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chattegeorgiana · 4 years

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Can I just say how freaking articulated you are?!

I’ve been reading your thoughts/theories regarding NaruSaku and SS and I love how you keep your cool and analyze the facts and I’ve been having a blast reading your posts.

Also, when I first started watching the anime, I think I was 13/14 years old and, just like you, I used to ship SS but as I got older I was like OMGWHY, and at first I was really shocked with how much I started to enjoy the idea of NaruSaku since up until that point I only saw them as friends.

Adult me doesn’t like SS at all, I’ll protect Sakura with all that I have until the end of times and I can’t stand how some people see their relationship as “healthy”.

Seeing that I just finished reading some NaruSaku stories, I’m feeling warm and fuzzy and filled with love, and I opened my tumblr and saw some hatred being throw your way, I’d come here and share with you that you’re awesome and I thoroughly enjoy reading/seeing/fargirling over your work. Happy Sunday and NaruSaku for life. ❤️

Hey dear!!

First of all thank you so so much for your nice words!

Lol, it’s like we have the same story, heheh. I was also a SS/NH as I started the anime. I think it’s no wonder that many of us used to be, since that’s what the anime version of the story pushed forward.

They literally stole interactions from canon from NaruSaku and gave it to the others.

For example how Naruto in the chakra training says to Sakura how great she is and whatnot? Studio Pierrot takes it and applies it to Naruto telling that to Hinata in fillers.

Sakura genuinely being concerned for Naruto and wanting to give up both her chance AND Sasuke’s in the chuunin exams selection?

Sakura is shown downright malicious there, like she is glad Naruto is going through this turmoil, when it’s viceversa.

Also, in the canon manga Naruto never thinks about copying from Hinata, while in the anime he does so.

So no wonder people disregarded NaruSaku that much. By doing everything in their power to show Sakura as being this malicious little girl, this only had a ripple effect on both the fandom, NaruSaku and their reception.

That’s why when I turned to the manga, I found a totally different story than the anime.

Which is sad, because the manga tells a rather much more touchy story than the anime, to be honest.

And this is also the reason I won’t be able to support SS. Because no matter what, the source material shows us SS as not being the right choice for Sakura. Through the plot, through character dynamics, through symbolism. You name it.

People can try defend it as much as they want. It’s out of the necessity to fill a void. I know I used to do the same with Sakura, hoping that Kishi will finally make something of her. He didn’t, sadly. And that’s something I accepted.

I still love her, I still considers she has one of the best developments within the story (looking at source material, not the adaptation), but I won’t hide under the pretenses that she’s perfect.

Hell no. Her love for Sasuke makes her miserable. Her potential is unused. She was sidelined compared to the main cast, like it or not.

There are a lot of problematic aspects with her as well, as a character. But I ADMIT that. Unlike SS-ers that make it look like this perfect love story that breaks the curse of hatred. Nah. That’s NaruSasu’s story first of all, and second of all, like I said, God forbid these kids enter such a relationship. And I very much mean it.

However, I do defend Sakura on other counts. On those which I can, on those that put her on this hateful pedestal that she’s the meanest, when it’s not true. When she is one of the characters that has a change in behavior IN THE VERY FIRST CHAPTER SHE MAKES AN APPEARANCE!

I wonder how many people can brag about that in real life. People have NO IDEA how difficult CHANGE IS.

Look at this fandom. They weren’t able to change even now, years later, in their regards to Sakura. She is still one of the most hated characters in the history of characters (which is so interesting to look at from a sociological point of view).

But they talk all high and mighty about a character who is showing change ever since chapter 3, like I said.

It’s funny because when it’s about admitting faults, like SS is problematic? Noo, it’s whatever. But when it’s about admitting that Sakura showed real change in her relationship with Naruto and even FLIRTED with the damn guy and ACCEPTED A DATE with him, people are like NAH, SHE’S A BITCH, NEVER TREATED HIM RIGHT YADDA YADDA YADDA.

Or like... when it’s about her and the comedic relief punching thing, OMG SHE’S ABUSIVE!

