#God got really creative with a lot of animals

[ohnoitstbskyen]

let's spend an hour and a half enjoying the Heartsteel himbos | PARANOIA animation analysis

I have decidedly mixed feelings on the Heartsteel band splash art, which are intensified by the degree to which their 3 minute music video was able to near-instantly endear me to every one of these idiot himboyband doofuses.

Heartsteel is a project that suffers a lot in being compared to True Damage and K/DA, which are the most obvious points of comparison to draw, especially since Riot seems (at least to me) to have committed rather fewer resources to their virtual band project this go around. Wisely, thus, the Hearsteel project decided to attempt a very different narrative and emotional vibe with its characters from previous efforts. Where K/DA and True Damage both presented their characters as untouchable pop-gods at the top of their game, bragging about their accomplishments, Heartsteel comes from almost exactly the opposite place.

PARANOIA is a fearful, defensive, defiant song composed and performed like a triumphal power-anthem, coming from the perspective of a group of industry outsiders who have all been devalued or burned by the mainstream.

Ezreal is a one-hit-wonder whose image got run into the ground by controlling management, Yone a legendary producer burned out on industry conformity. Kayn is a pop music bad boy whose spiteful arrogance broke up his last band, K'Sante an ambitious vocal powerhouse who could never find creative partners, and Sett a disgraced rapper who lost his contract for punching a paparazzo.

These, then, are not pop-gods gracing the mortal realm with images of their brilliance, but a bunch of down-and-out losers and untapped talents trying to claw back their careers with nothing but found-family dynamics, the power of friendship, and Jackass-style promotional stunts in their arsenal. The music video depicts them running a night-time raid on a film studio, stealing props and causing god knows how much property damage trying to film their own comeback music video.

It doesn't.... quite nail the grunge independent vibe that it seems to want to go for, it has a rather inconsistent diegesis, and trying to cram character moments for six characters into a three minute song compresses the pace of the video to an almost manic emotional experience. I found that most of its setpieces and ideas did not land with me at all until a third or fourth re-watch, and going through the video frame-by-frame so I could actually take in what the video was trying to say.

Once I did, I enjoyed it a LOT. The character animation is expressive, dynamic and immensely charming. There's a ton of great texture work going on, interesting lighting, extremely creative effects, and the emotional heart of the video - the genuine affection between the band members as expressed through boyish shenanigans - hits brilliantly... once you slow the video down enough to really see it. There is also a truly astonishing amount of work put into flash frames and scribbly visual effects, and an absolute embarrassment of screenshots that could be wallpapers.

Anyway, I spent an hour and a half talking about a three-minute music video because I am the world's easiest sucker for charming character animation. Care to join me?

#tbskyen #heartsteel #league of legends #heartsteel yone #heartsteel kayn #heartsteel rhaast #heartsteel k'sante #heartsteel sett #heartsteel aphelios #heartsteel ezreal #k/da #true damage #riot games #Youtube

[ioniansunsets]

Alright but hear me out (hello btw how are you ?) kayn heartsteel have canonically been kicked out of his previous band ; imagine fem!reader (successful idol herself or civilian) comforting him and trying to help him push through it and get back on his feet to continue his music !

✖ Pre Heartsteel!Kayn Being Kicked Out ✖

✖ Word Count: 1.3k

✖ Tags: Established R/S, Idol!Reader

✖ A/N: You were a performer too and met him at a gig before either of you got famous! You two live together in this one, you’re a solo idol that practices at home so you can spend your days with him. These are headcanons! Whee!

----

-  It wrecked him. You two got together while he was in his old band, so it was an important memory to you both. As a solo artist, you understood the intricacies of being in the public eye but still, being kicked out? That was rough…something you personally could never experience. You did your best to comfort him.

- The first few days was the worst. Kayn was the perfect definition of bi-polar. Either his Rhaast ego was full blown, wild, and uninhibited. Man straight up was about to do crimes and was only stopped by you begging him not to make things worse for himself. (You caught him with a bag full of spray paint about to go wreck his old studio.) Or he was the trained Idol, Kayn. Rhaast entirely held back, the perfect definition of an average idol, obedient and reserved. Joining you in your dance and vocal practices in your home studio.

- Don’t even talk about the things he tweeted during that era, you had to run into his room and tell him to delete them minutes after posting. It was a bad time. If you were to ask Kayn now about those old tweets? He was on the very fence of, cocky pride on how he was a “badass” that “didn’t follow rules back then” or just overwhelming embarrassment for being young and dumb.

- There was a lot of work to be done over those first few days, you got the help of your own PR guys to try and get Kayn’s media presence looking better. You yourself doing your best to give him advice on performing, it wasn’t even that he was a bad artist, it was just…he had some strong ideals and just didn’t work well with his old band. It took months honestly but as always, drama died down and Kayn slowly got to live his life again.

- The saddest part of all this drama was that because you were an idol too it was hard to bring him out to comfort him. Paparazzi were hounding you both, media wanting to know what went down with Kayn and if you were seen beside him…gods who knew what the media would say about your career. You two barely left your house because you just couldn’t.

- So, all you could do was your best. Dragging him to game with you on the PC, buying new consoles to try new games with him (murdering things in game really helped him unsurprisingly), watching movies together at home (feel good films that actually make him cry), getting him to do weird shit like painting your shared room (you have a messy signature of his by the door), crocheting weird little animals (he made Rhaast!), hells you managed to get him to read a book (banned in various nations). It was…different. But it helped keep his mind off doing anything that would ruin his career more while satisfying his need to just be a creative.

- On one of those uneventful days, Kayn ordered a nice little delivery package and excitedly ran into your room. Holding the plastic bag up proud. “ Y/N. I’m going to change my image. Entirely. Can you help me. Like…Right. Fucking. Now.” You stare at him in confusion until he walked up to your table, and pulled 7 boxes of bleach and dye, dumping them on your table. “ I’m going to go hot pink.” You laugh, but oblige anyway. If it would cheer him up then you would spend the day helping him out.

- There was a lot of angry snuggling on boring evenings. Kayn would lie in bed in your arms ranting about his ideals, how he was meant for bigger, greater things, things no one else in the industry or his old band could comprehend. And you would hug him tight, supporting him as he complained, listening, agreeing where you can, giving him bigger and better ideals of grandeur. The both of you knew it wasn’t anything serious, but it really did help lighten his mood. “ I’ll really set the stage on fire next time just watch me.” “ I’ll bring the gasoline then.” “ For real! I will fucking bring fireworks and shit too. It’ll be sick as hell! Never seen before! I’ll wreck the stage!!!! Livestream that shit!!!” Such evenings would end with the both of you laughing. It was nice to see him happier again in those small moments. Sometimes you could even see a sneak of a soft smile creeping onto his face, his appreciation for you playing along and not stopping him.

- It took about a week before you felt it was right to get him to pick his guitar back up. Convincing him that the best way to get over the bad memories was to form new ones, the two of you sitting down to write a song. He really went HARD with the lyrics, it was a damn god rap at that but it was honestly a diss track at his old band and shall stay hidden in the files of your computer forever. You do secretly listen to it sometimes, it was raw as fuck, personally it helped YOU when you were angry and frustrated. Not that you would admit to him. It would only stroke his ego more.

- He only admitted it once. Once when you two were soaking in a hot bath together. Only Once did he tell you how much your support meant to him. Nice smells and colors from a bath bomb floating around you two. It was a slow morning, a few weeks after getting kicked out, right before he joined Heartsteel. You sat there, back against his chest as he rests his head on your shoulder. Relaxing in the tub. It was peaceful silence before he spoke up. “ Y/N…I’m going to join a new band.” You actually had to pause and turn to stare at him. Shocked. Asking him if he was sure, if he was ready, if he was comfortable to be performing with people again. You held his face, asking once more if this is what he wanted to do in his career, if he was going to give up on going solo like you. His hand rose to hold yours against his face as he spoke. “ Yeah, I talked to them a lot the past week and…they genuinely accept me and all my crazy ideas. They love Rhaast for who he is and I think I can work with this. I’m sure about this.” He laughs, putting your arm down as his hands wrap around you in a tight hug. Kayn moving his face down to your neck as he gives you a soft kiss, gentle, barely there as he whispers, not looking at you. “ I have to thank you for this by the way. For letting me Be Rhaast. For telling me time and time again to just be the Rockstar that I was meant to be. That my unique brand of rock was fine. I’ll remember this forever. Every time you see Rhaast on stage it’ll be thanks to you. Remember that.” And that was it. He never really showed his vulnerability about his old band ever again. The next day he joined Heartsteel, and it was great for him. Your own heart feeling warm and fuzzy seeing him laugh and have fun with new bandmates. And when you stand in the audience, seeing Rhaast rap some sick bars, you can’t help but smile. He was Your Rockstar.

#I was like damn i have writers block #then i wrote and wrote and wrote #and dropped the last headcanon and made myself emotional......... #they are good for him. they help him BE him #Anon Answer #HEADCANONS #League of Legends Headcanons #Shieda Kayn #Heartsteel!Kayn #Kayn x Reader #Kayn League #Kayn LoL #Kayn League of Legends #KaynLeague #thank you for letting me write this. #ONLY PROOF READ ONCE i will read it again later it was LONG

[kaythefloppa]

Wild Kratts - Our Blue and Green World: Part 1: Review [Spoilers]

Welp, here it is, the Wild Kratts TV movie (not to be confused with the feature film they've been teasing us with since 2021). There's been a lot of hype around this special and season, especially with how much the latter was being hyped up during the hiatus. Let's see if the blue and green bros were able to deliver: Spoilers under the cut

Well, this is certainly an attention grabber!

This entire live action intro is shot and edited like an animated Wild Kratts episode, it's glorious.

Woah, intro change!

They said the thing! They said the thing!

HELP THIS IS SO RELATABLE. Also, THE BOYS ARE FIGHTING

Lmao I don't think they do it very often, but using animals/nature in their insults is very creative.

Also, whooping crane episode when?

This entire song is mercifully short. Like most character sung songs in Wild Kratts, it's not good, but this at least is clever in its lyrics and its visuals. It feels like a Disney reference at best and I am content with that. I also ADORED seeing the Draco and Walrus Suit return again. It's arguably the best musical number in the series. No, that is not saying a lot.

MARTIN WHY ARE YOU THE ONE WHO'S MIFFED YOU NEARLY MUFASA'D YOUR LITTLE BROTHER

CHRIS WHY ARE YOU MILDLY INCONVENIENCED YOU GOT ACRAPHOBIA FALLING FROM THAT HEIGHT

When I first saw the clip, I thought that they were going somewhere with this, like they'd activate Peacock Powers at the end when they recognized the compatibility and blue and green. But nope. Wasted potential is an understatement.

Also, where the fuck are they right now? In a previous shot there was Target the Chameleon, implying that they've been to Madagascar, but that is an Indian peafowl, and as far as I'm concerned, they don't live in Madagascar. Were they just having an off-day? These animals have little to nothing to do with the plot when they really shouldn't have, so I don't see why they couldn't have just shown a projector image or something.

Remember when I joked about the Wild Pony Power Suit returning in S7.... fuck you Apollo.

Man, they are eating it up with the animation here. It's hard to tell with screengrabs but man, is it fluid.

The first half of this episode is mixed. While it feels like the brothers are incredibly stubborn, it also does make sense for them to be this fixated on their favorites. So I can totally buy this. It could've been insufferable to watch, but it wasn't.

As if YOU haven't spied on them since the first time your dorito-headed ass showed up on screen

Did you find that funny? Because not only do they do a similar joke like that later on, but they follow through on that joke in the most unexpected way you will shit your pants when you first ingest it.

Oh my god if they make a Creature Power Suit off of that bird, I will take back any diss I've made, that is so beautiful.

Good to know that Aviva put the button near the chest and not near the back.

Maybe it's just me but this is kinda pushing it. Chris is literally getting his organs crushed, I think that should matter more than A) being right or B) trying to get 2 people to stop fighting.

I'm loving the callback and what this leads up to but ew, all this does is remind me about how ugly bright the color pallatte in S6. Really glad they fixed it in S7.

HELL FUCKING YES

This episode finds really unique ways of showing how the two different biomes are interconnected. It's like Rainforest Stew's (very brilliantly handled) message only to a larger degree. Kids can learn a lot from this.

