#i honestly didn't watch a lot of anime this decade

[the-stray-liger]

Where do you recommend someone start out with the .hack franchise? 'cuz there's a lot of stuff and it's kinda intimidating to get into

RUBS MY GAY HANDS TOGETHER a friend just asked me this on discord lol

OKAY so there's a ton of games and a lot of anime and manga to read and I'm kinda trying to remember it as I go because it's been years

ok so the first wave of games that you should check out in chronological order is infection, mutation, outbreak, and quarantine. Along with those came 4 episodes of the Liminality anime which goes along the game but happens outside of the game in real life. Liminality is very worth checking out if you play the games in that order.

Then you can give a spin to .hack//SIGN which happens in the same version of The World as the first games, it's super interesting and emotional and I highly reccomend it. It includes a parody episode called GIFT that actually used to put me on my ass as a kid.

I didn't like legend of the twilight, it's an anime that even to me in my peak anime cringe moment was very anime cringe, but I guess you can check that out too.

Then we have G.U. which happens in a different version of The World for reasons that I won't spoil, and revolves around a different character. These were my fav games: Rebirth, Reminiscence and Redemption, the third one being my fav out of the whole saga because it made me cry a lot.

There is an anime prequel to G.U. called .hack//ROOTS. I believe there's also a cd drama that I had my abusive exboyfriend rip for me back when we were together and he used gifts to demand physical affection for me but I have no idea what it is about so if you don't speak japanese you can skip that. Roots is very interesting too, I feel like it gives you a lot of context for Haseo (the MC of G.U.). But I did watch the anime after playing the games so I dont feel like you need to do that in chronological order.

There's also the G.U.+ manga which is like a G.U. alternate spinoff and honestly I really really really loved it and I think it's worth checking out

This is where it gets complicated for me because I stopped paying attention to .hack// for a few decades following a really bad breakup in 2010-11. I think .hack//Link came out next but I didn't keep up and I'm not sure of what comes next.

G.U. Last Recode came out in 2017 I believe, I own the game but haven't played it; I think it's like a remake/summary of the G.U. saga with a few things added in and others taken out. Liek I said I haven't played it yet so I can't speak for it.

But that's all of the .hack// knowledge I can provide at the top of my head. Hope that is helpful! And I really hope you can give the .hack// franchise a chance, it has some really beautifully thought out lore and some characters that even 13 years after playing it for the last time still live rent free in my head!!!

[kylesvariouslistsandstuff]

Once again, I take most news from scooper sites like DisInsider with a grain of salt... But some new particular claims they've made are interesting.

When one of their owners was asked about what animated projects - no specific studio, be it Walt Disney Animation Studios or Pixar - were in the works, the answer was... A new princess picture that's in early development, and a "pirates" movie. Supposedly an animated PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN project was in some form of development, and that it's unknown whether this "pirate" project is that or an original story about pirates.

No word on the Middle East-set fantasy film that Suzi Yoonessi had been attached to for so long, that could've come out this year... But then again, we know about that one's existence. The "princess" movie and the "pirate" movie, not so much.

Honestly, I'm down for an animated pirate movie from Disney, be it a POTC movie or an original project. A couple months ago, I posted about the upcoming live-action POTC reboot, and shared an idea I had:

My ideal PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN film would be animated. With designs based on Marc Davis’ exemplary concept art and resembling a 1960s Xerox-era Disney film, like a high seas JUNGLE BOOK or something incorporating the original 1967-era music of the ride. That’s what I would make, although I don’t know if the public would fly out in droves to watch that, lol.

But it'd also make for a solid animated adventure movie, because I'm always down for that kind of thing. I think WDAS sometimes does the straight-up adventure movie pretty well when they aren't doing musicals, and a high seas one is kind of a no-brainer. Former Disney director Chris Williams showed that in spades with his THE SEA BEAST. Even though that was a Netflix movie produced at Sony Imageworks, it felt like an old-fashioned Disney adventure movie out of the '50s or '60s rendered in up-to-date CGI.

As for the other movie, well... Another princess is always inevitable, there's always a new one to join the pantheon. The last one we had was Raya, and her movie wasn't a musical, which was a welcome change of pace. Wonder if the next one follows suit.

But again, that's all rumor-mill stuff. After all, this same site did say that WDAS was making an adaptation of BLUEBEARD and Pixar was making a movie called SUMER. And that's just the tip of that iceberg, there's always some project that gets reported that was never happening in the first place, or there was some misunderstanding from within the trenches. Like how MOANA was at one point reported as THE NAME GAME, a South Pacific-set adaptation of the Rumplestiltskin story.

I would love for there to be an animated pirate movie from WDAS, though. I would also love it if WDAS looked at a picture that didn't through once, and try again...

It happens... TANGLED's origins are in attempted RAPUNZEL adaptations from the late '90s/early aughts. THE LITTLE MERMAID and BEAUTY AND THE BEAST were once considered by Walt himself decades before they became a reality. THE SNOW QUEEN was worked on in the early 2000s, a long while before FROZEN became a thing... No reason they can't dust one of those movies off once more and try again.

I know a lot of Disney fans online continue to mourn, say, a project like GIGANTIC, their attempt at a feature-length JACK AND THE BEANSTALK set in a sky-world of giants. I'm still baffled as to how they couldn't turn KING OF THE ELVES into a feature, and COSMIC 3000 is a film I wish would've happened. Would've been a galactic banger, I feel. Plenty of unmade stuff in the morgue to choose from, if they're short on new ideas, eh?

Oh well, whatever moves forward, moves forward. Maybe D23 tells us later this year...

[finniestoncrane]

I'm here for a blind date I'm genderfluid (afab if you're wondering. I apparently give off Boy Vibes™)

I love dinosaurs (some of my favorites include Archaeopteryx, Australovenator, and Baryonyx, Minmi, Oviraptor, and Yi qi) comic books (mostly Suicide Squad but you already know that by now), and I'm trying to get into cars because I want to be an automechanic, since my grades weren't good enough for paleontology and I suck at art. College wasn't right for me and being an automechanic is probably like... A trade school thing, right? I also like Transformers. I got a mullet at one point, but it grew out a bit lol. I'm kinda clumsy, which is pretty evident since my glasses keep breaking lol. Not like I can afford new ones so I guess I'm using duck tape and super glue to keep the frames in... 2 pieces I guess. I guess it's just duck tape keeping the ear things on. I really got into old monster movies in Middle School because of a book called the encyclopedia of monsters. From like... The really old ones like The Blob That Ate Everything to the ones from to the slightly more recent ones but they're still decades old, like the Alien Franchise. Not too big of a fan of regular (?) horror movies. Technically I haven't seen most of the alien movies, but I really liked Alien VS Predator so I think that counts enough. I know I've already told you this but I fell down a YouTube rabbit hole of wilderness survival and eventually wound up finding a channel about boomerangs and the occasional Australian wildlife video (there's one titled Kangaroo Maggots. He finds a kangaroo corpse at the side of the road and maggots are inside of it. Really fucking gross. 0/10. Do not recommend if you hate maggots. Don't know why I watched that specific video honestly, but all the rest are good). Which lead me to another channel about Australian animals. I'm American and idk how tf I got from how to cook a cactus to watching a video on dingoes. I play a lot of simulator games. Like... If you look at my steam library it's like... 99% simulator games, the Batman: Arkham Series, and then a hunting game for some reason. And even then I think that's a hunting simulator come to think about it. Don't know why I like Simulator Games, I just do. Wait... Does the Arkham series count as simulator games? Like... Are they technically Batman simulators. I love reptiles and rats, but I fucking hate spiders. Need an Australian Man™ to help me if a spider is near lol. You know wow I'm talking about here I tend to get overexcited when myself or others are talking about stuff I'm interested in. I go on long tangents about stuff I like. I'm kind of a nerd when it comes to my semi-niche interests. I do enjoy listening to people go on their own tangents about things they like too though.

It's also quite apparent I have a thing for weird and/or disgusting fictional men ( my taste in women is better I swear. (Will fall for any tall woman who even looks in my direction. Which isn't saying much cuz I'm 4'10¾") )

💜 blind date 💜 the kitchen is now closed! 🔞minors dni🔞 • masterlist • kofi link • tag: finnie1500 (to follow or to block) a/n: hi please come in and distract this idiot, quickly, quicker, HURRY 💚

"Hi, uh-huh, welcome to the Vill-Inn. Can I just... sit you down as quickly as possible? If your date asks any of us if we want to see his big, curvy weapon one more time, we are going to escort him from the premises. Good luck!"

The moment you sit down at your table, after being rushed over by the waitstaff, you're met with a wide and mischievous grin, a signature smile from a man you recognise.

