#his scarf falls into this category too but that actually has more actual backstory about it bc i can’t be normal about anything about him

[waywardsalt]

thinking abt linebeck’s coat. something very alluring about it for some reason. so im just gonna ramble about it here instead of in the tags for once

you can probably start a fight between the people who think it’s a coat and people who think it’s a jacket but i think it’s a coat moving on

the character designs are interesting to look at due to the proportions and art style so it is hard to imagine how long his coat would be but i think it would go down to a bit above ankles because i think that’s good. it’s a bit more dramatic a bit more impressive(?) that way and would probably lead to problems tbh

based on some of the official art i imagine that the stripe at the bottom might’ve been a late addition since it’s missing in the bit of official art most used to represent linebeck. tbh linebeck is inconsistent in very tiny ways in the official art but that’s mostly if you’re gonna be nit-picky or bored enough to notice

his coat is so good it’s simple but very recognizable and stands out among the other character designs in ph and its just. yknow good character design

its also surprisingly good for headcanons and stuff and because i mostly take a lot of canon as suggestion i have a good handful of headcanons tagged specifically onto his coat (one of which is the length of it ig)

i like to imagine that he made it himself. i’ve seen stuff where people write linebeck as being able to fix link’s tunic when it gets torn and i feel like the logical extreme of that is that he made his own coat. i think that adds a layer of. importance to it? it’s unique it’s solely linebeck’s it’s tied to him because he made it with his own hands and maybe it can represent something about him that way?

i like to imagine that in addition to the normal pockets one the outside he’s got a whole lot of little pockets on the inside of the coat, like so many pockets that he hides little trinkets or tools or things he steals in either to keep or to take back to his ship for whatever reason. some of the pockets have little flaps of whatever they’re called that can be secured in place with a small button to keep stuff in

he’s got like pencils and a compass and little notes and tiny figurines and cool rocks and feathers and all kinds of little things he thought was worth keeping around and due to that his coat is uncomfortable sometimes but if he knows for certain he’s going to be busy doing stuff he’ll empty out all of the pockets and only leave the important stuff so that it’s lighter and less uncomfortable. link finds his coat lying around at some point and is caught so badly off-guard by how surprisingly heavy it is with all of the bullshit he keeps in all of his pockets

i also imagine he values it a lot, maybe to the point of being really possessive and protective of it, not letting link touch it and if it gets torn or stained he shuts down and has to fix it before he can move on to anything else, and if he can’t fix it at the time it leave him kind of overwhelmed or upset until he can fix it. he has a lot stocked-up materials specifically for his coat to avoid a situation where he has to go for while with his coat damaged

backing away from headcanon territory, his coat is just a cool bit of character design and has just been lodged in my mind for a while. its cool and never brought up within the game (obviously) and i guess a last little closing thought is that in the cutscene where oshus teleports link above linebeck it kinda looks like his coat moves when he tries to catch link and i think that’s cool

#afraid of clogging ph tag so ill just tag this as #linebeck #character development not hiding in the tags this time #salty talks #this is how i talk on discord but i fear initiating social interaction so heres this #im in some kind if weird denial ever since that last totk trailer bc i think ive been lowkey constantly overwhelmed ever since seeing it #ugh. i miss linebeck. totk scares me and so does the fact that i cant get myself to be as excited as everyone else seems to be able to be #typing this was painful bc i turned off my autocorrect on my phone a while back bc it fucking sucked and now its like #man i am bad at typing on a phone holy SHIT #coat post thinking about linebeck helps me feel good. also projection he’s my go-to for projection when like anything happens #i imagine his coat as like. a comfort item to some degree. like it’s something he made himself and he’s had it for a very long time #like i have a comfort item or two of my own so its like. yeah i get how it feels to worry about it getting damaged or lost #so within the bounds of my ideas linebeck cares about his coat in a similar manner he does his ship. hes autistic abt both of them #his scarf falls into this category too but that actually has more actual backstory about it bc i can’t be normal about anything about him #still talking in the tags. oh well. im going to snap #i have planned a 17 chapter linebeck backstory. this is not related to that but i feel like its worth just. mentioning #i could probably make his coat represent some aspect of his identity if i wanted. like. maybe its a representation of what he really wants #i keep the coat in most au designs but the two au designs that dont have the coat are where linebeck’s identity is a bit fucked

[managician]

ARC V Anniversary Day 4

Discussion prompt:  Who’s your favorite character(s)?