I fucking love this episode, man.

Honestly, the way they write Paisley in the first half of the episode is very in-line with her character. Most shows that do what this episode does has them be out-of-character as a set-up, but here, she's just roasting the fuck out of Zach. Once again, recontextualized entirely in the climax.

HOW THE FUCK DID HE GET TO MADAGASCAR FROM THE GODDAMN AMAZON IN ONE AFTERNOON THAT IS LIKE MORE THAN 1,000 MILES AWAY?? ARE ANACONDAS THAT FAST?????

Also, INDRIS!!!!! :D

I was frankly expecting this to horribly backfire but spoilers, it doesn't. This actually winds up working. Common Aviva W.

To be continued.... will the blue and green rivalry end? Will one prove superior over another? And will they be able to stop Zach and Paisley and save the planet earth? And will this change the adventures of the Wild Kratts team forever? Stay tuned for part 2!

Pros:

The live action segments.

The animation of the earth's model.

The musical number not being ass.

Paisely's catty behavior.

The Anaconda Suit.

The inventive ways they show how the stability of the Earth is complex. There are a lot of ways it functions and thus a lot of ways it needs to survive

The comedy.

Cons:

The villains do not do anything until the second half of this episode. In fact, they're left completely in the backdrop. I expected them to make their prescence known and for Aviva to invent the discs to get them together for the SAKE of fighting the villains. But no. It makes the stakes feel hollow, which is the opposite of what they should be gunning for in an hour long special that they hype the shit out of.

CONCLUSION:

It was an "okay" set-up. It did live up to some of the hype it had, but not all of it. Honestly if it wasn't for the second half of this episode, this movie would be mediocre or slightly above average, but no. They do pick themselves off the ground and... they do jump the shark. But we'll get to that next time

#spoilers #season 7 spoilers #wild kratts #wild kratts season 7 #paisley paver #zach varmitech #kratt brothers #2d kratt brothers #2d martin kratt #2d chris kratt #I lost sleep over this episode istg #Youtube

[quinloki]

ooh for the ask game cross guild besties with begging, pet play and hair tugging please!!!

Good News Anon - I wanna do all four XD

Begging, Pet Play, and Hair Tugging: With Buggy, Sir Crocodile, Mihawk AND Killer \o/

Let's just get right into this ♥

Buggy:

Begging - FUCK Yes - Buggy himself is pretty good at begging (He's had lots of practice bumbling his way through one terrible situation after the other, let's be fair.) but He really likes it when you beg him. The sweet look on your voice, the certain tone your voice gets, the way you reach for him. It's all really flashy, and it's all a turn-on.

You're so sweet when you're begging, but the sounds you make when he's pleasing you are even better, so he never makes you beg for too long. He will urge you to be more flashy (read: more vulgar), sometimes, but usually he just listens to you.

Pet Play - Yes - He's not likely to lead you around the ship on a leash or anything, but he'll lean into it behind closed doors if it's your thing. He'll run the line of simply using pet names for you, to having you do tricks for him, all the way to not letting you talk. Pets don't speak, after all, you'll just have to communicate how you're doing in more primal ways.

Hair Tugging - Oh god you don't even know - Buggy has some beautiful locks of hair all on his own, and he certainly doesn't mind when you tug his hair. He's probably got a soft spot for having you brush it out or play with it.

But he loves to pull your hair. The little gasps that escape you, that sweet almost orgasmic sound when he pulls you around just right the right way. He'd kill for those sounds. If your hair's not the long, or you're not keen on having it pulled, then he'll live with it, but he might be asking you to tug on his more often than he would otherwise.

Sir Crocodile:

Begging - FUCK Yes - Your smart, you have to be to keep up with Crocodile in the first place, he's sure your vocabulary is reflexive of that. Bonus if you know a couple other languages/dialects. He's quite certain you can be creative and descriptive in your begging. What exactly do you want from him, or what do you want to do to him? Use your words, love, and keep those sly hands under control until he gives you permission to use them.

Pet Play - FUCK Yes - He's into it. He might even lead you around the mansion on a leash if he wants, having you crawling beside him. If you're into that then it would be a reward, otherwise it could very easily turn into a punishment.

He'll run the line on it, from not allowing you to "speak", all the way to feeding you treats for being good. He's got a bit of a soft spot for the animals as a general rule, so I can see him being subconsciously nicer to you during these kinds of sessions.

Hair Tugging - Yes - He actually prefers to play with your hair than to tug it. He enjoys combing it out, or just massaging your head. Whatever kind of hair you have, those magical fingers of his will feel almost like water, snaking their way through even the curliest of locks.

But those same deft fingers will certainly snatch you up by the hair and pull. The sharp tug that demands a gasp from you, and the tight grip that causes you to mewl for him. He'll even guide/force you where he wants you by the hair if that's what you want, but he'd much rather force your hand, than force you by hand.

Killer:

Begging - FUCK Yes - Oh please do beg. Use your words, your hands, your mouth - Killer will control how much pawing you can do to him easily enough, but he loves all the sounds. He loves that desperate look on your face, the pout that crosses your lips when he pulls you back and holds you in place. The frantic look in your eyes as you try to think of better words to convince him.

It doesn't matter what you're begging for, it's all music to his senses. His favorite thing is to tease you while you're begging and listening to your attempts shiver and shatter as his hands and lips break your train of thought.

Pet Play - Yes - He'll get toys and accessories for you, leaning into it as much as you like him too. His rating of it might even go up if there's other kinks he's into thrown into session (like begging, bondage, etc.) Pet play on its own won't do much for him, but he's also okay with pleasing you. Killer's the kind of dom that'll get you one of those butt plug tails, and take his time working it in.

Hair Tugging - FUCK Yes - Killer's like 80% hair by volume. He knows how to take care of it, control it, use it, etc. He enjoys having his hair pulled almost as much as he enjoys pulling someone else's hair. I feel like him and Kid both are just good at it (Kid maybe likes it a little more).

Killer will let your hands disappear into his hair, and he'll tug, twist, twirl, curl, straighten, pull and tug your hair as much as you'll let him. He's into the sensual side of it, but he can also drag you by your hair and you'll be surprised to find that it doesn't *hurt* - it's not pleasant - well, not unless it is pleasant, but he never pulls your hair out because of it.

Mihawk: (Bonus!)

Begging - Oh god you don't even know - Mihawk's idea of begging is a little different than most. It's elegant. If you're not sure how to beg properly he'll teach you. Proper posture, proper tone. You may be saying the most disgraceful and needy words, but there's no reason to be an animal about it. It's a very corsets and lace kind of vibe, and the leather glove that caresses your skin makes your heart race as much as the sharp eyes watching you.

Of course you'll beg so sweetly just for him to begin, and the real trick will be keeping your tone under control as the pleasure washes over you again and again. Just how long can you beg properly?

Pet Play - Sure - He'll oblige, but it goes against his usual preferences. Though if you're leaning more toward the variety that includes, say, obedience training, he might show a little more passion than he would otherwise.

Hair Tugging - Oh god you don't even know - When your posture's good and you've been begging so sweetly, you deserve to be rewarded. He loves to bury his hands in your hair and move you as he pleases. Exposing your neck to the lips and teeth he desires to place upon it, bringing your mouth to places he wishes it be. Your hair is just the perfect way to do all these things. He does admire the way it frames your face, how it shifts when he's deep inside you, how it glistens with effort and sweat whether his hands are in or not.

I think he's also really good at doing hair. I don't know why, but he seems like someone who would provide you an act of service (especially during aftercare) where he wouldn't just wash your hair, it'd be the whole spa treatment.

#kinky one piece head canon #buggy the clown #sir crocodile #killer one piece #dracule mihawk #x reader #buggy x reader #mihawk x reader #sir crocodile x reader #killer x reader

[roses-dreams-andthorns]

May I request Lilia, Leona, Azul and Jamil with a reader who's got the ability to make her art come to life?

Writing a word creates that word (writing basket of cherries makes an actual basket of cherries come to life), drawing a picture makes whatever she drew real, etc.

Magic art? absolutely.

F!Reader (bc she/her pronouns used in request, but anyone can interact)

Leona

He doesn't really care at first, the only thing he really cares about is using you as a pillow for when he takes naps. But then there came a time you got tired of being the pillow and your legs going numb because this sleepy lion insists on using you as one and refusing to get up until he's done his nap. So you drew a pillow on your sketchbook, and boom, now he doesn't have to use you as a pillow, because now he has one of his own. He now constantly asks you to draw him up a sandwich so that he doesn't have to wait for Ruggie to get one for him.

(Sorry Trey didn't have many Ideas for this guy)

Azul

Azul has most likely tried to throw you into a contract multiple times to try to take your magic, using propaganda like; "I can get you anything you desire in exchange for your precious magic abilites..." but little does he know, you can do that yourself. Need money? Draw money and poof! you're rich! Need food? You could draw yourself an entire meal! See a plushie you like but don't feel like spending your money? Draw the plushie and you'll get it for free! Need a fancy outfit like a suit or dress? Get creative and draw it! He then falls into a pit of embarrassment and frustration when he realizes that his propaganda isn't going to work on someone who can already obtain anything they desire themselves for absolutely free just by drawing it. But despite his frustrations, he is quite amazed by your magic, and believes it would be insanely useful for business purposes, but what do you decide to use it for? Personal needs and wants, and for the sake if others as well. and he envies that.

Jamil

So... you can just draw anything you want? And you'll get it for free? Impressive. You could conjour up anything. plants, animals, money, plushies, collectable limited time items, furniture, clothes... Even a house?? You could draw yourself a whole castle, and make it a reality, It wouldn't surprise him if you can create your very own worlds filled with animals, castles, monsters and stuff like that, turning that world you created into the imagery in your head... You're letting your god complex show too much, Reader, let's calm down a bit... But besides using your magic for personal wants and needs, you also tend to use it for others as well. You use your magic to help him out quite a lot, like drawing up certain ingredients that he's missing for a certain dish, he's very greatful for that.

Lilia

"fufufufu... letting your god complex show, are we? Being able to create anything you desire...~ fufufufu... Your magic surprised me at first, oh but I have gotten used to it... Mind making me a few things, Reader?"

Lilia-san... you're breaking the fourth wall-

"I'm aware, Writer-san. But it doesn't hurt anyone.~"

Okay... have your wattpad moment, Trey supposes...

"Your magic, so unique and powerful... and how selfless you are to use it to help others as well... you never cease to amaze me, reader. I'm sure Malleus is also very impressed with your magic..."

Lilia-san... this is about you, not Malleus.

"Just saying, Writer-san.~"

...Trey would perfer it if you stuck to their script... but oh well...

Trey will have to keep Lilia-san from breaking the fourth wall next time...

#twisted wonderland #disney twst #azul ashengrotto x reader #azul ashengrotto #twst jamil #jamil viper x reader #twisted wonderland jamil #jamil viper #twst azul #twisted wonderland x reader #twisted wonderland azul #leona kingscholar x reader #leona kingscholar #twst x reader #twst leona #lilia vanrouge x reader #lilia vanrouge #twst lilia

[canmom]

Ping-Pong The Animation: eps 1-3

So Masaaki Yuasa [AN12, AN28, AN150] can do no wrong, right? OK, well, I'll admit Ride Your Wave was kinda mid, and Devilman Crybaby goes hard as hell at the beginning and end but sorta treads water in the middle, but... generally speaking! No-one does it like Yuasa.

For reasons I don't really remember, I didn't get very far watching Ping-Pong The Animation some years ago. It should be entirely my shit: Yuasa pulling in a gang of wildly creative animators to put their unique spin on something. However, the first episode didn't entirely hook me, and I never got round to trying the second before something else punted 'watching Ping Pong' out of my brain. ADHD, y'know.

This is a shame because even the very next episode seriously goes, as does the one after that. But also this anime isn't entirely what I was expecting (crazy sakugafest full of Yuasa weirdness). Not to say it doesn't do a lot of really unique stuff with its cinematography and animation, but these first episodes at least are more about like... dissociation! ennui!

But more on that in a mo. First I wanna continue the thread of 'how do you animate sports'.

