#literally not my fault the show's premise is That but it has a lot of really good scenes..... both silly and truly meaningful

[todayisafridaynight]

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR TRUSTING ME BRO I COULD CRYYYYYYYYYYYYY 😭😭😭😭😭I hope it does not disappoint... REAL THOUGH about the drama you mentioned in your tags, that's exactly how I felt reading If My Wife Becomes An Elementary School Student's title, for example, but I'm told it's wholesome☠️☠️I would love to hear about the one you were thinking of though!

I WILL BEAR IT IN MIND TO PREPARE FOR ARACHTAGON WHENEVER THE TIME COMES... totally understandable to get frustrated with RNG on top of that, RPGs can be so evil 😭😭😭still, again, I'm glad you're back to it! Also totally understandable to want to play on the original consoles... NOTHING beats the experience... the availability of playthroughs nowadays is nice for sure to be able to experience the series without investing that much!

I would LOVE to see more Normal interactions between Ichiban and Jo for real😭they have so much potential for silly moments... ever-thankful for your content and I Can't Say Enough always looking forward to whatever you might have in store :] whether it's that or something else :]

I EXPECT YOU'RE DONE WITH EPISODE EIGHT NOW AT MINIMUM SO I WILL JUST SAY the Ohashi arc and Episode Ø [<- why the hell is ep eight called this] are peak to me I am soooo glad you enjoyed the arc... LOVE the OST too, Yugo Kanno is a legend. HOWEVER all the songs on it are titled words that start with S and P so you get titles like Scarlet Pussy 😭

OH BUT SPEAKING OF SP'S WACKASS STRUCTURE pleeeeeaaaase consider watching SP: The Motion Picture and SP: The Motion Picture: The Final Episode after you finish the show... there is A Cliffhanger and those are the true conclusions to the story... and SP Final In Specific is what blew my nuts clean off...

STOPPP NO THAT'S EXACTLY THE DRAMA I WAS TALKING ABOUT BUT I DIDNT WANNA SNITCH ON MYSELF 😭😭 it really is a cute show..... im ngl it has some of my fave tsutsumi scenes/performances like it TRULY blew my expectations out of the water. i just feel SOOO awkward about it cause.. with a title like That and a premise Like That i wouldnt blame a single person for giving me a weird ass look so i generally try not to talk about it ☠️ its my guilty treat so to speak and i cant even tell if im making it sound worse than it actually is (╯x╰ )

in any case... i finished Security Police SO !!! onto After The Rain for me when it comes to Media Thats Awkward To Talk About But Please Believe Me When I Say Its Not What You're Thinking :]

LMAO PLEASE like... so long as you have the right equipment you don't even really have to do much extra grinding by the time you get to him... it truly is just hoping RNG doesnt dick you over ☠️ i've been cruising through the game since tho ! i dont expect myself to get into anymore awkward blockades anytime soon and then i can finally say i finished this game (●ˇ∀ˇ●)

THANK YA THANK YA it aint much but its honest work..... i have been real dead this week tho and i always get scared if ill draw again durin periods like this- i HOPE to come up with something soon cause there really is an untapped well of Good Stuff to be explored :]]

THE SOUND DESIGN OF SP WAS REALLY GOOD IN GENERAL THOUGH LIKE not just music wise was it good but i really loved hos inoue's migraines gave me migraines... immersion... but also just knowing when to keep things dead silent (like finding nishijima's corpse) did SOOO well to put emphasis.. the weird as hell names are just bonus points by now like. Gotta Let Bro Have SOMETHING As A Thank You For The Sound Design (╯▽╰ ;;) OH BUT IM GLAD THERE'S MOVIE TIE-INS CAUSE THE LAST SCENE HAD ME CONCERNICUS LIKE 👁️👁️? i was only able to find the first 2010 movie on the site i usually go to but its somethin...

#long post #snap chats #i remember i was telling jess about tsuma and we were texting but i just know she was textually giving me that Customer Service Smile #like im SORRYYY I DIDNT MEAN TO TALK ABOUT IT I ALWAYS SPEAK WHEN I SHOULDNT and then i never mentioned it again #well. i HAD to mention it when making that Shit I Watched list and Rest Assured i put a paragraph's worth of a disclaimer there 😭 #literally not my fault the show's premise is That but it has a lot of really good scenes..... both silly and truly meaningful #i actually downloaded a whole ep just so i could clip one of my fave monologues tsutsumi gives in it 😭😭 #REGARDLESS. if you dodge this drama i wouldnt blame you in the slightest like Again good luck talking about it without looking insane <- me #moving on tho..... big fan of the Lets Play era..... now my poor ass can watch people play games i want :) speedrun them too even.. #but yeah no i love having gameplay vids on while i draw. not during streams of course but on my own time i watch gameplay vids #ugh its my moms birthday in like. half an hour and we're going out to eat... why cant i just watch stuff all day (╯x╰ ) #IN ANY CASE im gonna go watch that sp movie so !!!! be back whenever i have the opportunity to speak again LMAO

[artist-issues]

I Saw Wish

And it was the worst animated Disney movie I’ve ever seen. I have to watch it again before I can get into the nitty gritty details. But I don’t need details to sum it up, because my dad actually said it perfectly as we left the theater:

“It was like someone who didn’t really understand Disney movies tried to make a Disney movie.”

Both the form (the technical arts of filmmaking) and the content (the morals, values, and themes of the movie) were totally horrible.

I don’t know who’s fault it was. Jeremy Spears was in the storyboard room and Mark Henn and Eric Goldberg did some 2D animation. But they must have gotten outvoted, or they must not care anymore.

Because holy cow. Here’s some stuff that’s just off the top of my head.

SPOILERS. Not that it matters, because nothing interesting happens in this movie.

The writing? Terrible. Ninety percent of it feels like the characters are filling time with quirky one-liners that are trying too hard to be appealing, then failing, then taking you out of the movie. The jokes aren’t funny. The characters just respond to each other in conversation to check a one-liner box. The other twenty percent is whole conversations repeating tell-don’t-show exposition that has already been covered, usually twice, in previous scenes. Like if in Tangled, every scene had included some variation of Rapunzel saying to friends and enemies alike, “I have to see the floating lights so I’m sneaking to the castle with this thief who wants a mysterious tiara I hid from him. Don’t tell my mother, she’s a bit overprotective!” Over. And over. And over.

The character motivations are way too broad. Asha? Her dream is just “that everybody around me gets to be happy.” That’s it, in a nutshell. No deeper exploration of that. Nobody asks, “why do you care so much?” Nobody tries to convince her she should look out for herself, and then she proves she was right all along. The King? We are told (not shown) that he doesn’t want anyone else’s dreams to be “destroyed.” But he in no believable way expresses that that motivation is still what’s driving him during the movie—what’s driving him is just a plain old lust for power, no nuance.

By the way, the whole premise of the movie? Undercooked. Half-baked concepts strung together with no definitive meaning. Therefore, it’s not believable. Example: The characters act like the wishes are beautiful—well, actually, no, this movie doesn’t know how to show, so there’s not a lot of meaningful acting—the characters just tell us that wishes are “the most beautiful part of someone,” and that’s why it’s worth going through this adventure to give their wishes back to them. But there’s no proof of that in the movie. In fact, it directly kicks it’s own legs out from under that idea, because it has every character who gives up their wish forget that part of themselves. Asha’s grandfather has forgotten his wish, but that doesn’t make him any less “beautiful.” She, and everyone, still treats him like he’s this wonderful old man who deserves the world, who everyone loves…but why is he so appealing? If he “gave up the most beautiful part of him?” The only character who is changed by their lack-of-wish is the Sleepy-analogue character…who is just sleepy, which is described as “boring.” But nobody else who’s given up their wish in the whole kingdom acts like that. It’s just him. Also, the King acts like it’s so important to protect the wishes from destruction. But what does destroying a wish look like? That actually happens to Asha’s mom. Her wish-bubble is broken, literally, and she just says she feels grief. But like. Why? She never remembered it in the first place; it had been missing from her life for years. Also, what the heck is a wish?! It seems to range from broad concepts like “inspire people” to “fly.” Just “fly,” like a bird. The desire to levitate off the ground is the most important, beautiful essence of one background character. Like, what?! But no character ever has the why behind their wish to make us care.