Hoo boy, I ended up making a top 10 because there’s so many lovable characters in this cast and I want to talk about them all... Warning for incredibly long descriptions as the top goes on (I’m sorry for mobile users)

10. Reira Akaba

Look at this precious bab. Right off the bat I knew I would like them — I have a kind of weakness for child characters (Rua is one of my faves from 5DS too for a reason), but I never actually expected to love them as much as I do right now. Seeing this little afraid kid with no sense of self grow into a person of their own and playing a literal key role in the resolution of the final conflict was so satisfying. 

09. Ray Akaba

Aand naturally, with me loving Reira it probably comes off as no surprise that I love Ray too. Even with the extremely limited screentime, she shot through the roof as one of my favorites. She was no goddess or super powerful entity that had the equal means to fight Zarc, but she did so anyway. And she won. She’s the porter of an incredibly inspiring message and pretty much symbolizes the core of ARC V’s narrative; she saw trouble and she knew cowering in fear would solve nothing, so she took a step forward with courage and believed in her own worth. POINT IS, Ray is awesome.

08. Rin 

Ahh, Rin... It’s one of the few cases where it’s hard for me to articulate what I like about her the most. I actually wasn’t super invested in her when I first finished watching the show, but one of my friends really likes Yugo and Rin and that got me to think more about her beyond her lack of screentime, and I found myself suddenly appreciating her a lot. She has all her pragmatic yet caring personality and goals scattered throughout the show if you pay attention to her interactions with Yugo, and you can actually get a extremely solid grasp on the kind of the person she is — even her deck plays into it (a logical and ruthless Burn Damage deck, which showcases she’s not here for anyone’s bullshit). 

07. Shun Kurosaki

Shun is a fairly biased case for me, I’ll totally admit. I didn’t actually like him that much during my watch of the show though, and it wasn’t until the XYZ/Fusion Arc that I looked at the events of ARC V in retrospective and realised how much Shun had been involved in. I’m a sucker for stoic and ruthless characters learning to trust people again, and Shun fit into the mold perfectly. And he definitely did strike me as cool from the first go, with Rise Falcon’s insane OTK against the LDS Trio back in Standard, so even if I wasn’t actively rooting for his character I wanted to see what direction he’d take. Seeing him grow and finally make peace with the Yuto/Ruri situation at the end of the show made me incredibly happy; I think that he could finally start leaving all the bitterness and pain behind and begin a new journey of hope with his comrades. 

06. Serena

Another case of me being somewhat (okay, really) gay and biased for girls. I loved Serena right from the first go; her pushy and pretty aggressive personality caught my interest, and we got a glimpse of her backstory with Reiji pretty soon after her introduction, which made me feel connected with her very easily. Yet another misguided Academia student — though her arc is completely different compared to say, Sora’s or Dennis’s. She had even less information about the outside world than the rest of the Fusion gang did, and so of course the key for her was learning the truth. Thanks to Yuzu and Shun she was able to check by herself how horrorific her Academia comrades’s actions had been, and she immediately decides to fight against the injustice. There’s something admirable about her relentless courage and will to do what’s right, and she never stops being herself and fighting like she wants to the very bitter end. Pretty inspiring for me, honestly.

05. Reiji Akaba

And we enter Top 5, starting off with Reiji, who is frankly the trickiest character for me on this list. Unlike many people I know I didn’t ever think of him as an evil or dettached rival, because of... His scarf. Yes, his stupid gravity defying-scarf. Red symbolizes heroism in many Japanese shows, so I had the hunch that Reiji would end up acting nicer than he did at the beginning of show. And boy, did he. He’s an incredibly compelling and well-rounded character who is a clear contrast to Yuya’s bright entertainment, and he expresses his emotions in a very subtle way. He’s an unexpected rival who subverts tropes left and right, just like the protagonist; and while it’s clearly a case of the “I Had To Grow Up Too Early” trope, it’s executed so brilliantly well that you can’t help feel sorry for him, even if you don’t particularly like him. ...Which was actually what happened to me, I barely cared for him in my first watch of the show... And then I loved him and suddenly he was in my top favorites. He’s so great.