"I go by many names. Captain Boomerang, George, Digger. But you can call me daddy, if you like."

You screw your face up a bit, trying to pretend like that line didn't get you, and he's quick to try and win you over.

"I'm joking, love! Lighten up, it's a blind date, it's supposed to be fun!"

At least he's quick to... not apologise for his jokes, but to try and recover from them. And he's also surprisingly interested in you, and in getting to know you. Although, you fear it's just so he can make more risque jokes.

"Ah, mechanics. So... you're good with your hands then? You wear one of them little overall things? With anything underneath?"

The loud laugh he lets out at the end of his remarks are so endearing though, they make his lewd comments almost charming. Which you're unsurprised by, given your specific taste in men. He's perfectly strange and definitely a little bit gross, just how you like them.

He comments on your glasses, mentioning that you seem like someone who is a creative problem solver. A comment that feels like a proper compliment, not just a segue into another flirtatious remark. And it feels like he's dialing down on that the more he gets to know you. he talks to you about horror films for twenty minutes without saying anything lewd or crude. It's almost like it's a defense mechanism he uses to keep a distance, to maintain his facade.

In fact, he barely says anything at all when you're telling him about your preference for classic horror, and what video games you're interested in. Almost like he's enjoying learning about you. Almost like he can forego his usual ridiculously brazen behaviour around you. And you're more than happy to return the favour when he gets excited about boomerangs. Your fault for mentioning them.

"Yeah, you can learn a lot from a video online about surviving in the outback, but if you're ever looking for private tutoring, I'm your man."

He winks with this statement, but you can tell there's sincerity behind the offer. The fact that you're willing to listen politely, and that you seem interested in him when he's talking about subjects that are so personal to him, makes him feel very at home around you. And you're warming up to him, to the point where you can make some jokes too. I mean, no harm in joking about inviting him round to your place to get rid of some scary spiders, since he's Australian Outback Extroardinaire.

"Listen, for you, I can let myself be more of a hero than anti-hero for a change. Show me the little buggers and I'll have your house spider free in no time."

He winks again, and you're so fond of it that you can't help but imagine a life of being winked at across tables. A strange, happily ever after.

#finnie writes #finnie1500 #long post

[repurposedmeatlocker]

6, 12, 26, 33, 42 and 47 for the movie ask? <3

6. Favorite movie from the 90's I technically already answered this one with a whole list of films....BUT WHATEVER. I realized I didn't add Toy Story (1995) and Toy Story 2 (1999). I love them both, and they honestly hold up super well for cgi animated films from that decade. The first one is especially kind of wonky, but I never really noticed that as a kid. I think because the story and acting is so well done, and choosing the focus to be toys was so clever for the technological constraints of the time.

12. Are you against book-to-movie adaptions? I wouldn't say I'm "against" it. Some of my favorite films are book-to-movie adaptions. A lot of films transition to the medium really well. Some are even more engaging to me than the book. That being said, I think it is RARE for instances like that to happen. Kind of a shot-in-the-dark. More often then not, when I read a book before and even after watching the film adaption, my first thought is "oh this is a lot better". As a result, I try to account for them as their own thing with individual merits rather than a direct comparison. I DO think that some choices for film adaption are unnecessary, because I cannot fathom how someone could take the book and make it into a film that is actually good and/or better than its original form. I don't think someone should necessarily be stopped from trying. Maybe they will surprise me. It has happened. Not often enough for me to be enthusiastic though.

26. Best experience going to the movies? I've definitely talked about it before, but it would have to be seeing Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker with my friends in 2019. We were all unashamed haters, and were lucky enough to be in a packed theatre also full of haters. The engagement from the audience was so visceral and fun, we didn't feel any shame laughing/clapping at inappropriate times. When Ray came onscreen for the first time someone yelled "hot!" Apologies for anyone in that theatre actually trying to enjoy the movie, but also it was Rise of Skywalker, that shit was just laughably bad.

33. An overrated movie Barbie (2023). I wasn't exactly over-the-hill excited about it when it was announced. I chalked it up to me just not being that into Barbie dolls as a kid. Then everyone started shouting really obtuse praises and I was a bit curious. When I actually saw it I was just like "that is it? This is what people were calling "sublime feminist cinema"? This is what conservatives all through the United States were getting scared of?" I don't know. No shame to anyone who the film did speak to. I sincerely love that for you. I'm just a bit tired of people using that as an excuse to call ANYTHING they like "nuanced" or "high cinema" without irony. I don't think I would be as bitter as I am towards the movie if people appreciated it as it was: a campy, fun summer flick. Sometimes a film is just that, and that is ok! We don't have to call everything "high cinema" in order for it to be valid and treated seriously.

42. Films you wanted to watch, but never got around to watching? SOOO MANY. My watchlist is so huge. Generally, ANY David Lynch film, ANY Cronenberg film, and ANY John Waters film. I sincerely don't know why I've been putting these off for so long despite being aware of them for so many years and actively WANTING to see them. At this point there isn't a good excuse anymore.

47. Favorite road trip film Thelma & Louise (1991) is so good. I cannot sing it enough praise. Closely followed by A Goofy Movie (1995), genuinely.

#tysm

[caluski]

So I recently finished reading TGCF... But I have a problem with two things. Spoilers ahead obviously.

In human years, Xie Lian is about 10 years older than Hua Cheng, yes? Since Xie Lian gets turned into an immortal at 17 and doesnt physically age anymore... So how is it that Hua Cheng dies before turning 18 like the fortune said? Because he dies as a soldier... But there is no way that a decade has passed before the war, no??? I can't remember exactly - I feel like I've read the whole thing too fast, the timeline feels blurry in my head - but hasn't it been less than a year since Xie Lian steps down to help for the first time? Isn't that when the war breaks out? That should still make Hua Cheng a child, not a nearly adult teenager...

But THEN - even if I assume I misread that and he actually did die at 16-17, where the hell did the adult form of him come from??? Wouldn't that make the one that followed Xie to puqi shrine the "real" form??? Since that's approximately the age he died?? His image with the eyepatch and the pearl bead and all that, it kept being described as a man in his 20s.... I keep trying to think what have I missed, but even the time he gets killed as a "no name" ghost for the first time, too, he's also in his actual time-of-death state. That much was clear. So what was up with the sudden body change? This whole time, between dying as a ghost, to rejecting becoming a god, he was an immortal still, in one way or another. He couldn't age, right??? It was never mentioned that in the process of becoming the ghost king he could mature physically as he was gathering more power. The only thing explained seemed to be the eye part.

What am I missing here????? No doubt there must be something I misread or accidentally skipped, but what.... What's the explanation for it???????????? How did Hua grow more and Xie didn't even though they were both turned immortal at approx the same age????????????????????????

Also, actually another thing that really annoyed me: that damn array password being left unrevealed. Not that I was that curious of what it was, but I expected it to be revealed and it wasn't, not even in the extras (and in the extras it was even revealed what the last mural was which was EXTREMELY obvious and didn't need to be said). So I went on reddit and I only found theories and someone mentioned that the author stated that "it's to stay between hualian". Which made me even more annoyed LOL because it just makes it sound like even she couldn't come up with what it could be. Personally I don't think it would be sexual, since obviously hua had a ton of worshippers and was a pretty boy and everything, so a lot of people, especially residents of ghost town, wouldn't actually mind saying some stupid stuff like praising his dick or something. I think it would be something like "hua cheng is the best husband in the world" because by the time Xie learned it obviously they still weren't a couple and if it was something Xie-specific (like "San Lang" since he's the only one to refer to him with that. He was soooooooo embarrassed of being so in love with Xie Lian he would NEVER force him to say this kind of stuff in fear of revealing too openly wanting to be spoken to in such way).

I don't know LOL I think I'm overthinking this way too much. But I don't want to give too much shit to the author, I think the story was fun and idk I honestly enjoyed it. Should I draw fanart. I kind of want to.... But yeah I think that's all I really have to say about it lol. It was fun! Definitely not watching the anime or reading the comic or anything else. Genuinely surprised there was no *actual* sex scene though. Also no wedding?????? I can't believe there was no wedding.... Have I missed a chapter or two???? How was there no wedding............ That's so crazy. I can forgive the lack of sex scenes but no wedding...... I'm so disappointed. I was actually so excited to read about a god + ghost wedding. That would be so interesting.

#Normally I never talk this much about books I read since they're usually nonfiction and biographies... #So forgive me for blabbering on so much #pogaduchy

[phantom-of-the-501st]

TBB Ep 10 Thoughts

Spoilers for TBB Season 2

Today on The Bad Batch, child slavery!

Let's get into it.

The way Wrecker stares at the part that fell off the speeder for a second and then falls back. 🤣

The timing of that cracked me up.

