#okay by the time I finished writing this post I actually finished watching the episode a few hours ago | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

gavisuntiedboot · 11 months

Note

Whenever you have the time could you write about Gavi with a gf that is a bit reserved and touch starved, her love language is physical touch but she doesn't initiate it with Gavi because her ex always told her she is clingy and annoying so she's insecure about it, so Gavi tries to show her it's okay by always cuddling her, or touching her in any way. And then over time she starts to initiate the cuddling/touching and Gavi is so proud and happy because she finally feels comfortable with him

Your writing is amazing btw, I've decided to wait for you to finish Just Pretend completely to continue reading it because whenever I finish the last chapter you post I get so sad because the next one isn't out yet and I can't live in the agony of not knowing what happens next

Pls hold my hand

"Princess, why do you have a sweatshirt that says ‘clingy’ on it?”

You looked over to Gavi, who plopped himself down on the couch next to you, grabbing the remote to cue the Netflix show the two of you had been watching for the last several weeks, eager to finally watch another episode, as the two of you held your shared series’ to a sacred standard. With only two episodes left of the latest “Drive to Survive”, you didn’t want to delay the experience with too much conversation.

"Just and inside joke between me and my friends.” You said, avoiding eye contact and focusing on the bag of m&m’s in front of you.

“Your friends think you’re clingy?” He asked, turning to face you as his hoodie slipped from his head, messy brown locks on full display. One of the things you adored about Pablo was how much he was always trying to protect you and look out for you. You weren’t really be confrontational, and this lead to some mistreatment and being pushed over at times by those close to you. Well, you used to. Since you and Pablo started dating about 8 months ago, he had been there to defend you against people who wanted to take advantage, and often was the voice reminding you to stick up for yourself.

“No no, it’s not them. It’s … something to do with my ex boyfriend. Do you still want to know?”

Gavi tensed at this. Despite you never saying anything explicitly negative about your boyfriend, all the stories Gavi heard made him hate the man with a burning passion. He had slowly but surely messed you up in so many ways, and now as Pablo worked to slowly unravel the knots tightened around your heart, he couldn’t help but curse the man that tied them to begin with.

“Yeah. You can tell me.”

You shifted in your seat, rather uncomfortable with the topic, but not wanting to lie to your boyfriend.

“Well, remember that little love languages quiz I made you do? Well I did mine like years ago, and I got physical touch. Which makes sense right because that’s one of yours and we seem to be getting along pretty well.” Gavi giggled at this, wrapping an arm around your shoulder and causing you to tense.

“Well, my last boyfriend wasn’t super into like… touching? Fuck that sounds sexual. I mean he didn’t really like being touched or cuddling or all that couple stuff. Didn’t like holding hands either. And like this one time, he was watching something on his computer and I was feeling bold or whatever and tried to sit on his lap — he hated that though. He liked pushed me onto the floor and told me to stop being clingy.” You forced out a laugh, trying to lighten the mood and soften the look of horror that had occupied Gavi’s face.

“That was actually why I broke up with him. Anyways I didn’t hug any of my friends for a month after that, and when they finally confronted me and I told them why, they got this made me for me. See, look at the sleeve,” you said, stretching out your arm to show him the ‘pls hold my hand’ embroidered on the sleeve. “So now whenever I’m in my clingy sweatshirt, my friends give me a ton of hugs and stuff. It’s funny. I think.” You say, winching slightly by the fact that Pablo’s eyebrows are still pushed together in anger.

He muttered his grievances about your boyfriend while cuddling closer to you, pulling you into his chest. Your cheeks warmed as they were pressed against Gavi’s beating heart. Despite the long time you had been dating Pablo, you still were shy when it came to initiating any sort of affection. You were too scared of annoying him and pushing him further away. So you remained shy and reserved, only responding to the touches he initiated.

“Give me your hand, silly. Never been with a girl who came with instructions before. Maybe I should get you a pair of panties that say-“ his sentence abruptly ended with a pillow to the face. You giggled, trying to pull away from his grasp, but he just pulled you closer, wrapping both arms around you now.

“Oh no no princesa. You’re not going anywhere. Now hush and make mean comments about Verstappen with me.”

Over the next few weeks, Pablo had made an active effort to make you more comfortable with being physical with him. Whenever the two of you were out, he held your hand or had you two link arms. He hugged you and kissed you on the cheek or forehead, asking, “you don’t want to give me a kiss back, Amor?” Puppy dog eyes and adorable pout on display, you coyly returned the peck to his jutted out lip. He smiled widely, teeth almost blinding you. He returned with an attack, kissing you across both cheeks, and ending with a searing kiss to the lips.

His favorite time was when you two watched shows together. He would always pull you in close, cuddling with you next to him on the couch. He would lean close and whisper his comments about the show into your ear, making your skin erupt in goosebumps as his breath famed over. He would press kisses into your temples, breathing in the sweet smell of your hair, and reminding you how much he loved being around you.

“You’re so warm amor - my personal furnace. I love it.”

“Your skin is so soft, feels so nice.”

“I wish I never had to get up from beside you.”

After three weeks of hand holding, kisses, and encouragement, you finally found the confidence to approach Gavi to heal your touch starvation. You put on your clingy hoodie again, laying out snacks on the coffee table and firing up her Netflix.

“Princesa I’m here! Where are you?”

Running to the door, you wrapped both arms around Gavi’s neck, pulling him into you and greeting him with a firm kiss. As he recovered from the unexpected greeting, you informed him that you would be in the living room pulling up a new series. He followed closely after kicking off his shoes, and peeling off his Barca jacket, picking up the hoodie you had laid out for him.

“Did you change shampoos? Used to be peach and now it’s strawberry.”

“How could you tell?” You asked, grabbing some drinks as Pablo got comfy on the couch. He crossed his arms across his chest, legs spread and back slumped.

“My clothes smell different around the shoulders. That’s usually where your wet hair sits.” He looked over at you, watching your eyes go wide. “Amor, you know I love you, stop being surprised when I actually act like it. Now what are we watching?”

Taking a deep breath, you walked back over. You grabbed the remote, pressing play.

“The new season of Black Mirror is out and I’m dying to see it. Heard this one is creepier than normal.” As you explained, you walked over to Gavi. Before he could move to make space for you on the sofa, you draped yourself over his lap. Your legs were to his side, back pressed to his chest. Your arms wrapped around his torso, and you laid your head on his shoulder. ‘Deep breaths it’s okay he’s not going to push you off.’

Pablo was stunned for a moment, so much so that he remained motionless. Once the shock wore off and he felt your slight tremble, he brought his muscled arms around you, pulling you tightly against him, soft lips pressing to your pulse point and freeing a soft gasp from your throat. He rested his head atop yours, the pressure and warmth comforting and familiar.

“Look at you being bold cariño. If I knew it would get you to sit in my lap we would’ve done this months ago.” You giggled softly in response, turning to face him. You rested your forehead against his, gazing deeply into the deep brown pools of his eyes. Leaning in, his lips eagerly met yours, refusing to release you. When you finally pulled away, you resumed your comfortable position in Pablo’s embrace. “I’m so proud of you, princesa.” The two of you fell into s comfortable silence, enjoying the show, squeezing each other tighter whenever things got intense.

“Can I get a matching clingy hoodie for whenever I want cuddles?” Pablo asked, smiling at you from above.