I could go on and on about that point. Like, think about Disney movies that wrote the book on how to make movies about characters with wishes. If Ariel were in Wish, her bubble would look like “dancing and learning and exploring on the Surface with someone who understands her.” But we believe that that is her real, genuine wish, and that it matters to her, because we are shown why being understood is so important to her. Because it’s missing from her life. There’s a scene where she explores a boat alone, and even her best friend doesn’t get excited about it with her. Her dad won’t listen to her point of view. Her siblings don’t ask her about her life even when they think she’s in love. She wants what she wants because of pieces of her life that we are shown.

We are never shown why Asha’s grandfather is obsessed with inspiring people, so we have no reason to believe it, or care whether he gets it or not. We can’t feel disappointed when his wish is said to “never come true,” like we did when Quasimodo was abused by the people he wished to join. We can’t feel elated when he finally “gets” his wish, like we did when Simba smiles on Pride Rock remembering the same way he used to as a cub and claims the crown with a roar. We don’t have anything to hang on to, nothing to relate to, nothing to grasp and feel with the characters. So we don’t feel, because they didn’t put the work in to help us feel. They just say, “the mom’s feeling grief. Feel grief.” And expect us to do the work ourselves. I have to stop harping on this point and move on.

But The main point of the movie is very broad because of that lazy premise, and it’s barely reinforced by any kind of appealing storytelling. If I had to guess, the point would be “Keep wishing for more even when it’s hard.” But the story they told to communicate that meaning was so unimpactful. Asha doesn’t have a dream of her own that’s such hard work to accomplish! (Neither does her grandfather; his wish is “to inspire people.” And at the end, we’re supposed to see him strumming a guitar and believe it’s inspiring? We were never shown how he worked hard to learn how to play the instrument. Or that he carved it with his own hands, or anything like that. So there’s no meaningful demonstration of working hard for it or achieving your wish even if it’s far out of reach.) And nobody except the king is trying to take wishes away from anyone, and he just does it literally, after they voluntarily give them to him, so there’s not even any impactful demonstration of “don’t let anyone tell you your wishes are dumb or unachievable, or stop you from reaching them.” Even when he takes them away, it’s just because they…could, someday, be used to threaten his kingdom in a vague, really unlikely way. There are so many things you could do with “keep wishing for more even when it’s hard.” For instance; you could say the main character has always been afraid to dream (wish for more), because maybe when she was a kid something wonderful almost happened but ended in tragedy, so she keeps her head down and doesn’t want much because if you don’t dream you’ll never be disappointed. She takes no risks, and has to learn that sometimes trying and failing is worth more than slogging through life all self-protective. I mean, the pieces were right there. She has this line about her dad, and how she wished he would get better but then he died. She has lines about how nobody should have to live with grief?? Then that’s never addressed again! It’s just a throwaway emotion-moment with no buildup or follow-through to tie it to and support that main theme.

The compositions of too many shots were so terrible. Characters got cut off in weird places. One shot has Asha dead center, with her grandfather on the left side of the table and her mother on the right, having a family dinner with a super exposition-heavy conversation that is meant to be emotionally charged. But despite everything else being perfectly centered, half of her mother’s body is chopped off. The movie’s shot like someone’s mom who doesn’t understand technology tried to take a video with her phone.

The charm of the art “style” wears off basically immediately. I know what they were going for. I see the sketch lines and watercolor textures. This is maybe the first time Disney ever failed to accomplish a visual “look” that turned out good. Everything looks dull. Muted. De-saturated. Slightly out of focus, but not in a cool Spider-Verse way. The sets or backgrounds are lazy; at no point does the scenery look complete; big, empty, boring spaces that do not create any kind of “stage” for impactful moments. The rendering looks unfinished. When Asha’s hair moves during her belting of the “I Make This Wish” song, it’s bad. It’s unnatural. It flops in a way that doesn’t make sense for the weight of her hair. The most impactful visual moments come from the villain, and they’re moments when he looks way too unhinged for the kind of line he’s saying.

There is no interesting character development. Asha goes from believing everyone is basically good and their wishes deserve the chance to come true , to….that, again. That would be fine, she could be a static character, if she proved contrast-characters wrong, in a believable way. But she never does. Because no other characters argue with her except the King. And it goes no deeper than “everyone’s wishes are basically good and they deserve the chance to make them true” vs. “nuh-uh, because I get to decide what makes them deserving.” The King doesn’t have any kind of interesting development, either. They don’t expand on his tragic backstory—it consists of one drawing of him near a broken boat, and a few images of the corner burned off of his family taoestry. They never say “King Magnifico wished for _____ and it was taken away!” They literally never tell you what his wish or dreams were, or what motivated him to create the whole kingdom that the movie’s premise sits on. So there’s no convincing sense of progression, how he got this way, why he’ll keep going “so far.”

The pacing is weird. It undercuts every moment that could have any kind of emotion behind it. One minute Valentino is suavely bouncing around, then he’s given a two-second beat to blubber with badly-animated tears that he’ll miss Star—then he instantly gets to have another funny one-liner so we forget he might’ve been sad a second ago. We’re clearly supposed to believe that the King and his wife are devoted to each other, and his turning evil was such a big betrayal, but there’s no time and no impactful evidence for us to believe either of those things. And even if we did, the moment he’s defeated and trapped in a mirror, and begs to be let free, the Queen kind of shrugs it off, makes a forgettable one-liner, and tells them to throw him in the dungeon. And he doesn’t look remorseful. And we don’t even get to assume he’s embarrassed or emotionally devastated that he’s come to this—because the last thing he says is “nooo, the dungeon is so smellyyy!” Like this is a half-baked LEGO short that can’t get emotionally deeper than what an actual 3 year-old’s parents might be okay with.

And that’s the worst offense: The movie is not genuine. It works hard for nothing, and it has no vulnerability. It just uses old Disney standbys to pretend to be vulnerable. Have the music swell and the characters gasp and the songs drip emotion when characters are meant to be saying or doing something emotional.

But truthfully, think of all the Disney movies you’ve ever seen with the hardest emotional moments. The sheer joy of Genie when he realizes he’s free. The anguish when Elsa thinks Anna’s been frozen forever, or when Anna thinks she’s dead. The trauma when Simba loses Mufasa. The longing and dreaming of Ariel when she reaches up out of her grotto. The sense of foreboding when Mother Gothel says “fine, now I’m the bad guy” or the heartbreak in Rapunzel’s eyes when she thinks Flynn has abandoned her, or the shame on Aladdin’s face when Jafar reveals he’s a street-rat, or the horror of cruelty when the stepsisters rip up Cinderella’s dress, or Kala’s tears when Tarzan leaves her in the treehouse, or Sarabi’s tears when Simba comes back, or Mulan’s father tossing aside the sword and token of the Emperor to embrace Mulan, or heck, even just Lilo pushing Stitch in the woods and telling him “get out of here.” This movie has no moments like that. It has moments you can tell that the filmmakers wanted to hit like that—but they don’t.

Because no work is put into building them up. You know how much Simba loves Mufasa, because you’ve been watching their chemistry more than any other character all the way up till he dies. You know how much Mulan wants to please her family because she spends all of Act I desperately attempting to do that. You know Quasimodo believes the world below is beautiful and wants them to accept him because he has interesting things like—talking to gargoyles, convincing us that he’s lonely; building a scale model of the townspeople, convincing us that he sees them in a beautiful way and wishes he were beautiful in more ways than one like them, too.

Right down to the facial expressions, none of them are as anguished, happy, sad, excited, silly, in any convincing way like all of Disney’s other movies. Asha’s “low moment” when she’s afraid her “wish” hurt everyone else (still vague on what that wish ever was) lasts two seconds, she’s not crying, she’s barely sitting with slumped shoulders, and her family barely spend two seconds comforting her. They basically just say, “aw, no, it’s not y fault, it’s the king’s.” And she’s like, “yeah okay” and that’s that. It’s like the animators we’re afraid to animate really intimate emotions on the characters’ faces. The voice actors, too.

And the whole movie is peppered with Easter eggs to past Disney movies. But all that does, if you really know Disney beyond the visuals, is make you think of how hollow this movie is in comparison. How much you wish you were watching Cinderella or The Little Mermaid or something with depth and vulnerability instead of Wish.

#I’ll talk more in an organized fashion later #wish #disney’s wish #wish Disney #wish 2023 #critique #spoilers

[crispycreambacon]

I'll forever be upset about how Elemental (2023 Pixar movie) flopped so hard, and it's not even its fault.

Let's be real, going against Across the Spiderverse would be a deathblow for any animated movie, but the marketing team REALLY didn't help matters. Not only did the trailers barely show up (to the point my friends DIDN'T EVEN KNOW IT EXISTED), the trailers also did such a poor job representing its actual story.