So, ping-pong, or table tennis. Not a sport I know much about, I'll be honest. (To be fair I don't know a lot about sports in general outside of some very specific niches. The sports I've pursued so far are rather eclectic: swimming, fencing, tai chi chuan, and roller derby; I never got particularly far in any and it's been years since I've done them.)

I'll inevitably be drawing a lot of comparisons to The First Slam Dunk, the other sports anime I've watched recently. I do think it's a productive comparison though! Both of them bring something of the visual language of manga into their presentation in unique ways. I have not yet read the Ping Pong manga, but it's by Taiyō Matsumoto, otherwise known for scifi manga like Tekkonkinkreet (god tier movie, still need to read the manga) and Number Five. So that's a pretty impressive track record!

If you go take a look at some scans of Ping Pong, what will immediately jump out is the shaky, rough line style and unusual camera angles and compositions.

The stylisation is also very different from a lot of manga. Noses are fully drawn, eyes are realistically small, and in contrast, lips and mouths tend to get the emphasis - as well as hands.

Knowing this makes a lot of the creative choices in the anime make sense! It also adopts a shaky lineart style, and makes use of heavy line weights and spotting blacks to add definition. It also has a lot of crazy closeups and layouts, and it loves a visual metaphor. But most of all, the most striking element of this anime is how often it loves to split the picture up into little panels...

...which [eli]'s subs do a really good job of typesetting, incidentally, moving the dialogue to fit naturally into the split composition. And while this shot with 7 smaller shots is perhaps on the extreme end, splits of three or more are pretty frequent. It's a really interesting way to evoke the effect of seeing a whole page of manga

So, as you proooobably know, ping-pong is a game of bouncing balls off a little table and directing them into places the opponent will find it hard to hit them back. From watching this anime I picked up that there are a number of styles of holding the racket (e.g. 'penhold grip' and 'shakehand') and approaches to hitting the ball (e.g. 'chopping'). A lot of this pretty much went over my head, but honestly it didn't matter, since the narrative significance was pretty much always evident.

Compared to basketball, though, ping-pong is a pretty tricky sport to make visually interesting! Sure, you have the players running to and fro, and that can lead to some interesting poses, but how do you get the drama and tension into this?

Ping-pong additionally is all 2D, it doesn't have the sort of resources that Toei could throw at making the best looking 3DCG basketball game ever. It is limited to a TV-feasible drawing count. So it has to make use of clever limited-animation tricks to get the most impact out of fewest drawings.

Let's take an example sequence from episode 3. A minor character is about to get his ass kicked by Tsukimoto. Tsukimoto is something of a pingpong prodigy, and yet he is very emotionally closed-off and even standoffish; he doesn't particularly seem to like the game very much, and doesn't particularly feel inclined to flex on other players and get into the status games. But other players, like Wenge, have heard about him and want to see what he's got.

First we have the setup. Other characters are observing and discussing the game. Since ping-pong tends to involve very rapid exchanges, it can follow the classic shōnen model where there's a lot of talking, flashy fight sequence, more talking...

The cut happens in two steps, maintaining the vertical dividing line. This approach to cutting is used a lot in Ping-Pong, and it's quite a creative way to keep visual interest when it's using a lot of largely static shots. The panel on the right is more animated than the panel on the left, a naturalistic depiction of bouncing the ball off the table.

Things start moving faster here. A rapid pan on the image on the left disguises the fact that this anticipation pose is actually not moving at all. This then goes into a rapid, explosive moment as this guy serves.

The final pose is held for a couple of seconds while the voiceover line discussing his intended move finishes. This sort of elasticity of time is a very Osamu Dezaki type of move - it's something that Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata actually really disliked.

A sound effect hits as Tsukimoto appears on the right in silhouette, anticipating his reaction, and setting up the next shot which leaves the split picture and hides the background for just a moment, as if to put us in Tsukimoto's shoes: he only sees the ball.

Tsukimoto follows through and holds this pose - the ball is the only thing moving here. The ball moves mainly on 2s while Tsukimoto moves on 3s and 2s, and he and the ball move on alternating frames. He holds the pose as the ball zips off to the right (bouncing off the corner of the table), with a speed lines-like effect. At the end of the shot, the ball freezes in the air for the moment while the sound echoes.

The actual table-tennis round lasts just seconds, and the drawing count involved is pretty minimal, but it does a lot with those drawings.

We go back to voiceovers and reactions in the next few shots, returning to the split video as Tsukimoto's opponent thinks about how he'd really rather be at the beach...

Often, these comic-like compositions will change one panel at a time, and while one panel is animated another panel will be still, naturally moving your eyes across the screen. It is an approach similar to some experiments I've seen in 'animated comics' viewed in a web browser, where the panels do not appear all at once, but enter with some animation.

So this is the sort of animation technique that Ping Pong uses. It's effective! Elsewhere the cuts are used in a less direct, continuity-editing way and more in a juxtaposition/montage way. For example, Wenge's desire to return to China is symbolised by match cutting/fading to shots of an aeroplane.

And there is a recurring image, which I'm sure will be expanded on, of Tsukimoto hiding in a cupboard and wishing for a tokusatsu hero to come save him from his isolation. As Tsukimoto's feelings about himself change, the toku hero is replaced by a robot. At this points it starts to feel like an outright Ikuhara anime.

There is occasionally a little bit of CG, mainly when Tsukimoto uses a different type of racket surface, and the way the ball and racket make contact is the crucial thing that the shot is trying to convey...

It gets the job done, but I'm glad they stuck with 2D for most of it.

So I went in the first time expecting like, crazy elaborate sakuga - and to be fair, the OP, animated by none other than Shinya Ohira, delivers on that front - but if anything what I've seen so far in Ping-Pong is actually a triumph of storyboarding and limited animation techniques. I think back then I didn't have the eyes to appreciate it in the same way.

OK, that's the film nerd stuff, but what about the story? Ping Pong follows two school friends, Makoto Tsukimoto aka "Smile" (right), and Yutaka Hoshino aka "Peco" (left). Smile is defined by a flat affect and a standoffish persona. He's just going through the motions. He's very good at ping-pong, but to him it's just a way to pass time, and he's scornful about the idea of caring all that much about it. Much like Shinji with his casette player, Tsukimoto is pretty much always staring at a handheld games console rather than make eye contact with anyone.

Peco on the other hand is the more childish one - playful, kinda arrogant, very much an 'emotions on his sleeve' kinda guy. He sulks when he loses and gloats when he wins, and is constantly seen with bubblegum or other kinds of candy. He provides a lot of our commentary when he chats with the other players.

日本語上手 readers probably noticed the tsuki (moon) vs hoshi (star) symbolism thing they've got going on here!

High-school table tennis in this story seems to be a rather 'tough love' kinda world. Most of these players tend to look down on those who can't meet their level. Going easy on someone is seen as weakness, or cultivating bad habits, by almost everyone. Tsukimoto doesn't play at his full potential because he isn't as invested in winning as all these weirdos, but it seems that might be starting to change...

The coach is interesting. He's an old man and fairly disdainful of the club at large, and prone to speaking English randomly with a heavy accent. But he gets excited at the prospect of getting Tsukimoto to unleash his full potential, in terms that are repeatedly metaphorically compared to romance/marriage.

And when Tsukimoto gets sick of it, he challenges him to a game, with the stakes as...

Cue Makima/Beatrice images here I guess.

Tsukimoto de facto wins when the coach collapses, but this episode marks a change of heart. He starts to think of himself as a robot - the affect of a robot replacing the affect of the toku hero in his fantasy. And in this way he does what people seem to want and plays ping pong with mechanical precision, expressed once again in visual metaphor (shot here from a cool transformation sequence)...

What if I just dissociate harder? This is gonna end well.

So it really is one of those kind of like 'ennui of being a teenager' kind of stories - c.f. say FLCL. 'Boy with complicated emotional landscape' is Yuasa bread and butter, but the particular variant here seems a little unusual for him - they tend to be a little more earnest. I'm curious to see how Tsukimoto develops.

I am definitely enjoying the arrogant Chinese player Kong Wenge. Dude's got a lot of screen presence, and while I'm sure he'll get shown up sooner or later, he makes for a very fun antagonist of sorts.

In comparison to Slam Dunk... one thing that's significantly different about table tennis is that it's an individual rather than a team sport, which means it's harder to have an ensemble cast all contributing to the protagonists' eventual victory - instead it's about a lot of individual arcs interweaving with each other, individual duels. Besides that, it does seem like it will be following a similar arc of a character in an emotional hole (grief for Ryota, depression for Tsukimoto) finding new meaning and purpose through sports - though I can't be sure how things are gonna go for Tsukimoto here!

The tone however is quite different. Even when it's silly, I feel like Slam Dunk is a very sincere story. There's little detachment or irony, or false consciousness - with perhaps the major exception of Ryota's mother, who lets her own grief and trauma get in the way of understanding her son. But ultimately 'why would you care this much about basketball' is not a question that anyone would ask in Slam Dunk. Even the judo guy in the manga who's trying to recruit Sakuragi is just as hot-blooded about his own sport of choice.

There's a difference in like, general affect about the players as well, which has something to do with the sport itself. Yeah, Sakuragi's superpower is his 'genius' ability to predict rebounds, and there is plenty of strategising in Slam Dunk - but basketball is still a sport that very much emphasises physical power, and as much as Slam Dunk will work hard to sell you on a clever trick pass, the visuals are also emphasising the speed that players are dashing, the height they're jumping, their physique. Table tennis by contrast seems to be a sport that's more about prediction and mind games.

That said it is equally just like Matsumoto's style being different from Inoue's. Now I know it's by the guy who wrote Tekkonkinkreet, a lot about this series falls into place! There's a sense of tension here, of being fundamentally at odds with the world. The autismfeels. This is reflected also in the drawings - the characters don't entirely seem comfortable in their embodiment.

So if that's what I'm getting from just three eps, I'm very excited to see what the remaining 8 have to offer. This series is probably too long to cram into Animation Night format, but we'll see...

#anime #manga #ping pong the animation #masaaki yuasa #animation

[shinneth]

My souring sentiments on Sailor Moon's manga

It'll be a surprise to no one who knows me even remotely that Sailor Moon was my everything back in my childhood. From the age of 9, I was utterly obsessed with it.

That was just a couple of years shy of 30 years ago.

Since then, I've often revisited the series. I watched the entirety of the Viz dub of the classic anime; all 200 episodes.

And I loved it all the same, if not more so than before. Because now I have context for why exactly the anime was the way it was, including its gradual diversion from the manga source material. And I respect the hell out of the staff who poured their life into this work, while concurrently running with the manga and doing whatever it could to not completely outpace it in the narrative.

Are there a lot of fillers in the OG anime? Yes. Too many? Well, not so from a functional standpoint (this show had to run weekly for 5 years), but there are definitely some fillers you could skip and miss nothing in doing so.

But a story like Sailor Moon honestly needed some breathing room in order to properly flesh out the cast.

Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon, the live-action reimagining of the show, was phenomenal back then (despite looking low-budget even by 2003 standards), and having re-watched the whole series recently, I can safely say PGSM more than holds up and deserves way more love and respect than it gets. It's THE perfect example of reimagining the story of Sailor Moon while still respecting its roots and maintaining the soul of the franchise.

Which is exactly why I couldn't stand Sailor Moon Crystal. We knew from the off that it was supposed to be completely faithful to the manga, but one look through @crystalvsmanga will show you Crystal took shitloads of "creative liberties", and the amount of changes I could dare to call "good"? I could count them on one hand.

The animation is low-hanging fruit, because everyone and their dog knows how godawful it was for the first two story arcs. But more than that, I actually loathed the general art design. Yukie Sakou's style DID NOT closely resemble Naoko Takeuchi's. People kept saying it, but I couldn't really see it. The eyes especially are a far cry from Takeuchi's style. And Sakou's style did NOT facilitate the OTT cartoony expressions that were definitely present in Takeuchi's manga; everyone looked so goddamn soulless, like overly-expensive porcelain dolls.

My biggest gripe with Crystal was the story, of course. While a great deal came from just being from the manga (which I'll get to in a bit), the changes they made went a long way to actively make the manga's story worse. My main takeaway from Crystal S1-2 is that it took itself waaaaay too seriously.

That being said, I did like Crystal's third season a lot better BECAUSE Chiaki Kon had way more competence and held a lot more respect for Sailor Moon. Like, my god, for once it felt like there was a soul in this show! It can actually take the piss every now and then!