“I don’t think so, Pablito. You would never take it off.”

~~~

Guys I have the worst headacheeeeee but yay I posted!

#gavisuntiedboot #pablo gavi x reader #pablo gavi #pablo gavi imagine #gavi x reader #gavi x you #fc barca #gavi imagine #pablo gavi x reader fluff #pablo gavi x y/n #gavi x yn #gavi #gavi fluff #pablo gavi fluff #gavi fic #pablo gavi fanfic #pablo gavi fanfiction #gavi fanfic

513 notes · View notes

terapsina · 8 months

Text

Now that the writers and actors strike is about to begin being felt (and as we wait for those greedy billion dollar companies who are refusing to negotiate fair pay and conditions to give up) here's 10 of my favorite (all around best) fully finished older series you should definitely check out if you haven't watched.

I mean it, these are the shows with continuously great writing and a satisfying endings that manage to actually deliver on their promises.

-----

1. Leverage - (containing 5 seasons, or 77 episodes) - trailer here.

Hitter, Hacker, Grifter, Thief and Mastermind. Heists and cons. Stealing from the rich and giving to their victims. They provide... leverage.

Meant for anyone who enjoys bad guys being the best good guys, who will burn down the lives of evil CEOs and then gloat in the background. Very satisfying.

Hands down the best example of a found family trope I've ever seen on screen. Barring none.

2. Killjoys - (containing 5 seasons, or 50 episodes) - trailer here.

Space Bounty Hunters. Another case of found family trope. Bisexual space princess assassin. Quippy sentient ship. Green alien goo. Evil lesbians (but like... in a good way). The warrant is all.

More seriously though, it's a story about three killjoys and the bounties they go after. Initially. And then they have to save the entire Quad from some very terrifying... stuff.

Contains one of the best friendships I've ever seen on television.

3. Orphan Black - (containing 5 seasons, or 50 episodes) - trailer here.

Found family trope but with clones.

Low level grifter sees a woman who looks exactly like her kill herself and plans to take over her identity long enough to cash out. Except then there's two other women who also look exactly like her. And apparently they're all clones and someone's killing them.

Enter a global conspiracy. Human experimentation. Lots of clone shenanigans. Some serial killings. And a few murders 💖.

4. Person of Interest - (containing 5 seasons, or 103 episodes) - trailer here.

Okay I'm beginning to see how I might have a found family trope issue.

Former CIA agent gets recruited by a reclusive billionaire computer programmer who developed a... machine that can predict acts of terror before they happen. But it also predicts 'irrelevant' acts of violence that will result in someone's death.

Unless someone interferes.

I'd really like to spoil some stuff to get you all to watch this one. But I'm going to maintain self control and just mention that early on they get a dog named Bear. Bear is a very good boy. Watch it for Bear.

Also for excellent commentary on rights of privacy, government surveillance and what does 'greater good' even mean? But mostly Bear.

5. 12 Monkeys - (containing 4 seasons, or 47 episodes) - trailer here.

The very best time travel show out there. What starts out as a confusing mess of causality basically exploding, by the end of the series all makes complete and total sense.

(when that final timey-whimey loop slid into place and revealed the entire pattern it was like a choir of angels started singing in the back of my head. It was freaking glorious).

Anyway, a man from a post apocalyptic future travels into the past to stop a plague from decimating nearly the entire world population.

He has the name of the man who released the virus and it's supposed to be a single trip. One trip. One bullet. Simple. Done.

Except then things keep escalating, and escalating until time begins eating its own tail and it might start looking like the end of the world might be a better ending than erasing all of time and space from reality.

Because when our guys screw it up, they screw it up GOOD.

And oh yeah... found family.

6. The Good Place - (containing 4 seasons, or 53 episodes) - trailer here.

A self-proclaimed Arizona dirtbag opens her eyes and finds out that she's dead and got accepted in the Good Place. Except that as soon as she arrives the Good Place starts glitching, and she really, REALLY needs to become a better person before she can be found out and kicked out to the Bad Place.

Luckily her assigned soulmate was a professor of ethics and moral philosophy.

One of the funniest, most thoughtful and clever comedies I've ever watched. Ever. The characters are delightful and by the time the final minute rolled around I had sobbed my heart out multiple times (which, as we all know, is a sign of the very best comedies out there).

As for the question of whether or not this too contains Found Fami- Yes! Obviously, yes.

7. Avatar: the Last Airbender - (containing 3 seasons, or 61 episodes) - intro here (couldn't locate the trailer but it's basically the same thing in this case).

The four nations lived in harmony. Until the Fire Nation attacked.

It's been a hundred years since the beginning of the war when two kids from the Southern Water Tribe find a boy frozen in ice and wake him up. A boy who's able to bend all four elements... though not very well.

Enter multi-nation flying road trip (thank you Appa, we love you most of all) as they try to find teachers for the Avatar and save the world.

Includes found family (shut up), amazing fight scenes, the most heartfelt and vivid characters ever, and the best example of a redemption arc actually done well.

8. Love Between Fairy and Devil - (containing 1 season, or 36 episodes) - trailer here.

This one gutted me. I'm saying this as a compliment. But it had to be said. Completely destroyed me. I just haven't been the same.

A love story between an Orchid Fairy and the leader of the Moon Tribe that starts out with her accidentally releasing him from millennia long imprisonment and then takes you through the caleidoscope of all possible human emotions (it's a body-swap comedy through the first part, then a romcom, then a dramatic romantic tale, and finally a tragic love story).

But it's such a satisfying slow burn.

And it carries this... humanity through the whole thing that makes it so visceral.

If you're a romantic who's very tired of instalove and characters dropping all their morals because 'ooh, attractive person' then you've got to watch this. Because this story does NOT take the easy road there.

(my more extensive rec for this series can be found here)

9. Star Wars: The Clone Wars - (containing 7 seasons, or 133 episodes) - fanmade trailer here (it was better than any of the official ones).

This series did so much. Introduced Ahsoka Tano, and made us love her. Gave names and faces and souls to the Clone Troopers (okay, it's the same face but you know what I mean), to a point where their endings during Order 66 destroyed me just as much as the ending of the Jedi Order. And somehow made me both love Anakin AND be a million times more angry with him.

There are some arcs in this series that might be a bit weaker. But there were some... god, there's a reason I love Clone Wars more than any other series or trilogy in this universe. And I'm not even a little ashamed to say it.

Must watch for Disaster Lineage shenanigans; for the vod'e; AND for the Jedi (who did their best okay? They always did their best 😭💔).

(and on the subject of found family... do I even need to comment)

10. Nikita - (containing 4 seasons, or 73 episodes) - trailer here.

A rogue assassin that escaped Division - covert government agency that takes recruits out of prison, fakes their deaths and then forces them to become spies and assassins - has come back to take it down. Brick by brick if she has to. With guns and explosives too when that works better.

Contains soooo many cool fight scenes. Is full of incredible characters you'll fall in love with (and hate with) very quickly. And most of all has an incredibly complex relationship of mentorship and friendship between two women that holds both great admiration and betrayal, real care and love as well as rage and hatred, forgiveness, mutual respect and an unbreakable kind of bond that so very rarely involves even one female character on TV, let alone two.

(as usual, found family tropes up the wazzoo).

-----

In conclusion. We all know there's going to be a large space between seasons of our favorite shows now (and some shows that aren't going to survive it). Let's fill that space with some excellent TV we haven't had a chance to see yet.

And direct the blame for the wait towards the right place (i.e. the studios).

358 notes · View notes

brucebocchi · 4 months

Text

Ranking every new anime I watched in 2023, Pt. 4: #5-1

hey, i just started a ko-fi for my writing and possible other creative outlets. this post will also be available there, so please check it out and consider tipping/donating as i'm currently between jobs. the tumblr version of part 1 can be found here, part 2 here, and part 3 here.

The list is complete! This took a lot of work but I'm over the moon to get this out there. Please consider leaving a tip if you've enjoyed reading.

Here goes, my top five anime of 2023:

5. Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead

Zom 100’s debut hit like a freight train, especially coming from a brand new studio. It had everything: Visceral satire of Japanese work culture, incredible animation, vibrant colors in unexpected places, clever cinematography, wish fulfillment for everyone who’s ever wanted to Stone Cold their boss, and most importantly: Zombie titties.

The premise is magnetic: When your job makes you feel like a zombie, an actual zombie apocalypse means certain freedom from the grind. Akira Tendo realizes that he can finally use the vacation time he amassed while being exploited and overworked at a legally dodgy black company, so he writes a bucket list of everything he’s ever wanted to do, with all intention of checking off every single line item before succumbing to a zombie bite. He manages to rescue his hunky fuckboy bestie from college, and they embark on a road trip across Japan to finish out the list, along with a beautiful, risk-averse tsundere and a big-tiddy German weeb.

It's a perfectly fine elevator pitch, and a welcome break from the guns-and-grit quagmire the zombie genre has been stuck in for the past two decades, but what makes any good zombie-flecked media resonate is the human element, which Zom 100 delivers expertly. You’re quickly given reason to care for all the characters, their motivations are clear and relatable, and you want to see them survive and live out their dreams. But more importantly, you just want to hang out with them through their hijinks. It even delves into more serious matters, like what we owe our parents as adults, the ways isolation and bitterness can drive people to act out in their worst moments, and even the factors that push abuse victims to stay with and even return to their abusers.

Above all, though, it’s a powerful (if extreme) story of finding joy in the direst circumstances. Akira, Kencho, and Shizuka are all kindhearted, well-meaning people whose situations kept them from what they truly wanted to do with their lives, and there’s something kinda beautiful to be found in them finding a new opportunity during the possible end of the world (Beatrix is a sweetie too, but aside from the whole zombie thing, she’s already exactly where she wants to be). The final arc of the season, in particular, looks you dead in the eye and asks you: If you were suddenly faced with the ultimate freedom, would you use the opportunity to better yourself, improve the lives of others, or do whatever the fuck you want at everyone else’s expense? You may not like the answer at first if you’re honest with yourself, and that’s okay. The world isn’t over, and there’s still time for you to be your best self.

Zom 100, unfortunately, fell prey to a cruel irony in the form of production issues. Bug Films is a new studio made up of a former team from OLM that was responsible for similarly gorgeous projects such as Komi Can’t Communicate and Summer Time Rendering. They clearly saw so much of themselves in Akira's workplace exploitation that they had to swing for the fences here. The firm he works for is named “ZLM” in this adaptation, for fuck’s sake, and he fully destroys his zombie boss in the first episode. But new studio or old, the anime industry is a grind, and Bug had trouble keeping up; animation quality did take a bit of a dip after the stunning first episode, and episodes were frequently delayed as the summer broadcast season wore on and ended without the entire seasonal run making airwaves. Hell, it was impossible to watch the final three episodes until just a few days before I could write this sentence.

For what Bug were able to pull off, though, Zom 100 is outstanding. The paintball-colored blood splatters everywhere are an instantly-iconic look that strike the balance between horror and spectacle. Everything and everyone looks gorgeously faithful to Kotaro Takata’s art, and delivers an appropriately cinematic look that the manga always deserved. I almost don’t know what else to tell you but that this show is a fucking blast.

There’s also a zombie shark. What more could you want?

4. Oshi no Ko

I spent a good chunk of 2023 just assuming Oshi no Ko was going to be a layup for anime of the year. Shortly after moving on from Kaguya-sama, I rushed to binge Aka Akasaka's subsequent manga in time for the anime's feature-length debut. I was taken in by OnK's bonkers premise and sudden dark turn and quickly fell in love with the characters, and my anticipation only grew. I had high expectations for the screen adaptation, but nothing could have prepared me for just how lovingly it all came together. This is as close to a perfect adaptation as you can find, and the same can be said about both the preceding and following entries on this list.

Oshi no Ko is an audiovisual feast. Doga Kobo cleaned up Mengo Yokoyari’s character designs just a smidge, but put just the right flourishes on them to make every single cast member instantly iconic. One look at Kana Arima’s eyes will tell you everything you need to know about the level of care put into the visual design of this anime. The performances are on point as well; though many of the main cast members are relative newcomers to the world of seiyuu, you can tell they truly came to understand the characters before they even recorded one line. I’ve already gushed about Rie Takahashi in earlier entries, but her turn as Ai Hoshino is easily one of the best voice performances all year. Takahashi makes a meal out of every single second Ai spends on screen and gives you every reason to care about her as a character.

Showbiz manga in general is obviously missing an audio element, and when an adaptation can expand on that aspect well, it can help turn even middling source material into something transcendent (see also: Rock!, Bocchi the). Music is central to Oshi no Ko, and the OP/ED combination is already iconic; YOASOBI’s “Idol” has had the best worldwide chart performance of any Japanese song ever, and the prolonged intro to Queen Bee’s “Mephisto” became a meme in Japan in the same vein as JJBA’s iconic use of “Roundabout.” Rather than taking manga characters’ word for it that someone is a terrible actor, we actually get to cringe along to an amateur actor’s hammy emoting. We get to see and hear what turned a fictional idol group into a national phenomenon rather than just see cute girls posing on the page. All of this is to say that while Oshi no Ko is an excellent manga, it needed a screen adaptation, and especially one of this quality.

Oshi no Ko deserves every shred of its success. I've never seen an anime make a splash this enormous with just its debut episode, even if it’s kind of cheating to say so because the first episode is almost literally a movie, and if I were to give an award for the best single episode of anime this year, it would be that one, hands down. Adapting the entire first volume into a feature-length debut was the correct move (mostly because it’s a tonal rollercoaster, and the Big Event that defines the entire story wouldn’t have happened until the fourth episode otherwise), and the investment paid dividends. The hype naturally died down a bit as the season wore on and settled into a more consistent tone and rhythm, but it remains an essential anime to 2023.

You may have noticed that I have said very little of what this show is actually about, and that’s by design: If you still don’t know the plot of Oshi no Ko’s first episode by now, I refuse to tell you: you need to go in blind. All I will say is that it is an idol anime that glorifies nothing. If you've read this far and still trust what I have to say about anime, I beg you to just take my word for it. It's an incredibly rewarding experience.

3. Scott Pilgrim Takes Off

There's just something so wonderful about taking in an adaptation of a work you’re already familiar with and knowing, almost instantaneously, that every single person working on it genuinely loved the source material and relished the opportunity to bring it to life. Nearly every single member of the original cast is in the dub (including the ones who went on to be MCU mainstays), Edgar Wright is back on as executive producer, Anamanaguchi reprise their soundtracking duties from the video game, and even Bryan Lee O’Malley himself helped co-write everything.

That last detail is probably the most important thing about this entire production: It’s not exactly a secret that the original Scott Pilgrim comics are very imperfect portrayals of a very imperfect young man. I knew reading them at the time that the comic did not have a great grasp on relationships and the dynamics between men and women, and that was at a time in my life when I myself was pretty terrible with and to women. O'Malley has said that he would only revisit Scott Pilgrim if it was “the right thing” and that he was leery of a straight retelling of a work he has since outgrown.

