections with people that it doesn’t really help her at all because, well, not just in school but in life, you really need to know how to handle people and work together with them, no matter how intelligent or capable you are, and this weakness overshadows her strengths, completely negating her advantages. Yuigahama is the preppy popular girl that is charismatic and good looking, but pretty naive or even ‘dumb’ sometimes, but then it becomes clear that not only is she incredibly mature emotionally, she WILL be ruthless and assertive when she actually needs to be and isn’t some selfless little goober, but at the same time, she also doesn’t have anywhere or anyone she feels she truly belongs at or with until she meets these two other strays, whose bluntness and sincerity she appreciates greatly.

Then, a third of the story in, we are introduced to Iroha, who represents the cunning younger student that is always this beloved, charming girl who actually is a pretty cunning and even malicious trickster that always gets what she wants... Except, NO ONE falls for it for longer than maybe a few seconds, and then it turns out that she and Hachiman are just really compatible, and they become good friends in that sort of caustic, vitriolic way that is only natural for the two of them, cynic duo that they make.

And needless to say, Hachiman’s sister, Komachi, is immediately, frame one shown to not only have a perfectly believable relationship with Hachiman in that they dunk on each other on sight, but also REALLY wants Hachiman to start dating a girl already and actively tries to get him to grow closer to any of his lady friends. The closest to a siscon joke in Oregairu is when someone reacts to Hachiman’s (grounded and not exaggerated) protectiveness of her by asking “oh, are you a siscon?” to which he replies “what in the fuck are you talking about, no, I’m worried about my sister because she’s my sister, don’t be weird about this”.

Oregairu has this habit of consistently showing you tropes and archetypes you will very clearly recognize from formulaic anime and novels, and then immediately humanizes them, not enough to fully remove them from the context of “you are watching anime or reading a light novel”, and just to remove them from “you know exactly what to expect from This Character”. It’s at that point where the narrative mix-ups, as it were, begin: Is this character going to at all follow the usual role you’d expect from them in a romcom or harem, or is this character going to go off the rails and pleasantly surprise me?

And it always goes off the rail when it matters with Oregairu. It’s always a pleasant surprise with Oregairu.

[considerablecolors]

so anyways thinking about Muriel trying to learn more about humans and watching TV and such and how they would absolutely undeniably be OBSESSED with Bluey once they discovered it. how they would immediately feel connected to characters that are also learning more about the world around them everyday and being proud of themselves for slowly picking up on jokes for the older audience and such. which is a fun thought by itself. BUT THEN.

this brings to mind Muriel wanting to show Bluey to Crowley and Aziraphale (this takes place sometime after season 3 where they're all a family again), and Crowley's like "yeah everyone Below tried really hard to stop it from getting distributed in the US, big blow for us" to which Aziraphale replies "oh yes I spoke with the angel that worked on it, they got quite the promotion!"

anywho both of them try to get out of watching it because "it's a bloody kids show" and "I'm really not too fond of modern television" but Muriel is making puppy dog eyes so OBVIOUSLY they're gonna cave in eventually.

and at first they're not really paying TOO much attention, Aziraphale is charmed by the soundtrack and animation and Crowley does snort at "this isn't the eighties anymore" but like obviously they're not INTO it, they can just admittedly see why Muriel likes it. and then. AND THEN. THE BLUEY EFFECT.

pause. we all know of the Bluey phenomenon. like oh it's this kids show for babies like peppa pig to -> oh there's some fun jokes for the parents here the teachers really like it to -> oh god I'm a 22 year old mentally ill queer person who's been sobbing my eyes out on tiktok for ten minutes why didn't my dad ever love me.

something something the soft gentle tone of the show and its lessons combined with how honest and blunt they are about things combined with the kind and powerful parenting displayed by the main family. it breaks people. it heals wounds. it gets through to those repressed issues. we all know the bluey effect.

NOW. THAT'S FUCKING HUMANS. NOW IMAGINE THAT WITH THESE FUCKERS.

literally centuries worth of repressed trauma, NO emotional intelligence or awareness whatsoever, every mental barrier you can think of, literally mommy issues from GOD, and on top of it all, they're an angel and a demon right so obviously they don't need to worry about petty human things like "therapy" and "coping skills" and "talking through issues" and "boundaries" and ""self-worth"".

BLUEY WOULD FUCKING BREAK THEM.

like oh yes this is a charming show but I'm not sure it's quite for me and then BOOM. Aziraphale gets hit with "there's something going on with me" "does your outside voice sometimes say yes when your inside voice says no?" "I don't think I know how to relax" "I just... felt like I was doing everything wrong"

like wow angel are you actually crying over cartoon dogs you're so emotional and then BOOM. Crowley gets hit with the "you don't need to keep coming back to this place" "he should take care of himself because I still need him" "now you've got all that upset and angry in your hands- do you want to keep it?" "why can’t she just have the thing she wants?"