But when they copied the same traits to Hinata and had Himawari punch the shit out of Naruto OUT OF THE BLUE FOR NO REASON, it’s OMG SO KAWAII.

Like, these people are shown a mirror of their very moral standards and they still won’t admit their double standards.

It’s fun to watch though. But aah, anyway, I don’t care about those kind of people. It’s funny to observe them, but NOT MY tribe.

Thank you very much for your kind message dear! You really made my day with it, gotta admit.

Sending back positive vibes towards you tenfold!!

SPREAD THAT NS LOVE, because that’s what NaruSaku always has been. ABOUT LOVE, about SHARING the love for one another, in more ways than one. Cheers!

#narusaku #anti-sasusaku #anti-naruhina #pro sakura haruno

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thefloatingstone · 6 years

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Heya! I was just wondering, why don't you like magical-girl horror games/tv shows? (This isn't meant to be confrontational at all, I'm just wondering! :3)

Hey anon! :D no worries! This didn’t come across as confrontational at all!

This is gonna be largely more anecdotal than factual, and the factual parts will come from other people’s posts more than what I’ve made myself, and whose opinions on this I found as explaining emotions I’d felt myself for a while, without knowing how to articulate it.

(Under the cut because this is gonna be a lot of words. And gifs because of course I put gifs in things)

So I’ve been a Sailor Moon fan since I was about 13. (this is not the reason WHY I dislike grimdark Magical Girl Shows but its a good place to start). the Sailor Moon R movie was the very first DVD I ever bought and the first thing I ever saw of the show (I had seen anime before and had a good idea what it was but this was my first experience with Magical girls and Sailor Moon). And I remember very clearly how enthralled 13 year old me was at this story. About these girls a year older than I was, fighting this bad guy from outer space who badly injured Usagi’s boyfriend. And that no matter HOW MUCH Usagi reached out to the bad guy to try and understand him, just how much he RESISTED her friendship. I remember the scene where he grabs the Silver Crystal on her chest and tries to rip it off little me actively thought “holy shit! This guy just WILL NOT STOP!! How on earth can he be stopped if he just KEEPS COMING???”

But of course, in the end, Sailor Moon is able to reach him. She is able to offer understanding for his sadness, and when he finally realises her sincerity, he is “defeated” BUT. More Importantly. He is the one who ends up saving Sailor Moon’s life at the end as a last goodbye gift to Mamoru, the boy he was in love with and who Sailor Moon loves as well. Before he leaves forever.

So a thing here. Not ONCE while watching the film the first time, did I EVER think to myself “Just stab him, Sailor Moon!” or “Stop trying to reach him and just kill him!!”. Like, NONE of those thoughts came to mind. I was fully invested in seeing Sailor Moon stop the bad guy, not by stabbing or killing him, but by REACHING HIM.

So anyway. We move on and for a while as a teenager I went through that dumb phase where I thought every magical girl show was a “Sailor Moon Rip off” and that they must all be bad because of it! In part it was true, as Sailor Moon was the first Magical Girl show that had girls use magic to fight bad guys, rather than become Jpop idols or adults or anything along those lines. However, Just because something takes cues from a genre changer doesn’t make it bad… right?

So, as I grow up I start to understand Magical Girl shows. I get what they are. They are, at their core, about young girls (usually between 12 - 16) transforming into a magical alter ego to fight bad guys and protect or save a love interest as well as their friends (mentored by a small animal friend). And this idea just seemed like… so obvious to me? But I had the luxury of growing up with this idea. That girls could fight bad guys without being tom boys or masculine or “hot and sexy”. I had the Powerpuff Girls growing up after all. Girls could be heroes while still being girls and liking girl things and wanting to have boyfriends and loving their families and wanting to protect their friends! And magical girl shows are always about getting more and more powerfull, so that by the END of the show, you face the biggest meanest bad guy of all! And then you beat him in the end. And it takes great sacrifice and you lose things and even people you love, and you have to give up so much. But in the end you win! and the biggest bad guy is dead. And you get to live your life full of hope and happiness as you’ve granted the people of earth and your friends a safe and happy life. You have protected that which you love. And it was hard, but by believing in yourself and your friendship you did it! And now, even if something bad happens again, you are powerful enough to face it.