04. Sawatari Shingo

I’ll say it right from the go, I didn’t ever think a character of Shingo’s type could get me so interested. From the beginning of the show I saw him as Yuya’s ‘rival’ in a purer sense of the word than Reiji; they’re both Entertainment Duelists and have a more direct confrontation in the championship’s Action Duel. But that’s all he really was to me, another showcasing of Entertainment and a fun character to see when he was on screen, nothing else. And yet I found myself taking a deep liking to him when he finally tried to steer his own path; despite being a loud, kind-of comedy relief character if the situation requires for it (somewhat akin to Jounouchi in DM, perhaps), at the same time he’s a quite talented Duelist who enjoys pulling a crowd’s attention towards him. He wants to impress people and that’s something I could relate to in a very intimate way, as much as I preferred Yuya’s ideology. And he grew so much during the BB Arc with Crow too, it was so cute.

Tied for 3rd spot - Yuto and Yuzu Hiragi

Aka... I tried really, really hard to pick one... But I had to give up. Sometimes I say Yuto’s 3rd and Yuzu 2nd and some other days it’s the other way around, and then sometimes I straight up can’t decide. Like today. 

I wasn’t big on Yuto at first at all. He did intrigue me, especially because thanks to him we were introduced to the same-face plot that set off the whole Standard arc in the first place, though that was it. I thought he was cool, a character you can appreciate if he comes up with screen, but don’t actively think of outside of that. Broodingly dark characters tend to piss me off unless they quickly grow on me, which probably added to me not feeling very interested in either him or Shun at the beginning of the show; even with that, I appreciated his rather calm and pacifist nature in comparison to his partner... 

And then Episode 37 happened and I was completely thrown off the charts. His desire to bring smiles to people and to not hurt anyone anymore to the point of refusing to attack Yugo pulled at my heartstrings, and I’m a complete sucker for self-sacrificing characters, so when he protected Yuya at the expense of his own soul and entrusted that desire onto him... I was sold. His influence is rather subtle but shows passionately many times, and I found myself falling in love with his character despite the lack of screentime and dubious characterisation that every XYZ character suffers from; I think he’s the best one out of the trio in that matter, though. And his interactions with Yuzu, Ruri and Yuya are so sweet; overall he’s just a character I can find myself easily toying with and I love his role in the show.

What can I say about Yuzu? She’s my favorite female lead from all YGO series. I found her rather annoying but cute during the first... Ten or so episodes. And then I fell in love with her because holy damn, she’s such an amazing character. She actually Duels, has a beautiful and kickass deck and is deeply involved in the plot from start to end (which is already more than can be said for the other shows), not to mention she’s such an inspiring role model. Yuzu always actively worked to improve herself and it’s refreshing to see her be so open with her feelings and caring for people. She’s so strong and I really enjoyed all the bonds she had with the rest of the cast — when you had half of them going through hell and back to help her, it felt legitimately heartwarming and believable, because she always does her best to forge a connection with people and isn’t afraid to say what she thinks.

She felt like one of the most human characters in the show for me, as her best strength was the power of encouraging and inspiring other people (Yuya, Serena, Yugo just to name a few) rather than being unbeatable or not being allowed to fail. She’s everything and more I could hope from a female lead and she inspires me everyday.

01. Yuya Sakaki

*falls to the ground and sobs*

I can’t even begin to describe how much I love this precious ball of sunshine. Anime protagonists are always without fail a 50/50 chance for me, I either love them with all my soul or I hate them and I’m 200% more invested in other characters. Yuya (un)surprisingly fell into the first category from the very first episode, he’s so adorable and seeing him go on a journey to leave behind his years of bullying and depression and turn into someone he can be proud of is hands down the most inspiring thing in this series. 

He genuinely makes me so happy and his character development is the very thing that made me invested in ARC V in the first place, I will never get enough of what an amazing and compelling protagonist he is. His attitude of trying to stay happy and make the people around him happy as well, but ultimately falling victim to his own emotions and crashing hard against reality is so brutally and openly real that my heart aches just from thinking of it. I’ve learned with him as I watched the show; as an audience we experienced the same happiness, sadness and pain that he went through, and I’m so proud of him for getting so far and never giving up despite all the odds always being against him.

He’ll always hold a special place in my heart, he’s so important to me and I’m just really glad he exists! 