They're gonna try and fit all 4 of them on one speeder???

GONKY IS HOW THEY FIND THE MARAUDER?!

Omega being a smart bean. 🥰

Honestly, the amount of Gonky in this episode makes me so happy!!!

Excuse me, but Mokko is not the metal-handed guy that I wanted to see.

ALL OF THEM BALANCED ON THE SPEEDER HAHAHAHA

"That's our defective power droid"

Fuck yeah it is!

Don't mess with Gonky. The dads will come after you. 😠

Wrecker activated Intimidation Mode ™️

Okay, yeah, cool, we're all just gonna abseil down a chimney, sure.

That seems totally safe. 😐

"Plenty of time". Omega's so one of them omg. 😭 She's grown so much. 🥲

That brief slow-mo when Hunter falls forward. 😍

Than animation this season is so good!!!

Ngl, them all sticking their faces over the chimney stresses me out.

Smooth take-down from Hunter, there!

Mokko is a dick. 😡

I'VE JUST REALISED THAT THIS IS WHAT JENNIFER'S CRYPTIC TWEET WAS

Omega's head poking out from the oversized coat! 🤣🥰

Bitch, you did not just press that button. YOU DID NOT JUST PRESS THAT BUTTON!

Omega giving Benni her ration even though The Batch don't have much food. 😭

Wrecker hanging upside from the ship is one of my new favourite things.

Okay, I understand why Benni did what he did. I'm still pissed though. 😤

All the stuff about kids not being able to just be kids in this galaxy is so sad. 😭

Sorry, did Mokko really expect his "let's make the Batch work in the mines for a decade" plan was gonna work???

Although, he does say something about if they survive that long, so best bet is he was just gonna leave them to die.

Like I said. He's a dick.

ALSO THREATENING TO THROW OMEGA OF THE PLATFORM?! HOW DARE YOU SIR!

He's actually lying to the kids and keeping the ipsium for himself? How surprising (note strong sarcasm).🤨

OMEGA THROWING HERSELF OFF WITH THE DROID BECAUSE SHE KNOWS HUNTER WILL CATCH HER 😭

That scene might be my favourite of the episode. Especially with the altered Bad Batch theme over the top.

Ngl, the fight with Mokko was underwhelming.

The guy literally fell over a railing by himself. 😭

Although he was also a pathetic dickhead so a pathetic end is kind of what he deserves.

WRECKER HUGGING GONKY!!! 🥰

Even though they were all in competition with one another, when it comes down to it, the kids actually do all care about each other. That's sweet.

Wrecker is reunited with Lula! 🥲

TECH AND OMEGA THIS SEASON ARE GIVING ME SO MANY FEELS!!!

Was hoping the Echo and Crosshair convo would carry on this episode but oh well.

Also, we never saw Tech and Wrecker apologise to each other. 🥲

Overall feeling about this episode is that I think it might be one of my least favourites of the season. I didn't dislike it but with how good the others have been, this episode didn't stand out a whole lot to me.

There were specific moments that I absolutely love though! Wholesome Batch moments just hit me right in the feels. 🥲

And Wrecker's "I'm working on it" reminded me of Echo in Season 1. 😭 I still miss that man.

Weirdly, I don't feel like I have much to say about this episode right now. There's some more stuff delving into the idea of kids not being able to just be kids in this galaxy, so I'm happy they're continuing on that narrative. I maybe would've liked to have seen a little bit more from the other miners? I don't know.

Normally when I watch an episode, one or two particular things sticks out to me as something I want to talk about more but I didn't really get that much from this episode. Think I may just have to sit on it for a few days and see what comes to mind.

Still liked the episode, but I definitely think that the first half of this two-parter was much stronger. Very excited to see what Metamorphosis is going to be about though! My hope is to see Echo and Rex again, but that's more wishful thinking than me believing it's actually going to happen. 😅

Edit: This was supposedly a breather episode, so that may explain why it fell a little flat for me. I think I got really hooked up in the more high-stakes episodes and that swayed my judgement on this one. 🤔

#star wars #the bad batch season 2 #the bad batch season 2 spoilers #tbb spoilers #the bad batch spoilers #the bad batch #hunter #omega #wrecker #tech

[disapoitment]

Hi guys!! It's been a little while! As usual, I'm back for the new season...mostly for the mice :D I missed you all!

If it's okay, I'd like to ramble and share my thoughts. But I'll warn you now, they may not be what you expect...

Animaniacs reboot season 3 spoilers ahead!!! Please, please beware :>

I apologise first for my absence. Honestly, I've been oddly hesitant to return to this fandom since Friday, despite it being the loveliest I've ever been in! And that's because, well...

I didn't really like the new season, mouse-wise. I know that's maybe a controversial thing to admit.

I promise I don't wish to drag anyone's joy down with this—gosh knows I wish and wish I could celebrate like everyone else!—but I just want to share how I feel, if that's okay. To people who can maybe understand. I'm sorry D:

There were some segments I enjoyed, and lots of moments and little jokes that made me smile. The concepts themselves rocked! But I just kept getting...this feeling...that something was off? Like the characters were very much, to me, misunderstood, particularly Pinky. I still can't explain it properly.

It might come from all the years I've spent analysing these characters, perhaps a little too seriously. Watching them portrayed (seemingly) without their fully-developed spinoff characterisations in mind always kind of bothers me, and that was an issue I saw in S1 too. S2 mostly evaded it, but it seems to have returned. I don't know.

To be clear, my issue is with the dialogue and dynamic—the script. Something felt off. I could go into this but I'm scared of rambling or making people mad.

What I think saved this (imo) unsatisfactory script was the truly wonderful storyboarding and animation. It managed to express patb as characters who actually LIKE each other and have a bond of decades.

But to find out a lot of the heart from these storyboards was cut too? :( I don't know. I guess I'm feeling a bit down and anticlimactic about this whole thing.

I've poured my heart into this pair for so, so long. I've spent soo much time analysing their characters, their relationship, every line of dialogue. Writing about them. Thinking about them. They helped me through some very hard times. They've been a special interest for years. I know these things are true for many of us.

And I'm so very grateful for those sweet memories. I'm so grateful Brinky is finally canon :'D I suppose I just wish it could have been under some kinder circumstances...

As it stands, Brinky can only be considered canon because someone heroically put their heart into showing it through some really, amazingly clever boarding. If not for that person, it would have ended up as a (by definition) queerbait. I suppose I'm just sad that's still how it has to be in 2023 🥲

On the bright side, I feel creatively inspired! I might put these weepy feelings on paper and punch out another fic. If I can make someone happy, my sorrow will be worth it, I think. 💗

Thank you for reading :)

#pinky and the brain #animaniacs #animaniacs 2020 #brinky #animaniacs spoilers #patb

[secretgamergirl]

All the seriously queer stuff in the back half of Sailor Moon

In case it wasn't obvious when I released a little mini-RPG a few months ago where you basically play as the villains, I've been gradually making my way through the entire run of Sailor Moon for the past year or so. Specifically I'm watching the 2014 Viz dub that covers all 200 episodes, trying to be as faithful as they can with it. It's been a really interesting experience, since I absolutely watched the old DiC dub back in the day, saw a fansub of one of the movies around the same time, and heard plenty of things about the missing seasons (particularly the infamous "cousins" thing from the Cloverway dub) over the years, and now I have all the context. And the context gets really shockingly overtly queer, turns out!

So first, let's just all get on the same page with the English language localizations of Sailor Moon over the years. Back in the 90s, Sailor Moon aired… well everywhere, with the English language version being a dub from DiC, which I will go to my grave defending as probably the best dub of anything I can think of. Fantastic casting all around, changes to the soundtrack that were actually for the better (keeping all the melodies but recording new versions that… aren't optimized to sound show-perfect when recreated by the cheapest sound generators one can shove in a toy, plus some original songs shoved into a few episodes). They did make some edits/cuts, but pretty minor ones, especially compared to the complete reworkings most anime of the era went through when coming to American TV, and I'm still not used to Luna not being prissy and British here.

That dub only lasted up through the second season. Past that, there was a dub of seasons 3 and 4 from Cloverway, which had some really questionable performances, and is where the infamous "they're cousins" bit came in. This also aired on TV in some places, but didn't have nearly the same omnipresent distribution as the DiC seasons (… and now I'm feeling old as I ponder whether to explain how local TV affiliates did their own thing back in the broadcast days). Then in the early 2000s there was a DVD release from Pioneer with cut/uncut versions of everything, apparently, which may or may not have recycled those dubs. I don't really have the energy to track that down, specifically. Anyway all the rights expired, gathered dust forever, then Viz picked it up and did this new faithful localization, and it took me about a decade to spot it on a streaming service.