So instead, we have the Rebuild of Scott Pilgrim, to put it simply. Takes Off is a completely new story that reexamines the Scott Pilgrim comics, movie, and even game without undermining what came before it. This series is not a repudiation of Scott Pilgrim (the character or the franchise)’s flaws, nor is it purely fanservice; it splits the difference perfectly. It’s both more mature and completely self-indulgent. This show so easily could’ve marched to the familiar discourse drumbeat of “Scott isn’t the hero here” or “he’s actually not a good dude,” but it instead focuses on what should always be the second half of that sentence: “But Ramona still sees something in him.”

Yes, Ramona Flowers is effectively the protagonist of a new work that doesn’t even have her name on it, and it tackles some surprisingly necessary questions: What was her responsibility in creating seven evil exes in the first place? What made them evil? Are they even that evil? This series opens up entire worlds of possibilities within the extended cast and gleefully dives into them. Though Takes Off may not flesh out every single character, it does take its time with several of the ones who really did need a little more meat on their narrative bones, and even gives some characters new roles just because it would be fun to see them in new situations.

I still cannot believe they got Science Saru to make this show. “They made a Scott Pilgrim anime” and “They brought back the movie cast” are already good enough fodder for that Vince McMahon meme, but “It’s produced by the motherfuckers who made Devilman Crybaby” had me falling out of my chair. The animation maintains O'Malley's chunky, cartoony character designs and works wonders with line weights and simulated camera effects to give everything a tactile, weighty feel, like it’s somehow (and very appropriately) splitting the difference between a comic, a film, and even a video game. There’s a wide array of visual effects that helps to place all of Scott Pilgrim’s influences further on its sleeve: Dynamic action scenes, camera depth and chromatic aberration, and our beloved pixel art inserts. It looks like every Scott Pilgrim, everywhere, all at once.

The live action film’s cast did a (mostly) great job reprising their roles for animation, and there are some wildly unexpected cameos in there. Voice acting is not quite the same as stage or film acting, but everyone pulls their weight, and dialogue feels far more naturalistic than your average anime dub. Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Ellen Wong and, surprisingly, Chris Evans are outstanding in their respective roles. I’m gonna have to watch this again in Japanese, though. Fairouz Ai as Ramona, Aoi Koga as Knives, and Yuichi Nakamura as Lucas Lee? Sign me the fuck up.

This is not an apology or revision of Scott Pilgrim the character or work, it is a celebration that still acknowledges and improves on the flaws. If you’re a Scott Pilgrim fan who’d been clamoring for a proper cartoon adaptation, Takes Off may not exactly be what you’ve wanted, but it may be what you needed. Chances are pretty good that you’ve grown since the first time since you read, watched, or even played something with Scott Pilgrim’s name on it, and it’s a blessing to say that while the character may not have grown, Scott Pilgrim the franchise finally has.

2. Jujutsu Kaisen, season 2

I’m so glad I picked up JJK this year, if only because I would’ve otherwise been caught in a mudslide of memes I didn’t understand.

Season 2 follows in lockstep with the manga from where season 1 left off, beginning in extended flashback with the Hidden Inventory/Premature Death arc, covering Satoru Gojo and Suguru Geto’s high school life and the events that would eventually create the rift between them that came to shape Jujutsu Kaisen’s story. We see very different versions of Gojo and Geto here, much younger and more naive, but only marginally less powerful as they’re sent on an escort mission with the future of the jujutsu world in the balance. Because this is Jujutsu Kaisen, and because Jujutsu Kaisen is for masochists, nothing happens as planned.

We unfortunately do not get the precious slice-of-life hijinks the OP suggests, but if you watched season 1, you should know better by now than to trust an OP. While the initial arc does have its quieter and goofier moments (and some delicious homoerotic subtext), it wastes little time in declaring that this is a new version of the Jujutsu Kaisen anime: Lines are thinner, character models are looser, and action is buckwild. Two of the best fakeouts in the series happen in the span of five minutes. Those unfamiliar with the source material may have wondered for a bit why there needed to be a five-episode prequel arc to start the season, but the pieces would soon fall into place.

And then came Shibuya.

The Shibuya Incident arc was what made Jujutsu Kaisen a must-read in every new issue of Shonen Jump. It reset the status quo for the story and shaped it into something far beyond another “teenagers with special powers go to a school for teenagers with special powers” battle shonen. Needless to say, the hype for its anime adaptation was astronomical.

The Shibuya arc sets the stakes early: Nobody is safe and there may be no happy ending. Triumph is short-lived, and every threat is existential. Everyone who has been in the series up to this point plays a role, and you’re not going to like a lot of what’s needed of them. This arc punches you in the gut, repeatedly, and in between each blow is some of the most intense and innovative action you’ve ever seen. It will hurt, and you will beg for more.

I liked this arc a good amount in the manga, but by the end I was ready for it to be over. I didn’t get the hype around Toji, thought the deaths were cheap, and was so. FUCKING. sick of Mahito. Seeing it in fluid motion onscreen, though, everything just clicked for me and I couldn’t get enough. I fully get now why the girlies have been wetting themselves over Toji; the character modelers were HORNY horny this season. I see now how even the most unceremonious deaths fit into the narrative, or at least one will make perfect sense to me once Gege Akutami and I have a little chat :). And holy hell do I understand now that Mahito is one of the best shonen villains in the history of the medium, that sick bastard. Season 2 was my Rosetta stone for Jujutsu Kaisen; I see it all now. My sixth eye has been opened. Throughout heaven and earth, I alone am the literate one.

JJK’s second season has a markedly different feel from the first from a presentation standpoint, and I feel it’s for the better. Every aspect of the presentation is on point, and I want to call attention to the audio element: The production music, with a heavy focus on jazz piano, is wonderfully unique for the genre, and the voice acting remains top notch. These are banner performances from the likes of Yuichi Nakamura, Kenjiro Tsuda, Takahiro Sakurai, Asami Seto, and Nobunaga Shimazaki, but the performance that defines the Shibuya arc (and by extension the entire season) is Junya Enoki as Yuji Itadori.

Enoki’s been great this year in lead roles in goofy works like KamiKatsu and Girlfriend Girlfriend (not to mention minor roles in Skip and Loafer and the vending machine isekai), so it’s no surprise that he continues to crush it as JJK’s protagonist; Yuji Itadori is a goofy dude. But the Shibuya arc, for as much ground and as many characters as it covers, is ultimately Yuji’s story as he is forced, time and again, to endure the cycle of the “suffering builds character” meme. His peers and mentors in the first season told him repeatedly that the life of a jujutsu sorcerer is a short and unhappy one, and he now has to shoulder that burden for everyone. Enoki nails every single part of a wide spectrum of emotions Yuji is forced to endure over the course of the Shibuya arc, be it determination, naive confusion, or just pure unbridled trauma. If this isn’t the best voice performance of the year, it’s top five at worst.

Like every major battle shonen release in the age of social media, this season has had its detractors. Reviewers at Anime News Network kinda hated the story, but that’s something you take up with Gege Akutami (and get in line behind the manga readers). I've seen people complain about the animation. Which, like. If you don’t like the new visual style, sure, fine, that’s up to personal taste. But if you think this season isn’t well-animated, you just plain don’t know ball. It may not have a cohesive look, but that was the draw for me: Season 1 was good, but at times I felt like it looked a little too rigid, a little too shiny, a little too samey. Season 2, especially the Shibuya arc, looks like everything. Sometimes it looks like an action film, sometimes it looks like Mob Psycho 100, and at points it looks, most crucially, like Akutami’s most iconic panels brought to life, stroke for stroke.

The varying styles weren’t an accident: Nearly each episode had its own director, and those resumes cover top-tier animations like Mob Psycho, Devilman Crybaby, Kill la Kill, Heavenly Delusion, Oshi no Ko, FLCL, even Akira and goddamn Golden Boy. While the episodes don’t look entirely consistent from one to the next, the variance is less jarring and more “holy fuck, what am I going to see next?”. The looser style of animation is what Jujutsu Kaisen always needed; Akutami’s art is very loose and dynamic, and his action panels are borderline inscrutable at times. Season 2 nails the feel of JJK to a degree that its adaptation always needed and lets its directors, storyboarders, and animators run wild. At times, characters will look like they leapt right off the page; others, they will look like something you have never seen before in your life.

It is unfortunately impossible to talk about this season without also bringing up MAPPA’s working conditions, and how animators were frequently overworked against nigh-impossible deadlines. It was an open secret last year as Chainsaw Man aired that MAPPA’s animation schedule was a meat grinder, but that came bubbling to the surface quickly as JJK’s second season aired. Word got out midseason that MAPPA had its animators sign NDAs about their work conditions, but complaints still broke containment and several staffers took to social media to apologize for their work looking incomplete, and some even publicly announced that they are leaving the studio. It is stunning that the finished product looks the way it does under such conditions, and I respect the animators for putting in such incredible work, but something has to give. Several major series suffered from major delays this year, some of which I gave significant praise, but MAPPA is lucky that all of JJK came out on time. I wish I knew what could push them to treat their workers with the dignity and respect (and pay) they deserve, but that’s a conversation that covers much wider ground than just anime.

MAPPA has already announced that the series will continue through the next major arc. While there is quite a bit of it that I would love to see on screen, I can only hope that the animators get to rest. For now, though, we can be proud of what they made under duress, even if some will forever wonder what it would look like if the staff were treated like something a notch above cattle.

1. Frieren: Beyond Journey's End

Fucking hell. This is why I watch anime.

I was curious about this one because a couple major anitubers I watch had reviewed the manga and were effusive in their praise. I knew the anime adaptation was on the way, so I decided to hold off on reading and see what the anime would be like, and with Keiichiro Saito (director of Bocchi the Rock! and key animator for Oshi no Ko’s instantly-iconic OP) at the helm, my excitement was piqued. That guy turned a B-minus 4-koma into an innovative hit comedy, so what can he do with a beloved source material and the backing of a legacy studio like Madhouse?

I've had so much to say about Frieren since the premiere, and I still have so much to say now, but to talk about what I love about this show is to talk about everything about this show. When the first four episodes dropped, I described it as “Mushoku Tensei without the baggage,” and I stand by that. There were multiple points throughout Frieren’s first cour where I'd nearly forgotten that I wasn't watching Mushoku Tensei. Every single element is on point: The animation is fluid and expressive, backdrops are consistently gorgeous, voice performances are quickly memorable, and the music is evocative and instantly iconic. This is, plainly, one of the most beautiful pieces of television I have ever seen on nearly every level, be it visually, sonically, or thematically.

The initial four-episode debut was a masterclass in establishing the setting, building emotional investment into the characters, and slowly but deliberately laying out the premise of the season to come. The titular Frieren is an elf mage who, for a very brief decade of her millennium-long life, lent her skills to an adventuring party to slay the Demon King. Though she helped save the world, she was never one for stuff like adulation or socializing, so she breaks away from the group to continue her hobby of collecting various spells and arcana. She regroups with them after 50 years, having kept in contact with none of them, only to find them older and frailer. The party’s leader, the hero Himmel, passes away shortly thereafter, and Frieren breaks down at his funeral, having realized exactly too late how important he was to her and that she’d never really bothered to get to know him as a person.

Some time later, she’s called by the surviving human member of the party, Heiter, under the guise of translating an old text, but soon realizes that he duped her into helping train the young orphan girl he adopted, Fern, as a mage. Upon Heiter’s death, Frieren and Fern head out together, carrying out odd jobs and retracing Frieren’s steps from the journey that changed her more than she realized. They soon learn from the other surviving member of the party, Eisen, that (ooh) heaven is, in fact, a place on earth, and that Frieren may be able to properly pay Himmel his final respects in person. In order to do so, they must make a trip to the north, past the Demon King’s castle. The story of Beyond Journey’s End is, quite literally, a nostalgia trip.

Frieren's story is one of grief and regret, but also how we can use those emotions as a way of moving forward rather than looking backward. Her history is a long one and her memories seemingly everlasting, but she uses them to pave the road ahead of her rather than let them shackle her to the past. This is best exemplified by Fern herself, as well as the other companion they pick up the way in Eisen’s former trainee, Stark. Frieren can carry on the legacies of Heiter and Eisen by helping their young wards grow into the capable young adults they’re meant to be, while Himmel’s legacy lives on in the memories of the towns and villages he helped save along Frieren’s new path, and most importantly, in Frieren herself.

The degree to which Himmel truly mattered to Frieren becomes more apparent to her as the story goes on, and it becomes more evident in her actions. Himmel was a gentle, selfless (if self-aggrandizing) man who was every last bit the hero the modern world believes him to be. With every statue of him she cleans, every flower she plants in his name, every core memory that returns to her, we are watching Frieren become more and more like him in real time. You would expect a thousand-year-old woman to be pretty set in her ways, but we see her holding off on old, bad behaviors because of how Himmel would react to them back then. As Fern and Stark grow into young adults, we see her beginning to treat them the same way Himmel treated her. Frieren doesn’t realize it until later in the season, but it’s apparent to us early on that Himmel well and truly loved her, and I feel that it’s dawning on her that she loved him too and didn’t recognize it. That is tragic in and of itself (this show absolutely is a tearjerker at times and I will cop to getting misty-eyed as I write this), but there is something beautiful, well beyond my grasp, in being able to honor the memory and carry out the legacy of a loved one in how you treat those around you. I don’t think anything could have made Himmel prouder.

Frieren herself is a really goddamn good character too (and expertly voiced by Atsumi Tanezaki, best known for voicing Anya Forger in Spy x Family). Though she is portrayed as quiet and uncaring for the early part of the story, it’s been really delightful to watch her open up, and above all, inadvertently reveal that she’s actually just Really Fucking Weird. For as self-assured and put together as she always seems on the surface, it was great to learn that she’s just an enormous slob (she just like me fr), and any outward expressions of smugness or her offbeat sense of humor are always a joy. “Deeply weird person trying to act normal” is always fun, and there’s just something so consistently delightful about seeing someone so typically calm and intelligent get caught in a mimic chest every single time.

I still can’t get over how fucking good this show looks. Beyond Journey’s End features some of the most intricate, loving animation I’ve seen for stuff as simple as someone putting on a jacket. Action scenes are few and far between, but not a single frame is wasted when shit pops off. Not everyone is as detailed as possible at all times, and they don’t need to be, but everyone looks incredible when they need to be. It’s well above my pay grade to accurately say so, but this show could be a lesson in proper animation budgeting. I could go on and on and on, but I’ve written nearly eighteen thousand words about anime, so I’ll wrap it up.