#arcvanniversary #ygo arc v #yugioh arc v #arc v #long post #i did not mean for this to turn into a essay but once i start talking about this cast i can't stop for a solid 20 minutes so

[junker-town]

SB Nation reviews: Sarah and Duck

Image: BBC

Graham MacAree: So. Sarah and Duck: a great children’s show, or the great children’s show?

Ryan Nanni: The only children’s show. Much like there are many stars but only one sun, Sarah and Duck is the center of our peaceful parenting entertainment system.

GM: It feels like most children’s shows accept that they’re going to slowly drive parents insane and so don’t bother with mitigation strategies.

Whereas Sarah and Duck doesn’t hate us.

RN: No, and this is because Sarah and Duck presents a world that seems much like our own but is, in fact, radically different. Let’s start with the first and most meaningful change: in this universe, all children are quiet.

GM: I wouldn’t swap my children for Sarah. But also, I wouldn’t not swap my children for Sarah (children, don’t read this).

The quietness is so impressive compared to, I don’t know, Paw Patrol. Their introductions couldn’t be more different.

RN: Everything that happens to Sarah and her friends on this show is met with the quiet version of the appropriate emotion. You fall down, and you wince quietly. You get a great present, and you grin and let out a tiny squeal. You eat something that doesn’t taste good, and you stick out your tongue and say “yuck” very softly. Not a single child lives this way, but that doesn’t make it any less aspirational.

GM: Sarah and Duck takes the presumption that quietness is coupled to ‘boring’ and demolishes it through ... I don’t know, sheer surrealism?

Those episodes must be hard to write — there’s no formula. If there’s a problem it’ll get resolved, but the shape of the problem and the shape of the resolution are not telegraphed at all. And mostly interesting, quiet things happen, and are reacted to, quietly. And then the curtain comes down seven minutes later. It’s fascinating that they’ve managed to construct a passable world out of these vignettes.

RN: Sarah and Duck embraces two truths that help with that, I think. The first is that problems come in various sizes. Sometimes your bouncy ball is insufficiently bouncy. Sometimes your yard floods. Both are stressful! The second truth is that resolution often is a matter of shifting your attitude, not changing the world around you. Take an episode where Scarf Lady wants to sell knit goods in the park, but the weather’s too hot for hats or sweaters. The answer isn’t to make something else. It’s to find a different use for those items, so a hat becomes a Frisbee, and a sweater becomes something comfy to sit on in the grass.

GM: The wool Frisbee didn’t work very well, but yes.

Apart from quietness, one of the things I most love about Sarah and Duck is that it is relentlessly, relentlessly kind. The combination of the general placidness and active acts of goodness make it extraordinarily soothing.

RN: There’s not really a mean character on the show, is there?

GM: No. Although Plate Girl is sort of jarring — while she’s not actively antagonistic to Sarah or Duck, she’s a little antagonistic to the ethos. I used to have John in that category too, but Season Three redeems him so thoroughly his appearances in the first two seasons are retroactively better.

Who’s your favorite character?

RN: Probably Moon. He’s got a surprisingly developed backstory and a lot of layers considering the character could literally just be “I’m the Moon, and I hang out in the sky at night.” What about you?

GM: I love Moon as well. It’s the kindness again, I think — we get to see him develop into an extraordinary painter over the first two seasons, and rather than flaunt his skill he is almost perversely appreciative of Sarah’s role in getting him started. I’ve actually started trying to steal his reaction when someone compliments his work: “Do you really think so? That’s very kind of you!” which is a step up from my usual “Well, obviously.”

But since you’ve already picked Moon, I love what they did with Duck.

In a kid’s show about a little girl and her duck, you’d expect them to have the duck talk. Duck doesn’t talk. He’s more communicative and thoughtful than the average duck, but mostly he’s sort of a nuisance who’s just in it for the bread.

RN: They also don’t do the typical kids show thing where Duck only plays one type of foil. He can be the troublemaker, or the coward, or overly helpful, or just tag along.

GM: Right. And then in Season Three, almost a hundred episodes in, they decide to make him preternaturally good at decorating cakes, which is a great delayed payoff to his being fundamentally a duck in all other ways.

RN: Here’s a tricky question. Most television for children is overtly about teaching. Do you think Sarah and Duck adheres to that? If not, is that a strength or a weakness?