So we've got 5 seasons, 200 episodes total, and a hell of a lot of formulaic structuring here. Every season (or half a season) we've got some main villain with an evil plan we may or may not get any details on, and some small number of underlings who then take their 5-10 episode long turns pursuing their goal in a way that inevitably generates monsters of the week, and meanwhile every season we have another conflict on the good guy side where someone is trying to locate some special person and ignoring the 50 or so obvious signs which main cast member it is while the audience gets frustrated. Oh and each individual episode has the same rigid structure of everyone getting caught up in some wacky teen trend, then there's a monster, they transform and fight a bit to no real end, then Sailor Moon gets around to using a finisher because that's literally the only thing actually capable of ending a fight. Honestly it's less "formulaic TV writing" and more like some sort of daily meditation. No way in hell I'd be able to sit through all of it if I had to look at the screen the whole time. This is background viewing while I work. Oh and I'm assuming everyone has at least enough passing familiarity to understand that if I say the name of a planet I'm talking about a teenage girl who's the reincarnation of some sorta magical girl/sentai squad member.

Season 1 has pretty gay vibes in places, but MOSTLY there's plausible deniability for all of it. We spend about half the season just establishing the characters of Moon Mercury and Mars, then quickly bringing in Jupiter and playing it up like a big shocking reveal for Venus. There's also a bunch of relationship drama between Moon, Tuxedo Mask, and the guy who runs the local arcade that she has a crush on and spends a while thinking is actually Tuxedo Mask instead of his actual identity of uh… a college-aged guy we're saying is the destined love interest of this 14-year old girl he's frankly pretty abusive towards. So, a lot of straight nonsense there. Meanwhile the evil queen's got these 4 generals, two of them are plainly dating, and no matter how you slice it, that's pretty overtly queer, but there's a valid argument to have over how we actually should slice it.

I was aware at the time that the DiC dub just ran with Zoicite here being a woman, making this a straight relationship, and I kinda figured they did a bit of tweaking and editing to hide that this was actually one of those bishonen types who were popular at the time who happened to be gay. Honestly though, watching it through a modern lens, it is REALLY hard to not just see a woman here, even when we're throwing he/him pronouns around. Like, if I'm handling a new dub, I'm just going to say Zoicite is a trans girl, who I'm at least headcanoning as being out for years, on HRT, and at that point where she can put on a suit designed for a man and nah that's a woman wearing a suit. Kinda just wraps around and makes me appreciate the old dub's handling more than the new one.

Season 2 (or R) doesn't really give us anything to work with, if I'm honest. There's probably some gals-being-pals energy amongst the main cast here and there. That's kind of always low-key present, especially with Jupiter, who has the whole big tough girl who wears long skirts thing sorta gay energy, and I want to say she ends up going to a dance with Mercury somewhere early on because one of them can't find a date otherwise.

But, we've got this filler arc with two dark elves in a tree who just kinda both hit on everyone of the opposite gender while the main cast sits in a holding pattern, then we get a proper villain squad not really getting enough spotlight time to have much of anything going on, and this whole weird thing where Moon and Mask's annoying toddler comes back from the future to… brainwash Moon's parents into thinking she's their daughter, and then she gets turned into an evil adult, and there's this whole bit about her having some sort of grim reaper/time guardian as a nanny (this is Pluto, the outer planets really have different things going on)… but again, mostly straight/cis flavored nonsense.

Then suddenly here comes season 3 (or S, pronounced "Super" which makes things real confusing), from a director who would later go on to create Utena, and in addition to just being the single best season of the series for a number of other reasons, everyone is canonically into girls now! It's shockingly overt about establishing that too, and reiterating the point several times.

It all gets started with Uranus and Neptune showing up. We kind of have this three faction conflict this season, where there's a proper main villain and squad of monster making minions, but then there's also this overtly queer power couple whose goal is basically to check out the "pure hearts" monsters of the week keep ripping out of people because they need to check them for these three macguffins they need to… reform the holy grail of all things to give to their leader they're too oblivious to know is actually Moon.

More importantly though, aside from making it abundantly clear that these two are banging every night, they have this very open relationship where Neptune is more than cool with Uranus hooking up with any given girl she's inclined to, and/or grabbing gals for threeways. And like, this isn't me taking a broad interpretation of things, it's weird how directly they just come out and say this. The other thing we have going on is that Uranus is just, like, the butchest of the butch.

Literally everyone just assumes she's a guy when they first meet, and quite a few people go into serious denial when corrected on the matter. And she kinda tends to react to all the misgendering with the sort of bemused nonchalance that makes it pretty easy to read her as actually being nonbinary. I swear there's an episode where she clarifies she's not a guy with that particular sort of emphasis suggesting that doesn't necessarily narrow things down to just "girl," too. And apparently Crystal actually DOES bite the bullet and flat out state she's nonbinary (or at least "both male and female"). That's cool, but there is no way in hell I'm going to sit through Crystal.

Anyway, point is, everybody wants to hook up with Uranus. Everyone. There's a whole episode where the power couple straight up takes Jupiter out on a date, the rest start gossiping about her being out on a date with two girls, everyone starts off shocked, then someone clarifies who it's with and everyone's like "oh, well yeah then I'd take them up on that too," with a little extra push back from Mars before she gets called out as trying to stay in the closet when she's clearly got a stash of photos of hot girls in suits.

This of course really makes me wonder about that Cloverleaf dub and why they went with that whole "cousins" thing to avoid addressing the overt queerness here, instead of taking the same approach DiC did of just making Uranus a guy. This would technically introduce the problem of having a guy in a miniskirt for fight scenes, but, eh, that'd be easier to edit around than you'd think. Uranus generally enters a fight scene pre-transformed firing an attack off from offscreen, arguing with the core cast a little, and leaving. Attacks are stock animation you can drop in anywhere, so that much is easy enough to chop out or replace with Neptune's attack. I don't know how one would even begin to cut around all the overt gay stuff though.

Nothing especially queer going on with the evil side of things. The villains are kind of amazing but too career oriented for relationships. I guess just for the sake of giving full context for the seasons most people haven't seen and fill in the obvious hole in the roster I can mention the eventual deal that the little goth girl Chibi-Usa spends the season hanging out with turns out to be the main villain's daughter, Sailor Saturn, and kind of the antichrist? Like I said, the outer planets aren't just cast expansions, they really have their own stuff going on. She also dies and reincarnates, doing so the long way where she sits the next season out being just a baby, which once again begs the question of whether when everyone dies at the end of the first season they just kinda magically come back to life with missing memories just as a temporary thing for a filler arc to play with or they really dd all reincarnate and have new families a decade and change later. Weird that that never got firmly pinned down.

Anyway though season 4 (AKA Super S, which is pronounced "Supers" and now you see why I prefer just numbers)… sucks and you should skip it. No sense of stakes, no real character work, non-threatening villain, shockingly dull monster designs, no outer planets, an ending that just drags on for what feels like forever and has no payoff. The only things it has in its favor are the inherent absurdity that people are wondering if Chibi-Usa is like full-on dating Pegasus (yes, the horse) and Fish's Eye.

So we have two different miniboss squads this season, the latter of which is a quartet of permanent-child acrobats working for the impressively titled if boring in practice Dead Moon Circus, preceded by three animals-turned-into-humans-by-a-witch with a weird What-you-originally-were's Eye naming scheme. Two of them are just dull slutty guys, but Fish's Eye is plainly and overtly a trans woman, and gets something of an arc about being willing to give up her own humanity for the greater good. It's a shame she's stuck in the practically unwatchable season, but at least she's on the REALLY short list of major villains who gets to have a happy ending. Usually even when someone has a nice redemption arc with the power of love and friendship they still get bumped off by another villain.

Different localizations have done different things with her. Some go "crossdressing gay guy" some just say she's a woman and leave her transness out of it. The 2014 localizaton is pretty unambiguous about though, so, that's really nice. Casting could be better, but still.

Then finally we come to season 5 (Sailor Stars), which I think is even more queer than season 3 was, which is really saying something, and was also directed by someone who would go on to helm another girly show with a serious case of The Genders, Ouran High School Host Club. Structurally it's a bit weird, because the first few episodes are just straight up taking a mulligan on the terrible finale of season 4, this time with the outers in (Saturn hyper-ages back to her standard 10 or whatever and gets a bunch of inexplicable knowledge and memories which is cool but never really paid off), the main villain doing something, and as a shocking rarity for the series, this whole mini-arc where characters are broken into pairs of one inner one outer and get to bounce off each other in a way the series frustratingly usually never does.