Some silly things kinda broke my immersion (such as the Senshi just being able to fuckin' fly and Chibi-Moon in particular was literally sky-stepping), but most of that can be blamed on the source material it was adapting. While I was fine with Crystal3, I definitely didn't feel it was anywhere near as good as Sailor Moon S. Outside of Hotaru/Sailor Saturn having more of a presence, there wasn't really much in Crystal's take on Infinity that I liked better than S.

But most of that comes down to the fact that I liked S more than manga's Infinity arc to begin with.

Which is a good segue to talk about the manga proper.

I have not yet watched Eternal or Cosmos. the movies that adapted the last two manga arcs, but it'd be redundant since I know ahead of time what they're going to be about, and so far I haven't heard about any of them deviating from the source material, so it'd be moot to talk about them even if I had watched.

When I first got my hands on the manga, which was when I was around 12-13 and thus got the crappy MiXxZine translations, I was fine enough with it. Thought it was too fast-paced and didn't care for 99% of the villains being one-and-done jobbers, but I was also reading it with my impressions of the 90's anime characters still intact. I was reading the manga like an extension of the anime, rather than the other way around.

It wasn't until many years later when I grew older, when the manga was properly translated, when I acquired the wisdom my teenaged-ass self lacked, and learned to look at the manga as a completely separate entity that I started to see the cracks in the manga's narrative.

Further rereads have left me in something of a mindfuck, as I experienced the manga the proper way. And I realized:

The more I read the manga, the more I disliked it.

The manga is lauded for having an infinitely better depiction of Mamoru, as well as his ~Miracle Romance~ with Usagi.

Objectively, the manga definitely spends lots more time giving UsaMamo attention as a couple than any other aspect of the story...

I'd say they're also more developed as individuals in the manga too, but usually the beats, uh...

... let's say they usually ring hollow, when these two (and sometimes their daughter) are the only ones who consistently get shit done across the series. Hell, on the rare occasion that the Inner Senshi weren't rendered into street pizza, Neo Queen Serenity basically told them to fuck off and let her daughter, past self, and past hubby take on motherfucking DEATH PHANTOM/NEMESIS BY THEMSELVES.

It's likely because my first exposure to Sailor Moon was via the 90s anime, which had more of a focus on friendship and comradery between Usagi and her friends than it did her romance with Mamoru. I mean, romance was DEFINITELY a prominent thing even in that iteration of the story, but that wasn't where my interest lied. I was, am currently, and always will be more interested in Usagi's galpals than I'll ever be interested in her love life.

And, well, I'm sure this qualifies as a hot take, but...

This one moment with Usagi and Mamoru in the elevator (hell, their interaction across this entire episode was great) resonated with me far more than any ultra-romantic declarations of eternal devotion that Usagi and Mamoru kept regurgitating at each other in the manga.

Granted, the manga had a FEW moments early on where their dynamic was more playful, but they were pretty much confined to the early chapters and this element of their chemistry pretty much died not long after this.

Some say 90s anime Mamoru was far too mean-spirited in his teasing of Usagi. And I mean, sure, he was kind of a douche at times, but he usually got some karmic blowback from it (I remember one time he made Usagi cry without even really meaning to, and she cried so loud in public that randos nearby were giving Mamoru the evil-eye or a scolding). But honestly, after R, Mamoru kinda became a bland, generic love interest, just as he almost always was in the manga. The only difference was that anime Mamoru was never granted powers that were literally equal to Usagi's. The manga gave him a GOLDEN FUCKING CRYSTAL.

There was that infamous break-up arc in R that, yes, was shitty in concept and execution. But if I had anything positive to say about it, it at least shook up the status quo. It didn't make him immediately fall into the bland, generic love interest he would soon become. And it gave us some of the most emotionally-charged Usagi moments in the entire anime.

Conversely, in the manga, we had THIS shit for our UsaMamo "drama":

(the former incident with Usagi literally accusing her boyfriend of falling in love with a kid, by the way, happened while MOST OF HER FRIENDS WERE KIDNAPPED BY THE ENEMY AND COULD'VE BEEN DEAD FOR ALL SHE KNEW AND YET SHE FUCKING HAD TIME FOR THIS STUPID SHIT)

Everything seemed to revolve around Usagi and Mamoru (sometimes Chibiusa too). It lowkey came off that way at times even in the 90s anime, but in the manga or Crystal? You'd be hard-pressed to find the girls engaging in their stated hobbies at most points in time, because they're usually all together and talking about their prince and princess.

Hell, even Haruka - Sailor Uranus herself - seemed much more interested in Usagi than she ever did in Michiru, her actual girlfriend.

So... am I just missing something? I've seen people say that as they grow older, they prefer the manga/Crystal to the 90s anime. But I've never seen anyone other than myself express the opposite sentiment.

But it's true - unless I completely leave my brain at the door, I have a hard time enjoying the manga for what it is. The characters I'm most interested in or attached to quickly get swept aside for the characters I have the least interest in. No more does that ring true than the Stars arc of the manga, where Naoko Takeuchi basically speedruns killing off literally the entire cast until Sailor Moon's the only one left standing. Most characters don't even get to go out in a blaze of glory or anything - it's got nothing on the finale of the 90s anime's first season in that regard. If you're lucky, you'll get a single panel where your entire existence is ripped to shreds - but sometimes you'll be killed literally off-screen!!

There's a number of questionable manga-exclusive aspects that rubbed me the wrong way as well, such as poor Sailor Pluto being assigned as a child to guard the Door of Time in complete and total solitude. While I appreciate more Silver Millennium lore that the manga provided (the anime hardly mentioned it past the first arc), it was more than a little uncomfortable knowing the OG Queen Serenity conscripted the Inner Senshi as small children to become Princess Serenity's guardians. Really casts Queen Serenity and her Moon Kingdom in a much darker light - like maybe Queen Beryl and Queen Nehelenia had a point in trying to take them down (though the manga I believe retcons all past villains as incarnations of Chaos, so that arguably removes all prior villains' agency?). Lots of little things that I didn't think twice about, but now that I look at them again, I'm wondering WTF Naoko Takeuchi was thinking.

Though I don't want to be too hard on her. Poor girl was working under stress far longer than she'd planned to (she'd intended on ending the story either by the Dark Kingdom or Black Moon arc), so it's no surprise there's a lot of clunk and clutter in the narrative.

I often wondered if Naoko Takeuchi really wanted to make Sailor Moon with a Super Sentai-esque setup in the first place. After all, her first big hit was Sailor V, which was exclusively Minako and Artemis fighting evil with Minako having her own masked love interest she ended up being at odds with and he eventually died. With a scant few secondary characters here and there.

It led to me thinking about what Sailor Moon would be like if Naoko kept the cast to a more Sailor V-like size. That, perhaps, the Sailor Moon she really wanted to make would be quite a different beast from how we know it to be today.

So this lengthy diatribe about my personal conflicts with my waning fondness for the manga versus my strengthened love for the OG anime and live-action show was actually a preamble to a bizarre AU I wrote an outline for over a year ago but never posted in public. I had considered posting it to Sailor Moon's Reddit back then, but I (probably wisely) held off, as my musing went way off the rails.

But I figured now's a good time as any to share it here, at least. Though it'll need to be its own post since I wrote so goddamn much in this post alone, wow.

On that note, I'll end with this: The only iteration of UsaMamo that I unironically enjoyed and rooted for is...

#sailor moon #pretty guardian sailor moon #bishojo senshi sailor moon #sailor moon manga #sailor moon anime #sailor moon classic #sailor moon crystal criticism #sailor moon manga criticism #pgsm #naoko takeuchi #usagi tsukino #mamoru chiba #chibiusa #usamamo #usamamo criticism #miracle romance #no kidding the fandom usually acts like the manga is sacred territory #something you're not allowed to have a bad opinion about #I don't necessarily HATE it #just... #I don't really feel what everyone else is feeling from it #if nothing else it'll always be better than s1-2 crystal #now THAT'S an abomination I know I'm not alone in feeling that way about #but yeah #the manga is overrated #there I said it #am I okay?

[bindeds]

explaining my musical-only lucifer magne/morningstar playlist bc i would be confused too if i just happened to chance upon this on spotify BUT I HAVE EXPLANATIONS I PROMISE

quick disclaimer before i start, this playlist is still a wip and these are just my headcanons of lucifer’s story from his pov! i just wanted to share because i wasn’t sure if anyone’s done anything like this (and i may have hyperfixated on this instead of falling asleep, whoops.)

i grew up on theatre so a lot of these songs mean a great deal to me, though some of the movie versions are here instead of the animated films (for disney only) because i simply prefer the movie versions.

i arranged the playlist according to the (rough) order of events, meaning i’ll be going section by section which represents each stage of his story. i won’t be going through every single song but majority of the time, the titles explain themselves but i will be talking about the songs that stand out to me.

of course, we have his heaven era, which has two subparts—his admiration for heaven but his hopes and dreams for a brighter future for the world they’ll make.

speaking of subparts, lmk if you want a part 2 of this as i’ll only be covering the ‘first arc’ of this backstory in this post and i have songs all the way up until the hotel becomes successful (which hasn’t happened yet, i know. but sometimes i am hopeful.)

i feel like honor to us all not only represents how lucifer had to conform to the other angels’ way of thinking but also just how rigid the rules and system of heaven is. the entire song, mulan gets told that she must be this or that and a lot of it are almost impossible standards, and i imagine lucifer, especially being the dreamer that he is, found it even just a little suffocating in the beginning and of course it grew worse as time went on.

“men (god) want girls (angels) in good taste; calm, obedient who work fast paced”

i imagine the angel’s got to properly see the wonderful things lucifer was capable of before he started talking about them and i think the greatest show represents that well.

a million dreams is obviously a song that can describe lucifer’s many creative ideas and goals for the new world they’re going to make soon.

— mother knows best is where his pure admiration becomes unstable doubt as it’s god/the angels shutting lucifer down on his ideas (and possibly gaslighting him into making him feel ashamed for having ideas.)

proud of your boy is lucifer listening to god at first, seeing as being an angel is all he’s ever known, of course his first instinct was to obey god and listen to the other angels.

waving through a window describes lucifer’s struggle with being shut down and being forced to essentially hide who he is, and since he was no longer allowed to take part in the making of man, he was on the ‘outside looking in.’ lucifer also gave the angels reasons to stare at him and cast him out when he shared his ideas so the first line fits perfectly.

“give them no reason to stare; no slipping up if you slip away, so i’ve got nothing to share. no i’ve got nothing to say.”

“we start with stars in our eyes; we start believing that we belong; but every song doesn’t rise, and no one tells you where you went wrong.”

“when you’re falling in a forest, and there’s nobody around, do you ever really crash or even make a sound? did i even make a sound, did i even make a sound, it’s like i never made a sound—will i ever make a sound?”

— DEFINITELY represents how he was casted down into heaven later on, and he wonders if he ever even mattered to the angels, if he made even just one valuable contribution in their eyes, so maybe they can reconsider and see that he could be forgiven.

waiting on a miracle definitely refers to him being a part of the angels and yet they don’t quite treat him with the same respect just because of his ideas, and him ultimately hoping that he can go back to being or feeling loved by god wholly.

“don’t be upset, or mad at all; don’t feel regret, or sad at all. hey i’m still apart of the family madrigal (angels) …”

“and i’m fine, i am totally fine; i will stand on the side as you shine … i’m not fine, i’m not fine.” — ‘shine’ could refer to the archangels making the new world without him.