The debut season of Frieren will continue into 2024, and if the quality remains a constant, it could very well be one of the best anime of next year too. It has remained as MyAnimeList’s top-rated anime ever for its entire run, warding off the legion of Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood fans. Frieren deserves it. I say with no hyperbole that this is one of the most perfectly realized things I’ve ever seen on television. This is an essential watch for anyone who likes fantasy anime, anime in general, or fantasy in general.

#anime reviews

107 notes · View notes

miukki960 · 3 months

Text

Okay, so I just finished Love for Love's Sake and..... I have so many thoughts. I could wax poetic for hours about how much I loved the show, but right now what I really want to talk about is my theory on the ending and the whole concept of the "game."

Please bare with me as I don't make posts like this (or any at all for that matter) often. Please forgive me if it's incoherent, my thoughts tend to run faster than my fingers can type lol.

Here we go!

First, who is the author sunbae? I think he's the embodiment of death. When Myungha wished on the shooting star for 1. Someone to care for him and love him and 2. To disappear,he was wearing what I'm pretty sure is the same outfit as when we first see him in the bar back in episode 1. This leads me to believe Death heard his wish, so when Myungha decides to end his life and regrets his decision in the last moment, Death decides to give him a chance to change his fate.

So he creates the "game" based on a novel he supposedly wrote. I believe this is a false memory he gives to Myungha so he will willingly play the game and try to change his fate. Which leads me to my second point...

Myungha is the author. The show did a very good job at keeping this subtle at the beginning. We as an audience are led to believe he is simply transported into the videogmae world and is at the mercy of the dating sim, but they show us multiple times that that's not the case.

Once, when Myungha mentions that the missions are written in his handwriting, a second time when we get a flashback of him actually writing these missions in a notebook at the bar, and a final time when we see him pen the shows Ultimate Mission using the Author's Pen, "Please make Cha Yeowoon Happy."

I started to get the idea that Myungha was the author back in the first few episodes when we started to see the side missions. Every mission he got screamed to me "this mission is actually for you, not Yeowoon." What was the first thing he did when he was supposed to get Yeowoon more friends? He befriended Kyunghoon himself. Save 3,000,000 won? For himself. Get Yeowoon followers? Using HIS Instagram. Which leads to point number three....

The game Myungha is sent to is actually a reenactment of his senior year of high school. All the characters he meets are actual people in his earlier life, his grandma, Kyunghoon, Sangwon. But in his original "playthrough" he didn't bother to befriend or interact with them, so they went about their lives unaffected, and he forgot they existed. I say all this with the exception of Cha Yeowoon.

Cha Yeowoon is a mirrored reflection of Myungha created by Death and inserted into the game. Myungha said himself at the beginning that Yeowoon was his favorite character because he reminds him of himself. Later on, we learn that their backgrounds are almost identical too. Yeowoon lost his mother, has an absent runaway father, and was raised by his grandmother. Myungha has a dead father, absent runaway mother, and is being raised by his grandmother. So at the beginning when Death asks Myungha if he will change Yeowoon's fate and rewrite his story, he's really talking about Myungha.

Adding to this, I also noticed something rather spectacular narratively in the second half of the show. The whole show, we watched Myungha try and (mostly) succeed at making Yeowoon happy. But suddenly I realized, as we watched him get happier and happier, Myungha was falling deeper and deeper into a sadness rivaling how we saw Yeowoon in the beginning. We stopped seeing the calculations of Yeowoon's affection level, and instead saw error messages and system malfunctions, representing Myungha's emotional state.

Which begs the ultimate question on everyone's minds to be answered. If the whole point of sending Myungha back to his 19yo self and giving him Yeowoon was to get him to love himself and be happy, why were the system malfunctions so devastatingly awful and cruel? Answer: because Myungha is the author, and he's depressed and self-destructive.

He begins to feel happy with the changes he's made, he sees Yeowoon happier and he feels like he's succeeding, yet the countdown message to his death still appears. It's ominous and impending and a constant reminder that he's failing. So as the author, he tries to revert back to factory settings by getting rid of the major changes to his life, Yeowoon and his grandmother. The two people who love him most, and the two people he thinks he deserves the least.

Sangwon said it the best. Myungha's main issue is that he refuses to receive love, both from others and himself. Which is why he fails the game and dies a second time. He followed the missions for Yeowoon and refused to let them break down his own walls like they were ment to.

But Death does see the change in him through Yeowoon. Being Myungha's mirror, Yeowoon represents the change that was supposed to happen to Myungha. So when Myungha (the him he hates) deletes himself in order to make Yeowoon (the him he loves) happy ("please make Cha Yeowoon happy"), Yeowoon is able to go full-meta, breaking through the game and rewriting the mission to "Please make Tae Myungha happy."

Thus saving Myungha and allowing him a third chance at a happy life, where he receives just as much love as he gives.

Don't ask me about the "he comes back disjointed from Yeowoon's timeline" thing bc I don't understand it narratively but it sure does make for a visually pleasing ending.

#love for love's sake #love supremacy zone #text #text post #long post #kbl #korean bl #tae myung ha #cha yeowoon

62 notes · View notes

squishyteri · 2 months

Text

*Deep disappointed sigh*

I was thinking that I'll be sitting here at this time, writing about finishing another amazing drama, but instead I'm sitting here, absolutely baffled and beyond dissapointment and confusion.

What the hell just happened? That what what I've asked right after finishing the final episode of DFF. And the worst part is that I will actually never know what had happened.

Honestly, the drama started getting worse in episode 10. That was a whole mess (I've written entire post about it, read HERE ). Episode 11 was good in a terms of what it gave us, but it was at very wrong place. It was truly bad choice for the pre-finale ep, that was supposed to build up the tension for the final ordeal, so this Tee backstory felt anti-climatic.

And today, the finale came and it felt like I clicked on the wrong show. Am I really watching DFF? I asked in disbelief. I just couldn't believe what I saw.

I try to go one by one.

Starting with Fluke. That was actually the part I liked. He was the bywatcher. He just watched. So it was really good choice to let him stab his eyes out. But I hated that he didn't even know about it, since he died (most likely) while still being high on absinth. I HATE the choice of having him die. Him living blind, not being able to be a doctor would be such a great punishment for him.

Top ... Well, first of all, how are you still alive, buddy? But given the amount of people (1) that took way too long to die, I guess people in DFF universe are just slower at dying from very obvisouly fatal wounds. Him killing himself and taking Fluke with him was okay, I guess? I mean we know NOTHING about Top, so how could I know what is in character and what not?

Tee and White. Oh boy. I knew right away that us getting the emotional backstory of Tee is not a gift, it would come in an exchange of an inevitable traumatic experience. But this was not what I expected at ALL. If everything else was perfect, this would fit well. I feel like it's a good scene and great punishment for Tee to live with. ... If we KNEW what happened to Tee... but I'll get to that later.

(also like... White's character is so ... idk, he's just a random, innocent dude, who is there only for the purpose of dying ... not the mention he was really annoying to me at the beginning, like what was that about?)

Now here it comes. Jin. I ... I can't say much, because I think even Tumblr would ban me if I went into detail. Let's just say I did not expected Jin to be horny on main. I still don't understand how Jin was the one who posted the video (we had some evidence it might have been someone else), but if he did or thinks he did, it only makes sense his fear would be related to it. But even so, I think his fear should've been more about him not protecting Non. We know that Jin liked Non and wanted to protect him. So why is his biggest fear everyone knowing he's horny on main? We know from Copper himself that Jin should've been percieved as a good character, but him fearing that what he did to Non happens to him is sort of selfish and absolutely not something I thought about Jin. But let's be honest, bad writing was screwing Jin over since like ep 6 (and it was doing it even harder than Phee) (sorry for this one, I'm leaving the room now).

Now Phee. His fear is obvious and he's the only one getting out of the hallucinations and saving the day. (probably) I didn't understand his momentarily need to save New??? Like buddy, you are in this mess because of him??? But him getting the antidote, saving Jin and then coming back for Tee: amazing, hot, I loved it. Only sad that was like 2 minutes of this tragedy.

New. Oh, New. He was a guy broken beyond repair and I knew he will go. I mostly hoped he would end his life himself after realizing what he did and what happened to Non, but he was too lost for that. But I'm okay with his ending.

FINALLY the holy grail of dissapointment. The ending itself. It suddenly cutting to "2 Years Later" got me thinking That's it??? It didn't even have the shock point, because I was confused the entire time. I was thinking why on earth would you end it like that? Why are PheeJin having happy ending (not that I didn't want it, but not like this, not like this, mate) and why is Tee having the bad ending (really, why?) and like what happened? What did police say? Why we skipped two years ... and suddenly BOOM, they smacked me across my face with that "oh, how did we get out then and why is Non over there?" ending. Like WHAT?

HELLO?

REALLY?

Like you really made me sit through 11 episodes, making my judgement and assumptions about every single character, wanting their ending to be whatever I felt they deserve and instead of giving me the shock, happiness, sadness of what you cooked for them you GIVE ME NOTHING?! OF ALL POSSIBLE CHOICES, YOU GIVE ME NOTHING?!

Is this like write your own ending thing or-? WHY WOULD YOU JUST LEAVE ME HANGING.

Not to mention there are lot of things unexplained.

Was Jin the one who really posted the video? There were lot of contradictions to it.

How on earth did New manage to prepare everything and hurt Por? We just heard it from Phee, who couldn't have possibly known. And some things like weren't adding up, even if we have the hallucinations thing.

What happened to Keng? Like, is he dead? But we never saw the body. Really, what's with him?

Who are the survivors? We might assume Phee, Jin and Tee, but are they? Are they all dead? What happened to them? This was literally why we all were here and we don't even get that answer?

That ending was soooooo anticlimatic and out of place. This kind of ending can work, but in a slasher movie where we don't care about characters that much and we are there just for the blood and murders (A Nightmare on Elm Street does this wonderfully, for example) but not in a drama, where we spent HOURS learning backstories of each character (except Top, like who is he?) and want to know what is their destiny.

It's like if the ending of Harry Potter was Harry and Voldemort about to fight, then cut to the 19 Years Later scene, but Harry sees Voldemort on the platform and then cut to broken Hogwarts and then end credits. Like, nah, that doesn't work.

I don't want to make my or yours suffering any longer that needed, so I will end this here. I'm very sad, very disappointed and very confused. I feel like I was robbed. This drama was so good, but the writing team just gave up somewhere around episode 9. It's like when I think of good plot for a fic, but don't come up with the ending and have to write just whatever to not leave it open.

Yep, thank you for reading this. The best part about this drama was without the doubt being able to share my thoughts and theorize with everyone. Thank you guys for it.

Special thanks goes to my beloved friends @tbhimnoteasyonmyself @ayansbff @jeffsatursgender and @toonstuna, who were watching each episode along with me and today (and not just today, for like past month and half) were very nice, kind and patient to listen to me ranting about everything for hours (as they were all ranting themselves). Love you all, guys, really <3

Thank you everyone who has been through this with me. Hopefully next time we will meet again at something less disappointing.

Baya!

#dead friend forever #dff #dff spoilers #thai bl #dff the series #thai drama #dead friend forever the series

27 notes · View notes

yumedoca · 2 months

Text

I've finished the episode and I am literally crying. No, this is not an exaggeration, I am actually crying and I don't think I've literally straight up cried for an episode like this since 'Since your parting' and I'm crying much more than I cried back then. It was beautiful, thank you David Productions, it was perfect. It is now my favorite story in the remake now (it was already my favorite in the manga anyways).

I've already analyzed the story entirely here but I want to talk more about my favorite bits and addition in the remake (and other stuff)..

Nozomi's diary entry at the start was done so beautifully. The vibe which comes across is so soft and innocent, perfectly showing of Nozomi's pure heart. The soft coloring, the music, how they showed the writing, her voice acting (and the snow globe 😭) It honestly felt like I was watching another anime..

Speaking of the music, it seems like they made new BGM for this episode and let's just say, it's perfect..

..and the animation quality is just superb..

Oh my gosh, the way Nozomi becomes sad when he's unable to hold her hand... poor Nozomi :'(

Ataru commenting on how the scarf has his initial on it. As an artist, I can say it make people really happy when someone else points out the details in their work so I'm sure it made Nozomi really happy too..

Also, I love the colors for everything Nozomi made. I think it's a combo of the of original anime and manga's versions, which is very cute.

I love the addition of people not being able to see Nozomi, making Ataru seem like a loon. It makes him look stupid (while also wearing winter accessories during summer) but he doesn't care..

The whole date is so damn cute by the way, I think I was already tearing up by this point..

The whole moment where Nozomi was in the dark, I was literally screaming for Ataru to come out and be with her cuz I couldn't stand seeing her like that.. the poor girl..

Nozomi's soft smile as she rests in peace.. and now I'm crying again...

One detail I love which isn't remake original is how proud Sakura and Cherry are of Ataru after the date, like they didn't have much faith in him about him not breaking her heart at first but now they are very much proud of him..

"I'm gonna keep it on a little longer."

YEAH I AM NOT OKAY

The way Lum looks at him in the final scene.. You just know this is when she fell in love with him all over again..

"Maybe I should become a ghost too."

"What? Don't be stupid."

😭😭😭

Yup, I'm crying the second time after rewatching it (for writing this post)..

This is actually now one of my favorite episodes of all time now, no kidding. Ataru Moroboshi, you very sweet boy, I love you so very much..

#yucawatches #urusei yatsura #うる星やつら #urusei yatsura 2022 #ataru moroboshi #nozomi #lum #sakura #cherry #god i love them sm #so very much...

24 notes · View notes

gale-gentlepenguin · 10 months

Text

Gale’s Top Ten: Least favorite episodes of Miraculous Ladybug (as of season 5)

With Season 5 finished and my posting of my top 10 favorite episodes, it’s time I crank the meter the other way. Now some rules

1. Like always this is my personal opinion, and if you liked these episodes, that’s great. I would love to hear your reasoning

2. I will be judging them SOLELY of what was shown in the episode, not by any leaks that came out before or after. I’m solely judging on what is seen and confirmed

3. Word of warning, I will be pretty vicious with my critiques. Also profanities will be thrown.

Now before I go into them, I should give some congratulations to some episodes no longer in my bottom 10

Captain Hardrock: You are still a lame episode, but not the worst you are actually decent in comparison to some of these.

Stormy weather 2.0: Clip shows still are awful, but there are worst things

Frozer: In the grand scheme of things this episode really wasn’t important and there are worst character writing

___________________________________________

10.Sole Crusher

Revisiting this, it really isn’t a good episode for ML. I don’t know what was more Shoehorned in, Zoe’s character arc of replacing Chloé or the lucky charm.

It also makes little sense that Marinette would be the one pushing for Zoe considering her experience with Chloé and her family (especially after Season 5 revealed her trauma).

Now Zoe isn’t a bad character, but she will always be seen as the replacement Good bee, and she deserves better writing.