A lot of people were turned off by the "unoriginal premise" as well as the "forbidden romance", and I can't even blame them but no!!! The story is so much more than just "ooo they can't fall in love because they're (gasp) FIRE AND WATER?!?!?!?" and "what if (insert concept) has emotions but elements this time"!!!!!

At the heart of it all is a personal immigrant story. A story about two fire people moving to another place in order to start a new and hopefully better life (aka literally immigrants). A story about their daughter who feels in debt to them for making the sacrificd to leave their home. A story about her feeling like she'll have to sacrifice her whole life and her dreams in order to repay them and make them happy.

Not to mention how Asian-coded it is!!! The director, Peter Sohn, is clearly writing from his perspective as a Korean-American immigrant, and as an Asian immigrant, I resonated so unbelievably hard with Ember's story. It really felt like the movie held up a mirror in front of me. I've never felt this seen in a movie before this one.

And it feels so good!!! I'm so sad that a lot of people will be missing it out because the marketing team did such a terrible job at their literal jobs. If more people gave it a chance, they'll likely find a story that truly made them feel heard.

Also the romance is really cute. Like I don't typically seek out romance stories, but damn that was good food, that was good fluff. I think it's also a great allegory for interracial couples, but I'm not in an interracial relationship, so I won't overstep too much!

Long story short, if you're unsure on whether you really want to see this movie or not, hear it from me who saw it twice:

Go Watch Elemental!!! You will not regret it!!!

#THIS MOVIE WAS MADE FOR ME AND OTHER ASIAN IMMIGRANTS FOR REAL FOR REAL!!!! #also obviously it's not perfect #I understand the concerns with how fire is dangerous so the allegory may be flimsy #but they addressed it in the film!!! #also honestly there's also a good disability angle to look at here? #especially with how fire people are trying to live in a world that refuses to accomodate them #and would rather discriminate them #or shun them from society to the point they have to make their own community #but I'm not disabled so again #i won't overstep!! #elemental #pixar elemental #elemental 2023 #pixar #review #rant #opinion #commentary #chris p fried rambles

[pupyuj]

rei mentioned sugar is in the premises

okay but can we talk about how she would absolutely love having reader having an oral fixation.. like?? it’s not your fault that you just wanna give all your attention to her tits,, even when she’s on stage, giving a performance, despite trying your hardest to focus on her dancing you can literally just focus on her bouncing chest and she knows it AND LOVES IT???

also switch!rei thoughts but she’s either such a doll ready to be used and objectified or the caring praising mommy,,, wanting to be groped and titty fucked and ridiculed OR.. wanting to breastfeed you and pamper you while she fingerfucks you while she kisses your neck LIKE YOU GET IT RIGHT??

ask from suggy my beloved!! RRRAAHHH I HAVE TO DO THIS WELL OR ELSE I'LL DEACTIVATE 😤😤

i am a firm rei-big-boobies enthusiast as ya'll may or may not know and ugh.. i need her badly 🤤 switch!rei would be sooo cute tho?? as in her smirking and intentionally wearing outfits that show a lot of her chest to get you excited and then once you've got her alone she's completely at your mercy while you grope and squeeze her tits 😵‍💫 i just know rei would absolutely love having you leave hickeys all over her chest and tits and take pics of it... lowkey she can be such a troll (jiwon's influence istg) so she'd send them to the 04 gc just to show off and bring chaos upon wony and jiwon's lives 😭😭

mmmdsfhgfdh imagine coming home to a needy subby rei,, her climbing on your thigh the moment you sit down bcs she needed to be touched :(( pulling off her top and grabbing your hands, putting them on her bare tits herself.. stares at you with a pleading look that so cute to the point you don't bother to even tease her about how needy she was being! but she'd enthusiastically start grinding her cunt on your thigh without being told... whimpering at every little sensation she felt whether it was from her grinding or your hands.. and yes she can cum just from being groped bcs i said so!!

telling her to quicken her pace on your thigh so she does :(( watching her breasts bounce softly as she moved back and forth like the sick perv that you were 😵‍💫 even slapping her tits from time to time?? laughing at the way she'd whine and moan but she enjoyed every hit more than the next 🤭 her cumming on your thigh and she's sooo embarrassed 💔 but both of you know that she'd willingly do it all over again!!

rei also doesn't mind when you choose to make a mess on her chest tee hee 🤭 letting your drool spread while you sucked on her tits.. she absolutely loves how you'd look up at her and she could see just how obsessed you were with her 😳 oh, and since she already sends pics to her 04 sisters as a prank, why not videos as well?? reibear probs has an entire album of you just,, playing and sucking her nipples like a needy baby and she touches herself to them all the time—especially when you're separated for a while!!

if you were the super needy one, she'd definitely make you ride her fingers as a way to make you beg and beg for her boobs :(( "mhm.. baby wants mommy's tits in her mouth, hm? cum lots on my hand and maybe i'll consider even letting you touch them..." and then she gropes her tit herself just to make you whine and work yourself harder on her fingers 😣

now.. omg... the titty fuck part??? 😩 YA'LL KNOW I DON'T DO THIS OFTEN BUT FUUUCKKK this is so perfect for g!p reader EEHHEEHDK sitting on your bed while rei has her tits around your cock?? moving up and down while sucking you off at the same time she's actually insane?? again, her loving the sight of you literally drooling for her while she did what she does best 🫣 "a-am i... ummf.. doing good, mommy?" she randomly ask in the middle of her super awesome blowjob, knowing damn well you can't reply bcs you were too busy moaning her name 😣😣

and now the best part of the night.. cumming all over rei's face and tits with a cute squeak (which she soooo loved, by the way) and watching her lap up your cum obediently.. she's such a sight to see GAWDDD

#ive smut #ive x reader #ive imagines #ive x fem reader #ive thoughts #naoi rei smut #naoi rei x reader #naoi rei imagines #naoi rei x fem reader #naoi rei thoughts #rei smut #rei x reader #rei imagines #rei x fem reader #rei thoughts #girl group smut #girl group imagines #girl group x fem reader #girl group x reader #girl group thoughts #g!p reader

[firecrackerhh]

I sometimes wonder if the reason (if not at least one of many reasons) why antis are so against Hazbin Hotel as a show (besides the obvious anti viv bullshit) is because the very concept of redemption is anathema to them.

They do not believe people can change, and thus the entire premise of hazbin, (and frankly helluva too) is something they literally cannot understand. Refuse to understand at the least.

They don’t care about other people, they do not care if their actions in the name of their own twisted form of justice causes undue suffering, they simply want to be seen as a “good person” without putting in any actual effort to be good.

Sure, it’s easy to find a shitty person online and rake them over the coals for things they’ve said or done years ago. Effortless. But it takes real patience, compassion, perhaps slight firmness but certainly no undue cruelty to convince people they need to change, and even then, that’s a personal journey that others can at most try to influence, but they can’t make people change.

And even if the person they’re bitching about does, it’ll never be good enough.

There’s nothing Viv can do to change these peoples minds, nothing we can do. No matter how many apologies she gives they will never accept it. No matter what we say they will never accept that Viv is not fucking Satan incarnate.

Engaging with these people is a waste of time. Always has been. If Viv is so irredeemable to them, they likely look at us the same way.

I wonder what skeletons people like this must hide, anyone who acts holier than thou about being a “better” person while engaging in reprehensible behavior themselves is a rather irritating form of hypocrisy that boggles my mind.

I am no saint, god knows I’m no fucking saint, but I know what’s right and wrong and antis are wrong every. Single. Time. Any evidence they claim to have of Viv’s awful behavior is either nearly a decade old and thus clearly irrelevant given the people who vouch for her in the present, doctored discord messages (which even if they were real, shows no dates, so we have no idea how old those are to begin with) or the ‘evidence’ is so flimsy that if a lawyer looked at it he would say you’re wasting his time.

I think these people don’t like Viv’s shows because they are morally incompatible with it. They do not believe in redemption. They believe once you’ve fucked up in life, that’s it, no second chances.

I fear what they must think of our current prison population. I fear what they might say.

These people have no moral high ground whatsoever.

They dare to talk shit about the fandom, Viv, anyone else associated with the show, pretending that they’re saying what they’re saying in the name of justice, as if attacking people with their past when they have clearly changed and made apologies is in any way a justifiable thing to do.

They don’t have to like Viv, they really don’t, but calling her irredeemable, calling us irredeemable, is fucking bullshit.

None of us are irredeemable.