And then, in 2011, along came Madoka Magica.

I was recommended Madoka Magica by a guy who runs (to this day) an anime store in the city I lived. Saying it was a Magical Girl show with a darker edge to it. And told me “watch until episode 3, and you’ll know if you’d like it or not”.

Having watched Revolutionary Girl Utena by now, I was excited by what I considered a “Trap” anime. An anime that leads you to believe its one thing, and then after a few episode throws the curtain back and goes “HAHA FOOLED YOU!! THIS IS ACTUALLY SO MUCH MORE THAN IT SEEMED!”Utena did this as well. And Utena was and is my favourite anime. (tied by Sailor Moon.)

So I watched Madoka Magica and I liked it a lot!! I watched all 12 episodes, and it was hard, but by the time I got to the end, I felt rewarded for sticking through all the really terrible things that happened to the characters. I described it to other people as “It’s going to make you feel terrible and if you’re able to stick with it, it will reward you by the end!”. Some people saw the end of the show as rather hopeless, or stagnant, but I saw it as an empowering message. That even if someone tells you something is impossible, you should try anyway! Because you are more powerful than they realise! And THAT, I felt, is why all the suffering was important. Because it needed to challenge just HOW TERRIBLE being a magical girl is, and just what a bad idea it is, and even if you become one you can’t change anything. But then Madoka at the end plays the system against itself, and fixes things for every girl throughout history forever. And yes there are still bad times and friends still die, but she took away the dark core of the situation.

Also, Utena had given me a taste for genre deconstruction by this point.

So yay! a great show with a really unique take on the idea of “Magical Girl!” Awesome! There was nothing else like it!

….aaaaand then…. Madoka became super super popular. And that’s when the trouble started.

I found out a few months ago, that Madoka Magica’s writer and creator, Gen Urobuchi, (a man) created Madoka Magica with a very specific idea in mind; That women having goals and wishes are dangerous and lead to suffering. That girls should not have ideals and ambition. Because it will only hurt and punish them. And he wanted to show that in Madoka Magica by showing how, if no girl in the show had ever made a wish, none of the bad things in the show would have happened at all. He has stated this in multiple interviews.

Madoka Magica, however, was an anime, and had several people working on the show, not just one guy. So how much was altered and changed to circumvent his intentions I don’t know. But even if his opinions could devalue the show as a message of empowerment, it can’t change the fact that I WAS empowered by it.

But as I said, then Madoka Magica became OBSCENELY popular. But like… that was not the problem. What the problem was was… “an anime, written by a man, about cute magical girls suffering horribly, became popular with a male audience”.

And due to the insane level of popularity, this lead to copycat shows. And these shows did not copy Madoka Magica’s deconstruction of the genre, they did not copy the art style, they did not copy the deeper look at Magical Girls as a concept. They copied the idea of “Grown Men making shows about cute really moe looking girls suffer horribly for a male audience”.

And during this surge of Madoka copycats, I watched “Yuki Yuuna is a hero” and I HATED it.

Yuki Yuuna is a story about a group of girls who are given the opportunity to become magical girls and help make the world a better place. They are already all part of an after school club called “the hero club” where they do things like volunteer work, or babysitting, or helping out at libraries etc etc. So the idea of becoming REAL heroes and saving the world?? Of course they absolutely want to do that!!

So they get essentially tricked into this situation where they fight giant monsters who come to destroy the world, and they each have a “final move” they can use to destroy these monsters. However, after a difficult battle which had all of them use their biggest move at least once to protect each other and save the world, they all find themselves slightly injured and, weirdly, a part of their body stops working. One girl becomes mute, another loses sight in her one eye, another hearing in her one ear etc etc.

The show goes on to explain that, in becoming magical girls, what these girls have really become, are sacrifices to the gods to protect the earth. And each time they use the gods’ power, they sacrifice a physical part of themselves to use the power of the gods.

So these girls essentially get slowly MAIMED throughout the series, because they wanted to make the world a better place! They didn’t even get wishes like in Madoka! they LITERALLY just wanted to save the world. And they were punished for it.