Honestly it could be argued Queen banana should be here, but that episode is too much of a s***post that I get more enjoyment out of it. This is trying to play this straight and it don’t feel right.

9. Qilin

This episode has a some things going for it, great akuma design, decent action. But it also has a ton going against it. It’s in a series of episodes I like to call “Thomas’ gets political” and I will tell you this, he sucks at it.

I would try and explain further but I am aware I would butcher the topic, all that should be said is, racism tackled poorly and Marinette says she will pay for a ticket that her mother didn’t deserve to get in the first place.

Also the animation looks off in the episode, it just looks so bleh.

8. Migration

Remember that whole reveal that Luka knows both Ladybug’s and chat noir’s identities and how he kept that to himself?

Well that FINALLY gets addressed. And are Ladybug and chat noir mad at him? No. No consequences for him.

The whole episode acts like he is such an important character but this is one of 2 episodes he’s in where he has more than 2 lines.

Then he gets to travel the world with his dad because monarch found out he knows.

Kagami got akumatized twice and she knew Ladybug’s identity, step up your game Luka.

Also the fake out with Rose was bulls*** and everyone knows it.

Also the entire episode had everyone but Luka lacking brain cells.

I don’t rank it lower because while it annoyed me greatly, there are worse offenders on the list.

7. Animaestro

Astruc complains for 22 minutes that nobody cares about him anymore.

Also Marinette teams up with her bully which after watching Derision, WOULD BE THE LAST thing she would do.

This is the worst example of the Creator calling out the audience, There are other episodes like this but this one is the least entertaining. And if the ending of season 5 is concerned. “I’ve seen your writing, so I can FUCKING CRITIQUE IT YOU ARROGANT PIECE OF…”

Okay, I’m calm. Point being. It’s his call out the critics episode and it sucks

6. Furious Fu

I HATE Su Han.

He is a worse version of Fu in every stretch of the imagination.

The episode where Su han shows up and starts making demands is stupid. The only thing he has going for him is his fighting style which he never teaches the two people that could have needed it!

The episode isn’t lower because despite Su Han’s impact, he really doesn’t do much and he is just there to be a nag later on. Also Fu’s akuma looks dope as hell and gave Fu some slack.

5. Feast

So remember how Su han showed up in the last episode. Well he and all the other guardians were gone for over 100 years because they lost to a 4 Foot blue dog made by a hungry child.

This episode isn’t as bad as the others as a stand alone, but knowing the lore makes it sound so completely stupid. Like Fu was HAUNTED by his past and we find out it was because he was hungry when training and the guardians COULDNT handle that? All trained to fight miraculous users should they go rogue, couldn’t beat ONE DOG. The mysterious order is incompetent as heck.

It’s just so stupid. Also Fu was acting irrational af over all this didn’t help.

4.Reflekdoll

I want everyone to know how massive this is, Reflekdoll is no longer my least favorite episode.

For anyone that follows me, my SEETHING hatred of this episode is well documented.

I won’t go on about how the tropes were horribly done or ignored, how off the banter was, or even how stupid everyone is this episode. Because I’ve discussed it in length.

I will simply say, Thank God there is Passion, so if people want a GOOD kwami swap episode they can watch that one.

3. Miracle Queen

I’ve talked about this episode to death on here. But really the only flaws with it are the last half of the episode.

The drama of the first half is great. But the ass pull of a memory wipe, the clear degradation of Chloé’s character, and just the simple giving up of Hawkmoth, he could have easily still won if he pushed a bit longer. The ending was depressing but also a clear example of how the writers put themselves in a corner with no way out.

The only thing that makes it worse is Fu’s replacement (Su han) ends up being a worse teacher.

Also considering how they spent season 4 quickly getting Marinette and Adrien out of the relationships with the love rivals, even they realize it was a dumb call.

__________________________________________

2. Ephemeral

Hey, let’s make an episode to explain why Adrien can NEVER know his father is the villain.

This episode is the go to justification of the writers on why Adrien will always be sidelined. It was also the unofficial reveal of the sentimonster theory before it was said pretty much outright in season 5.

The worst akuma design. Marinette gaslighting, gate keeping chat noir at its worst.

Gabriel wins and gets his wish.

And none of it mattered and no one remembers it except I think Sass. So it was pretty much pointless.

Not even the ladrien and cute reveal could save it.

And don’t even get me started on how pointless and avoidable it is.

It’s almost funny because despite how pointless this was, it’s still better than number 1.

1. Re-creation

So many cool concepts, great designs. Marinette dropping a piano on Gabriel. So many great things. But it also had some flaws, like having Adrien sidelined, and the focus on heroes from the specials for practically no reason. But all of that could be forgivable if the ending lands…

It really shows how an AWFUL ending can fuck up everything.

Imagine having 5 seasons of fighting to stop a villain from getting the miraculous to make the wish only for him to WIN! Yes he wins. He gets to make the wish, you know the wish that was said should NEVER be used. Of all the stupid, asinine, Shark Jumping BULL SHIT. Who the fuck APPROVED THIS HORSE SHIT?!

So he gets his wish, and he gets a statue HONORING HIM. What the fuck? Adrien, who was ABUSED now sees his abuser as a hero and EVERYONE THAT KNOWS THE TRUTH IN HIS LIFE IS HIDING THE TRUTH FROM HIM. Nathalie, Marinette, Felix, Kagami. Even PLAGG!

And the whole utopia crap, everything is just perfect now, because the villain got what he wanted.

That’s a great lessons for kids! (Blatant Sarcasm)

But let’s really dig in, the ending left a LOT of things vague. And hilariously ALL OF THE POTENTIAL OUTCOMES ARE SHIT.

1. Emilie was revived and Nathalie got healed.

So Gabriel gets everything he wanted from the wish, justifying everything he did and he gets treated like a hero and another person hiding the truth from Adrien. Marinette knows everything that brought this about and is keeping that from Adrien, but is justified slightly because it could encourage Adrien to try and get his father back with a wish. Also brings up the question of who took Emile’s place.

2. Only Nathalie was healed.

Gabriel ended up with Emilie like he wanted, gets treated like a martyr, Adrien is technically an orphan, Marinette is knowingly lying to him about his father and Adrien continues to get Gaslit.

3. Emilie is revived, Nathalie is healed, and memories were altered

Gabriel’s wish basically shaped EVERYTHING how he wanted, meaning he is still in control of Adrien’s life even in death. Even his own wife. So while this removes Marinette covering for him intentionally, it just means Gabriel was so much worse.

4. Nathalie’s healed and memories altered

Gabriel gets to be with Emile and has shaped Adrien’s life even in death. Everyone basically puppeteer by him as he died. Sure he’s dead but he also retconned for his redemption, which is bullshit.

Now there are people that defend this ending/potential ending.

I’m sorry but, unless they revive Gabriel and he gets exposed, Adrien finds out the truth, and he gets held accountable for his actions. I can’t feasibly imagine this ending being good.

The writing staff aren’t going to do Anything about this, they are just going to move on to Lila as the main villain and say the Agreste plotline is over.

If they Do, do something, I’ll happily take back my words and alter my view of the episode but right now.

It’s one of the WORST season finale’s I’ve seen in my life.

#miraculous ladybug #ml #ml critical #ml writer salt #Gale rants #Gale’s top 10 #ml spoilers

76 notes · View notes

seahydra · 3 months

Text

Okay I think. I'm posting it. 800+ something words under the cut, I wanted to write something kind of like the audio dramas featured on the album CDs or the silly skits in the podcast episodes, so it's all written as if it were a script. Enjoy?!

Levi: Ah, y-you're here! ...You're early.

Lazarus: Well, I got bored waiting for the time to come around, and I wanted to see you right away, so... ahem.

Lazarus: Anyway, we’re watching the Ultrawitch finale tonight, right? I've been looking forward to it.

Levi: Actually, I… had something else in mind for us to watch tonight, if that’s okay with you? We can totally finish the series some other time, it’s just- I saw something I really wanted to watch with you ASAP, and…

Lazarus: Really? I do wish you’d told me that earlier...

Lazarus: But it’s fine. I suppose I don’t really care, as long as we get to hang out. What did you have in mind?

Levi: It’s this 12 episode anime I discovered recently. Each episode covers a different tragic story, with different characters. It's supposed to be SUPER heartbreaking lol. I mean, i-if you care.

Lazarus: Huh… much different from our original plan... but alright. It sounds interesting enough.

Levi: Really?! Thank goodness, I was so worried you’d turn down the idea!! Okay. Come sit down, I’ll get it all set up.

Lazarus: Got it.

Lazarus: …Hey, you’re moving in a bit close, Levi…

Levi: Yeah, so I can see your face bette- um, I mean-! A-A-Am I?! I’m so sorry! I’ll get out of your personal space right away, ahahaha!

Levi: A-Anyway, I’m about to hit play, so quiet down and watch closely, alright?!

…

Levi: (sniff) Making the immortal say goodbye to his human lover is so cruel... gaaahh, it hurts my very soul! (sob) Why couldn't they both just be together forever? It's not fair...

Lazarus: It is rather painful, indeed... but at least they got to be together at all, even if it was just for a little while?

Levi: But now he's going to be alone! Uuuugh, I can't think about this anymore... (sniff)

… ...

Lazarus: Ah, this poor girl... watching her repress herself like this makes me feel bad.

Levi: (sniffle) Everyone in that town is so shallow. They have no right to talk about her behind her back just because she's a little "weird"! Don't they see how much that hurts her? I bet they don't even care! How heartless... (sob)

Lazarus: (Yeah, I know what that's like...)

... ... ...

Levi: W-Well, that was the final episode. Um... your thoughts, please?

Lazarus: Eeeh, bit of a 6/10 to me, I think. No, maybe 6.5... 6.7?

Levi: 6.7?!?! That's it?! N-No way... did you somehow feel nothing while we were watching it?

Lazarus: Well, the stories themselves were written fine enough. But, it didn't really do anything for me overall..

Levi: ...You're unbelievable.

Lazarus: Eh?! Hey, what's with the sudden mood change? Are you mad at me?

Levi: Tch... I should have known... even if we ARE best friends, you'd never... not in front of someone like me...

Lazarus: Levi?

Levi: Like, why would you?! Who would want to be so open... in the presence of some loser...

Lazarus: Leviathan.

Levi: What?!

Lazarus: Talk to me. What's wrong?

Levi: ...No. I can't. It’s too embarrassing.

Lazarus: Come on, tell me! You know I'm not going to judge you!

Levi: Fine. Fine!

Levi: I was just thinking... in the entire time we’ve known each other, I’ve seen all sorts of different emotions on you.

Levi: I’ve seen how happy you get when you pull a UR card of your fave. I’ve seen you be totally pissed off, like when we first met. I’ve even seen you be terrified out of your mind, but…

Levi: …somehow, I’ve never seen you cry before. I thought for sure today would be the day, but everything backfired on me. So humiliating...

Lazarus: Hm? So all of this was merely you trying to make me cry?! Okay, I miiiiight judge you a little for that. You’re weirder than I thought, aren't you! Ahaha!

Levi: Wait. Wait, wait, wait! No! I just realized that sounds really bad! I-I-I promise I’m not a sadist or anything! It's because, um, I…

Levi: …I brought it up once, to everyone else. And they all said they’d never seen you cry, either. Like, not even tearing up a LITTLE bit!

Lazarus: ...Yes, because I don’t like to do that in front of other people.

Levi: But that’s the thing! When they all said that, I thought... I really wanted to be the first and only person to ever see you cry.

Levi: Because, like… that would mean you trust me, right? I… want.. to be the only person you’re vulnerable with, in that way… or something.. whatever.

Levi: Never mind, it’s nothing. Just forget I said anyth-

Levi: …Wait. A-Are you--?!

Lazarus: T-That’s… (sniff) somehow, that’s the sweetest thing... (sniff) you’ve ever said to me!!! Waaaaaaaahhh! Levi, you’re so cute!!!

Levi: Why was that what did it for you?! Hey, don’t just throw your arms around me-! Aaaaghhh, I can't process all of this!!! Let go, you idiot!!!

END 💥💥💥

#atari.pdf #<- IDONT HAVE A WRITING TAG. I SHOULDNT HAVE USED TXT!!!!!!!#Anyway this is entitled 'a new side of you' in my documents #I think this would be much better if it were actually voiced but obviously that's not happening so www #No taglist either coz I'm shy if this gets seen it gets seen. Hi guys #Plot inspired by the fact that I truly honestly do not cry much (I wish I could though. It's just physically difficult)#❥ the prince and the little mermaid

21 notes · View notes

grapenehifics · 3 months

Text

Making of Monday: Can't Stop the Suns Part 1

(I am thinking SO positively rn that I am calling this part 1, like I will remember to actually write more. YMMV; we'll see how I do.)

I'm hard at work on the concluding chapters of Pick Up the Pieces right now, and working on Pick Up the Pieces means I also need to do a fair bit of rereading An Uncivil War, so it's very much on the forefront of my brain, and also I have yet to participate in a single MoM, so: here's some backstory on An Uncivil War.

Okay I actually need to back up even farther than that, all the way to Solsbury Hill and February 2020. I started Solsbury Hill - it wasn't called that, then; it didn't have a name, just 'weird doc file/outline I'll probably never finish because I don't have a track record of finishing creative writing projects, ever' - and then the very next month I started working from home AND season 7 of Clone Wars premiered.

To get ready for season 7 - and because I was home a lot more during the day, now, and didn't have to commute to work - we decided to do a rewatch of Clone Wars season 1 through 6. And you know how we joke about plot bunnies, and why they're called that? That the hardest idea is your first one and once you have that the ideas just keep multiplying? So, I'm sitting on an outline for what would become Solsbury Hill, and we're watching Clone Wars, and we get to season 5, and the episode with Ahsoka's trial, and I think to myself, huh. That's weird. Why is Obi-Wan acting like that? Why is he not sticking up for our Padawan? If he had, I bet things would have turned out differently. Ahsoka might not have left the Order. Anakin might not have turned to the Dark Side. Clone Wars is full of all these little things that individually might not be enough to push Anakin over the edge, but they start stacking up, collectively...

From there, it was a pretty easy leap to, 'what if Obi-Wan left the Order instead of Ahsoka', and that created this whole domino effect because Anakin would obviously leave with him, right, and Ahsoka was getting kicked out anyway, and now I've got this scenario with three Jedi on the run in the middle of a war.

And that was fascinating to me. Once I started thinking about it I couldn't stop. But I was also getting really into Solsbury Hill, at that point, so this new story needed to take a backseat. I dumped a bunch of notes into a Word doc and went back to my AU.

It turns out, though - and this was the first time I'd learned this about myself - that I liked having both an AU and a canon project going at the same time. Solsbury Hill and An Uncivil War both used such different parts of my brain and required a different skillset and researching vastly different things, and if I got bogged down in one it was nice to be able to switch to the other one and hack away at that one for a while. So I ended up, from early 2020 until August 2022 when I posted the first chapter of Solsbury Hill on AO3, working on both projects nearly simultaneously, although obviously Solsbury Hill (despite being three times longer) got to the finish line first.

For a long time - almost three years - An Uncivil War was just called, An Uncivil War. And it had this expansive outline that I just kept cracking away at, and whenever I came across something cool in another piece of Star Wars media or another show premiered or I read another book I'd think 'Ooh, that's neat! That's going in the fic!' and I'd add it to my to-do list. And at some point I looked at my word count and realized I was pushing 100k and not anywhere close to the end of the story I wanted to tell.

So, I started thinking about sequels, and series. I had (still have) this outline, fortunately, and there was one pretty obvious stopping point at what was then the mid-point of the plot. (I say, 'then' because it has since, of course, expanded. It turns out I'm very bad at guessing word counts.) So I took half my outline, dumped into a brand-new doc, called that one Pick Up the Pieces, and wrote the 'ending' of An Uncivil War, as much as possible, as if it were the ending, just in case I for some reason never got around to writing Pick Up the Pieces.

Because it was important to me that An Uncivil War be able to stand on its own. It's got a beginning, a middle, and an end, and the end calls back to the beginning, and the main threat to the characters is resolved, and they talk about what they're going to do next but even if that was the only story you had, it should still be a satisfying conclusion (or, at least, I hope it is).