“i can’t move the mountains; i can’t make the flowers bloom, i can’t stay another night up in my room”

— of course this isn’t about lucifer being unable to do things, but i think it could mean that unlike the other angels, he’s just not comfortable bending completely to god’s command if he has genuinely good ideas to offer. but of course, no one listens to him.

i’d like to think almost there is both about lucifer almost getting the whole ‘conforming to the angel’s rigid rules’ thing right, AND refining his ideas so that maybe heaven doesn’t find them so outlandish and they won’t cast him out again, even if the chances are highly unlikely. judging from just how reluctantly he was to let charlie go to heaven that time, it seemed that lucifer really was as hopeful or even more hopeful than charlie was that heaven would listen to anyone with good intentions, especially their own angels.

when will my life begin and naughty come hand in hand with the former being lucifer trying to convince himself that things are good as it is even if it doesn’t feel like it, and the latter being about two things; 1, to stop sulking about his current situation—2, actually doing something about it, thus the decision he made to visit the garden of eden (because i assume he wasn’t allowed to enter for obvious reasons) where he met lilith and began to spend time with her.

touch the sky is about lucifer getting to explore and spread his wings in eden.

something there and can you feel the love tonight is just two love songs i really like for lilith and lucifer as lilith representing belle, the beauty, is just so accurate and makes so much sense as she was made by god to be ‘the perfect woman,’ even if things didn’t turn out that way. and of course, beast represents lucifer very well because later on lucifer ends up being the devil, the worst ‘beast’ of them all.

defying gravity is lucifer’s first proper realization that heaven’s prejudice against him doesn’t matter and that he should still try to pursue his wonders despite it all. i would also like to think that lilith helped me realize this; that if lilith can make him feel this amazing and this loved being on her own, then imagine the things others can do when they too, like lilith, take matters in their own hands. thus, i headcanon that the idea of free will might have been inspired by lilith caring for lucifer. (i am a hopeless romantic like that.)

“i’m through with playing by the rules of someone else’s (god’s) game.”

“as someone (god) told me lately, everyone deserves a chance to fly.”

“and if i’m flying solo, at least i’m flying free”

— if lucifer is the only one who will support himself, at least he is no longer bound the rules that suppress him and who he is as a person/divine being.

“to those who ground me, take a message back from me; tell them how i am defying gravity.”

“and soon i’ll match them in renown.”

— and soon, lucifer will be just as good or even better than the angels who helped make the earth.

the other side is SO definitely about lucifer convincing (or maybe even seducing) eve into biting the apple of free will.

“you run with me, and i can cut you free, out of the drudgery and walls you keep in.”

— drudgery and walls very much referring to having to submit to adam and not knowing the taste of free will. same with ‘same old part you gotta play’ that plays during the chorus

“and if it’s crazy, live a little crazy; you can play it sensible, a king of conventional—or you can risk it all and see.”

— i don’t know. this quote struck me as so, authentically lucifer, the subtle playfulness in both the lyric choice and the tune towards the end.

“is this really how you’d like to spend your days, whiskey and misery, and parties and plays?”

— i can see lucifer saying this to eve 100% because it’s completely reasonable to be skeptical of a man you just met, so this could be him trying to further convince eve.

“if i were mixed up with you, i’d be the talk of the town (angels), disgraced and disowned”

— eve fighting back. though similar to how this song ends, eve gives in eventually … but i do headcanon that lucifer offered eve’s first act of free will to be either to reject or accept to have sex with him, just because i really like the idea of lucifer getting back at those who made the first humans without him by seducing both of adam’s wives.

h

story of tonight is lucifer knowing that his consequences have actions, and even if his plan works, heaven wouldn’t be happy about him disobeying their orders. but at this point, lilith had been the only person to fullyaccept him for who he is, and he realizes it’s not worth conforming to the rules of people who force you to be someone you’re not.

“raise a glass to freedom; something they can never take away, no matter what they tell you.”

— definitely lucifer raising a glass to lilith and eve, because they’re most likely more free from heaven’s clutches compared to him, and both of them have discovered free will at this point already.

if you’re still here, my god, thank you so much!! please let me know if you’d like to see me explain the rest of my playlist, and here’s the link again if you’d like to check it out on spotify :)

#hazbin hotel fandom #hazbin hotel #hazbin lucifer #lucifer hazbin hotel #hazbin hotel fanfiction #lucifer morningstar #lucifer magne #lucifer x reader #hazbin hotel headcanon #hazbin hotel finale #( ᶻ 𝗓 𐰁 hazbin hcs. )

[marshmellopie]

YOU THERE

Give me your spamton headcanons! Any kind!

loki i love you so much you don't know how much i've been wanting to share my headcanons oh my GOD [scans over my 20+ page headcanon doc]

putting it under the cut because it's a lot of random stuff, i didn't categorize anything so there might be whiplash between everything:

– Five feet tall, previously 5'10 when he was still an Addison. I made Puppet Spam was 4'5 for the longest time, but I decided to say fuck it and make him taller. Still short in terms of Cyber City residents though, I like to imagine normal Addisons are around 6ft.

– I sometimes forget to draw it and I can't really animate it consistently, but his knuckles are constantly bruised because he keeps punching things whenever he's angry. Experiences really severe temper tantrums/outbursts and usually resorts to violence.

– Do not touch his fucking hair if he doesn’t know you. He’ll legitimately plan your murder if you cut any of it off– and that’s not a hyperbole. He can’t grow it back and his hair is his pride and joy, so he will genuinely track you down and rip your goddamn soul out of your chest. It's also permanently black (besides the grey but that's from stress), he changed his coding when he was famous to have black hair. Could've been reversible, but some things kinda stuck after he fucked himself up and became a doll.

– Weird mixture of Addison and mannequin. Mysteriously fell incredibly ill with a virus that was destroying his coding after his phone went dead silent, and became desperate to the point of converting his remaining data into an inanimate object. Kind of like converting a PDF into a JPEG with the compressed quality and all. Kinda iffy with this one and not really canon-inspired, I swap between him gradually and suddenly turning into a puppet. Used to base it off the Acid Theory but I'm tryna be creative sjfkdsjf he did probably fall in/get pushed a few times but it didn't burn him to the point of no return, it definitely stung though

– Blurry vision in both eyes because he had the audacity to peek into the Shadow Crystal multiple times. Hacked his glasses to somewhat correct it, but it only works to a certain extent.

– Talks through a voice box. He really doesn't need to move his mouth at all to speak and has limited range of motion (he can't close his mouth all the way and has no tongue), but he tries to purely out of habit.

– gayest man in cyber city

– Eats basically anything. From spaghetti-code to cardboard, his body is kind of forced to digest all of it, but it obviously hurts him if it's not supposed to be eaten.

– Sometimes doesn't recognize his own reflection.

– Riddled with viruses for so long that he probably wouldn't ever be able to get rid of them. He could probably minimize them if he got treatment, but only to an extent. They're a permanent part of him now.

– His nose is simultaneously the strongest and weakest part of his body. Either pierces through metal or bends like a bendy straw depending on if you throw him or just lightly poke it.

– Terrifyingly amazing aim. Can throw a pipis at a specific target without much thought. His pipis explode.

– Calmed down a bit as the years went on (because he lost hope LMAO), which isn't saying much considering he's still extremely rabid. Was extremely volatile when he first decided to give up the good life and live in the dumpster. Frequently tried to break into the mansion, probably stole a few cars, mugged a few Plugboys, picked fights with other malware on the streets. He still continues to do these things, of course, but to a lesser degree.

– Spiteful cunt. Wrong him once and he'll never forget your name. Rarely apologizes even if he's in the wrong.

– Can't say names properly unless he's being completely serious.

– Upholds his end of most deals, but words himself carefully so that if what he has to bring to the table isn't up to par with what the other person asked of him (which is 99% of the time), he can easily swindle his way out of it. No refunds on the sword. It's broken? I told you that. Cut anything, two pieces. You heard me clearly, and you obviously had no qualms with it from what I could tell. (Except he'd say that in a really fucked up and more condescending way.)

– Constantly hears static, but it grows and fades depending on his mood.

– Laughs at the most inconvenient times. Someone's threatening him? He'll chuckle. He's nervous? A little giggle. He just received some devastating news? Roaring laughter.

– Very unreliable narrator and storyteller. Tends to exaggerate things that have happened to him (doesn't mean that he didn't go through some wild shit though).

– Doesn't celebrate his birthday, for obvious loneliness and conflicting self-resentment reasons. Also because he doesn't keep track of the time. He don't know what day it is fam.

– Can mimic voices really well, though he still retains that bitcrushed/noisy overlay and the ad pop-ups.

– Tends to chew on things occasionally as a nervous habit. He doesn't exactly have a tongue, so he instead picks up random small items scattered around (ie. a pencil) and chews on them. Worst case scenario he just grinds his teeth together.

– Gestures with his hands a lot when he speaks. It literally looks like he's going through an emote hotbar. Also very expressive when it comes to his face, despite rarely being able to frown properly. You can garner a lot about his mood from his glasses.

– Mostly bark over bite. Tends to make empty threats a lot when he's startled in hopes his loudness will be intimidating, but will indeed bite if he needs to… or wants to. Sometimes there’s no bark at all, and he’ll literally bite.

– Has a weird fascination with shiny objects. He steals many things that seem valuable or visually appealing and hoards them in his shop.

– Once you put the KEYGEN into NEO, it takes a little bit for him to actually take over the body because he's transferring his data onto it. Permanently. Even when he becomes small Spamton again, he's permanently linked to the machine now, so he can change into it at will. Technically not at will because he has trouble controlling it, but you get what I mean.

this was insanely long but thank you for letting me ramble <3

#[PRICE SPEAKS] #spamton... my salesman... #despite usually drawing him happy i assure you he's like. really fucked up #i don't draw angst much but only because it comes out looking weird for some reason #i think i should make him cry #spamton #deltarune

[zzzzzestforlife]

🍋 project diaries // brb, i'm going to code a bunch of lemons

in this issue 🔍: starting a coding project for fun after literally YEARS 🤓, drawing pretty (questionable) mock-ups 🎨, FONT SELECTION 🤌, color theory (i don't know her) 🤨

project inspo pics (left to right): toram (like this squirrel-bunny creature, my project is also going to be cute and irrelevant) // a shade of yellow + hex code (i know how to do shading on paper from my sketching practice so i wonder if i can code that??) // lemons~~ (definitely gonna see about using the flowers' shade of red as a highlight/underline effect on-hover!!)

i did it!! i actually started a coding project for fun 🎉 now i just need to, ahem, finish it 🙈

the last time i wrote ANY code for fun was when i was still learning to code for the first time in Khan Academy's Processing JS environment, so of course this project has to use p5.js for the nostalgia 🥺 but it's main purpose is to give me the opportunity to code a bunch of cute lemons in a gif-ed pixel art(?) style.

i drew a crappy little mock-up on my phone with my thumbs 👍👎 so you can kinda see ✨ the vision ✨ (if you squint and tilt your head):

my thumbs got a little over-excited. my MVP (minimum viable product) is actually just the lemons + the words DAILY ZESTY 😂 the key point here is setting goals so darn achievable i will never give up 😅

so, let's summarize the important specs:

special features that nothing else out there has: none 💀

work that could be accomplished without coding: literally everything 💀💀

the promise of fun and a sense of personal accomplishment: is there ☺️

me looking for fonts:

should i make my own font with my hand-writing since nothing is exactly matching what i want? 👀

the only font-maker for handwriting i've found won't work for Chinese or Korean 😞

OH MY GOD I HAD NO IDEA GOOGLE FONTS DON'T JUST WORK IN ALL LANGUAGES

WHY ISN'T THERE A FONT THAT SUPPORTS BOTH CHINESE AND KOREAN??

*imports three different fonts for English, Chinese, and Korean*

my font selection criteria: vibes 😎

now,,, colors have historically been "ok, whatever" territory for me, but i'm looking to (hopefully, slowly) change that as i work through this project...

yes, i know the green doesn't match my mock-up and i'm not even 100% convinced i even like the color in the mock-up, but that's not important FOR NOW. the main thing i wanted to get down was that the green part on top is colored by p5.js so that i can dynamically draw and animate the lemons on top of it while the color everywhere else is just plain CSS background-color

also toying with the idea of a softer off-white color for the div (the center box thingy) instead of smack-dab-in-your-face just the total absence of color that i kinda hate 🤢 idk if changing the green will change how the white looks, we'll have to see~

💌: overall pretty excited for this project since i rarely get to do creative design things at work and i don't often feel like i have a lot of agency — i just have to build whatever is needed. this project is purposely designed to be kind of useless and unnecessary because it's just so freeing that way 🕊️ it's also a welcome procrastination activity when i really should be studying my psychology coursework 🤭

#coding projects #codeblr #progblr #coding #programming #computer science #comp sci #web development #website #javascript #css #html #html css #frontend #zesty's life #women in tech #woman in tech #studyblr #productivity #100 days of code #studyspo #korean aesthetic #fonts #design #graphic design #product design #mockup #software engineer #software development #soft aesthetic

[dazaispinkietoe]

Belphie Analysis!!!!