The fucking conceit. The fucking gall. The fucking balls on these people.

Everyone has the capacity to make good and bad choices in this life. Yes, many people don’t make the best choices, but that doesn’t mean that they should be stoned to death for the most minor of offenses. For shit that’s long been in the past and apologized for.

I’m not going to say I think very highly of humanity as a whole, I’m a fucking misanthrope through-and-through, but I don’t think we’re incapable of being good, or doing good things, we just…choose not to, a lot of the time.

I also do not deny that there are some crimes so horrible that redemption isn’t even on the table, nowhere near it. But I feel like antis treat every perceived fault of Viv as some most grievous sin that must be met with full penance by…doing what exactly?

Apologize? Again, they won’t accept it.

Donate to charities or causes? She gets shit on for it, say she’s “flaunting her wealth.”

Get off the internet entirely? In an anti’s wet dreams maybe.

Her very existence makes them so mad. It would be funny if it wasn’t so fucking pathetic.

These people twist her words in every way imaginable to make her look like some horrible person undeserving of her success, without realizing they make themselves look far worse than her by several measures.

They claim she’s racist and queerphobic, but if anything acting as if BIPOC and queer people shouldn’t ever be shown doing awful things because “bad queer/ BIPOC rep” or whatever I think is just as racist and queerphobic. Minorities are human beings, and as such they are just as capable of being shitty. I already made a post about this before, so I’ll keep this paragraph short.

They claim she’s abusive to her coworkers when it seems the one person bitching about it has no problem putting other past co workers under the bus for their personal gain. Antis claim she’s abusive while engaging in downright emotionally abusive behavior (I know that sounds kinda dramatic but I’m making a point) themselves as they shit on us for the stupidest reason imaginable: liking a cartoon.

They cry about ableism while ignoring their own.

Not that I’m all that offended if I’m honest, it’s just more evidence that antis aren’t any better than the people they bitch about.

I could go on about this for a while but you get the point.

I repeat, these people have no moral high ground whatsoever.

Frankly, as much as it bothers me that they leak patreon shit and whatnot, many fans are actively warning against them, and I think the idea of someone actively choosing to give money to someone they hate just so they have more content to shit on is fucking pathetic and getting upset about it is exactly what they want.

They want you to be just as miserable as they are. They just want to suck all the fun out of this fandom, I’ve said it once, I’ll say it again, these people are tar pits, trying to drown us in their muck. It’s pathetic and sad. No use in having sympathy, they don’t deserve any.

It’s funny how antis scream and cry about how awful we are as they ignore their own sins and mistakes, hypocrites.

If anything, their behavior is far more irredeemable than Viv’s has ever been.

I wonder when they will realize that, if they ever do. I can only hope some of them grow the fuck up and realize what the fuck they’ve done. If the ensuing guilt eats them alive, I can’t say I have pity for them.

Wonder how many of us would accept their apologies, if they chose to make one.

Alright it’s almost 7 am I gotta get to bed. Peace.

🔥🧨~Firecracker out~🧨🔥

#tis i the werebitch #vivziepop #hazbin hotel #helluva boss #btw to my followers #sorry I’ve been so extra negative lately #I just have way too much to say about this shit

[mezzy-1]

Agents Reacting to Deadlock Joining the Valorant Protocol

Another of Evie’s headcanons that I’m slowly but surely going to do some more of and hell, probably more of my own stuff.  Thanks again @eviethelesbian for the ideas!

Gekko 

He ran up to meet her at first when she got released from the medical wing after being stabilized and allowed to walk around the premises

When Thrash appeared behind him, she panicked and grabbed a nearby kitchen knife to defend herself

Gekko had Thrash revert to a globule and instead grabbed Wingman to show Deadlock that there was nothing to fear

Wingman waddled up to her and kicked him away 

Gekko’s reassurance didn’t work and she called him childish for keeping the radivores around and made it clear she wanted nothing to do with them

In his eyes, she was being cruel and he didn’t let her off the hook for reacting with hostility

Neither tried to back down in this confrontation and it was broken up only by Killjoy insisting Gekko go to Neon for training and that she needed Deadlock’s measurements for the prosthetic 

Afterwards, she would often consider killing Gekko’s pets if she saw them.  The only thing stopping her is the retribution from the protocol

They hated each other for a while, passively avoiding each other and trying to keep their distance as much as possible

It wasn’t even that they got off on the wrong foot, they have fundamentally different philosophies a wedge issue

Wingman is used to wandering the headquarters, and whenever she sees him she can’t help but remember the events at the facility 

She and Gekko didn’t have respect for each other and a mixture of Deadlock’s trauma and Gekko being unaware of this meant they would continue their conflict

Skye

Her and Iselin are on a first name basis, but initially she was a hesitant to get to know Kirra

Because of the animals she could create, Iselin initially thought that there was some kind of tie to the radivores 

Then when out hiking, she met Kirra and to be accommodating Kirra dismissed one of her summons

Additionally, Kirra and her started hiking together to let her get out of the facility.  It was Kirra’s idea because she knew Wingman never leaves the building if Gekko is inside

Both of them bonded over a shared love of nature and also from working out together.  Iselin could easily see Kirra being on the Staljaeger team and that gives her some comfort

When Kirra showed her ability to heal, Iselin got somewhat intrigued by the regenerative process.  Both of them were thinking the same thing

They attempted to regrow Iselin’s arm, but it wasn’t effective and both walked away with with disappointed looks

That evening they both apologized to each other one of the overlooks on their typical hiking path.  They agreed that it was nobody’s fault and they just got their hopes up too much

Iselin trusts Kirra with her life, and has even asked for her to produce the totems before so she could see how they worked.  Kirra being able to influence them fully and use them as an extension helped Iselin’s anxiety

The pair like each other, enjoy each other’s silence while hiking and have deep respect for the other

Sova

When Deadlock woke back up at the HQ, Sova was in the room with her and one of the first faces she saw at the Protocol

Sova’s understanding nature and general compassion helped to ease her during some of the initial shock

Also there was a lot of gratitude towards Sova because of him finding her and taking her to medic immediately

When she received her first active mission, it was with Sova

Yeah they have a lot of sibling energy, but weirdly nobody can tell which one is the older sibling

Example: Sova will absolutely have no idea what’s going on if he zones out in a briefing and Deadlock will grab his attention 

Other Example:  Iselin will completely focus in on something so intently she’ll forget things around her and Sova will remind her 

She’s literally forgot one of the fingers on her prosthetic before, back when it was being adjusted

They’re both capable, mature people but together they have no brain cells 

Also drinking buddies, especially cause Sova isn’t a lightweight and neither is she so they take their time sharing progressively funnier or sadder stories

Deadlock and Sova don’t use first names though, which is strange considering how close they are

The ‘thumb incident’ at Sunset is the perfect microcosm of their entire relationship.  They are basically brother and sister and have no shortage of loving and confusion for one another

Deadlock feels safe around him, and trusts his judgment when things get difficult and she needs a confidant

Fade

Her and the Protocol were on ok terms and the Radiants there convinced her that Radiants were just human, and above all could be dealt with if needed

Fade was another matter entirely though, as she not only had Nightmare but also the knowhow to blackmail Valorant.

It didn’t exactly help that Nightmare fed off of Iselin’s fear at times, tendrils and sinew crawling up her while she dreamt

Fade noticed the Prowler she let around sniffing around Iselin’s room and when it took the appearance of a bear she decided to investigate

Iselin’s terror had been sent into overdrive by Nightmare, visions of the Landfall facility and the bear leaping out at her, severing her arm 

She woke up to Fade holding back Nightmare and shaking Iselin awake

The two didn’t talk much before, but seeing as they needed to have a discussion about what happened they retreated to Fade’s room

Fade explained to Iselin that Nightmare fed on fear, and the stronger the fear the harder it was to control and Iselin confronted her about keeping it away from her

What made this difficult was the fact that Fade knew Iselin was still holding on to enough terror that it would haunt her regardless of what Fade did

That’s when Iselin decided she was done with the constant nightmares, and because Fade was the only one who could help she was basically forced into triggering an episode

Fade and her held hands throughout the ordeal, Nightmare coming within inches of the two but Fade reassuring Iselin it couldn’t harm her if she controlled her fear

After about an hour, Nightmare couldn’t get energy and slunk back into shadows.  Iselin and Fade just kinda talked about what happened at Landfall after that

The following morning, the two shared some coffee and began talking more.  Very goth kid meets jock kind of relationship

Since Fade saw Iselin at her most vulnerable and kept it between them, Iselin feels at ease around Fade more than she lets on.  The two of them keep the other emotionally well

#valorant headcanons #valorant imagines #valorant agents #valorant deadlock #valorant gekko #valorant sova #valorant skye #valorant fade #valorant game

[cere-mon-ials]

I heard a great many things about My Mister before I went into it: a masterpiece, a truthful portrait of everydayness, a vehicle towards catharsis for the parts of the self weathered by everydayness, a moving story that is strongly anti-patriarchy, an ode to parental love and a child’s love and a sibling’s love and a friend’s love and other love that comes uninvited—all true. But I was not prepared for this story to be packaged in an affair and internal corporate espionage.