But it isn't the entirety of the story I wanted to tell. Because they originally were one big story, I actually had maybe half of Pick Up the Pieces already written by the time I started posting An Uncivil War, so while the first part took me three years to write, the second has technically only taken me a year, but I was definitely not starting from scratch.

I also - and this should shock absolutely no one - was once again wildly off in my word count estimate. Pick Up the Pieces is, right now, already as long as An Uncivil War (120k), and I've still got three chapters left to go...plus a bunch more things in my outline I haven't gotten to yet.

So, in true Star Wars tradition, I'm now plotting a part three! Pick Up the Pieces, like An Uncivil War before it, has a logical ending point, so it will wrap up there, but the plot will move merrily along to the next thing on my to-do list, which is in fact the same to-do list I've had since March 2020. (It's a good thing I love this story so much or I would have quit long ago.) Part Three, at the moment, is tentatively titled Sometimes Fate Steps In, and I'm really, really sorry to have to admit that that's where all the smut is going to be. (I know. It's Solsbury Hill all over again.)

(I do love it, though. I feel like I should...apologize, to my fics, somehow, for having a favorite? I do have a favorite, though. It's this series. I love it so damn much. This is the one thing I write where, if you told me right now that I would never get a single comment or kudos on it, I would still write it anyway, because I just get so much enjoyment out of researching and writing it and re-reading it.)

(Which is not to say you shouldn't comment on it. Please, please do! You will absolutely make my day, week, month, year! But I love it enough to do it anyway.)

#making of monday #obikin #an uncivil war #pick up the pieces

18 notes · View notes

bizlybebo · 2 months

Note

For your final thoughts on PD once you finish, I present to thee:

This ramble ask

How ya feeling?

HOOOOOOOOOOOLY SHITTTTTTTTTTTT ENDYYYYY

ENDYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY IT. I WAS NOTTTT EXPECTING ANYYYY OF THISSSS AAAAAAAAAAJRGBTJKWEFREGTKWEFREGTKRFGNYT

YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOU'RE ASKING FOR BY SENDING IN THIS ASK. KJREHKJERHD

this is probably gonna be even longer than my ramble after completing the greyscale series so once again i dont expect you to read all of this but OHHH YM GODDD i need to dump my thoughts somewhere cause HOLY SHITTT

after writing this out i really only managed to touch on the last 2-3 episodes but yk. there are my thoughts on the ending so it makes sense. i dont think we wanna see how big my ramble on the entire fucking series could get

spoilers ahead for anyone else who sees this: literally all of prime defenders s1 and s2

ashe came home.

ashe fucking CAME HOME.

now, i had a feeling since about episode 35 that ashe was certainly coming home, because there was so much buildup, yakko did an ashe cosplay, etc. like it would have been stupid for her not to return at that point. plus i kept seeing people drawing a post-trickster ashe and was like huh.

so essentially, i thought that because i Knew, i wouldn't get blindsided by these final episodes. in fact, knowing almost made it more... bearable? i guess, because i could hold onto the light at the end of the tunnel that ashe was 100% coming home. it almost made me feel the same hope that the group was feeling about ashe, because i had that certainty and faith in the good ending.

and then william wisp fucking died. again.

i was really sleepy when i was listening to that scene but still persisting because my anxiety was slowly increasing as the episode went on, but when the trickster just. plunged his hands through william's chest i was FULLY awake just sitting in absolute shock. i'm not the kind of person to cry huge tears over media (i think the only time i non-happy cried watching riptide was ep 53), but when william died For Real i actually gave a good few sobs. i was no longer sleepy i was just in shock and then in grief.

and i was like. oh shit. maybe there is no good ending.

something like that ENTIRELY blindsided me in such a crazy way that it had me doubting ashe would even come home.

and i kept thinking, hey, no, he's risen before, he'll be okay! but then he went to the fucking spirit realm. he got dispensed there with kumori and began the first day of forever and i was like oh. shit.

william was gone.

and the REACTIONS from dakota and vyncent were both so guttural and real and true to their characters in their own ways. like so good it's nearly painful to think about.

dakota's loud. he's loud and he's rambunctious because he's dakota. he never speaks below a shout.

but when william was torn in half, he wasn't shouting, he was wailing. the absolute shock and denial he was in haunts me dude.

dakota's was begging william not to do this to him. he could forgive william for so much-- for lying to him, for not asking for his help, for fucking killing jade, but he could never forgive william for dying.

dakota's not the kind of kid to ask, y'know? if something doesn't go the way it should to him then he'll fight abrasively and outwardly for what he believes is right, or in the harder cases he'll bite the bullet and take the fall.

but here, he was pleading with william to just. not die.

and i think the final thing that shattered my faith that hey, maybe william wasn't gone was that tide was so accepting of it. he fell to his knees, he grieved and he was torn apart for a second, but then he was back up, holding dakota, going as far as to use a whole turn in initiative to only hug his boy despite the deadly circumstances. despite the world falling apart around them. to loosely quote my other mutual cayden (<333), "at the end of everything hold onto something and dakota had to hold onto tide because it was the end of everything for him" and i think that's just. the only way i can really phrase it. top 10 moments that rewired my brain chemistry

and dont get me started on dakota LITERALLY JUMPING THROUGH HELL FOR EVERYBODY. JUMPING THROUGH HELL, LOOKING THE TRICKSTER IN THE EYES AS HE DID SO. LIKE I'VE SAID THIS BEFORE BUT SOARING THROUGH THE BURNING SKIES OF THE CHAOS REALM? THE REALM THAT CORRUPTS AND WARPS EVEN THE STRONGEST DEMONS? AND STILL COMING OUT ON THE OTHER SIDE BECAUSE YOU'RE DAKOTA MOTHERFUCKING COLE AND YOU SIMPLY REFUSE TO SUCCUMB?? FUCKING INSANEEE.

and. fucking. fuck.

vyncent. MOTHERFUCKING. sol.

when i fucking catch condifiction.

vyncent sol is such an interesting fucking character. most of the time i'm like "there is something deeply wrong with him <3" in an endearing sense because yknow. he's a little strange. he's not from around here.

but oh my god.

vyncent sol, THE character development guy ever.

he starts off season 1 violent, unable to control his powers. he's violent, and he's scared, and he's homesick, and he's like a skittish dog who bites when it gets nervous because he doesn't know what the fuck he's doing here.

but he changes. he grows.

he gets his closure with fauna, yeah, but then he finds a new home. he finds himself in a flying car, chasing after the fucking lich, watching william and dakota fighting in the front seat like a married couple, and he just thinks yeah. this is home.

and he doesn't quite unlearn his violence or his vengeance but they do certainly shift gears (also tidbit-- the 'fatal flaw' of justice is vengeance which is part of why i chose him for that human soul in the undertale shit i was telling you about :D).

his character is about balance. he has to learn not to be reckless and violent like in season 1, while also not apathetic and taking inaction like he did in s2 episodes 31 and 32.

at the end of everything, he protects william with his life, ready to interpose any attack. he thinks that he can do right by somebody this time, act now so that there aren't any consequences later (y'know, like he never did with jade, or ashe, or the lich).

but william. still. dies.

the sheer anger that vyncent felt in that moment was overshadowed so strongly by his grief, but it was still there. i can't even put it into words without going on a whole nother tangent but oh my fucking god. dude. vyncent sol has irreparably rewired my brain he is all i'm gonna think about.

prime defenders honestly is just THE character development show in general. i haven't even touched on william's development, on how he put faith in his friends over mal even if he knew it was going to make things much harder because he trusted dakota and vyncent so much. on how he literally got killed, repeatedly, over and over, in the spirit realm for 12 hours straight. on how he dirtied his hands during the greyscale arc out of fear.

on how he finally. stopped. running. stopped trying to escape who he was. but still won't come out of the closet

and god this is a looooong fucking ramble and i haven't even said much yet, this is only me screaming about the last two episodes really, but so much has happened in them that i just AUUUUGUGHGGHGHJKTEHRKJ

and. holy fucking shit.

JADE??? MAY STILL BE ALIVE??? D OYOU UNDERSTAND HOW FUCKING FERAL IM GOING OVER THIS JADE CANTRIP VENGEANCE ARC. I NEEEEEED XAVIERRRR TO SEE HER AGAINNNN JADE AND XAVIER'S FRIENDSHIP MEANS SO FUCKING MUCHHH TO MEEEEE

AND ATLAS? BRO POOR FUCKING ATLAS. he really could not catch a fucking break for the ENTIRE series. when bizly started describing the 'odd fizzling' i was like 'man this guy is just going THROUGH it with his career i feel kinda bad for him' and then.

he was dead.

i think grizzly said it best, how bizly has to 'keep reminding us that prime defenders is r-rated' cause yk. the sudden violence/gore. it was so impactful you were so right when you were talking about tonal whiplash because holy SHIT.

like we were just in mario kart hell chasing after le frog who stole pizza he couldnt even eat cause he was vegetarian. and then atlas' throat was slit and he was marked with an x. (x as in xavier's vigilante persona????????RTEHRTTT$YRJHTTETR)

im just AUGUGHGHGH so FUCKING UNWELLLL OVER THIS ENTIRE SERIES. I'M SO STOKED FOR WONDERLUST BUT ALSO THAT MEANS PRIME DEFENDERS PROBABLY WON'T RETURN UNTIL THE END OF THE YEAR OR EVEN LATER.

i need a prime defenders christmas episode. dearly.

the bright side of this is that now i can write a shit ton of fic + inhale every single fic under the prime defenders tag on ao3.

but GODDD this is the most gutwrenching piece of media ever. i've never had such a strong hyperfixation since 2020 because the world is just so good. every single character and npc means the world to me. even summer and doug are constant subjects of my brainrot. even fucking lightspeed and harlem and aughughugnjtr.

thank you for the ask endy lmao im FUCKING CLAWING AT THE WALLS OVER THIS SHOW. AIUKGHEJHW

JADE CANTRIP REVENGE ARC PLSPSLPLSPLSPLSPLSPLS. I NEED HER TO COME BACK AND I NEED HER TO COME BACK WRONG AND I NEED XAVIER TO BE TERRIFIED OF HIS BEST FRIEND EVEN THOUGH IT'LL EMOTIONALLY DESTROY ME AKTJHETRKJTRWKERE

okay that's. all i can say for now

#vixen rambles #vixen answers #jrwi pd #jrwi #WEKJTHETWKJGREHTITWJKREJTYIQKJEFWRE8T90OPQEF9GRET0OE #LOSINGGG MY MINDDDD

15 notes · View notes

thegeminisage · 3 months

Text

oh boy IT'S tng update time. last night* we watched "imaginary friend" and "i, borg."

*tonight. it's 1am. whatever. it's posting tomorrow when i'll be awake but busy. anyway im gonna have to start splitting these up so tumblr will stop FUCKING me re my character count

imaginary friend:

what i like about this episode and indeed tng as a whole is that the little girl was fucking adorable. tng fans, your show has at least one point of validity. whenever there was a child on tos i wanted to throw them out of the airlock because they acted possessed. all the children on tng inspire within me motherly concern.

HOWEVER. THERE SHOULD NOT BE. CHILDREN ON A STARSHIP.

we've gone over this at length. we don't need to do it again. i am sick to death of hearing myself talk about it. i want to stop. and yet. every. and i mean EVERY. SINGLE. PROBLEM. in this episode. happened because there were children on a starship.

problem #1: child is making up a fake imaginary friend instead of making real ones = it's because her dad hops from starship to starship

problem #2 her imaginary friend is real now and wants to drown her in the pool like in that one episode of s*pernatural = this is because an alien, from space, read her mind, which it could not have done if she wasn't in space on a starship

problem #3: the alien HATES the grownups and thinks they should die = because she is seeing the ship from a child's pov, because there are children on this starship

and on and on and on.

aside from this huge and ongoing point of contention it was solidly watchable. i liked the little girl. i like guinan. i like worf being a big old softie when he found them out of bounds. i like people not undermining deanna's counseling work. i liked the horrifically unsettling imaginary friend with laser eyes who definitely absolutely inspired 2.11 playthings.

can anyone tell me if the other star trek shows just let them have kids on the ships? ds9 i get because that's a space station but are there kids on the ship in enterprise? voyager? discovery? genuinely please write in i can't take living like this

i, borg:

ooooooh. ooh i am twirling my hair and kicking my feet and giggling about it. OHHH finally we get a good tng episode. and not just a good episode a GREAT episode. the liz community has forgiven tng. oh baby where do i even begin

okay, firstly, beverly. she so instantly sees someone injured and HAS to help, i mean HAS to, it's so good. it's very bonescore in a way that doesn't feel like they're trying to make her a cheap bones knockoff but rather a spiritual successor. he would have also helped his enemy rather than watching him die. hell, he DID do that and got quite literally mind-raped for his trouble, and he'd probably do it again. i was really really lukewarm on poor bev at first but she's come into her own so well and i'm proud of her

the borg himself - third of five, aw, just like seven of nine - but no, hugh - the name is dumb but whatever i'm glad he has one - was well-cast. it would have been easy to make him uncanny and an unpleasant presence onscreen (this was my biggest issue with data's daughter even though the ep DID make me cry, deeply sorry to data whomst i love the most). his "you will be assimilated resistance is futile" song and dance was actually really funny when played off of geordi's wry indifference. "ok, but before we get assimilated, can we please finish x test?" so true king

geordi's a natural choice to pair with this guy because when he's not being the creepiest person on earth to holodeck girls he's sociable, outgoing, and patient. PLUS he has experience befriending machines because of data. hugh actually reminded me of data in some ways because of his general lack of understanding re: humanity but - and this is critical to me - HE IS HUMAN

like, i feel like the episode didn't quite nail the point home hard enough possibly because they were afraid of the implications but the cold hard truth of the matter is that each and every person on the borg cube IS A PERSON. they have been assimilated, but we've twice now seen that it's possible to unassimilate them with only a few days of effort. picard (and guinan!) consider the entire collective their enemy but the collective is comprised of brainwashed prisoners. those fucked up little borg babies they found in the cube were assimilated as INFANTS - i assume they weren't born on the cube bc if the borg could reproduce on its own it wouldn't need to assimilate - but even if they were born on the cube, they had no choice but to be this. you know.

which is whyyyy it's so fucked picard was like yeah give hugh some digital poison let him carry it back to his cube and we'll kill them like ants <3 like, oh my god his lingering borg trauma or whatever. MWAH. when he told deanna he didn't wanna talk. when he and guinan had to trauma-bond while fencing. when he told geordi that he needed to unattach himself because it was nothing more than animal experimentation. STONE FUCKING COLD BY THE WAY. he is fighting in the war on animal experimentation on the side of animal experimentation. he was going to let his cre heal and feed that kid and then send him back laced with poison. diabolical <3

and, of course, when he didn't want to speak or associate that borg kid at all because that's who he used to be AND WHO HE STILL IS in some corner of his brain (!!!)

LIKE. WHEN HE WAS FINALLY CONVINCED TO INTERROGATE THIS KID. and IMMEDIATELY broke out the locutus voice. he still remembered all the protocol! the way of speaking! everything! i was so shocked and thrilled.

i love also how everyone who spoke to hugh came away extremely unsettled but also totally convinced of his humanity. even guinan, which was so fun, because she was even more anti-borg than picard at first and they were bonding over trauma and fantasy racism. that bit where hugh, who had only known about the concept of loneliness for like an hour, immediately pegged her as lonely after like three lines of dialogue. oh my GOD???

i was decently satisfied with the ending - obviously they couldn't send him back with poison nor could they protect him from the borg, but i wish they had informed him of the inevitable memory wipe before he made his choice. (a selfless choice! he loves geordi!!) still i think he mostly walked into it with eyes open. very sad but very proud of him.

my one tiny nitpick with this episode is that for all beverly's genuine and justified concern about hugh, i don't think theyre ever gonna address the fact that she shot and possibly killed some of the borg in the episode where picard got assimilated. i feel like after realizing they are all people, like hugh, she should also realize she's broken the hippocratic oath, and have a little crisis about it. i have no idea why we had the DOCTOR shooting and killing anybody but let alone if we aren't gonna get into that. i don't think anyone cares/cared except me though.