JUST MY OPINION!! NOT EXCUSING HIS ACTIONS OR ANYTHING

Starting with introductions, Belphegor is the last brother we meet. He’s implied in the introduction, with the video having lines of him pleading for help and all, but never specifically stated. All we know is that he’s “In the human world,” according to his brothers. Only Beelzebub seems to be upset by this, while the others accept that they can’t do anything about it because it’s what Lucifer wants. They don’t agree with him, but they know what he says is basically law. They don’t wanna be strung up on the fan by him again (OKAY BUT THAT'S ACTUALLY A SUPER CREATIVE PUNISHMENT?? LIKE??)

Eventually, we got up to the attic. Lucifer tried to keep MC out, but they’re a little shit so of course they get in. When we meet him, he says he’s been locked up. Despite him lying about being human, this is true. Now, we don’t actually know how long the exchange program has been going on. Solomon seems to already have been here a while, as well as the angels. Time doesn’t have as much meaning for them, and they can say with less harm, so I’d assume they’ve already been there for a couple of years. The brothers haven’t spoken to Belphegor since then, and we don’t know if Lucifer even spoke to Belphegor or tried to suck up his pride and explain his actions. Not that Belphegor would forgive him, but it doesn’t seem like Lucifer even went up there to check in on him often. So at this point, he’s desperate. He wants to get out, and likely isn’t thinking clearly from the isolation. When you’re isolated, you’re at greater risk of cognitive decline, depression, and anxiety. All of those can affect your ways of thinking, as well as how you handle situations. 

Eventually, he gets exposed for his lie when Beelzebub reveals what he looks like to MC. When he is confronted about this, he doesn’t try to keep up the lie, realizing it’s pointless. He admits to the MC who he really is. At this point, he leaves it up to them on whether or not they trust him. They have the option not to, and he doesn’t seem to expect them to. So when they come back, he’s surprised. Obviously, Belphegor hates humans. We don’t know that yet in the story, but he blames them for his sister’s death. When he was in Celestia, he introduced his sister to humans. She fell in love with one and when he got sick, she used forbidden methods to save him. This started a war between God himself and the siblings, and ended with Lilith dying in his arms before they fell to the Devildom. When you go through grief, you’re likely to try and find ways to escape from it, blame an outside source, yourself, or to just completely shut down. Because Belphegor is so stable, he did all of those. Even though he used to love humans, he tried hating them because he didn’t want to blame himself. This didn’t work though, because subconsciously he still turned to them for comfort. In lesson 16 on hard mode, we get a story featuring him and his perspective. He imagines life in the human world, seemingly as a form of escapism. He uses escapism as a coping mechanism often, and it’s one of the reasons he sleeps so much. I’m a firm believer that their sins are how the brothers coped with the trauma, but even without that theory, in the anime when he is upset he goes to bed and dreams of a world where what made him upset was different. 

Moving on, he tells MC to make pacts with all of the brothers to get him out of the attic. He tells them to start with Beelzebub first, knowing that he’d be easier to win over. I don’t think that he actually thought that MC could be a danger here, because even though he planned to kill them, he started with the person he cared about most. Even if Beelzebub could be easier to win over than the others, I couldn’t imagine Belphegor putting him in possible danger just because of that. Then, after a lot of plot development, he is let out of the attic. It is not MC that let him out though. Beelzebub and Belphegor take MC to stay with the angels, and I want to note that Belphegor does not attack MC. You could argue he didn’t want to do it in front of Beelzebub, but the second time he doesn’t care if any of the brothers are watching him, so I don’t think that was it. He’s fine with existing in the same room as them, and even talks to them from time to time, before being arrested by Diavolo. (I hate Diavolo for this because I get it, I do, but he did NOT say anything???? Leave him alone?) Then it is revealed that he hates humans. So, Beelzebub and MC go back to The House of Lamentation. There, they confront Lucifer. Here we find out that the argument that led up to him being locked up was about the exchange program. 

Belphegor tries explaining to Lucifer why he didn’t agree with it. Obviously, he didn’t think it was safe, especially because he was still recovering from his sister’s death. But instead of trying to find a common ground with him, Lucifer just says that he wants whatever Diavolo wants. Upset now, Belphegor asks if Lucifer even cares about the brothers or remembers Lilith. Lucifer says no, and Belphegor (obviously not thinking clearly at this point) says that if the program happens, he’ll kill everyone in the human world. At this point he is thrown into the attic and locked away, before the program even started. After talking it through with the brothers, once they hear this information, they decide to go to Diavolo to get Belphegor back. Diavolo agrees, but only if MC can figure out how exactly Belphegor escaped in the first place. When MC finds Belphegor, he’s talking in his sleep. He says Liltih’s name, so I can assume he’s having a nightmare. This is when Belphegor tries to kill MC. But what stands out to me here is that he apologizes. This could be mocking, but this is where something else I had the joy of witnessing comes in. In his UR card, in the A Nightmare, there’s a story called Hide and Seek. The cover of this card is literally him crying, by the way. In this story Belphegor is dreaming, and is playing hide and seek with Lilith. Eventually he cannot find her, and begins questioning if it’s because he’s a bad older brother. Just as he’s about to find her, Lucifer comes in and tells him that she’s dead and Belphegor shouldn’t be looking for her. While we’re on this part of the dream, I’d like to note that this shows how Belphegor views Lucifer as an authoritative figure. As someone who controls and disciplines him, telling him things he doesn’t want to hear. It was not always this way though.

In another card I have, the brothers are playing a game. In the game, Belphegor is constantly seen complimenting Lucifer, and they seem to have an adorable relationship. Asmodeus is even jealous of Belphegor for it, but then the scene cuts into current Belphegor, locked up and talking to MC. He says he hates Lucifer. I feel like after he was locked up, understandably, his trust was shattered. It’s implied his greatest fear is being alone, and Lucifer practically forced that fear onto him. Now, back to the Hide and Seek card, after Belphegor wakes up from this dream, he starts sobbing. MC finds him like this, and tries to comfort him. At this point, Belphegor can’t really hide his emotions or intentions, but isn’t mean to the MC. He asks them to stay with him, and even says he wants to see them and his brothers once he gets out. He seems to genuinely care for the MC. So when he was apologizing, I think he knew that what he was doing was wrong, but couldn’t bring himself to not do it. He’s forced himself to hate humans and lied to himself enough that even though he knows what he’s doing isn’t okay, and people can’t help their species, he hates them enough to try and stick to his beliefs. It’s also mentioned that Belphegor is an extremely proactive person, so once he saw that MC had come into his brothers’ home, he likely wanted to protect them.

Lilith brings MC back to life, telling them to help her brothers. Once they confront Belphegor, they reveal that they are Liltih’s very distant relative (btw this wouldn’t be incest, in Celestia no one is actually related by blood, they are simply created, and Lilith had been dead for hundreds of years b ty then.) While all the brothers rejoice, Belphegor starts breaking down. He talks about how everything is all his fault, and how he feels useless. He lets go of his human grudges, and is seen in the same lesson talking to the MC like normal again. He even sends them a text later, saying that he felt jealous of the time the brothers had with MC, and how he had missed out on it. Belphegor isn’t the type to apologize with words, but apologizes with actions instead, giving himself to the MC as a gift. This is likely because of how his trust was betrayed by Lucifer, but also to ensure MC that he isn’t trying to manipulate them anymore, and instead of forcing himself on them letting them decide what to think.

After MC becomes okay with him, he becomes attached. He asks MC for help often, and tries to assure them that even if they weren’t related to Lilith he would still feel the same as he does now. He expresses jealousy often, uses excuses to hang out with them, etc. But he still holds a bit of resentment. In his special guest dialog, he doesn’t seem to be totally honest with his feelings. He makes it seem like everything MC does is for themselves, and he doesn’t enjoy it, even though his face gives it away. He doesn’t seem to be comfortable with a lot of interactions, which is probably a mix of the isolation and having to change his opinions so suddenly. It’s obvious he tries though, and for how long he’s been like this, he made progress fast. 

When the time comes for MC to leave, Belphegor holds true to the jealousy I mentioned in the paragraph before this. He says he wants to get to know MC more intimately than anyone else, and that if they cannot come to the Devildom themselves, he will have to go to the human world for them. Once again, a big step with the whole human thing. He complains when the rest of the brothers join him in the attic, and when MC leaves to go check in on Lucifer he tells them to be right back. The fact that he was in the attic says a lot about his relationship with the MC too. Because of the time he has spent in there, even though it has unpleasant memories, he finds comfort in the attic and is seen retreating to it when presented with negative emotions. It’s likely that he went up there and napped because he didn’t want to think about MC leaving him. Once they do leave though, he tells MC that he loves them. He’s actually the first person to say this to the MC so far, with everyone else just implying it instead of just saying it bluntly. When Belphegor isn’t trying to get his way, he seems to just say things as he sees them. He doesn’t like fake people. This, besides the controlling Lucifer thing and acting without thinking, is probably the main reason he dislikes Diavolo. Diavolo has a tendency to act kind to everyone, even if he might not like them, like Belphegor. Belphegor probably sees this as a threat or something to notice about him. 

Moving more outside the story though, Belphegor’s fear of the MC leaving him is one of the most noticeable things about him. People seem to think that this makes him ‘yandere’ or whatever they want to call it, but that’s just…not how it is? In multiple events, he mentions that he wants to combine with the MC or have all of them, and in songs he talks about never wanting to let go of MC, one of the lines literally being that. (I think that was in the Christmas song? I pointed it out when I first listened to it.) He’s also seen actively wanting to care for MC. In a card where MC gets sick, he cares for them, neglecting his own care, only to end up getting sick himself. But he doesn’t try to push anything onto the MC, or force them to be with him, like other people think he does. Another thing I noticed was that in the anime, his brothers treat him like a child, but also like a ticking time bomb. In the episodes he’s in, he’s shown being treated like a baby, which is understandable because he’s the youngest, but even after Lucifer puts him in charge, the brothers still dismiss him. They also treat him more carefully than Satan, who is literally the avatar of wrath. In both the canon story and anime, they treat him awkwardly when MC is not around. This leads to him breaking down and talking about how he can’t understand them, and how he knows they can’t understand him, but they should just say it. This makes me believe that a part of the reason Belphegor doesn’t engage in conversation much is because he finds it hard to understand others and therefore doesn’t know how to reply, or not being able to understand them makes him upset at himself.

Belphegor is also seen getting irritated often. Mostly at others. In an event he states that he doesn’t actually think he’s smart, and that anyone could do the things he does. He’s pretty insecure about this fact too. So I think that when people don’t come to a solution right away, he gets frustrated. There’s a possibility he also does this with himself, or holds himself to a high standard. In a chat with him talking about something with Beelzebub, he seems to feel guilty easily, and tries to make it right. This probably goes along with the fact that he doesn’t think demons should make mistakes often, he doesn’t allow himself room to make errors, but also lacks the motivation to try. He’s a lazy perfectionist, and while it actually works out for him, all the stress he puts on himself doesn’t exactly help him. He also doesn’t know how to deal with his own emotions, having frequent outbursts and locking himself away when presented with negative ones. It reminded me of how when Satan would get angry, they would chain him to his bed. Understandable based on how he would be aggression wise, but the brothers could have taught him how to deal with his emotions better. I think something similar happened with Belphegor, not being taught what to do with his emotions. And when he did express anger to someone else (Lucifer) he was locked away, so he probably thinks that isolation is the right, if not only thing he can do.

That’s all I’ve got for now though!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY BELPHEGOR I LOVE YOU SO MUCH HEHEHEHEHEHE

Toodles >_<

#obey me belphegor #om! belphegor #obey me #obey me swd #obey me shall we date #om! belphie

[gartenofbanny]

You all know what time it is, time for the review for the most hyped up episode since The Circus!

The Good

Vortex

Vortex, as always is the best character in every episode he's in. As always he's pretty chill and nice around Loona treating her like a person and he's really nice with his girlfriend Beelzebub. There is one scene of Beelzebub talking about fucking Satan despite the fact that she views him as a brother and Vortex just doesn't say anything..and lets Beelzebub say it.