GM: Not exactly. But I’m not convinced teaching small children matters much anyway. Really, what you want is to inspire a deep and (hopefully) insatiable curiosity about the world.

By setting up a really interesting world with a coherent, if bizarre, internal physics, I think Sarah and Duck does do that. Things happen pseudo-logically and in repeatable ways. Exploring the world has payoffs in an episode, and well after the episode.

RN: Yeah, the world of the show is oddly fascinating. There are adults, and most of them have normal jobs. (The Cloud Captain is a notable exception.) There’s a big department store and public transit. (Though the bus can also go underwater.) Also all the children seem to live by themselves, but they do responsible things like grocery shopping and cleaning up.

GM: Do they live alone? It’s not clear to me whether the Narrator is an actual presence in Sarah’s life or not.

RN: Let me amend my statement: no child on the show ever refers to their parents or a guardian of any sort.

GM: Right. But the Narrator (he’s played by Roger Allam, who is probably the single biggest reason the show is Quiet) is sometimes obviously Sarah’s dad and sometimes sort of a ghostly presence in her adventures. The show is totally uninterested in resolving this, which is the right approach, because the revelation would be uninteresting.

RN: Wait, I did think of a slightly mean character: Scarf Lady’s nemesis, Hat Lady.

GM: I hope they get further into the backstory behind their relationship. Scarf Lady has enough history to merit her own spin-off show, and Hat Lady is a great pseudo-villain in both episodes in which she appears.

RN: You mean how she’s just casually an Olympian? Or at least the equivalent in this universe, since the Olympics would absolutely sue a TV show for kids.

GM: And owns, for no apparent reason, a jet-propelled hot air balloon? And a talking bag?

As an aside, it is pretty great that everything talks in Sarah and Duck except the animals.

RN: There’s a talking CAKE. Cake winds up living in a bakery, where he watches dozens of his baked brethren sold for consumption and is ... never bothered by it, I guess? Sometimes it’s best to not think too hard about the logistics.

GM: Rainbow is also fun, especially when they start using the mechanics of him getting yanked around by the weather to tell stories.

The way Sarah and Duck manages to expand everything that happens into something else down the line is magnificent. The show has huge, intersecting plot arcs!

Granted, those arcs don’t matter, but the intricacy gives the illusion of a huge world the writers are exploring, rather than one they’re creating per se.

RN: I think that goes back to the spirit of curiosity you mentioned. Sarah and Duck doesn’t focus a ton on existing character dynamics. It takes them into the world and shows them new people or objects or experiences, and it treats them all as equally interesting. And it reflects something very true about children: fascination can come from anywhere. (Any parent who has given a child a Christmas gift where the ribbon was more intriguing than the toy knows this to be so.)

GM: Ultimately, I think Sarah and Duck is trying to be a kids’ show in that it’s built to show off the world through children’s eyes rather than a show built to amuse kids with shiny lights and loud noises.

There’s an ugly cynicism to most children’s entertainment which Sarah and Duck completely elides.

RN: I agree. In most shows, the adults are there to teach and guide the children. The adults in Sarah and Duck aren’t really much wiser or more capable, they’re just older. In many ways, it’s about the value and joy kids find in doing things independently.

GM: The care and craftsmanship isn’t just in the writing either. The overall aesthetic is beautiful, and the music and sound design is gorgeous.

RN: Is it fair to say the visuals are beautiful and complex in their simplicity?

GM: Yes. But also, the attention to detail is stupendous. Watch what the characters and environment are doing when they’re not the focus of a scene, for instance. It all ties back to the world feeling like a place to be inhabited and explored rather than one being sketched in on the fly.

RN: The music is extraordinarily pleasant as well. Most scenes are highlighted by just one or two instruments playing a calm, friendly tune, and the original songs are 1) short, 2) easy for a child or their tone-deaf parent to sing, and 3) again, not shouted.

GM: My one-year-old thinks the ‘theme song’ is shouted.

RN: Again, the show’s quiet is purely an aspiration, not a reality.

GM: Speaking of aspiration, one of the few things keeping me sensible in the year of our lord 2020 is that Season Four is going to be announced. I suspect it won’t be, because that’s how the world goes ... but wouldn’t it be nice?

RN: Season Four would be a wonderful surprise. But if we have to spend 2020 rewatching old episodes, well, that’d be pleasant, too.

Style 10

Content 10

Overall 10