but tbh, for me this is one of the main draws of the borg. they're ALL brainwashed cyber-assassins and they're ALL prisoners and in theory ALL of them could be saved if only they would stop attacking first. sure, yeah, in fights you gotta do what you gotta do because your own life has gotta come first, but the unique scifi horror aspect of all of those guys being perfectly innocent people fucks and they should utilize it a little more!!!

NEXT TIME: "the next phase" and "the inner light."

#personal #star trek blogging #tng lb

15 notes · View notes

tellthemeerkatsitsfine · 1 month

Note

hi! I want to familiarise myself with John Robins's work, I was wondering if you could recommend a good starting point? the radio show? standup? just thought to ask you, my favourite comedy connoisseur! thanks :)

Oh wow, I thought you’d never ask! By which I mean, when you spend as much time as I do putting completely unsolicited screeds into the internet that I’m pretty sure are of interest only to me, it is rather fun to write one for someone who has specifically said they want to read it. Though I don’t know if you’ll feel the same way by the end of the post, given my penchant for detail and the multiple unnecessary caveats that I’m already planning for this. I will add a cut to spare everyone else the unnecessary detail.

Okay, so. Weird thing about me, given the current state of my blog, I actually disliked John Robins for the first few years that I knew who he was. That is because the first time I saw him was on Mock the Week, where he appeared alongside Sara Pascoe just as their relationship was about to collapse, and he was an absolute dick about it. So definitely don’t start with that. I mean, Sara Pascoe also wasn’t great in that episode, but I already knew and liked her, so I forgave her. I had no such goodwill toward John Robins, and it completely turned me off him for a long time. After that I saw him pop up on other shows once in a blue moon, but found him annoying because I’d already decided I didn’t like him based on Mock the Week. Definitely do not watch him on Mock the Week.

What turned me around was in November 2022, when I came across a copy of The Darkness of Robins, his 2017 stand-up show that won the big Edinburgh award and was made into a Netflix special. I really, really loved it. I remember making a post at the time when I said this is the fastest I’ve ever turned around on any famous person, the biggest swing from disliking them to thinking they’ve made one of my favourite stand-up shows ever.

After that, I did exactly what you’ve done here, which was ask around on Tumblr for where you can go if you’ve just decided you want more John Robins if your life. Because I knew he had a radio show on one station and then another station with that guy who’s (not) married to Isy Suttie, but I also knew those had about 150,000 hours (slightly exaggeration) worth of episodes and obviously no one has time to listen to all that, that would be absolutely ridiculous, what sort of fool would take that on? Obviously I could have just jumped in at the most recent episodes of their radio show, which is something you could do as well if you want, but my brain’s relentlessly completist nature wouldn’t let me do that. I needed something I could watch/hear all of, but have that be under 150,000 hours.

I asked Tumblr about this, and the best recommendation I got was to check out A Robins Amongst the Pigeons. This started as a feature on his radio show in which he read out loud from the autobiography of broadcaster Tony Blackburn, which was meant to be a serious book, but it’s so self-important and unintentionally hilarious that John got quite a few good weeks worth of content from reading out bits to make fun of them (if this seems mean, it helps to know that one of the passages he read said women working outside the home is bad for children, so I don’t feel bad for the guy). Later on, John Robins mentioned that he’d learned the writers of the Alan Partridge autobiography – I, Partridge – had based it partly on Tony Blackburn’s book.

After he finished reading the Blackburn autobiography, John Robins started to write his own autobiography, “in the style of Tony Blackburn”, and read out a chapter each week on the radio. Basically, John Robins is a huge Partridge fan and took the opportunity to write out his own life story the way Alan Partridge would tell that life story, and it’s really, really funny. It’s a good introduction to John because it goes through his life and lets you know what he’s like, and that gives you an idea of what sort of things he’ll say if you get into the rest of his work. And it’s also a good introduction to John because it’s really, really funny. If you listen to that and don’t find it funny, you probably won’t like the rest of his stuff.

Someone on YouTube compiled all the clips of John reading chapters from A Robins Amongst the Pigeons, and put them on YouTube so you can hear the all as one long string:

youtube

I downloaded that YouTube video, converted it to mp3, put it on my phone and listened to it like an audiobook. My biggest recommendation for someone who wants an introduction to John Robins would be that you do the same. He’s also released it as a paperback book, and did a few live performances where he read it out loud to an audience back when he first wrote it (2015), which is good because it’s too funny to have remained just a feature on a weekly radio show.

The next thing I did when getting into John Robins was go to his Bandcamp page, where he’s released three of his old stand-up shows:

They’re his 2013, 2014, and 2015 Edinburgh shows, with the dates listed on Bandcamp all being from a year later because they were recorded on tours the following years. I think they noticeably get better with each year, and his writing and delivery skills improve. Speakeasy is objectively the best one, Where Is My Mind not quite as good but still made me laugh more than a lot of stand-up hours do. This Tornado Loves You is, I think, not quite objectively as good as Speakeasy. But might edge Speakeasy out as my favourite of the three because it hits some things that I subjectively really love in stand-up.

He did a stand-up show in 2019 called Hot Shame, which I'd really really love to hear, but he's said he never recorded a version that was far enough along, with high enough audio quality to publish (though personally, I would happily take a version with shit audio quality and/or early WIP). In 2023, he did a stand-up show called Howl, which he's recently said he has on audio recording and is planning to publish on Bandcamp at some point, but it's not there yet. I am very much looking forward to hearing that one when it come out.

(Disclaimer: This Tornado Loves You has a routine about PMT/PMS where I see what he was trying to do, it’s not just an average “women be crazy on their periods” routine, he says it with an understanding that the victim here is the woman suffering from painful symptoms, and has said similar things at other times. However, I don’t think the stand-up routine does enough of that to make up for the inherent shitty-ness of a cis man making a joke about his girlfriend getting disproportionately emotional on her period, and I just want to clarify that, because I don’t want anyone to listen to that stand-up show, hear that routine, remember that I said that stand-up show is my favourite of all the Bandcamp releases by one of my favourite comedians, and therefore, I must think cis men telling jokes like that is a good idea. I don’t, I think that was a misstep in an otherwise great show.

The reason I add this caveat is because in the last months, I’ve had three different people watch The Darkness of Robins at my recommendation, and all of them came back with the comment… so this thing that you’ve been calling one of your favourite shows ever – did you mean to go so hard on endorsing a show that ends with a really inappropriate amount of sexual detail about Sara Pascoe, a woman whose name the audience knows, and it’s probably not cool for him to be saying that about her in public? Because this has happened before, I feel the need to say, again, in case anyone watching Darkness of Robins as a result of this post: I don’t love the part at the end where he describes sex with a person the audience can identify in an inappropriate amount of detail. When I endorse the show, I do not endorse that. I hope he asked her if it was cool to talk about that on stage before he did so, but I don’t know if he did, and I have a feeling he probably didn’t. Having said that, I recently watched a bunch of Sara Pascoe’s stand-up from across the years, and I hugely enjoyed it because she’s very funny, but I also learned more sexual details than I wanted to know about John Robins from her stand-up, so I would argue that they are, at best, even in terms of inappropriate talking about each other on stage. Also, for anyone who’s reading this but hasn’t seen the show, I’d like to clarify that it’s not like he goes on some misogynistic rant about her, he just describes sex with her in detail that gets a bit graphic for a couple of minutes.

While I’m caveating, I’ll just throw all my disclaimers in together, I did also have someone watch Darkness of Robins and say they were surprised I liked it so much because the stuff near the beginning, where he talks about how his relationship fell apart, feels a bit like the misogynistic stand-up trope of Man Complains About His Girlfriend For Being Less Logical And Rational Than Him. I’d like to say I actually stand by that routine, he’s built quite a bit of his comedy on talking about how he is compulsively and maladaptively meticulous about everything and is therefore more logical than everyone, he spends half his radio show complaining about how Elis James isn’t logical enough and doesn’t put enough thought into planning and organizing and getting everything right, that’s not a gender thing, that’s just his thing. A lot of his comedy is about his obsession with being precise about everything to the point of overthinking that ruins his life, and if you are reading this post in which I’ve just spent three paragraphs adding unnecessary caveats because I get paranoid about anything I say being misinterpreted, you might understand why that appeals to me so much.

Summary: I do not endorse the menstruation routine of 2014 or some of the sex details of 2017, but I do endorse the many parts of his comedy in which he comes off as an exhausting nightmare, that is very much part of the appeal, though it may not appeal to everyone.)

Besides his stand-up, he’s done some guest appearances on TV, radio, and podcasts. I was about to start listing the ones I’ve found, though it’s probably easier to just give you a screenshot of my folders of his audio guest spots:

and TV guest spots:

I've watched/listened to everything in those folders up to October 2018, since I'm currently working through the radio shows and going through all those other things chronologically alongside it, so I haven't seen the things past 2018 and can't speak to what's in them. Technically, it's possible that he became a flat Earther. So there's another disclaimer: any views expressed by John Robins after October 2018, I haven't heard and cannot endorse. But there's definitely some good stuff in the earlier years.

If any of the shows in the above screenshots are one you already like, then tracking down John Robins' episodes of them is probably a good intro to John Robins (or send me a message if you want a link). Except that second Mock the Week one - don't watch that no matter how much you normally like Mock the Week.

Of his guest spots on TV and audio, a lot of the best ones are better if you're already familiar with John from his radio show or at least from his stand-up, but some hold up pretty well even without that context. His Live From The BBC episode is a shortened (half an hour instead of an hour) version of his Speakeasy show, if you want to see a (shortened) video version of that instead of hearing the audio (and if you are a completist like me, it has a bit of material that's not in the Bandcamp version so it's worth watching). His other TV stand-up guest spots are mainly just little repeats of stuff that's in his longer published shows, except the Russell Howard's Good News extra, which has an older routine that's not in his Bandcamp shows.

I'd say his episodes of Alan Davies' show are particularly fun, though warning that there is a story in the episode he did with Russell Howard that's really weird. There's also another story that he either stole from Adam and Joe, or he was the person who sent that story into Adam and Joe, and I fear it was probably the former, but he wouldn't be the first to steal someone else's story on As Yet Untitled.

On the subject of people who steal other people's stories on As Yet Untitled, I found him very very funny on Isy Suttie's podcast, though he was quite drunk and I can imagine a person with less tolerance for drunken shoutiness could find it annoying. He's good value on Pappy's, a lot of fun and usually drunk (pre-2023, at least). He has a nice rapport with Richard Herring. He played a really weird song on Jon Richardson's old radio show. He told us about a sex dream he had on The Horne Section podcast. And he bickered with his girlfriend on Do the Right Thing. I also thought the Robins/James episode of Comedian's Comedian was excellent (Robins and James both did individual ones that were also both good, but the one they did together is one of my favourites out of the 76 episodes of that podcast that I've heard (I almost wrote ~75 there so I could pretend I don't have a spreadsheet to know the exact number, but why pretend that at this point?)), but it gets pretty deep into stuff from their radio show, so probably isn't worth a listen unless you've heard that show.

John Robins also released a book in 2018, called The Holy Vible, co-written with his radio buddy Elis James. I'm currently nearly done listening to the audiobook of that, and to be honest, there's a lot of filler that will be of interest only to someone who's already very, very interested in whatever John and Elis have to say. Which I am, so I'm enjoying the book, but I definitely don't recommend it to anyone who's not already very much into the radio show.

And that brings me to the 150,000 hours of their radio show, since that's pretty much the only place left to go. It was early 2023 when I listened to his Bandcamp stand-up shows, said I love these and I loved Darkness of Robins and I loved A Robins Amongst the Pigeons, I guess the next step would have to be the radio. But I don't have 150,000 hours to spare to listen to all that. So I guess that's as far as I'm going with the Robins fandom. I even made a post in which I said "John Robins is dangerous - not in general, but to me", because I like him so much that at any moment I could slip down the radio rabbit hole, and then I'd lose 150,000 hours of my life. I held out for nearly a year after I wrote that post, but here I am now.

The radio show with John Robins and Elis James started out in February 2014 on the indie music radio station XFM. XFM rebranded as Radio X in 2015, and they continued to make the same show on Radio X until they left in February 2019. In May 2019, they began broadcasting pretty much the same show (I think, haven't heard it yet, he might be a flat Earther) on BBC Five Live. They continued to do that until the end of 2023, and in 2024, they started doing some other thing that I don't understand. They record it as a podcast first (as opposed to live radio that gets edited and released as a podcast, which is what they did from 2014 to 2023), and then highlights from the podcast get broadcast on the radio, and it's released twice a week, also there are videos, I don't know, I haven't got that far in the chronology. I'm still on October 2018.

I can say that the XFM/Radio X episodes they did between February 2014 and October 2018 are fun, engaging, very funny, often interesting, and I think have been worth the several months of my life it's taken me to listen to them. They go up and down, like anything else that's produced that many hours - there have been a few times when I've thought the show was in a bit of a slump and hasn't been that funny for a couple of months, but just as I'm thinking that, they'll pick it up and do a run of like eight great episodes in a row. Overall, in my subjective opinion, they've had far more strong periods than weak ones. They have a great dynamic with each other and with the features. They spend too much time reading out emails but that's going to happen on a radio show. I'm not particularly into their food tasting segments but that's just because food shows don't generally appeal to me, I love their running quiz segments because competitive features do appeal to me. Your mileage may vary. Also, you don't have to do the relentless completist thing that I do. You could just jump in now at the latest episodes of whatever the hell their BBC show is now.

Oh, and he plays golf on YouTube with Alex Horne. I haven't watched that because I dislike golf and I haven't got there in the chronology yet, but I'll probably end up watching it at some point. A lot of people like it and I think it's probably funny, but I haven't seen it myself so I can't speak to that. It's called Bad Golf and you can find it on the internet.

To give a proper shot at answering the original question, which I now feel like was asked 100 years ago: I think the best introduction to John Robins is a Robins Amongst the Pigeons, linked above, that I recommend listening to like an audiobook. I did Darkness of Robins first, but I think the best order for a good introduction would be Robin Amongst the Pigeons first, to get a good overview of what he's like and what you're getting into with him, and you'll get that overview via 100 minutes that you'll either find very entertaining, or you won't and you'll know not to bother with the rest of his stuff.