More importantly though, at least for this post's purposes, basically the first scene of the season is Uranus and Neptune having a flirty exchange ending with something along the lines of "let's save the pillow talk for when we're actually in bed together later tonight," which sort of sets the tone for just how blatantly these two are talking about their extremely active sex life in no uncertain terms, out in public. Some of the other characters are a bit weirded out by their complete lack of filter, but hey whatever.

The real proper start of the season though has our core cast finally starting high school, once again reminding us that everyone is at LEAST 4 years younger than everything about their designs, interests, and handling of responsibilities would indicate. This also reminds us how deeply creepy the Moon/Tuxedo Mask relationship is, but fortunately he hops a plain to America and is straight up out this season, and as an added bonus Chibi-Moon finally goes back to the future. Before you get too excited she IS shortly replaced with an even younger, barely verbal new mystery gremlin called Chibi-Chibi whose existence nobody can account for, but at least she's actually cute and not akin to the baby from Dinosaurs. More importantly though, as the girls enter high school they end up in a class with the titular Sailor Stars, AKA The Three Lights, AKA Fighter Maker and Healer, a popular boy band who are also a new mysterious set of Sailors with what I assume are intentionally quite confusing gender shenanigans in play.

Normally, they are hot lanky boys, boastful about their masculinity to the point of it bordering on misogyny, but also super super femme, with earings, hair down to their ankles, and very noticeably female VAs in both Japanese and English. Then when there's a fight they're very plainly hot lanky girls in bikinis and one of them has an attack shouting "Star Gentle Uterus!" before hitting a monster with a glob of liquid to a disgusted reaction. And their transformation sequences (and bikinis, and some shirtless scenes) make it absolutely crystal clear that yeah there is some magical reconfiguring of their bodies when making the switch. The show pointedly avoids elaborating on what the deal is past that in terms of which they form they started with/feel more comfortable in/why they switch it up/etc. which would normally frustrate me as one of those Schroedinger's Queer Rep situations, but I very much get the impression that we're going for intentional confusion and ambiguity in service to a general message that if you're into someone you shouldn't have hangups about their gender or what it says about your own sexuality and just kind of accept your feelings and them as a person and I am pretty OK with that.

The cast is too. Mercury Mars Jupiter Venus and for good measure Luna all kinda spent the entire season fixating on how to hook up with any/all of The Three Lights, meanwhile at basically any moment there isn't a fight scene or some plot exposition happening, Fighter is VERY ACTIVELY pursuing Moon in a sexual fashion, with pretty overtly stated tension before damn near every commercial break over whether this is going to be the scene where Sailor Moon gets absolutely railed by this maybe-genderfluid pop star from another world. And I have to just say as a brief aside that while we obviously never go there, I kinda wish we did? Tuxedo Mask is WAY too old to be dating someone Moon's age, even if we do the thing where we just add 4 to everyone's stated age. Plus he kinda treats her like absolute garbage for the whole show, and even when they're in a more wholesome mode the whole thing feels toxic and messed up. Meanwhile Fighter here is literally the same age, clearly into her, and beyond the one character flaw, an actual decent person. Though again, really damn forward. Still beats the hell out of the guy in college dating a middle schooler, and kinda flirting with his own prepubescent future-daughter.

There's also this huge confrontational thing between Fighter and Uranus, where it's slightly unclear if Uranus is being protective of Moon, violently jealous because Neptune is totally and surprisingly overtly open to hooking up with anyone from this boy band too, or just kinda trying to defend her position as the hot androgynous badass who swept into town with the intent of hooking up with every girl in the zip code eventually. Meanwhile Fighter thinks Uranus is a kind of toxic macho dude and really questions the whole "she's not a guy" thing, which is, you know, interesting. Pluto never really weighs in on this because… Pluto kinda lives outside of time and space and has maybe 8 minutes of real screen time in the entirety of the show.

Past that, we've got a bunch of other gay stuff too! We're back to cranking the general queer energy of the core cast up past the point of plausible deniability with regards to each other and a random girl trying to pass along a love letter with some confusion as to who it's for. It also bears mention that when the full deal of the new characters and their gender flipping comes to light, Jupiter makes an active point of making it clear that she is still 100% down and like, hey, I already knew you were the least conflicted of the bunch about how bi you all are, but I appreciate the active refutation of transphobia is still cool. We've got an honestly adorable pair of villains where one is frankly such a bimbo she's completely incapable of doing the evil general thing on her own or preparing her own food, and her hyper-competent girlfriend helping her out while also having to come up with cover stories because they're supposed to be pitted against each other. They'd definitely get a nice happy ending in one of the even numbered seasons, especially once it's made clear that they're very much being coerced into the evil stuff/taking things down from the inside, but… yeah this season ends up going super dark.

I don't want to totally get into how absolutely pitch dark the big 8-part series finale gets and spoil the hell out of it since if it wasn't clear, the odd numbered seasons are all really good stuff you should watch on your own, plus this one has a bunch of genuine twists, but I have to get into some of it in my mission of explaining how gay it all is. Consider yourself warned.

As happens kind of a lot in Sailor Moon finales, the bulk of the season 1 cast gets killed off once the main villain steps in to start getting her hands dirty, but here it's early enough on in the arc for Moon to really process it and give it the weight that maybe it'll actually stick this time. In particular of course she's worked up about Tuxedo Mask turning out to have died off camera at the start of the season (the impression to that point being that he's too distracted with a trip to America to check his messages or maybe just straight up ghosted her), but then almost as broken up over losing Mars, because yeah, those two in particular actually end up with a surprising amount of low key romantic tension between them by the end of things.

Then once it's time to get the outer planets off the table, all four of them end up in a no-win situation against the villain, who does that villain thing of of offering them a choice of just being killed and having their souls ripped out to be made into new stars (this is kind of her whole thing, see), OR if anyone's up for it, they can switch sides, still get their souls ripped out to be made into stars, but given funky magic bracelets that allow them to stay alive, just, you know, corrupted by evil and acting as her new villain squad. It's actually established right before the last one gets vaporized that all her original henchgals are in fact the Sailors of other planets she forced into the same deal just before the last one gets vaporized for failure, making it that much tragic in retrospect that the cute competence-disparity couple didn't make it.

Anyway, Uranus and Neptune actually take the deal. Like, zero hesitation. Part of it is eventually explained as Uranus having enough faith that she's too into her girlfriend to be fully corrupted and might get a chance to sucker punch the villain with her own soul extractors (which she IS it just doesn't work), and failing that Moon'll probably swing some kinda deus machina (which is an admittedly safe bet, honestly). But another part of it really is just "yeah screw it, if I still get to be with my girlfriend I'll take being evil over being dead" and they really do go through with it and promptly murder their oldest friend and a very young girl. Don't let anyone tell you Sailor Moon is one of those power of love and friendship always triumphs sorta shows. I don't know that the power of love and friendship even ties the scoreboard if we tally things up over the whole series. Oh and the final final final showdown has a nude Sailor Moon with angel wings just trying to hug it out with the main villain, which I guess could also maybe be read as a bit queer.

So yeah. Sailor Moon. When you don't have a puritanical edit, it's queer as hell. Everyone's bi or non-binary-and-sapphic. Several different flavors of trans rep. Goes out on a note of not getting hung up on gender. All of this in a roughly 30 year old series now, aimed at young impressionable girls. … actually for that matter it's also a show aimed at girls with really powerfully horny monster girl designs all over the place. Possibly relevant.

Oh yeah, and maybe consider throwing me some money via Patreon? I can't actually cover next month's rent as things stand.

#sailor moon #queer #gay #lesbian #trans #nonbinary #genderfluid #positive representation #for real though it's really messed up that Sailor Aluminum Siren and Sailor Iron Crow in particular stay dead they deserved better #Youtube

[cescalr]

New tag game: list ten of your childhood ships!

tagged by @babybeale <3... forever ago. Uh. Whoops!

[I will also state my current feelings regarding the ship, and I'll go into as little or as much detail as I feel like <3 I'm also. I have a sieve brain. I'm trying to remember what the fuck it was I shipped as a kid lmao. Anything I shipped, say, pre 2016, I think should count? ftr that means I was 14 or under when I shipped it.]

Nina/Fabian, from House of Anubis;

They're still cute. Better than what they pulled in the last season ;-; fabian and mara...... why...........

2. Sam and Freddie, from iCarly;

This show was just. Not good at writing romance. At all. It was bad at it. But I am very smart and know better than them (/joke) so I could do seddie justice. Er. Maybe trying to do that right now, actually. Shh.

[also, friend; jade and beck is so complicated, you're right. A fun mess, but still a mess lmao. Me and my rarepairs was always a fan of stuff that never ended up being canon though. Might as well put it next, I guess? Looking at your 3.... when it comes to icarly; we could not possibly have had more different opinions on the matter <3 lmao]

3. Tori Vega / André Harris;

I haven't watched it in years so I do not remember why! But I do remember that I did. I think. Don't - don't quote me on anything ever.