Here’s the premise: Do Jun-young, the young and haughty CEO of a successful building & engineering company, is in a power war with other senior members for the attention of their ailing, but still sharp, Chairman. Caught in between is a general manager, Park Dong-hoon, a decent, generous-to-a-fault man. Dong-hoon is the darling of the other faction in the office, and the task at hand for Jun-young is firing Dong-hoon. To Jun-young, who used to be his junior at university, Dong-hoon’s rise would amount to Jun-young's fall. Jun-young has little by way of a brain, few spineless right-hand men by way of brawn, and lots of money. For Lee Ji-an, the cold 20-year-old temporary worker with fortitude that comes with abject poverty and mounting debt and being a social reject, this is jackpot. She promises Jun-young that she could get Dong-hoon fired in exchange for money. In the process, Ji-an finds out that Dong-hoon’s wife has been cheating on him with Jun-young.

Here’s the heart: Dong-hoon and Ji-an embark on a relationship where they see in each other a reflection of themselves and then some. They are empty, broken people who constantly wonder why life happens to them, with neither the strength to ask what matters nor the inclination to face the music of the answer. They protect each other, from themselves and others.

Age has caught up to both of them—Dong-hoon, literally, he’s pretty much lived the same way for four decades; Ji-an, metaphorically, because at 20, she has already lived through the trauma of being an abandoned child, the disillusionment of a teen shunned by faux meritocracy, and the role of a care-giver without money or support. She is a child who had to grow up too soon in the worst way possible—taking the life of an abusive elder, who should have taken care of her, in self-defence. She is 30,000 years old, she thinks. He is 40, and that’s old enough, he thinks.

Ji-an’s survival instincts jerks Dong-hoon to a life that feels more urgent. Dong-hoon’s rule-abiding spirit shows Ji-an how to secure a life that could afford her space to breathe. It is Ji-an who protects Dong-hoon from being fired. It is Dong-hoon who tells the clueless Ji-an how to move in the world of adults, above ground.

Every other relationship in this show has a name. Sibling, friend, neighbour, parent, spouse, office senior, officer junior. But this one, of Dong-hoon and Ji-an, with their 20-year age-gap, has none. ("Platonic" does come close but I am still wrestling with that one.) They go out for dinner, witness each other at their worst and saddest, and tell each other what the other needs to hear the most. 

The choice of this age-gap inevitably gives rise to the question of another affair, and this is where writer-nim Park Hae-young has me by the collar. My Mister feeds off the casual, crude, often-infantalising narrative of why young women are attracted to older men. That stereotype is bait, for those so easily bought into too many stories of the kind, to interrogate what about relationships outside the norm in civil society—relationships that do not have a name—terrifies them. The characters in the show who accuse Dong-hoon and Ji-an of having an affair are those assigned as antagonists.

PHY believes and says “Every relationship is fascinating and precious,” so why do we say no to making more of them as we age? The norms in civil society is a good reason, but maybe a superficial one. She maintains it's the simple act of being vulnerable that leads to building and treasuring relationships; one of those things we tend to lose as we "age". The facade to maintain as a successful person is at odds with being vulnerable so we have to fragment the contours of our love and maintain boundaries. It’s why the relationship between Dong-hoon and Ji-an is—and has to be—cemented on wiretapping and surveillance and the ugliness of baring your soul, against your will even. 

At their workplace, Ji-an is only privy to Dong-hoon, the structural engineer working a desk job without many promotions under his belt for a man several years his junior. It is because Ji-an snoops around that she learns of the affair that sets the story in motion. It’s how she finds out that he is a husband who goes back to an empty house often. He is the middle child, bearing the weight of providing in the absence of a financially-independent elder brother and a younger one trapped in his own insecurities and failures.

But it’s also how she learnt of the love and grace he enjoys otherwise. He plays soccer with friends he has grown up with, he drinks with his siblings whom he has loved all his life, he is the favourite son to his mother. This kind man is the beating heart of his neighbourhood. There will be at least two dozen people who will chase around the streets of Seoul seeking vengeance should he have a scratch on his body. If he is in pain, his brothers will give up other responsibilities to be with him all night until blue hour. These scenes, and the ones in Jeong-hui’s bar, are brimmed with warmth, of love freely taken and given. It’s how Ji-an begins to fantasise having people to go back to, and to call your own. Her love for Dong-hoon is also a love to the world he brings to her, a world of community that sticks together. 

When I watched My Liberation Notes, I sensed that PHY does not give a hoot about green flags and healthy relationships. She might look at those tweets and posts, laugh with her whole chest and mumble: cute but no. This is so very stark in Gi-hoon (Dong-hoon’s younger sibling) and Yu-ra’s relationship, one that is marked by the intimate act of cleaning up vomit. Love comes from unfiltered, almost disgusting, honesty, picking at things the other would never think of sharing to another being. Love is a muscle you have to use everyday. You have to be talking all the time; and somebody should be listening. 

The scene that is tattooed in my heart is Dong-hoon whispering “Call me,” into the phone he knows she is listening to. This is after he learns the truth of everything, of her initial plans to betray him, of her surveillance. But as he tells her later: “Once you know someone, there comes a point where you don’t really care what they do. and I know you.” He knows her and now, he knows everything. That's all that matters. 

In the final act of the show, loving truly as knowing fully is reinforced on a very unlikely character: Gwang-il, Ji-an’s abusive cousin, son of the man she killed for abusing her and their grandmother—and also the loan shark Ji-an owes to. It is through those surveilled tapes that we find out that before he was the son of a father who was murdered by a cousin he loved, he was kind. Ji-an was speaking to Dong-hoon, who knows this before us, the audience. That submission, those words she could never say to Gwang-il’s face, pushes the plot which began with a discreet affair to its conclusion.

When My Mister ends, things are slightly better for the characters than when we see them but it’s left ambiguous. The last 15 minutes of the show goes like this: four minutes of Dong-hoon, in his empty apartment after his wife has left for the US to join their son, engaged in chores and a snotty breakdown; Gi-hoon and Yu-ra’s fracturing relationship leading to a break-up; Dong-hoon's new company; Ji-an in her new job and friends she has started making there; Gi-hoon picking up a pencil to write a screenplay; and a final reunion between Dong-hoon and Ji-an one year after their last goodbye. I think PHY needs her characters to be people who find peace and who love and look out for one another, even if they remain broken.

That love doesn’t need to be forever. Ji-an stops listening to Dong-hoon’s phone after he finds out that she does. When she is about to uninstall the app from her phone, she registers the way his shoes hit the asphalt on the road, that dignified stride despite the hunched shoulders, and his steady breathing one more time. The footsteps recede; she isn’t listening anymore. Then they come back; love can also be a powerful memory, a fuel to someplace else to love more and be someone else. PHY’s thesis is so devastatingly haunting because she dares to tell you, with a jerk first and then gently like a goodnight kiss, that loving is both the very least and the most you can do while you’re here.

#my mister #my ahjussi #kdrama #lee sun kyun #lee ji eun #iu #one of 57 thoughts that has plagued me #i can't think of another writer who is so fearless in answering hard questions as much as in asking them #phy is very good at knitting nuance through the broadest range of characters and that's why you can't take away a single one of them #watch this show for dong-hoon and ji-an #but also watch it for all the others who will live with you long after it's over #(forgive typos please it's sunday and i am tired from feeling) #notes

[secret-engima]

Hi ! So glad I find your master worldbuilding mind!

Quick question, how do you think we went from a clan-based village to actual Konoha where several clans (Senju, Sarutobi?, Uchiha, Danzo clan? , Hatake if it's a clan) have disapear? Did the village care ou try to protect them? Did other clans are treathen by the possibilities to be let down?

Because you said that Tobirama trust Uchiha with police force but Sarutobi was obsessed by clan balance and all. I know Sarutobi is old, so a lot could have happening.