This is honestly reminding me a little bit of Rent a Girlfriend, I really fucking hope they don't make Vortex into a cuck because that'll make me lose respect from the writers and Beelzebub. Not so much Vortex because idk what the hell he's even going to do against Satan when he finds out Beelzebub sleeps with him. The most he could do is leave Beelzebub.

Gluttony Ring

The Gluttony Ring looked pretty creative, it's my 2nd favorite one behind Wrath Ring. Why is it my second favorite? Because the atmosphere and the setting a little bit looks more like Earth than it does Hell. And the location where they're at just looks like a bee-themed tropical beach instead of fucking Hell. This is probably the last thing I would think of when I think of "Gluttony Ring in Hell". It's pretty, but it isn't something I'd imagine that Hell would have. Also, why is it that some places in Hell look fucking disastrous but other places in Hell look like oasis? Is this supposed to be a place where Sinners suffer or just Earth 2.0? We don't know and Viv doesn't either.

Animation

The animation in this episode is pretty solid and looks good which is expected for a Helluva Boss episode, but there are some times when I find the animation to be really weird.

In the beginning of the episode, it shows Demons partying, but doesn't show their full appearances just silhouettes.

And in the same timeframe, Loona and Tex outside has different shading, but once they're inside the shading instantly changes and they have thick black lines around their body. Making their characters not fit with the background. And all this shit happens in the first 47 seconds of the episode, holy shit.

Viv did say that this episode was supposed to be "A grand visual spectacle" but the only grand visual spectacle was the Cotton Candy song which took a significant chunk of time from an insignificant episode.

Yeah, there's not much I actually liked in this episode, so let's move on to the bad.

The Bad

Beelzebub's Design

I don't have any problem with Beelzebub personality-wise. She's cool and surprisingly nice for one of the Seven Princes of Hell. Vortex really does have good taste in women..aside from her wanting to fuck Satan. But I can dismiss that as a joke and pray to God that it doesn't actually happen.

But what I do not like about Beelzebub is her design which I know damn well the animators didn't get paid enough for animating this.

Nothing from this design tells me that this is Beelzebub. I was completely confused on whether or not this woman was Beelzebub until I saw the credits. Beelzebub is depicted in Demonology as an insect, not a hellhound variant. A lot of people and I assumed that Beelzebub was going to be a bee due to the Bee Aesthetic in Gluttony, but we just got Jay Jay recolored and with four arms with miniscule insect aspects.

The second reason why I hate this design is because it's not creative at all. This design without a doubt was heavily inspired by Jay Jay, but it wasn't just heavily inspired it's literally copied and pasted. They copied Jay Jay, gave her Loona's legs, recolored her, added so many unnecessary details, and called her Beelzebub. Looking at Beelzebub and the other furry characters that Viv designed in her past you can see that there's little to no difference between them.

Beezlebub's design reminds me of how video game characters have alternate skins because her design is literally Jay Jay but recolored and with added cosmetics.

Or how in Injustice: Gods Among Us the yellow costume for The Flash is Reverse Flash but he still looks identical to the regular Flash. So different personality, but the same skin just recolored.

My third reason why I don't like the design is that Beelzebub's insect features are so miniscule that you can easily miss them. The only insect like features she has are the bee wings, four arms, and antennae in her eyelids and ears. Aside from those, there's nothing else. Now when she increases her size, Beelzebub does have bug like eyes but again that doesn't really say much.

My fourth and final reason why I don't like the design is that Beelzebub has so many unnecessary additions to her design that it looks pretty overwhelming but at the same time distracting. What was the point of giving her a lava lamp stomach? What was the point of having honey levitate from behind her? Why is her fucking eyeliner dripped as if she cried? I'm most likely going to do a design comparison with another iteration of Beelzebub, but yeah those are just my thoughts on her design overall. It's lazy, but also somehow overcomplicated.

It would fit more if they made her into Cerberus instead of Beelzebub as Cerberus is a three-headed hellhound in the Gluttony Ring of Hell that likes to consume a lot. This design is more fitting for that to me.

Kesha voicing Beelzebub

Kesha voicing Beelzebub was a weird and bad choice not because of Die Young, but because Beelzebub represents what Kesha was running away from in her past. For those who don't know Kesha had a persona called Ke$ha who she describes as a "front for her emotional pain". And there are a few things that conclude to me why Beelzebub and the persona Ke$ha are nearly identical. They both overindulge in partying and drinking since Beelzebub represents overindulgence in those two things and many other things, but that was a really toxic lifestyle for Kesha to go through. There are two differences between the two characters that being Beelzebub also overindulges in eating but Kesha in the past had an eating disorder. She couldn't indulge in eating because as she says "I convinced myself that being sick, being skinny, was part of my job" and having Beelzebub a character who can overindulge in eating but still manages to stay skinny and thin is insensitive and unrealistic. The second difference is Kesha had to go to rehab in order to stay away from all of that and most likely doesn't partake in those anymore while Beelzebub doesn't have to.

Simply put Beelzebub represents the persona Ke$ha and not the person, the same persona that Kesha used to mask her emotional pain and had to go to rehab to fix. I am fully aware that Kesha is an adult and she can make her own decisions, but having someone voice act a character who represents the persona they had in the past is really absurd and stupid, especially on Viv's part.

It's likely that Beelzebub will never appear again or will have a different voice actor. Because Kesha being involved caused legal issues that took almost two years to resolve. If Beelzebub does return then I think she'll be voice acted by her singing voice actor Rochelle Diamante or someone else entirely.

Cotton Candy

After listening to the Cotton Candy song multiple times, I've come to the conclusion that this song is ass. It's not even intentionally trying to be bad either that's the worse and funnier part about it. The words "Cotton Candy" takes up 1/3 of the song, there's an entire video called "Cotton Candy, but only when they say Cotton Candy" and it's 1 minute long.

My problem isn't with the singing the singer behind this is fantastic, but my main problem with this song is the lyrics and beat. This song sounds like a bootleg version of Die Young, I know that was intended by Viv but that doesn't mean the song is good. The lyrics rhyme "Cotton Candy" with "Cotton Candy" Whoever was writing this song just needs to stop.

Also, why is the song about Cotton Candy and not Honey? Beelzebub does have a bee aesthetic around her so wouldn't it make more sense to have her sing about honey. It's sweet and addictive

This video perfectly summarizes my thoughts on this song

Loona barely has a spotlight

Loona was hyped up exponentially a couple of days before this episode came out. From the voice actress stating that she'll return to voice Loona while striking a pose to a Loona plush releasing not too long ago.

While I don't believe Loona was hyped up for this episode in particular she was still hyped up regardless and this episode was assumed to be a Loona-centered episode...that is until Beelzebub. Beelzebub stole the spotlight from Loona due to her character reveal being the sparkly song it was and a lot of people liking her design due to it being flashy.

Even a couple of days after the episode's release I still see more people talking about Beelzebub than Loona, regardless of how I feel about this character Beelzebub stood out more than Loona did to me. It's amazing that Loona was sidelined in her own episode

Slight Tonal Issues

There are some tonal issues with this episode particularly in the middle and near the end. So in the middle of this episode, Loona walks out of the party wanting to leave feeling as if she didn't belong there.

When Blitzo was going to leave, she gets flirted with by some other hellhound and that's more than enough to convince her to stay. So apparently, Loona getting hit on allows her to become less insecure and more sociable. Jesus Christ

Near the end of the episode, Loona places Blitzo on his couch after pouring him some water then all of a sudden Blitzo suddenly has a sad moment saying that he'll die alone old and wrinkled.

I gotta add if you don't want to die alone then stop treating people like shit Blitzo.

But anyway, this scene really just comes out of nowhere because Blitzo didn't express any problem with what happened at Ozzie's before he went to the party. I understand he was drinking all of his pain away but it still felt weird and forced to me.

Then after Loona calls him "Dad" for the second time in this episode, Blitzo suddenly just puked for the sake of comedy...

Jesus Christ, even a filler episode has tone issues. Oh yeah, speaking of filler episode.

This episode is meaningless

This episode isn't a direct continuation of Ozzie's nor does it affect any future episodes. Viv stated that Ozzie's is the true season 1 finale and that this episode is a "grand visual spectacle"

So all of this is just meaningless and what reinforces this is Loona's behavior. Loona went from her taking care of Blitzo to even calling him dad to straight up physically and mentally abusing him just because he wanted her to be nicer to the clients. Seeing Stars takes place at least a few days after Queen Bee so there's literally no reason for Loona to even act like this.

Raises more questions than answers

This episode like all of the other ones in Helluva Boss raises more questions than answers. Hell, I'll even say that it doesn't even answer any of the questions I had. Beelzebub can literally make food from nowhere, so what's even the point of Wrath? Why is Tex and Beelzebub dating good, but Stolas and Blitzo dating isn't? How many abilities does this Beelzebub even have? Does the food she make has any side effects on those who consume it? Like there are so many fucking questions but NONE OF THIS GETS ANSWERED.

At this point, I will be really surprised whenever one of the major questions that the fandom has actually gets answered. Because I'm getting tired of this.

Conclusion

In conclusion, this episode really meant nothing and despite it not meaning anything I didn't like it. Especially Cotton Candy, that song sucks, I don't know why they didn't use Silva Hound's "Monster Ball" it sounds leagues better than "Cotton Candy" plus it's more fitting since Demons are monsters. Anyway, thank you all for reading and I hope you all have a nice day!

#helluva boss #vivziepop critical #helluva boss critical #vivziepop criticism #helluva boss criticism #vivziepop #helluva critical #helluva boss critique #vivienne medrano #helluva criticism #helluva critique

[kinderartifact4]

A list of my Total Drama AUs because I love them all wholeheartedly, feel free to ask questions about any of them.

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Animal Mutant AU 🐾🧬

+this AU was just an excuse to make Noah an owl person

+canon divergence happens shortly after Action/before World Tour

+The mutations are a worldwide phenomenon, it’s happening to everyone and no one knows why

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A Bloodsucker and A Mutt🩸🐺

+Alenoco AU

+Show goes on as normal for the most part

+Noah’s a vampire

+Alejandro’s a werewolf

+Cody’s just there

+made this AU for fun

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Magic AU ✨

+Magical creatures living amongst humans type thing, but it’s my takes on them

+Like we got merfolk, satyrs, angels, demons, elves, harpies, that kinda thing

+It’s like an assimilated society thing, they’re mostly at peace with each other with some mild species specific discrimination mostly courtesy of humans

+mild feels like an understatement

+everything’s got so much lore

+and of course, we got ✨magic✨

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Monster Apocalypse AU 🏚

+Most developed AU

+Really though, I’ve put my entire heart and soul into this AU

+Duncan’s group has a silly vibe

+Other than that, nobody is having a good time

+Tyler is going through it

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Drider! Duncan Dunoah AU🕷

+Sort of a high school AU? Most of them go the same school since a lot are kept human for this)

+Just a clingy drider with abandonment issues and his human bf who doesn’t actually understand how he got here

+definitely more of a self indulgent AU

+I don’t remember why I made this AU but now I can’t get rid of it

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Godly Patron(?) AU ✨🙏✨

+Some of the cast each has a god that has taken a liking to them

+they’re my take on gods because I like having full creativity, so none of the ones people usually know about are here(like greek or norse gods)

+Alejandro is not having a good time

+Noah has the oldest god

+Alejandro’s got a lot more lore than he was originally going to have

+Made this AU because I wanted Cody to have a proper parental figure

+Aleheather got that “Doomed Love Trope” vibe going on

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Wings of Fire AU 🐉

+My favorite book series combined with one of my favorite shows

+Alejandro has so much lore, he usually does with me ig

+This AU is the reason I’m starting to hate every design I make

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Trollhunter Cody AU🧌🗡

+I just thought it’d be fun

+Cody would be the type of guy to say “crispy” wouldn’t he

#tdi #total drama #total drama au #total drama island #td au #wings of fire #wof #wof au #tales of arcadia #trollhunters #trollhunters au #alenoco #dunoah #td noah #td alejandro #td cody #td heather #td tyler #td duncan #aleheather #it’s mentioned

[elderscrollsconceptart]

I'm not into Fallout, but I dread all tv adaptions of games. I only have to point at the travesty that is the Netflix Witcher as to why (don't get me started, I've got a long list of reasons and I WILL go through them all given the opportunity). That said I think Bethesda games are a better choice for adaption than the Witcher or TLOU because there isn't really a set protagonist or cast of characters to misuse - as long as it's entirely original, only based on Fallout lore, it might be okay.