4. Willoz - from buffy the vampire slayer;

No gifs for them :( :( :( love them still so very much <3

5. Honestly, I'd steal your number 5 bestie, 6Teen was great. In the spirit of obscure animated TV shows, though - and It's been so damn long I forgot the names of some characters, had to look up the guy's name, lol - Zero and Vin from The Invisible Network of Kids. It left a profound impact on my psyche because they did something really fucked up in the last episode, plus left us on a cliffhanger, and then the show got cancelled </3 rip. Haven't watched it in a decade or so. No idea if it holds up, but I was super invested in these kids doing spy work and experiencing insane levels of trauma that would be ignored come each new episode </3. I was literally 8 years old <3. It has a TV tropes page and the entire show is availible on the Internet Archive, of all places, sooooooo I may browse. For nostalgia's sake. There are literally zero gifs available for this one, because. I mean. No shit.

7. Didn't watch any of that continuity - only got so far as Tracey Beaker Returns... alas. Anyway, my pic for 7..... hm. Sigh.

Stiles/Lydia, Teen Wolf.

This ^ is NOT romantic! she slams her mouth onto his in the middle of a panic attack. Babe. No. No. Regardless; I don't like it </3. They really. Oh god they really fucked up this one. Like a lot. Plus, they both just ended up with much better canon ships (stalia, marrish) that then got shafted for this mess to be the endgame and then the movie breaks them up anyway!!! OFFSCREEN!!!! they didn't even last 2 weeks!!!! fuck!!!!!!!! I don't like them. But I used to. Playlist, for proof. I feel like this counts, because I shipped them when I first watched the show as it aired (I was 10 when the show started), but I did still ship the pairing until well into my teens (16 or so) before I wised up (the show made them very bad in a really boring way. Not that they weren't bad before. Love how they both do things that are otherwise reprehensible but the show frames them as romantic for some fucking reason </3 I was like 13 when I saw this kiss on screen. They're lucky I did research and didn't just take it at face value or I could've gotten some really bad ideas about what's healthy in a situation like this!).

8. Zikki (Zane/Rikki), H20: Just Add Water;

Season 3 does not exist <3 [also, the way they wrote the 'cheating' plotline was fucked up. That woman planted one on him!!! he did not consent!!! Why are we supposed to be blaming him for being sexually harassed in the workplace!!! No!!!]. Still ship them fr fr.

8. maf;lkasjd;f yeahhh. Think if you watched friends as a kid, it was inevitable you'd ship rosschel, the damn thing was pushed so hard. Stand in regretful solidarity;

For really obvious reasons (being that it is rosschel); hot damn no I do not!

9. Harry and Ginny, Harry Potter.

Ignoring the horrendous movie adaptation, when I read the hp books I basically just defaulted to shipping whatever was canon. Luckily for me, the canon hp ships are actually pretty good ones! If you ignore the canaries in the room. (I. Do not. Famously. Well. Infamously.) As for Hinny, whilst its a garbage ship name, the pairing itself is pretty great <3

10. kaljdflkasdt thank god I don't remember jack shit about watching glee for the first time! the sieve brain is a blessing in this one occasion. I've already mentioned in another (tagged <3) post my vaguely-relevant hsm ships, though, so..... hmm. What should I pick.... let's think.... I'm kidding. I don't need to think.

Shoker is a major missed opportunity in ME, and I've been mad about the choices for my fem!shep for YEARS because. Look. Kaiden she did not cheat on you. You left!! You accused her of being evil and fucked off after she was resurrected!! what else was she supposed to think other than 'guess he doesn't want to date me anymore. Rude.' And. You could have sex with Jack but not romance her, that was locked to male characters >:| biphobia [Jack can have sexual relations with women, but her only real connections are to men. Rude!]. And, Liara in my games always turned herself down for romance because she assumed my shep wanted to date Kaiden because she's not a total dick to him and there's no way for me to clarify otherwise, also people making assumptions :/ not great. Plus Li becomes the shadow broker and it's a whole thing, so that doesn't really work out narratively for me anyway. Can't romance Miranda. Can't romance Tali (wouldn't anyway - Tali/Garrus <3). Refuse to romance Garrus that is just so platonic a dynamic it's not even funny. Jacob cheats and dips, so fuck him. Like... all of the fem!shep romances are terrible (or Trainor, I guess, but she's... kind of. Nobody. She's Just There. Sorry. It's not narratively interesting enough for me.) and Joker was right there and augh. Augh! Still ship. Still mad about it. Hatboy Project is doing the lord's work! I salute thee soldier in thine endeavours. Waiting to replay LE until it's been finished <3.

<3

If anyone wants to pick this up, go for it!

#took me so long i think you went through two url changes lmao #tag game

[onlycosmere]

Victor-Romeo: Some very successful authors have difficulty in delivering books to wrap up the series. Why do you think this happens, and what is the best attitude and healthy behaviours die hard fans should use to encourage authors to deliver the books they are hanging out for?

Brandon Sanderson: Anytime you get into “should”, that is dangerous ground. I am a creator and I do not think I should be dictating fan behavior. That’s your world as a community to decide upon; I prefer to let the community do it's thing.

I do not think there is one good answer to this. (IE, why other authors are sometimes slow.) One common answer is that it has been a hard decade for a lot of people. Man, there are often difficult things about this last decade that have been draining to people. Then add on to that personal issues, and it is very hard for some of my colleagues to be creative in the way they have to be to write a novel.

Another big reason is that many authors tend to be “discovery writers.” Their biggest strength tends to lie in character interaction and believability in those characters. They give their characters so much volition. A discovery writer does not know their ending, they just start writing and let the characters interact. While those interactions often shine, the authors often have weaker endings. That is not to say that all discovery writers have bad endings, it just takes much more revision. It tends to be very daunting and slows them down towards the end. It is simply an outgrowth of their writing style.

Add on top of that expectations, and maybe never having finished something on this level before, and suddenly your stress is through the roof. These authors, I should remind, just started out like the rest of us. Unknown and just trying to tell a good story. To suddenly have the world watching can be extremely daunting, and there's really no way to practice for this. It can honestly be debilitating.

I think all the various fan reactions are understandable and in some ways they are necessary to the fandom’s psychology. I do not visit the places that exist to complain about me, to complain about my style and tropes. But those places existing is healthy. It is healthy to have a place to talk to people with similar opinions to you or to just post some memes and have some lols.

It can be unhealthy when it becomes harassing behavior. One thing I do not like is how our society treats people who like things. If you speak about liking something online, people will try to rip that away from you. This rubs me absolutely the wrong way. This isn't to say all criticism and disagreement should be done away with. I like is interesting conversations between people who disagree. I disagree wildly with Peter (this is Peter Ahlstrom, my VP of editorial at my company) about Into the Spiderverse. He could not stand it, while it is one of my favorite movies. (He didn't like the framerate of the animation; it drove him crazy.)

Fan criticism also becomes toxic when it becomes harassment to the creator. I do not know where these lines are, though. It's a tough one, because simply posting your opinion online shouldn't constitute harassment.

If you want my opinion, if an author says they are working on a book, they are. I know these people; they want to be done as much as you want them to be done. But there are mental, emotional, and sometimes physical difficulties preventing it. At this point, there really isn't much you can do. And I bet that the harassment of these creators has slowed the release of these books.

#cfsbf #brandon sanderson #wob #branderson #root

[inappropriate-aunt]

I'm back from Anime Boston 2024! It's been two days and I'm still digesting everything but holy moly it was so much fun.

I saw so many amazing cosplays. A really accurate No Face, an adorable femme No Face (she had a little No Face fascinator - so cuteee), a pink Pyramidhead, some LOPORRITS who were so gosh darn cute and they gave me a carrot full of goodies 😭❤️, an Elidibus who knows how to play mahjong, a Lady Maria who did a sword and ribbon dance that made me want to buy a PS4/5 so I can play Bloodborne, and tons and tons of Hazbin Hotel, My Hero Academia, Sailor Moon, and LoZ. It all made me so happy.

I spent a ridiculous amount of money in Artist's Alley and gleefully handed over my cash to those artists. They're incredible and I'm hunting them down on tumblr so I can follow them and show you guys their shops.

I cosplayed as White Blood Cell U1196 from Cells at Work Code Black! It was awesome, I met so many fans of the show, and a lovely GLaDOS told me that there exists a Cells at Work BABY and I found the manga and now I'm reading it. I'm also rewatching animes to plan my cosplay for the next con! And finishing up the Delicious in Dungeon anime on Netflix so I can read the comic.