And just in case it wasn’t clear who this show was for, ALL their transformation sequences are accompanied by aggresive fanservice shots.

of these 14 year old girls.

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And that’s where the entire idea of “Grimdark Magical Girl” show fell apart for me as a concept. And I didn’t bother checking out any more.

And what did we get after this?

Magical Girl Raising Project. a show where a group of CHILDREN who want to become magical girls have to Battle Royale each other to fucking death until the last child standing

And now the recent Magical Girl Site. A Magical girl show that includes Domestic abuse, vicious school bullying, self harm etc etc.

Even Re:Creators, a show I LIKE had this with their ONE magical girl character, Mamika. I am extremely pissed off that Re:Creators decided that Mamika, the magical girl, is the character that had to be killed horribly so that her death could motivate OTHER characters into action.

The only reason I am able to swallow this in Re:Creators, despite being angry about it, is that before she died, Mamika was shown to possibly be the strongest character in the whole show. To the level of being completely OP. And the fact that she died because she tried to reach the main bad guy, knowing full well she most likely would not survive, but she wanted to try anyway.

youtube

It still makes me mad, but at least it does take the sting away SOMEWHAT. Especially since Re:Creators is not a magical girl show. And its entire point is to dissect all its characters by removing them from their own anime and video games and forcing them into a reality where they have to face things they would not normally have to worry about in their safer, more genre-based universes.

“Dark Magical Girl” or as I like to refer to it as; “Grimdark magical girl” shows are now the most popular versions of the magical girl genre.

a genre that STARTED as manga written by women for girls to read and feel empowered by. They have now been turned into a genre for teenaged to adult men to enjoy cute moe girls in horriffic torture porn. (see. Because torture makes it MATURE and ADULT).

They are no longer shows spreading messages to young girls about believing in themselves and their friends and their own power, but are instead torture porn for men.

There is an excellent post by a tumblr user called @timemachineyeah which I link to all the time regarding this topic which I will do so again here;

https://thefloatingstone.tumblr.com/post/165077370034/i-cant-remember-if-youve-posted-about-this#notes

And in the OP’s words (emphasis mine):

“[…]That’s not subversive. That’s our whole fucking lives. That’s what we get everywhere else. Nothing a girl does can be right. We’re bad to have ambitions and to want things. Even the “nice” things we do are dismissed with ulterior motives as soon as someone decides they’re done with us.

And I fucking hate people calling it “so profound” and whatever, when it’s ultimately torture porn and the message isn’t even deep.

And more than that, I hate that it’s success has spawned a series of knockoffs, so that now moe torture porn grimdark magical girls has become the most common iteration of the genre. So we had the incredibly ableist (OMFG WORST SHOW EVER MADE) Yuki Yuuna is a Hero, and we’re getting the “Magical Girls have to CULL EACH OTHER in a grim CHILDREN-LED FIGHT TO THE DEATH” of Magical Girl Raising Project and like I’m so fucking done with these grown ass men making shows for other grown ass men shitting all over girls’ power fantasies and thinking that shitting all over girls’ power fantasies is something new and subversive and not a reassertion of the status quo.“

Does that mean I think men can’t make magical girl shows? Of course men can make Magical girl shows! Revolutionary Girl Utena is an ENTIRE show about the patriarchy and its destruction of girls and the role of women in society and the eventual triumph of our female heroes OVER PATRIARCHAL BULLSHIT ITSELF” and it was created by a man!!

Namely Kunihiko Ikuhara!

And not only did he make Revolutionary Girl Utena, but he is large responsible for not only making Sailor Uranus and Sailor Neptune a couple in the original anime, but for largely fleshing out their motivations and drive in the anime, making season S of Sailor Moon PROFOUNDLY better than the exact same arc in the manga!

But this is not what is happening here. Heck, I have a suspicion one of these grimdark shows might have originally been written by a woman.