Any thought?

Hi! Okay so this ask is actually based on a slightly flawed premise (not your fault it's Kishi's worldbuilding again) in that we do not actually see a lot of "wiped out" clans. What we see is Kishi not bothering to flesh out the clans he has because what is attention span. For example; the Sarutobi are not wiped out! There is exactly one shot of the Sarutobi clan in the 4th war arc that is in both the manga and the anime (in the anime the shot is actually narrower so you can't see as many as in the manga shot) where a bunch of their jounin and chuunin members (like easily double digits, I forget the exact number but I wanna say around 20ish? With more implied to be off screen) breathe fire at the juubi in sync. And it is confirmed they are all Sarutobi. There's like one guy who's essentially like: COME ON GUYS LET'S SHOW THEM THE SARUTOBI CLAN KICKS ASS.

So the Sarutobi clan is actually a decent enough/healthy enough size, we just literally never hear or see it until that one single shot. So it's reasonable to assume most clans are healthy and protected by Konoha. This is kind of implicitly supported by the narrative too, because things like the Uchiha and Hatake and Senju being nearly extinct are things that people comment on and find noteworthy, which means it's *not* the norm.

As for how the three clans we know of being wiped out *got* wiped out, I think that is less the fault of Konoha itself (tho Hiruzen is directly at fault for allowing the Uchiha massacre thanks) and more a side effect of that transition from clan based society to village based society. Namely the multiple shinobi wars. As I mentioned in my economics rant, the shinobi wars were something entirely out of the league of clan wars back in the day in terms of scale and destruction, so clans that got hammered likely were ones either already on the small size (like the Hatake probably were) or ones that would have been intentionally targeted by the enemy out of fear (Senju and Uchiha). The sheer scale of the conflict and clashing powers would have decimated targeted clans, and the villages would have been unprepared for that kind of issue until it was too late. After that, the surviving members could have easily died out without having kids post war, or if they were female members in the case of, say, the Senju, they didn't die out but the *name* died out, because it's still traditional in Naruto world cultures for the woman to join the family of the man and not the other way around (with the exception of the Uchiha and other regularly manifesting kekkei genkai clans I imagine).

We don't see anything about the Shimura clan either way beyond Danzo, which is again a flaw in the kishi worldbuilding, so we don't know if he actually has a clan still running around, or if they were just a small clan that got hammered in the multiple shinobi wars. On that note you can apply this same worldbuilding problem to almost every other village in the show. Kumo, Iwa, and Suna all have characters who are implied to be from a clan or have kekkei genkai that appear to be hereditary but no clan is mentioned. So we just do not know if there IS a clan of say- people with hand mouths like Deidara, or if they are one-off manifestations of a kekkei genkai, or if they are survivors of other villages' clans that got hammered casualty-wise by the wars like the Senju and Hatake presumably were.

Logistically speaking it would be beneficial for the villages as a whole to do everything they could to keep their clans alive, since their clans are where their powerhouses tend to come from while civilian-born shinobi fill out the ranks with more mid-level shinobi. There would probably be incentives and benefits offered by the village for clan shinobi to marry and have kids that bear the clan name, etc etc. And clans that are still a healthy size work hard to keep it that way.

I hope that answered your question?

#SE asks #maneeyansf asks #Secret Engima Rambles #naruto #naruto worldbuilding #ninja economics #for organizational purposes

[anistarrose]

📙

(ask meme: send me a 📙 and i'll explain the plot of a fic i haven't written but still daydream about!)

okay, so. a very particular TAZ Balance AU idea, which is near and dear to me, is also one that I may never write, because it would just be such an undertaking — due, in part, to it kind of being told in non-chronological fashion.

it starts with Lucretia's pov, immediately post-Phandalin, welcoming a group of new recruits to the Bureau. however, two very important things are different from canon: Julia is alive and with the boys, and Magnus has a very energetic, very clearly magical dog familiar.

and like. Lucretia's thrilled to finally meet Julia, even if she can't show it; that's not the problem. the dog (I'm thinking like, a biiig reddish-brown St. Bernard) is a surprise, for sure (Lucretia can't believe she missed the years Magnus finally started learning magic!), and the situation totally going to warrant some new fencing around the edge of the moon, but the dog itself, technically, is still not the biggest problem.

the problem is that when Lucretia tells them about the Grand Relics and Red Robes, Magnus is like "but... surely not everyone who wears a red robe is a Red Robe, right?" and then, only then, does everything click together for Lucretia.

because long story short, this is a "Magnus and Barry made a warlock pact as during the Stolen Century as a joke, and (ironically) both forgot about it until Magnus accidentally summoned a familiar decades later in Raven's Roost" AU!

after the initial reveal, we get a series of flashbacks jumping back and forward in time, slowly fleshing out details of how much Magnus knows, how much Julia knows, and just the general vibes of their relationship with Barry, plus, eventually, their relationship with a Lucretia who needs their help to gather the Relics, but is paranoid about Barry's influence at basically all times to great comical effect lmao. highlights include:

Magnus manifesting magical powers and getting visited in a dream by a scary ghost, except the ghost's voice sounds like Literally Just Some Guy and he explains, seemingly honestly and kind of sheepishly, that he doesn't know how to undo the warlock pact because they made it For The Bit when they were slightly drunk

Magnus trusts the Red Robe because he doesn't want to lose his new puppy friend; Julia trusts the Red Robe because once they meet in person, she decides he's too anxious to be an effectual evil mastermind

Barry helps out the Raven's Roost rebellion, scaring Kalen so shitless that he doesn't even try to bomb the support pillars and that's why Julia lives

Magnus knows his patron sometimes goes unresponsive for months at a time, but doesn't know why, just that he always warns him in advace and it's never forever

when Phandalin comes along, Magnus knows Alive-Barry is familiar but he absolutely cannot place it, and Alive-Barry is equally as confused, and as unhelpful as humanly possible

the main focus of this AU is on Magnus and Barry as found family, and Julia and Barry as found family by proxy, with of course Magnulia running in parallel — but my absolute favorite underutilized dynamic (Lucretia and Barry oscillating between being serious archnemeses versus just being siblings with a hilarious petty rivalry) is baked into the core of the whole premise, too

idk about the details but I like the idea of Magnus getting in big trouble with Kravitz and, much like Merle, losing a hand or a limb or something — which Barry angsts about a little bit, convinced that it was all his fault for dragging Magnus into this, but it turns out Julia is a super competent artificer and Magnus winds up really loving the prosthesis she rigs up for him

Barry does not change the "show up and monologue ominously to the Reclaimers" strategy at all but there's a lot more goofy banter with Magnus sprinkled in now

Lucretia is constantly paranoid that Barry is spying on her through the eyes of a dog (except she's correct, he absolutely is)

OH and Magnus was asked by his patron to keep an eye out for the Umbra Staff, so he recognizes it when Taako finds it in the vault (he asks if Barry wants him to steal it, but Barry is weirdly insistent that no, it should stay with Taako)...

and I want to say that it's still not an immediate realization, but he does therefore give Barry a head start on figuring out that mystery, and once he tells Barry what Angus told him about that time it burnt "LUP" in the wall, it also becomes a Lup freed early AU :')

I guess lastly, and based off the "Undead Patron" warlock subclass, there's like a spectral red robe that appears around Magnus's shoulders whenever he's kicking ass

#taz #taz balance #taz balance spoilers #magnus burnsides #julia burnsides #magnulia #barry bluejeans #lucretia taz #ask meme

[plenary-indulgence]

Okay so I know it was just a lil meme/joke, but out of curiosity if he WERE to get sent to silent hill what sort of emotional baggage wouldve sent em there and how well would he handle it?