I ate delicious food at Red White Ramen and Wagamama, got to stay in a hotel with my friends, was deliriously dehydrated all weekend (my bad, I couldn't find the water stations because I could only see out of one eye and I wasn't wearing my glasses lol), discovered a lot of new songs I love and animes to watch.

I haven't been to an anime convention in over a decade. It was like rediscovering an old friend! If people are interested, I'll post pics of my cosplay. I honestly didn't think anyone at the convention would recognize it but I got a lot of enthusiastic greetings!

#anime boston #anime boston 2024 #anime and manga #cells at work #cells at work code black #u1196 #white blood cell #wbc #GLaDOS

[melonteee]

i recently found your tumblr and i just realised that i forgot to tell you....

i would like to sincerely thank you because you and your videos are the reason why i got into one piece this year. i watched your law/corazon one and thought that it was an interesting dynamic, but your zosan one got me HOOKED

i actually grew up with one piece, kind of watching some episodes on tv, kind of reading random chapters above my bro's shoulder, so i knew the main frame and the main spoilers, but i never really started to read it from A to Z on my own (well i tried once, back in 2015. i lasted 66 chapters💀)

besides the length, one of the main reason why i didn't get into it before was because dudebros fans/powerscalers had me convinced it was just another shonen anime like naruto, bleach etc (no shade to them, i also grew up watching/reading them (with more involvement than with OP too, i just can't say they're my fave mangas ever, even if i like them. they're pretty classic if you look at the formula imo))

ANYWAY,,, i started catching up from chapter 66 in january and less than a 100 days later i was caught up👍🏽 if i had been told that it was mainly a story about adventure, friendship, dreams and FOUND FAMILY i would have gotten into it a good decade ago at least. but it's actually all because of a video that i decided to watch on a whim. i can honestly say one piece is one of my favorite manga EVER, and you're the one who lit up the spark, so from the bottom of my heart, thank you❤️

(also goes to show how important what you're doing is... the way fans showcase the media they like has a huge impact on its image and you shade a different (if i may, more accurate) light on what one piece is about)

(also i'm writing at 2am right before going to bed so sorry if there are any mistakes!)

dude omg thank you 🙏🙏 this whole message means a lot to me but you would not belieeeve how many people go "uh, yeah, we know one piece isn't about the fights" like yeah I know WE know, but people outside of one piece only know one piece as a battle action shonen anime 😭😭😭 which I'd KNOW because I was literally on the other end thinking one piece was just dragonball with pirates HHHH

Like I could NOT be happier my videos have helped people realise One Piece is so heavily focused on found family and emotional exploring of character and importance of relationship in the most intense of ways because when I realised all this, I went ?!!! WHAT THE FUCK!!!! One Piece has such a strong heart behind it and I cry thinking about how many people think it's just another standard shonen battle anime for men HUUUU

BUT IM GLAD I HELPED YOU SEE THE GREATNESS OF MONKEY D LUFFY!!! <33

#ask

[marciabrady]

Hi, I really love your crits ❤ but I'm wondering why you dislike Frozen so much? I'm a huuuge fan of Aurora and Mulan myself, and I hate more and more every 3D/live action film and terribly miss 2D animation, but I must say I really loved Frozen (only the first one!!), I saw it together with my sister, who's also my bff, so maybe that's why it appealed to us, there were also some traits we felt like we had in common with these characters... and maybe it's also the thing we didn't see the film with English dub, which didn't the best (totally agreed with your take on K Bell! I'm not a fan of her personally). And I know this movie has a lot of flaws, but at the same time it was really easy for me to ignore them - until F2 I guess, it brought up all of my problems with this franchise lol Anyway, I just wanted to ask - bc I think it can be the problem with all of the new (3D) princesses - aren't they a bit bland? I was thinking about it the other day, what's characteristic for Anna and Elsa and... well, he's extrovert, and the other introvert I guess? And Anna is romantic? But there's no hobby, no distinct personal trait, nothing. On the other hand Rapunzel was briefly shown to can/like literally ALL! You make candles? Play guitar? Sew? Sing? No problem, she's just like you, you can identify with her. And the bland princesses? You can easily project yourself onto them if you will, it's not same they like to, it's say, paint - but it's not said they hate/can't do it either, right? Sorry for my rambling, it's quite late, and I've just finished my weekend Disney Princess movie marathon. Anyway, love your blog and take care xxx

So I wouldn't necessarily say I hate Frozen, I just strongly dislike certain tonal elements to it but I generally don't really think about it because it didn't resonate to me. Frozen to me doesn't really feel like a film but rather a commentary on other films? With all of the "you can't marry a man you just met" lines and how all of the plots that occur were clearly planted in order to combat criticisms of the Disney Princess line: ie them not being active, or physical, or being too naïve, or lovesick which is why I think Anna is treated as a joke pretty much. So I feel like I'm watching a commentary track where this film is retroactively beating up the previous films on which it was based on and whose success made that endeavor possible? And honestly...I think that's what a lot of people like about it. At the time it came out, I never really heard anyone talk about the value of the characters- rather the emphasis was on "Elsa's the first Princess who didn't need a man! She's independent! Unlike the other princesses, she's a BADASS" or them applauding how Hans killed the Prince Charming trope (which I think is largely reductive, and not even inventive as Gaston had accomplished that previously, but I digress). In general, most of the elements people find revolutionary about this film are anything but- this film essentially just takes elements from other films and infuses it with a lot of meta-textual criticism and added in some sparkly magic to divert toddlers. I even read a book about women in animation and the author said that a woman contributed the idea of Anna being gassy (which I hate btw, it's not charming it's uncouth and I don't think men or women should openly act like that lol) and how it was game changing for how women were depicted when Princess Fiona already did that over a decade earlier?

Apart from the elements I mentioned above, as I touched on in my previous response, Kristen Bell's voice gives nothing to me. I don't like how Anna is treated as a joke, I think it's visually very boring, I don't like the 3d design, and I have no object permanence for the plot because it feels like there's just a lot happening to keep people from being bored without any weight behind it. I'm also not a fan of the universe, with the trolls and just none of it makes sense? Like they go through hoops to try to hit us over the head with how strong Elsa and Anna are as female leads and how men are useless but then Elsa runs away from her own kingdom and Anna leaves it to the attention of Hans while she goes off in search of Elsa??? I don't know, it just all isn't for me lol I know a lot of people like it and they're certainly entitled to, I just think it isn't to my taste.

#ask #anonymous

[some-movies-ive-seen]

Avatar The Last AirBender (the Netflix | Nickelodeon series)

Episode 1: 3/10

Episode 2: 4/10 (Kyoshi brought it up)

I don't really want to even watch further. Let's start off with the good.

I love the music and sounds. Brilliant.

Some actors are very good and their act is believable to the point it makes me forget I'm watching a TV show.

Honestly most of the time there's CG I don't even notice it.

the makeup, the sets, the costumes, wow. wowowoww. wowweeee. I love it.

The bad:

Very very very few actors know what they're doing.

It's a known problem that child actors are just terrible - not because children can't be great actors (c.f., Heidi, literally everyone in Matilda (ily Danny Davito)), but sometimes the show has a director that cannot for the life of them work with children (e.g., Stranger Things, and this ATLA series). Aang, for example, delivers a performance which is painful to watch. I'm not hating on the child, again, the direction is just completely missing. There's a scene where they have Katara just light-jog to Aang, then pivot slightly to Sokka. For what. It's so stiff and awkward and her expression is completely void of life (this happens a lot, her eyes are frozen, and only the rest of her face conveys expression). There are times when the laughter is obviously forced. There are times when dialogue delivered by the children are far too 'complex' for what a child would say. It's just so, it's not good. It feels like a show for kids. But I'm reminded that in the opening scenes a person was burned alive, so unless the kids these days are fine with that (deity knows I wasn't as a kid), I don’t know.

Most of the time it just doesn't seem believable. It feels like some friends and family got together and just shot some scenes on their iPhone to try and replicate the animated series. There are actions taken by characters which make no god damn sense. There are scenes where their facial expressions aren't human, because they're trying to mimic the animated characters (especially Sokka). I also get the vibe that they didn't rehearse lines, like at all. Aang messed up pronunciation TWICE in the first episode* (I'm pretty sure it was both in the first episode, he just mumbled over his words and they didn't think to re-shoot it or fuckin, I don’t know, do a little dub? like?).

There's no real explanation for bending??? Which ig wouldn't be necessary if you've watched the animated series. But like why can't the fire people just spew out a constant stream of fire, why must it be fireballs. Why does the earth bender boy need soooooo long to charge up his move? Why was Aang flying around the first time we saw him, but then he was free-falling reaching desperately for his stick later on (where did the stick even come from???)?