Thank you for sharing your thoughts and I agree that a lack of a set protagonist is one of the boons to either a TES or Fallout TV series in terms of not immediately stepping on established series lore.

As you know, the Fallout show itself is making massive changes to established lore in the games. Not necessarily reconning things per se, but I don't want to get into more detail in a post due to obvious spoilers for a brand new show.

I feel a TES show *could* work simply due to the fact that

A. Tamriel is massive and Nirn is obviously an entire world.

B. We have multiple dimensions where things could take place in thanks to all the realms of Oblivion, known and unknown.

C. TES has a massive massive timeline that stretches beyond known history in their world. They could set a show in late Merethic era Elsweyr or High Rock and barely step on any established lore. A TES TV series absolutely *could* add to the lore while not quashing established lore or creating lore problems.

All in all, my biggest worry is the impulse for TV show runners to want to place the series in the most recognizable or familiar setting/timeline. God forbid a TES TV show happens and they try setting it in directly post-Oblivion crisis Cyrodiil or something like that. Thats not to say that such a period couldn't be explored in the lore, but I certainly don't trust TV executives and writers to start taking "creative liberties" or "fix" the lore of well established periods and locations. Additionally, a TV series could be made thats 100% non-canon and treated as such. I think most of the fandom would be totally cool with that and the show could tell any story it wanted without upsetting anyone. Sadly it seems like a lot of these big "TV adaptations we've seen over the past decade seem to insist on becoming canon or adjacent to it.

Never forget the Rings of Power...Never forget the Witcher on Netflix...Never forget Game of Thrones... Creators/rights holders allowed their properties to be taken by television companies to make shows out of them. They all ended up sucking, disrespecting the source material, and greatly upsetting most of their fans in the process. Television shows based on adapted material should not be made by people who don't care about the property itself and just want to make a popular TV show.

I think a TES TV show of *some* kind (perhaps animated?) is almost inevitable if the Fallout show is good and a huge success, and I think it absolutely *could* be both quality television *and* respectful of established lore. I just don't personally trust television executives to make a show of that caliber *and* respect the source material.

#the elder scrolls #tes #tesblr #tv adaptation #fallout tv series #tes tv series #asks

[autumnaaltonen]

How do you think alucard would react to a gen z humor? For example: would he enjoy tiktok and vine? Would he be confused by our memes? How would he react to our self-deprecating humor?

This will be a running theme in my fanficiton, so I'm all for this. Also, I am barely Gen Z, and continuously learn new slang from my students, so excuse the cringe 😅

In my personal opinion, Alucard very much gives supportive grandpa vibes.

He's happy to view whatever "KidToks", "YouViews", or "Bumblr" memes you shove in his face. He's not going to understand it, but he's happy to watch if it makes you smile.

He really loves BookTok for reading material when he's chillin in the dungeon, especially murder mysteries and modern fantasy.

When he first got a taste of your Vine-Vocab, he legit just thought that was the way you spoke.

Seras delivering you a birthday gift: "so you just gonna bring me a birthday gift on my birthday to my birthday party on my birthday with a birthday gift?"

Giving the Hellsing taskforce driving directions for their next mission: "Road work ahead? Uh, yeah, I sure hope it does."

Joining him in the shooting range for target practice: "Don't fuck with me! I have the power of God and anime on my side!"

When you eventually informed him it was from a dead meme-site that defined your generation, he was very impressed that you young-folk have such an extensive reference log to communicate with each other.

Like I said, grandpa vibes.

His favorite moments are when your Gen Z slang is directed at him. He has no idea what you're talking about, but he loves it cus it's you. You love it too, because you can use it to your advantage and flirt with him incognito.

"Alucard, I admire the 40s coat and sunhat drip, but it's a little camp these days. We really need to give you a glow up."

"I saw the footage from your last mission, and I have to say, you were an absolute snack. Totally bussin'."

"You high-key live in my head, rent-free, Alucard."

He enjoys your silly words. Such admirable youth.

But when it came to your self-deprecating humour, it was kind of 50/50 for him. He understands it with no issues, and as long as it wasn't too hurtful towards yourself, he thought it was hilarious.

"Sorry, demons! There’s no room inside me because I’m self-possessed." Hella relatable for him.

"I question my sanity a lot of times. Every now and then, it replies." He's like, "same."

You'd think he would enjoy it all, given his dark-humour streak. However, when you talk too poorly about yourself, it really puts a damper on his mood.

Even though he's a grandpa, we have to remember that Alucard is incredibly intelligent. So whenever you're shitting on yourself, he plays your game to his advantage.

You: "I'm the human equivalent of a typo."

Alucard: "But you'll always be my type."

Wait. What?

You: "If I remember correctly, the last time that I was someone’s type was when I was donating blood in the blood drive."

Alucard: "I had it for my dinner last week, it was one of the best bags I've ever drank."

Motherfucker. There more you try to put yourself down, the more creative he gets. It's like a ping-pong game of put-downs and affectionate counter-attacks.

You: "My life’s purpose is to be a cautionary tale for others."

Alucard: "I'll just have to be your happily-ever-after."

You: "I wouldn’t even settle for me, so why would you?"

Alucard: "Because we could be settling together in my coffin when we sleep."

You: "When I’m ready to sleep, I don’t bother checking if my foot is hanging off the end of my bed anymore. Come get me, demons."

Alucard: "Is that a proposition?"

You finally admit defeat, as your red cheeks and blood pressure could only handle so much.

Damn that sexy old man.

#hellsing #hellsing ultimate #alucard #alucard x reader #I had way too much fun writing this

[flamedraco]

So I don't really post a lot on this site. I reblog shit but the amount of times I've actually "posted" in the sense of using my words is a lot smaller than my reblogs. I write a lot of fanfiction though. So in celebration of the fact that my tumblr is now apparently a year old??? I think? Like hell do I know how this site works but I got a notification this morning about it? But in celebration of that I'm going to talk about "You Were Never Meant to be a Hero", my most popular, completed, TNT Duo superhero fanfiction. You'd expect me to talk about my fics more often so if you want to see more of this let me know I guess? And feel free to ask me questions. I enjoy getting them.

So YWNMTBAH started as an urge, as most fics do. I was reading through a lot of TNT Duo fics while working on my first project, Arsonist's Waltz, and I encountered one or two TNT Duo Superhero AUs. Now, I had just come to DSMP directly after two years worth of being in the BNHA fandom. Which if you didn't know is a superhero based Shonen anime. I love superheroes. I always have and probably always will, despite not being able to grow up with too much traditional "superhero" media. So of course I was excited seeing superhero AUs in my favorite ship. I had seen it a lot in SBI stories but not TNT Duo yet. However: I couldn't find the kind of story I wanted to read. The stories I read honestly just...didn't hit the right buttons for me. I'm not saying any of them were bad, gods no. They just didn't have my favorite trope involved or the type of pairing I was looking for. I saw hero/hero, I saw hero/vigilante. I saw a lot of "good" pairings. But I also saw a lot of characters being dumb idiots and while I do love some fun identity shenanigans it gets dull after a while. I have a thing with dense protagonists and 'will they won't they'. I hate miscommunication and a lot of tropes that were being used at the time. There's more to "superhero" than just secret identities. There's a lot of creativity to be had. Creativity and ideas that I just...wasn't seeing. I wanted hero/villain. And I wanted fallen hero, my favorite trope. The antithesis of the redeemed villain. YWNMTBAH started as a oneshot idea. Because I knew how I was. I knew that if I didn't cap it as a oneshot I would spiral when I already had a massive project I was working on. But after giving it more thought...I realized that I really wanted to do more with this idea. I wanted to write a multichaptered superhero fic for my favorite pairing. Self indulgent? Yeah. I didn't expect many people to read it at the time. Little did I know. Which brings me to what I really wanted to talk about: The first chapter.

Anyone who's read YWNMTBAH knows that the first chapter is very unique. I showed you the future before showing you the events that lead up to it. (This is the part where you should abandon ship if you don't want spoilers for the fic btw, link will be down below). From day one I knew what I wanted for the fic. I knew what its themes were going to be. I know precisely what the endgame of the fic was going to be. And for any other authors out there? Here's the best advice I can give you: Know what you want out of the story. Know your ending before you even think of the rest. The job of a first chapter is to ALWAYS- 1: Establish your main characters. 2: Establish your plot. 3: Establish your story concepts. The first chapter is always going to be the hardest in my opinion because it's your first chapter that you, as the author, use to introduce your world to your readers. Think of it like your hook sentence in a professional essay. You need to draw your readers attention and get them to want to keep reading. I was impatient and wanted to write Wilbur's fall immediately. I wanted to write his break down as opposed to the build up. So...I wrote it first. And then realized: I could make it the first chapter. I could make it the first chapter...and then the next few chapters could be flashbacks. Showing the events that lead up to it. Not only was it a clever way to establish the world, the characters, and my plot and concepts, it was a good way to hook the readers' interest! The first chapter's objectives were to make it obvious what the fic was. It should've been a clear sign as to what the fic is. In the first chapter it's present from the start that Quackity is a manipulative bastard and that Wilbur, despite that, and despite knowing what Q is trying to do, he's still a hopeless fool in love. There is manipulation, but there is real love too. (And anyone who got mad over Quackity, the villain, who is tagged as a villain, manipulating Wilbur clearly didn't read the tags. Just because I gave him a sympathetic backstory and the fact that he does LOVE Wilbur doesn't change the fact that he manipulated him and would do it again. Quackity is written as a villain. Thinking he was anything other than a villain was a fool's decision. I could go on an entire separate rant over this aspect of my story). YWNMTBAH is a dark fic. It's been a dark fic from the very beginning. They are a villain and a hero. They are on opposite sides of the war. They are enemies, each other's nemesis. It was the perfect way to introduce people to my world. I knew from the beginning what I wanted for YWNMTBAH. I knew what I wanted it to be. "Fallen Hero" is the trope that refers to a hero who falls into villainy. It's the opposite of the redeemed villain, a trope that I feel is so overdone and overused. It was self indulgent, and I never expected it to blow up like it did. I didn't expect people to latch onto it despite everything. I knew it was different from other things I had seen, it was like that by design. I didn't want to emulate fics like Clinic (that I didn't know existed by the time I was writing it, otherwise I probably would've picked a different villain name for Wilbur other than Siren XD), I didn't want it to be the same hero/hero, hero/civilian, hero/vigilante pairs I had seen, and because of how common Wilbur was written as a villain in the fandom I wanted to write Quackity as the villain. In the same lane: In future superhero fics you'll be seeing Karl as a villain more often too. But by design I made YWNMTBAH to be different from what I was reading. I wanted it to be unique because I wanted it to be EXACTLY what I wanted to read. And apparently? A lot of people got behind that self indulgent idea of mine.

"You Were Never Meant to be a Hero" is my baby. It's my magnum opus. It has an entire multiverse surrounding it now with alternate timelines and AUs for this AU. It's helped me build an amazing community and I feel absolutely FLOORED with the beautiful artwork I've received for the fic over the years of it being uploaded.

So from one author to others: Write the things you want to see in the world. Be the change you want to see. I've seen a lot more hero/villain pairings since I posted YWNMTBAH and I couldn't be happier to see them. Write things inspired by other author's works. Just make sure to credit them and tell them about it. We love it when you guys do things like that. Enjoy creating what you want to create and don't worry about what other people might think of it. Because you should write for yourself, first and foremost. So what if someone would've enjoyed YWNMTBAH if Quackity got redeemed? That was never the intention of the story. That was never the point. So what if someone didn't like that Wilbur ended up with Q in the end because of how Q manipulated him at first? It's a dark fic, read the tags. Write for yourself. Write what you want to see. Inspire others to create. And if you see my fic and think you want to write a version of it in your vision? Fucking do it. I dare you >:) Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/37319827/chapters/93120913

#fanfic #fandom #writing #mcyt #You Were Never Meant to be a Hero #YWNMTBAH