first of all i HATE that u asked me this on anon b/cuz the fact that you a) looked at my post at all and b) took the time to ask me about it is making me insane and i want to send you a handwritten thank you note all tied up with like a ribbon and stickers and shit

anyway i definitely haven't thought about this at all clearly

ehehe had to get that out of the way it makes me laugh every time i look at it even though it's my own joke (i am one of like 7 people in the world who actually liked sh4)

i love the idea of silent hill aus and using them as a creative tool to really explore what makes your wol/oc tick in all the ugly ways but i personally feel like im not really clever or creative enough to do it well myself (kind of like konami after they fucked over kojima and made homecoming/downpour AM I RIGHT FELLAS!!) i can say with some certainty he wouldn't handle it WELL, there would be a lot of running away and panic and hiding and praying and swinging a lead pipe EXTREMELY INEFFECTUALLY because that's just how he handles things outside of silent hill too, by running away and hiding and praying. not so much the lead pipe maybe, that's a contrivance. :)

but i think primarily coconeja's biggest problem is his insecurity and his inability to really self-actualize and believe in himself as someone who matters in the world and how he just wants so badly to be what he thinks everyone else wants him to be, instead of just accepting himself for who he actually is. i think then some of the manifestations would be twisted versions of himself, or rather all the coconeja's he wishes he were but fails to be. and since it's a flawed premise to begin with, there is no "ideal" coconeja, they would all sort of be half-formed, misshapen things. pathetic grotesqueries. but with flavors!! the coconeja he thinks yshtola wants, who is clever and worldly - but physically weak and has to drag itself along the ground and oozes ink and has all the answers - but can only speaks backwards in riddles the coconeja he thinks thancred wants, who is quick on his feet and graceful and confident - but has no substance, and barely exists, and can only sort of shift ineffectually in and out of existence miserably the coconeja he thinks his parents wanted, which is just a sad little shadow who sits in a dark room full of dead fish all alone and counts, endlessly

you know!! stuff like that!! so on and so forth. a whole bunch of fucked up little coconeja ghoulies, so messy, so miserable, so gross.

oh and yea i guess there's the wedge thing; but joke photoshops aside he really deep down truly does not see wedge as anything other than good or as something that could ever hurt him. he loves wedge, and all the pain and the longing and the loneliness - all that baggage comes from inside, from him. he doesn't blame or resent wedge at all!! so if wedge did show up i don't think it would be as a monster i think it would be more conceptual. like something coconeja's searching for, or trying to reach, but can't. haunting this particular narrative in a way even though he's not dead.

although the more i think on it - while wedge himself is not at fault coconeja is REALLY AFRAID AND AWARE of how his status as the wol affects others, especially people he cares about, and how it can get them hurt or put them in danger. and i mean thats literally what happened with omega. compounding factor here that he thinks confessing or pursuing wedge in the way he wants WOULD hurt him and is wrong and like, not even doing anything but knowing he WANTS to - the shame and the guilt really do be eating him up.

mm like he really internalizes the fact that it's him, wanting wedge as something inherently wrong and hurtful and something to keep secret and locked away. in reality its BECAUSE he cares so much and would never do anything to hurt wedge, but has such a low opinion of himself and is terrified of the idea that just by having these feelings at all he's already ruined everything. idk im going in circles here. this particular aspect of coconeja is very stupid and hard for me to articulate lmao

i also think it would be dope as hell if there were just like, a giant godzilla sized flag. i mean you could make it relevant and say like "ohh well the giant godzilla sized flag is a representation of coconeja's inability to connect with people, his best friend is an animal because he's afraid of how he thinks real people won't accept his perceived inadequecies or whatever" and i guess like give him 3 heads and rusty muzzles and fucked up antlers that are just like a constantly twisting mess of human hands grasping at nothing hell throw in a bunch of rotting lunar tears all over him so i can even shoehorn the nier raid stuff in there and that's sort of coconeja's pyramid head figure, always just sort of looming off in the distance, watching, being a physical reminder of his fear and self-loathing and doubt

and of course as far as the actual silent hill itself, gotta go with the CLASSIC foggy town. or not so much a town, but the streets of uldah completely devoid of the hustle and bustle that defines it. it's cold and it's empty and it's rotting and it's quiet (aside from coconeja wailing his fool head off as he's running away from himself and swinging a rusty lead pipe at nothing)

anywho, thanks again for the ask!! thank you!! thanks!!

#AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA #ough you got me going anon #how embarrassing #its fine my lalafell is so normal actually #just a normal functioning guy

[flower-boi16]

Why "The Life and Crimes of Scrooge McDuck"'s Message Doesn't Work

Ducktales 2017 is one of my favorite cartoons of all time and used to be my No. 1 favorite until I saw TOH, but I still hold a very deep love for the show, especially when it comes to a lot of the character writing. That being said, the show…isn’t perfect, and I think the third season has a few problems that make it weaker than the first two (though I’ll have to finish rewatching the season to be fully sure).

The Life and Crimes of Scrooge Mcduck especially isn’t a particularly good episode with how it handles it’s whole message about "accepting responsibility for your actions" and in this post I’m going to analyze why it falls apart.

As I said before, this episode’s message that its trying to send is that you should take responsibility for your actions rather than make excuses for it. The premise of the episode is that Scrooge and Louie are transported to a magical courtroom thingy where Scrooge is accused of being responsible for Glomgold, Ma Beagle and Magica’s turn to villainy, and Louie has to prove Scrooge innocent.

The episode has Glomgold and Beagle show proof of how Scrooge "made them evil" and Louie refuting those claims, proving Scrooge’s innocence…until Magica comes along and shows her first time facing Scrooge, where, he ended up getting Magica to accidentally turn her brother into a bird and refused to catch him for her, leading Magica to lose her brother forever and never be able to find him.

The show treats this as a big moment where, Louie CAN’T defend Scrooge here, being an example where Scrooge DID have a part in one of his enemies turning evil because of him, and after that, he says that he might have some influence on each of his enemies becoming evil…

…except for the fact that Scrooge did not make Magica evil. Scrooge had no effect on Magica turning evil; Magica was already directly shown to be evil to begin with, mainly with how she and her brother…ya know…literally in slaved a town into giving their goods to them and then made a spell that attracted money directly to them?

Was Scrooge not catching Po a dick move? Yes. Does that mean he is inherently responsible for Magica turning evil? No, because Magica was already evil to begin with and Scrooge changed nothing about her.

Same thing goes for the other villains as well, who the episode also tries to say that Scrooge might’ve had an influence in becoming evil as well after saying the exact opposite up until this point…?

Scrooge is not responsible for turning Glomgold or Ma Beagle evil either, Scrooge was trying to give good advice to Glomgold, its not Scrooge’s fault Glomgold was a brat, and Scrooge won the wrestling match far and square, and, like the episode shows, Ma Beagle was also always a brat from the start.

So the episode’s message of accepting responsibility for your actions doesn’t work because Scrooge was not responsible for any of them turning evil, they were ALWAYS bad people from the start.

The same thing applies to Louie who the episode has learn this same message, with him accepting responsibility for how his actions might have hurt Doofus Drake, which would be fine if it weren’t for the fact that Doofus was shown to a spoiled brat from the beginning and the first time him and Louie met he literally tried making him his "best friend".

I’m sorry, is Louie seriously supposed to apologize to Doofus for getting his parents to grow a spine discipline him just a tincy bit? Cuz I don’t think so.

Really, The Life and Crimes of Scrooge McDuck has a decent message on paper but it falls apart when you actually think about it for more than five minutes. The episode has other issues like introducing a major revelation near the end of the show, or just how underwhelming it is as the penultimate episode of the show which just further solidifies it as my least favourite episode of the show, but this is the biggest issue with it to me.

So ya, that’s why this episode’s lesson doesn’t work…goodbye.

#ducktales #ducktales 2017 #ducktales critical #ducktales analysis

[oddygaul]

The Hunger Games Cinematic Universe

To preface, it does feel a little weird to critique these movies as if they sprung from nowhere. They’re all pretty faithful adaptations, which is relevant because many of my problems with this series are structural / worldbuilding issues, and so aren’t necessarily the fault of the adaptation as much as the source material itself. On the other hand, it’s pretty easy to rattle off some adaptations that took risks and made something fairly transformative - Jackson’s Lord of the Rings, or anything Masaaki Yuasa has adapted come to mind  - so fuck em, they’re fair game.

(I’d seen the first two movies a decade ago, and read the trilogy after that. Ballad and the Mockingjay films were new to me.)

The Hunger Games

Okay, so the original holds up as far as I’m concerned. What sets it apart from much of the post-apocalyptic or action YA that I’ve seen is ultimately how grounded it manages to keep its portrayal of all the kids. I think a lot of fiction with a similar premise tend to falls prey to Anime Syndrome: yes, all the characters are 16 or 17 or whatever, and the authors will make them do some classic teen angst things like get into stupid arguments and be deeply hormonal, but they fail to have the kids react to the horrifying situations they find themselves in convincingly. This is the plight of any battle shounen: the characters are literally fighting to the death against some manner of horrible supernatural monster, or even other human beings, yet will be written like a little devil-may-care badass, or even be stoked about getting to tEsT tHEiR LiMitS! If you’re going for a fun action show, that’s fine, but if you’re trying to sell it as a drama, you’ve already lost your biggest chip.