They resort to dark / dimly-lit scenes a little too frequently to make the CG easier / less noticeable. but it has the unintended effect of 'I can't see shit, babes'.

I think I'll watch more. I don’t know man it just feels like Netflix is hiring bottom of the fucking skill-barrel. Like I'm glad there's so many new people in the acting space, instead of recycling Marilyn Streep and, that guy, like they used to for the last few decades. But it comes at the cost of 'what the fuck are these people doing, do they want to be here?'. It's very Disney-girl-turns-pop-princess-because-daddy-knows-people. does that make sense.

I don’t know. Kyoshi just. compared to the others around her? Night and day. Night and fucking day, babes. Not even funny; her composure, her delivery, the tiny details, she just nails it for the most part. And then she's standing next to Aang who's just like omg when does this take end so I can go eat my fairy floss teehee.

#ATLA #avatar the last airbender #netflix

[honeyhotteoks]

hi! a bit of a weird question, i hope you don't mind! i saw in a different ask that you didn't always write for kpop or things regarding real people - how was that shift for you? i'm only just now starting to write for kpop but i feel weirdly. shamed or embarrassed to openly slap that label on, say, an anime blog or something, but at the same time i also feel like i should not care? weird cross roads! i am cringe but free(? lol)

this is such a great question and not weird at all! to be honest with you..... i totally used to be one of those people who rolled my eyes at kpop. i feel shitty about that now because honestly.... why in the world should any hobby or thing that brings people joy be shamed - but i won't lie. i used to be a bit of a stuffy academic, reading only capital "L" literature and listening to only "meaningful" music and watching arthouse films but honestly none of that shit made me that happy, it just made me feel self important.

i would read and write fanfic completely privately, and i had packed away a lot of shame about even that. so you can imagine how shifting into kpop was a weird change for me. i had a friend in the kpop space for months that i just didn't tell about aurora until finally i was like "haha by the way..........." and being honest about that was a huge shift. i made so many other friends after that, and i'm glad i was just 100% myself and honest for that one second.

i explain all of this to say, i completely get the feelings of internalized shame and embarrassment. for decades we've been watching content making fun of women and young girls who get excited over boy bands or fandom experience, and there's no way that type of internalized misogyny doesn't seep into your mind. i don't know if you identify as a woman, i'm just speaking from my own experience here, but i think maybe you can see what i mean regardless.

at the end of the day..... the way i decided to stop caring was to make friends in the space that brought me joy. i talk about kpop in "real life" but not as much, and that feels like a good safe middle for me personally. when people side eye the hobby or say something out of pocket, my reply is typically "i just don't believe in yucking other peoples yums". it's a quick way to push a bit of that shame back on the person. what are they judging for? they should probably take a look in the mirror and stop commenting on other people's lives.

hopefully this helps, but at the end of the day, live your life, no one else is going to live it for you. if other people don't vibe with your choices, that's really on them.

#answered anon

[noctilucentstorm]

i agreed with you until you said ghost game was better than all the non adventure anime

savers is really good

Savers is really good and definitely one of the more underrated Digimon series. I should probably go back to it sometime since there were elements I did enjoy, like the premise and the story. I didn't really latch on to any of the characters though and for me that's probably the number one thing I care about, which is why I would rate both Adventure and Ghost Game higher in my personal list.

Since you've brought up different series, it's made me think about my own biases to each series and why I have them and how the way one is introduced to a series can make such a difference on their impression of a show.

There seems to be this push recently (...ok, last decade) in fandom for fans to be more objective in their thoughts and feelings on a piece of media. I'm not really sure why, since the whole point of fandom is about being stupidly passionate about something and finding others who support that passion. I've tried being in fandoms where almost all the most-active members would do is analyse and critique every new work that came out. It was frankly exhausting to try and be a part of. That's not to say one can't criticise something, but in my own experience it tends to snuff out creativity in smaller fandoms.

So as a counter to that, here's my personal opinions on each Digimon series and how the way I approached each season likely shaped my viewing. Warning for lots of rambling and bias.

Interacting with media, whether they're books, TV shows or films among others, is deeply personal. The main reason I gave up doing write ups of each episode of Ghost Game wasn't because I stopped enjoying the show, but because I didn't get anything from writing my thoughts out in such a way. I've always preferred the fanfiction and fanart side of Fandom, rather than the side that analyses every scene and critiques and speculates, although I appreciate why others enjoy that.

Like probably many that still hold the original Adventure in their top spot, I started watching it at a very impressionable time. I had watched one non-episodic series before, so a plot going over a whole series in a cartoon was pretty new to me and I loved it. I started watching Digimon during the Myotismon arc at a time when there was no easy way to quickly catch up with a series without trying to tune into every episode on TV I could find. I honestly don't think I would've stuck around if I'd started watching the series sooner, but it's difficult to know for sure. By that point the dubbing changes were less obvious, although still there, and I absolutely fell in love with the characters, the settings and the plot about a bunch of kids around my age trying to save the world with all their virtues and flaws exposed. It's stuck with me even as an adult, so even if an objectively better Digimon series came along, I think it would still be an uphill battle to dislodge Adventure from the top.

I watched almost all of Adventure 02 and Tamers as they came out: weekly episodes that I sometimes had to miss due to other commitments. Unfortunately, I missed the finale of Tamers and it was literal years until I saw the final two episodes. I've done rewatches of both since and have an appreciation for them, but they just highlighted how much I missed the original Adventure kids. Is that fair? Not really. I also didn't particularly like what they did to Rika or Jeri in Tamers who were basically the only reason I kept watching (especially the former). I also wasn't a fan of the final arc, but get why others did like it.

Frontier is a weird one because I will fully admit I rate this one too highly on my personal lists compared to what it deserves. I saw it at a time when I was moving... a lot, so pretty much only saw a handful of episodes from the first half. But again, I loved the characters and I got enough of a hint of the story with Kouji and Kouichi that I was really intrigued. When I finally watched the rest of the series in it's total I was pretty disappointed like many that half the cast was side-lined and the sexism with Zoe/Izumi was pretty off-putting. Still, the initial potential of the series will always stick with me.

Savers was the first series I watched through online so went through binges and breaks as I caught up with episodes. As I said at the start, it was good, but just didn't leave an impression in the same way. Some of that was probably because I just went through episodes, leaving little time to contemplate them after. And the characters didn't hook me the same way.

I've not finished Fusion/Hunters or Appmon. The first dragged like many Digimon series and I found trying to get to where the plot picked up difficult, and Appmon was... loud. I don't think I've ever hated the partnership/evolutions scenes before, which has made viewing more than an episode at a time a real struggle and doesn't particularly leave me wanting more, despite promising characters. Both would've benefitted from me being able to watch in weekly episodes, but I missed Fusion's release and I had held out on Appmon, hoping it would be distributed legally given Tri. was.

Tri, Adventure: and Ghost Game I watched as they were released. I personally really enjoyed Tri. although understand the criticism that fans have. Given it was made by a new team, though, I never had expectations for it to feel the exact same as Adventure and I really appreciated them trying new things even if it didn't always work. In contrast, Adventure: seemed to lean too heavily on nostalgia rather than trying to be it's own thing. The expectations for the latter were too difficult for me to overcome, which is why I dropped the series about half way through. I do appreciate the pandemic may have messed with their original plans though.

And finally Ghost Game. I don't think I've hidden that I was originally disappointed when learning the series was going to be episodic and focussed on getting in new fans. I interpreted that as most of the episodes were going to be stand-alone so a new viewer could pick up the series at any point, which probably appropriately set my expectations. It was designed so someone could drop in part-way through the series without needing to go back to the beginning a bit like how TV shows aired when Digimon first started. Was it a good idea? I'm not sure, but for me I liked the comparatively low stakes in contrast to the others, while being more "realistic" on the consequences of humans and digimon trying to live together - something Tamers tried to do, but I personally thought was less successful in because it focussed more on the action and consequences to the kids rather than wider society. Ghost Game is also the first Digimon series I've watched where I feel I could stitch together a completely different story while still keeping to canon, which offers some great fanfiction possibilities I hope might get explored. I'll fully admit I was pretty surprised and disappointed a new Digimon show wasn't announced on the back of it, since it felt like Ghost Game was going to be the gateway for new fans, but with lots of newer series taking months or years off in between seasons, maybe continuity just isn't as important anymore.

Digimon has been around long enough it has a wide range of viewers since, unlike a series such as Pokémon that sticks to a formulae, it's constantly trying new things. It means some series will work for you and some will not quite resonate.

And that's a good thing!

#digimon #ghost game #wall o' text #I'm so sorry anon #you can just read the bit before the cut #the rest is my pure self-indulgence based on your ask #ghost game is such a gold mine for canon-based fanfiction #wish I had more time for all my ideas