ALL OF A SUDDEN MURIEL LOOKS UP AND OH MY GOD I MADE MY DADS CRY I'VE NEVER SEEN THEM CRY BEFORE OH NO OH NO WHAT DO I DO UMMM NINA MAGGIE PLEASE COME TO THE BOOKSHOP I THINK I BROKE THEM ON ACCIDENT

i'm just saying if aziraphale and crowley had been blueypilled before then maybe there would've actually been some fucking nightingales ok.

[heyhellohihowareyou]

Why “Ball Game Tournament Time” is underrated as hell

BASEBALL EPISODE! BASEBALL EPISODE! Any anime that has a baseball episode in it is bound to get Hailey hooked!

And this one is about her Sugi boy! She’s all for him getting more screentime!

Out of context picture

I’m pretty sure that this was the episode that started the “Jiriki Hongan Revolution” intro (Correct me if I’m wrong) and since it’s tied as my fav AC intro, this episode gets points for starting it!

Baseball fanatic Koro is best Koro!

Anyways, did I mention I love baseball episodes because I love baseball episodes

Found a cute side character with freckles. Appreciate her NOW!

Two very good boys right here!

Kimura gets to do something! We must savor this moment while we still can!

Awww a cute Mimura!

I live for a badass Sugi boy (Even though this one is in Shindo’s head 😅)

Also, start the count for how many times Shindo looks like he’s about the piss himself

Ain’t this such a great episode! 3-E is succeeding and showing the main campus kids what’s what! Boy I sure hope no one ruins-

Bitch. Can you please stay out of my feel good sports episodes and not traumatize people at all? You’re bringing down the vibes man 😕

Well the girlies are back at least! Kind of wish we got to see them play though.

Kayano: “It’s just that the other team had huge jiggly boobs! It made me so made that I couldn’t concentrate!” Kaede sweetie you are not beating the allegations 🩷💜💙

Nothing to say except I like Maehara’s bewildered face

GAKUHOU STOP FUCKING MANIPULATING TEENAGERS FOR FUCK SAKE

I hate the man but those eyes though

Irina: “Aha! I think I get it! So you hit a ball with a stick!” Never change Irina. Never change.

Oh my god EVERYONE SHUT UP RIGHT NOW AND LOOK AT MY BOY!!!

Did I mention that I adore Sugino. Well, I ADORE SUGINO!!!

I swear to god Gakuhou doesn’t have life WHY ARE YOU HERE!?

Also, anyone else felt bad for Shindy this episode? Sure he was sort of a cocky bastard for the first part but man is he put through hell here.

Karmster using his bitch powers to good use (Yes, Karmster is his new name now)

Also this should be a meme template

I saw the glowing red eyes and my first thought was “Baki?”

Nothing to say except that I find Isogai’s little sigh cute

Bewildered Shindy

Gakuhou: “Crack a skull if need be.” Why aren’t you in jail yet?

We love Karmster’s little bitch face

Karmster: “Swing like you’re trying to kill us.” My guy is in distress

Nagisa: “That’s got him pretty shaken up.” Pretty Shaken- MY GUY IS TRAUMATIZED!

Again, poor Shindy. Like seriously get this boy some help.

I’ve caught two bright smiles in one screenshot!

Sugino: “Didn’t mean for things to get so crazy.” Shindy needs to go to therapy

Juuuust Karmster

Hadn’t mention before but I love listening to Sugi’s dubbed voice. For someone who shares a voice actor with the loud mouth that is Katsuki Bakugo his voice is nice to listen to

Sugino: “It was about being proud of my new friends. I wanted to show them off.” Sugino I fucking love you.

Welp that’s it. That was a good ass episode that we as a fandom should talk about more! It’s season 1’s version of leader time to me. In fact it’s part of my top ten favorite episodes of the series (I really need to make a list) I don’t say it that much but Sugino as a character brings me so much serotonin so watching this episode was a joy for me! Combined with the fact that I love baseball this episode was an absolute delight.

I keep forgetting how bad I feel for Shindy boy here. Like, he was just slightly cocky and he ended up getting manipulated left and right. Seriously, I wouldn’t be surprised if he ended up having nightmares about the 3-E students sniping him in his sleep or something.

Anyways, like I said. This is a good episode and we should really discuss it more. We should discuss Sugino more. DISCUSS THE BOY! <—— Barely discusses the boy in question