What’s happening here is not about who the creator of these shows are, it is who these shows are INTENDED for. And what their intent as a show is. And yes. a lot of Magical girl shows have the intent of selling merchandise. Let’s not pretend PreCure or Jewel Pet are trying to become feminist icons or anything. But even if their intent is merely to sell toys, they STILL have the function of telling girls to have hopes and dreams, fight to protect their friends, and that it is OK TO DO SO WHILE STILL BEING A GIRL. Something American tv wasn’t doing at the time! Instead all girl characters from America who were “tough” were all tomboys who hated pink and refused to wear dresses, a la Spinelli in the cartoon “Recess”.

It was not until Sailor Moon showed up girls were taught you don’t HAVE to be a brutish loud angry tough girl to believe in your own power.

But now the magical girl genre’s most popular shows are not about girls being powerful and having dreams and protecting the earth.

It’s about how much our cute moe looking protagonists can suffer. For having the audacity to want to having power to protect others.

#Anonymous #Magical Girls #Mahou Shoujo #anime #long post #gif warning #video

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payment-providers · 7 years

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New Post has been published on Payment-Providers.com

New Post has been published on https://payment-providers.com/celebrating-kool-aids-90th-anniversary-pymnts-com/

Celebrating Kool-Aid's 90th Anniversary | PYMNTS.com

Kool-Aid kind of gets a bum rap.

After all, it’s pretty hard to stay relevant for 90 years – in the food and drink category, no less – and yet, Kool-Aid is still going strong. It’s even flavored in much the same way as it was when Edwin Perkins first set up shop in Hastings, Nebraska in 1927.

“We have a significant level of awareness,” said Andrew Louie, brand manager of refreshment beverages at Kool-Aid’s modern corporate parent company, Kraft. “The brand continues to be extremely popular, even though it’s over 50 years old.”

Sometimes, though, Kool-Aid has been popular in the wrong way. In fact, the most common Kool-Aid idioms involve not drinking it – something for which we at PYMNTS have been proud flag bearers on a number of fronts, often years before the “Kool-Aid” stopped being drunk. Whether it’s FI’s fascination with bitcoin three years ago – which, by the way, continues with the recent news of Coinbase’s $1.6 billion valuation; near field communication (NFC) penetrating 50 percent of POS terminals by 2010 – and turning the US into tap-and-go nirvana; or the oversimplification of starting and scaling a platform business – or even that a platform business exists, we’ve tried to infuse those endless FinTech innovation pitchers of Kool-Aid with a little splash of reality over the last eight years.

Hey, we warned you guys: Don’t drink [that Kool-Aid] and drive or make investment or strategy decisions .

But, as a drink, there’s no arguing that kids everywhere love Kool-Aid as though it were the ambrosia of the gods themselves. At just 26 cents per packet, enough to make a whole pitcher’s worth, there is just no way to beat the price of Kool-Aid. And, in an era of all-natural, 100 percent pure, juice-is-just-as-bad-as-soda messaging, there is something almost deliciously subversive about downing an ice-cold glass of neon-colored sugar water – especially as a way to celebrate summer.

But, unfortunately, in 1978, cult leader Jim Jones and the People’s Temple made drinking Kool-Aid forever synonymous with getting on board with a really, really, really bad idea – and no amount of “Oh Yeahs” can ever quite sever the link between brand and event.

We imagine, though we can’t be certain, that the good people of Hastings, Nebraska, and most of Kraft’s executive team deeply wishes Jim Jones had been more of a Tang fan.

All the same, though, no one can deny how delicious Kool-Aid really is. And so, in celebration of national Kool-Aid day – which was technically yesterday, but is being celebrated throughout the weekend (more on that in a second) – we come not to bury Kool-Aid, but to praise it.

Everything You Need To Know About Kool-Aid

Apart from being rolled onto the market in Nebraska in 1927, we have a few other fun facts about the fruity, sweet beverage. Kool-Aid was originally called “Kool-Ade,” but people found that pronunciation confusing. It was quickly switched to the modern spelling and released with original flavors of cherry, lemon-lime, grape, orange, root beer, strawberry and raspberry – all of which can still be purchased today.

Raise your hand if you remember your mom mixing up a pitcher of cherry-flavored Kool-Aid in the summer for a summer barbeques.