After that, I'd say, if you have any completist tendencies, or tendencies like mine toward doing things in chronological order because I think everything is better if you have all the context for it first, then I would recommend listening to his Bandcamp shows in order (Where Is My Mind, then This Tornado Loves You, then Speakeasy), and then watching Darkness of Robins. If you're not bothered about that, just skip to Darkness of Robins because it's the best one. If you do all that and are still interested in finding more John Robins content, then I'm afraid you may have to set off on a journey to give up 150,000 hours of your life the way I have.

Well, there might be one other option. There are other clips and clip compilations from their radio shows, and while I personally have difficulty doing anything in clip form if I haven't gone through the full-length version first (Robins Amongst the Pigeons was an exception because that was its own thing, it was a collection of radio clips but they've also been released as their own book), some of those may be fun in isolation. You can flip through this playlist to find some of them (you can CTRL+F the word "complete" on that page to find compilations of their features and running topics):

One time, in a fairly early XFM episode, Elis informed the listeners that someone had written an email to the show that asked what their five favourite albums were, and John had written a reply that was an essay of several thousand words, and then apologized on the radio by saying there was no way this person wanted their inbox taken up by that much rambling. That may be what's happened here, the difference being that I don't have the status of a (then-future) Perrier-winning comedian to justify why anyone wants to read this many of my words. But still, I'm glad you asked.

9 notes · View notes

fakeosirian · 1 year

Text

"house of anubis has bad writing"

so i have a bit of a pet peeve when it comes to critical discussions about tv, and i'm going to use house of anubis as a vehicle through which to talk about it since i think it's a very good case study of this particular problem.

it's pretty simple: "x has bad writing"

saying something has "good writing" in passing is fine -- not every conversation needs MLA citations -- but for the sake of this post not being a million words long to account for every nuance possible, let's discount those situations and suppose that this is in the context of an extended critical discussion about something, and specifically calling out the "writing" as the culprit.

the funny thing about "writing" is a lot of the time, that...isn't what's being identified in a statement like this. this is where i'm going to start talking about house of anubis so i can give you an actual example

house of anubis has what i would call strong writing for most of its run, with a few notable exceptions (that i'd like to note are localized, specific problems!). when i say this, i'm thinking about specific parameters: the coherency and structure of the story, the pacing, the tone, the consistency and fidelity of the characterization, the quality of the dialogue (doing everything possible to only consider the words themselves, not the performances from the actors), and bells and whistles/creative choices that elevate it past functional narrative and into a piece of art. that is writing.

things that aren't writing that have a huge impact on how the writing/story is digested and are heavily influential creative choices in their own right BUT are literally just. not writing. that get commonly conflated with writing: ACTOR PERFORMANCES (i would write this one 100 times if it made a difference), shot composition, editing (both cut-to-cut and structural editing), and in some cases production design (so sets/props/costumes).

house of anubis is a great case study for this because oftentimes (especially in this VERY cynical phase of pop culture we're in) people conflate things that are earnest, low budget, or camp (especially when talking about elements in the "not writing" category) with "badness" when, while you don't have to like it, if you changed the lens through which you observed them, "bad" would be...not apt as a description. that being said, house of anubis isn't a great case study just because it's camp, but because, as the strongest example here, sometimes the performances are just Not Good. i will not name names (especially since everyone has their moments/odd line reads AND you can see clear improvement over time). but hopefully you know what i mean. it CAN affect your opinion of the story as a whole in a way that like...okay if you were watching season one for the first time as an adult, i wouldn't blame you for being turned off by the pilot, or hell, even a solid 80% of the entire first season.

i've attempted hoa watches with rl friends 3 times now, very recently finished s1 with someone actually, and noticed that more often than not, it was the acting (either because it's a very characteristic/camp/borderline theatrical style that takes getting used to or because it's...roughest at the beginning) that was turning them off. sometimes that was highlighting existing writing issues, but especially during arcs like the play/patricia's kidnapping that are structurally sound, perceived "cheesiness" in the acting would leach into the perception of the writing. we actually skipped the first 5 episodes entirely to try and mitigate the parts that are a bit hard to sit through without prior investment (i showed them the recap portion of the video essay i'm working on instead because they'd seen the pilot before and quote "could not handle that again" LMAO) but i noticed something interesting: while it took them a while to come around to fully enjoying the show, there was a period before that where i could tell that something shifted -- they were invested in the story, but they were still reacting like we were watching a neil breen movie. once the acting picked up, "oh this is garbage" (affectionate) turned to "wait a minute this is good."

that is the difference between bad writing and bad [something else].

this is a post about how house of anubis has good writing more than anything, but i do have to talk about the actual bad writing to make this point. early s1 has a particular type of writing flaw that's both INCREDIBLY interesting to break down, requires good writing ability to make in the first place, and unfortunately, is a KILLER for interest in a show like house of anubis, especially when it's taken out of its original context of being released every couple weeks in runs of 4 days of a new episode each night (which side note: COOLEST release schedule i've ever seen a show do. BRING THIS BACK) and binged instead.

quick interjection because i realized that how i define the plots in this show is not at all universal and i haven't talked about it before/released that damn video yet so you won't know what i'm talking about: until episode 9, season 1 has TWO A plots -- whatever nina/fabian/amber are doing (A1), and whatever patricia's doing (A2). at episode 9, they converge, so it's a more conventional singular A plot, but the reason i insist on it being 2 A plots before that instead of the show having an A/B/C/D plot and then A/B/C is a) for clarity's sake since the other plots don't change at all so why shift their categorization b) calling patricia's plot the D plot so you don't have to do that would imply it's the least important when it's easily the MOST important (it gets all the coolest reveals let's be real) + the C plot usually changes every episode/couple of episodes so putting a long-running plot after what is usually just a runner in the hierarchy makes things needlessly complicated c) they DIRECTLY converge in a way that's well telegraphed from the start. you KNOW whatever nina's doing is related to what patricia's doing from the pilot, and that's good.

so let's be real here: the A1 plot kinda sucks. not because the content itself is bad on its face -- that part of the writing is fine -- but because the individual scenes and what information they drip-feed the audience are poorly paced. the most egregious scene is the one in episode 5(!!!! FIVE) where fabian finally notices the eye of horus in the stair railing (by getting his shoelace caught on the doorknob somehow -- don't get me started), shows nina, and they come to the EARTH-SHATTERING realization that robert frobisher-smythe was really interested in egypt! 💀 it's not so much about them...coming to an obvious conclusion...even if that was what caused my ??? kneejerk reaction, but more that we spent an entire scene on this information (that even to a kid wouldnt bear stating), and it's not the first (nor the last) time that something like this happens in the A1 plot. meanwhile, in the A2 plot, patricia is learning something LEGITIMATELY earth-shattering once or twice a scene, and with multiple scenes in an episode for her, it's difficult for the A1 plot to keep up in terms of intrigue/information weight. the audience can tell that nina's the main character and that whatever she's doing is the "main point," but it gets increasingly difficult to make that case when patricia is getting gangstalked while they're visiting sarah over and over without learning anything new.

the real rub here isn't even in the comparison itself but in the fact that they're still, ultimately, both the A plot, and the characters in each need to get to specific places in the information they have/things they've experienced before their plots can converge properly at victor kidnapping rufus. when you compare them, there's a discrepancy pretty quick: patricia has way more things she has to piece together than sibuna do. thus, the sibuna plotline is artificially sandbagged with repetitive scenes, reveals that don't deserve the fanfare they get relative to the actual content of the reveal, and contrivances (see: fabian shoelace doorknob scenario) so it won't outpace things going on in patricia's plot and undermine the reveals there. when you add in how the B/C plots tie in and have impacts on the A plots or vice versa, it makes sense that something would end up being sacrificed in the pacing department. it seems kinda nuts that it'd be A1, but at a certain point of fiddling with events/moving stuff around, i can see why it had to be A1 that got this treatment.

i'll add that while it was airing, i didn't mind that and even liked how things felt ""sort of normal"/not that supernatural relative to where it was going to end up for a WHILE so when, say, the elixir is introduced and alfie gets trapped in the cellar and they REALLY start using their effects budget, it feels like a considerable shift in the setting. a mystery story that lets you get used to some sense of normal first before yanking the rug out from under you is the best kind, but striking a balance between "something weird is going on here that needs my urgent attention" and "but it's still not THAT weird" so the reveal is both shocking but entirely appropriate and satisfying is VERY difficult. (it's also a move that improves the rewatch at the expense of the initial watch, which i can't help but have a soft spot for as a certified Pretentious Bitch.) that's what i mean by it being a problem that comes from a good writer -- they're trying something! it might not be working perfectly but they're trying and to me, that's far more interesting than technically "clean" but very unambitious writing! but i digress lol

something neat that scene i ragged on early does do is the presentation of the information, though, and it makes me trust this was a particularly thorny structural issue and not amateurish writing. it seems to us that the takeaway is that they need to look into egyptian mythological sources for further information, and that the rollers likely belonged to the frobisher-smythe family. what ends up actually being relevant, though, is a) the naming of the eye of horus for the scene later where rufus asks patricia to look for them (specifically the locket, as we find out later, but he doesn't give that away, same as the scene not giving away why it used the eye of horus in the railing to clarify ^ the above dubiously useful information) and b) the subversion of the audience's attention. i'm not sure if this was intentional, but there's something magical about the way it primes the audience to be dismissive of nina and fabian's discoveries and investigative ability early on. for one, it makes the scenes where nina makes fun of amber for investigating every nook and cranny extra ironic in a way that i love (yes! giving your prototypical blank slate audience insert main character hints of a personality that ends up commenting on the nature of blank slate characters/how their behavior would actually come off if they were real people later down the line!), it makes the audience more likely to get invested in making connections/speculation independent of the characters solving the mystery (audience engagement is critical in a good mystery!), and by hiding the "most important information" in plain sight, it reinforces the illusion that this is a living, breathing world where everything is interconnected in unexpected ways. sure, it's cheesy and may feel cheap, but through that, it hits something real.

to sum up, i can see why if you're just turning this show on expecting a straightforward supernatural teen drama you wouldn't see this stuff first (especially since that genre is predominately cynical in tone right now and house of anubis is reminiscient at first blush of the type of show that a lot of other shows in the genre are...making up a guy like and parodying (badly)) and feel inclined to call it bad, especially without watching season 2. if you're someone new to the show, hi! i hope i haven't scared you off! if you don't mind spoilers, i did a writeup about a scene in late s2 that's an example of both good acting and EXCELLENT writing, both in dialogue but most importantly on a structural level. while it is a standout phenomenal scene, it's only that good because of the writing around it supporting that level of subtext in the first place, and the bones of that are present even in early s1.

i'm holding myself back from writing about cynical vs. earnest media because that's better saved for another post (specifically the fabled s3 writeup i will do someday i promise), but i cannot overstate how much of an impact that has on this, too. to state that conclusion as concisely as my verbose ass can manage: you need both cynical and earnest media in your media diet, elsewise your taste and critical skills will just Be Bad. too much cynical media, in particular, can trend towards a lack of appreciation for the earnest media it needs as reference material to respond to, and at that point, you're just adulating hatred ("intelligence") over loving, y'know, love. earnest media can suck, but at the very least, it's less insufferable to argue with.

(also, sidebar that's been said a million times, but these are TEENAGERS!! so many teenagers on tv are written like adults who make bad decisions, but there's an inherent corniness to being a teen that IS sorta "cringe," and you can't take that out without ruining the experience. i'm a super risk-averse person, but i'd be willing to bet a considerable amount of money that if you wrote up some early-ish s1 dialogue in script format (incl. action lines, etc.) of a scene with all kids and compared that to a scene of just adults, so stripping out the performances/keeping those from interfering in your interpretation, the dialogue that comes off "cringe" would read like perfectly fine, age appropriate language/cadence. i HEAVILY respect a show that doesn't pretty that up, even at the risk of coming off "amateurish.")

in conclusion, i asked my friend when their opinion of the show shifted from essentially "well i'm having fun watching it with you at least" to "ok wait a minute this is actually good," and they said the last four episodes of s1. while i'd place the "officially Good" marker for myself somewhere around episode 9, maybe a little later, i can see exactly why it'd be far later (and at that point specifically) for someone else, particularly someone that hasn't taken...extensive notes on every single moment of s1 and poured over them like it was my job for a solid couple years.

episode 23 and onward has: jerome and alfie getting more complex material to work with AND get to play off one another (and thus two of the show's best actors get to show us that), the rube-goldberg-machineification of the plotlines is setting in (the scene where mick and mara are playfighting while doing the dishes (as a result of their relationship turmoil up to this point??) and spill water on victor right when jerome chases alfie into the kitchen with the drawings of the ankh pieces?!?!?!??!?! LIKE!!! YOU CAN'T CALL THAT BAD WRITING...); reveals are paying off; stakes are high without spiraling out of control; actors in general are refining what elements of their characters work the best/need highlighting; beyond that the characters have weathered enough conflicts that their choices are cropping up to be consistent and solid characterization with a direction; it's clear that this is a campy endeavor with writing chops to back up the cheese.

the way that manifested in my friend's reaction was "wow, that was a good scene." "wait, that was acted really well. everyone did a good job there." "oh my god, they're not. theyre not doing this. oh my god, they are."

that is the essence of house of anubis, i think. it's not for everyone, but "bad writing?" a bit unfair, if you ask me.

#house of anubis #house of anubis meta #hoa meta #hoa #my writing #i feel like this is too vague and soupy so i might write a sequel to this at some point lmao

66 notes · View notes