Though native to Nebraska, the people of Memphis, Tennessee, drink the most Kool-Aid in the nation, followed by Little Rock, Arkansas; St. Louis, Missouri; Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; and Jacksonville, Florida. The people of Jacksonville have actually sworn to take the number one Kool-Aid consumption seat, because apparently having Disney World is not enough for Florida – it also wants to be America’s Kool-Aid capital.

It’s also worth nothing that 563 million gallons of Kool-Aid are consumed annually, about 225 million gallons of which are chugged in the summer. In other words, 17 gallons of Kool-Aid are consumed every second during the summer season.

That’s the actual drink, of course. Metaphorical Kool-Aid is drank in quantities so vast that we would need scientific notation to cover it.

If all the envelopes of Kool-Aid sold in a year were laid end-to-end, they would stretch 58,524 miles – enough to wrap around the Earth’s equator twice, or stretch between Los Angeles and New York City more than 20 times.

Think about that next time some startup tech founder wants you to drink his “Kool-Aid” and buy into his claims to strike critical mass and ubiquity. The real-deal Kool-Aid has already laid that founder’s wildest dreams to waste with its level of saturation.

Some Things You Probably Didn’t Need To Know About Kool-Aid (Including Its Prison Currency)

So, in the off chance that you ever happen to find yourself in prison, you will really want to stock up on Kool-Aid packets once you’ve settled into your cell and established dominance by knocking out the largest, meanest-looking inmate you can find. This stock up is for two reasons.

The first is that in prison, Kool-Aid is one of a handful of goods, along with Ramen Noodles and cigarettes, which can be used as currency.

“It got to the point where some people would rather have a decent meal than a stogie, especially the way they’re feeding us in prison,” said Gustavo “Goose” Alvarez, prison chef and co-author of “Prison Ramen: Recipes and Stories from Behind Bars,” in an interview with the The Washington Post. “Times have changed to cut a buck.”

Kool-Aid is key to a decent prison meal, hence its high value as a trading item. Plus, as Alvarez notes, Kool-Aid is good for more than just drinking. It can also be used to make liquor or as a seasoning for Ramen Noodles. Orange is apparently the best ramen noodle and Kool-Aid combination, in case you were curious.

Even if one does not plan to pay or season with Kool-Aid in a prison context, there remain other out-of-the-box ways to use Kool-Aid. For example, as hair dye. The recent wave of 90s nostalgia has brought back something that mostly disappeared since 1995: using the bright colors of Kool-Aid to temporarily dye one’s hair pink, blue or purple.

It should be noted, though, that Kool-Aid hair dye only works for people with very light blonde hair – so light, in fact, that it borders on white. Kool-Aid home dye will not show up in even regular blonde hair and will, in many cases, attract bugs through its high sugar content.

Celebrating Kool-Aid Day (Or Weekend)

If you find yourself with a sudden, burning desire to drink a tall glass of Kool-Aid this weekend, or perhaps a lot of glasses of Kool-Aid, we have two suggestions.

The first is to drink lime-flavored Kool-Aid, because it is amazing.

The second is that if you happen to be in the vicinity of Hastings, Nebraska – you might want to get a glass or ten with the people who are undeniably the nation’s most enthusiastic Kool-Aid drinkers (Florida be damned).

The World’s Largest Kool-Aid Stand is poised to break its own size record with four additional serving stations at this year’s 20th annual Kool-Aid Days celebration, scheduled for Aug. 11 through Aug. 13 across in Hastings.

“We’ve been working toward this for the last three or four years and finally made it happen,” noted Pam Bohmfalk, the event’s organizer. “We had been waiting several years to improve on the design and hope we’ve done that. We wanted to kind of step it up and have something special for our 20th Kool-Aid Days, and that’s the reason we’re increasing the number of flavors on the stand this year to 20. I don’t know that we’ll maintain that forever.”

So, if you ever wanted to feel the rush that is drinking 20 different flavors of Kool-Aid in one sitting, Hastings is the place to go. Ask a local school child about the history of Kool-Aid, and he or she can tell you more than this article can ever hope to divulge. After all, it is a regular part of the local school curriculum.

Celebrate Kool-Aid. Go ahead, drink some.

Well, until Monday, anyway – when we’ll be sure to tell you not to.

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