The Hunger Games (the first one, mind) never forgets that all its characters are young as hell. The absolute shaking terror of the cornucopia, the wide eyed panic as Katniss and Foxface come face-to-face and realize that neither of them wants to do harm, even Cato’s eleventh hour realization that his entire life and persona are ultimately meaningless*, all fill the story with a pathos that makes the movie work, despite some inherent YA cheese.

*Probably my favorite addition to the movie.

I really love the stupid-ass beard they gave this guy

Catching Fire

Yeah, this is where it starts to fall apart for me. The first act prior to the Games is pretty compelling; our look into Katniss’ PTSD, her and Peeta’s inability to reintegrate into society as if nothing happened, and the acute, sudden horror they’re slammed with upon realizing they’re being forced back into the games are all handled incredibly well. The first half hour of this movie feels like slowly waking up from a bad dream, only to realize you’re still asleep.

After that, though… eh.

I think what bothers me about the Games themselves in this one is that everyone taking part is an adult now. Part of what makes the concept of the Hunger Games so brutal is the age of the contestants - and not merely in a pearl-clutching, oh-jeez-it’s-so-horrible-to-see-this-violence-done-upon-the-youth sort of way. There’s just a special abhorrence tied to watching a bunch of children, who ought to have their whole lives ahead of them, slowly have the dawning realization that their whole world is now this mere microcosm, in which their only options are murder or death. Watching this emotional turmoil play out differently for each character is what makes the setup compelling; horrible, wrenching, but compelling.

So, having the idea for this one be that these grown-ass adults, each of whom has (by definition of being a victor) gone through this incredible trauma before, is willing to go back again and fight like it was the first time? I dunno, it feels goofy to me. And I’m not saying they have a choice to participate - I know it’s mandated - I mean that once they’re in the arena, half of them seem to go “oh well, here I go killin’ again!” like they’re clocking in for a job. It’s not like they’re sliding back into their old psychology by force once they’re in the arena, either - even in the training center, the careers are doing their usual sneering badass routine. You could make the argument that successful careers are the most likely to have child actor syndrome - that they stopped emotionally maturing after the Games and are stoked to be back in their element, Football Player That Peaked in High School style - but that feels so reductive.

I guess the fact that half of the tributes get in on the Secret Rebellion Plan kind of addresses this - they are working toward a goal in the background - but it still feels off. I wish the movie spent more time exploring the mindset of all the contestants before the games started to flesh out their motivations. As is, the Games here no longer feel like blood sport exploring the psychological response to trauma - they’re just blood sport.

Also, the violence feels very sanitized. Say what you will about the shakycam used in the first movie (it is undoubtedly excessive at times), but the confusion it provides combined with the blood makes the 74th Games feel absolutely terrifying. It gives the sense that no one is prepared for how primal things are becoming as the situation descends into a barbaric haze of violence. In Catching Fire, meanwhile, the bloodbath feels like it’s by-the-numbers for everybody - Katniss and friends group up and just start killin’ Bad Guys** right off the bat like it’s nothing, barely even watching their backs as they talk to each other. I read that the director of #2 and on made an intentional decision not to show blood, because he doesn’t like ‘glorifying violence’... I truly don’t understand how showing a bunch of characters cleanly and effortlessly killing other people like they’re in a Marvel movie is any better.

**This is just a symptom of my larger issues with the worldbuilding, but I really think the careers and their motivation get such short shrift in these movies. They explore it a bit in the first movie, but in Catching Fire they’re fully content to have the careers be easy Evil Bad Guys that the viewer isn’t supposed to feel bad for when they die. It’s another touch that betrays its YA roots, and reminds me of Harry Potter - “Welcome to Hogwarts! We’ve sorted you into the evil house for evil, no-good children, which exists because we need to have antagonists.”

This is also where the rebellion bits start popping up, but I’ll talk about those in a moment because…

Mockingjay I & II

…that’s what these entire movies are about and it’s so, so dicey.

Honestly, to me it feels like Collins had a great idea for a standalone book, but then, by dint of it being YA, was obligated to have the characters eventually band together to take down the big bad Capitol, and just didn’t have a great grasp on how the wider world worked or what a strong revolution story looks like. I think this story worked the best when it was only a small snapshot of the world, with all the periphery implied; the more it’s forced to get into the real nitty gritty of how the setting works, the more ramshackle and unbelievable everything feels, and Mockingjay is where it hits a breaking point. It’s not that there are plot holes, exactly, it’s that we see so little of the wider world that everything feels grossly oversimplified.

I think this is where these films’ dogged adherence to the source material really screws them over. While the books are also lacking in worldbuilding and context from the perspective of other characters, it makes sense there because the books are all first-person POV. Of course we don’t get cutaways to citizens in the Capitol ruminating on their role in all this, or seeing the inner workings of the Peacekeepers to give them any characterization whatsoever outside of being blank plastic suits, because Katniss doesn’t see that. Since the movies have fully done away with this conceit, though, the omission of these supporting scenes feels glaring - especially when the movies are trying so hard to push this theme that everyone has their own fight, and both sides have a reason for their actions.

So, on that note, thematically it’s a fucking mess. It dips its toes into a dozen different themes without really firmly exploring any of them, leaving it feeling indecisive and tonally inconsistent. For example, Mockingjay I spends its intro showing the effect Katniss’ PTSD is having on her, and challenging the idea that just because someone has gone through trauma, they’re a hero and ought to be set up as the mouthpiece of the revolution - how can you ethically put the responsibility of leadership on someone who gets the shakes every time they hear a bang? …but then, not to worry, show her a cool superhero outfit and she’s out there shooting down gunships with fuckin Hawkeye arrows by dinnertime.

And the wider revolution story has many similar issues. What’s your message? Dictators are bad? Wow, what a take. Both sides committed atrocities, so they’re both bad? Politics are hard and messy, and you just gotta keep your head down and hope you can retire to the country? Yeah, way to really take a hard stance on that one.

If I put all that aside, it generally works as a character piece - Katniss and Peeta’s development over the course of the story, in particular, is well done through and through, and it feels rare to see a broad appeal series like have the nerve to take its leads to such dark places. There’s also a lot of surprisingly great character acting throughout; my personal standouts are Hutcherson, Stanley Tucci, and (surprisingly) Woody Harrelson, but there’s honestly not a bad actor in the bunch, which is impressive. Still, with the subject material being so heavy, it’s hard for me just to take it at face value like that, and I wish they shored up the weaker elements a bit.

I’m just saying, if you spend that much of your screentime showing crowds of children being murdered by IEDs, I think you ought to be building towards a strong statement. 

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes

Yeah, this one felt like a waste of a movie in a really weird way. The execution was incredibly well done - lots of solid acting, production design, etc, which is a huge waste because the basic premise of the movie is fucking worthless.

So, the whole point, I would say, of doing a prequel is to flesh out interesting parts of your universe that you didn’t have time for in the original work. Unanswered questions, a character’s past that you want to learn more about, a deeper dive into parts of the world or lore that weren’t touched on but caught people’s imagination. The Hunger Games series has plenty of gaps that need to be filled: I said above how incredibly small the world seems due to barely exploring any of the capitol, other districts, etc., so it was ripe for a prequel or spinoff! Let us spend some time in other districts, see how other people live and feel about the whole thing. Even if we’re not going post-war, and are going back to the era of the Games (which of course we would), there’s 75 years worth of questions to explore.

Instead of focusing on any of that, the premise of this movie (/book) is “Hey, you know the villain from the original story that seemed like a huge, irredeemable piece of shit? Let’s spend a two and a half hour runtime telling you his backstory, which will show you that actually… he’s always been a piece of shit”. Wow. Spellbinding.

Now, there’s nothing inherently wrong with a main character being a bad person. Particularly, if your character is charismatic, they don’t necessarily have to be right or good to be interesting to watch; there’s a certain magnetism to watching that for a lot of people. It’s never been my cup of tea, to be honest; whether pegged as comedy (Always Sunny) or drama (Breaking Bad), I get fed up really quickly when I hate everyone in a piece of fiction. But done correctly, it can still be interesting - showing how a character ended up where they are, showing you a rare good side of them you’d never seen, or showing that they used to be moral, but just happened to be tested one too many times and fell off the deep end.

Snow is none of these. He’s a piece of shit from the first time we see him, he consistently acts like a piece of shit to everyone around him, and then he ends up, in fact, being a piece of shit***. What’s interesting about that?

***I think the most generous interpretation I could give of his character is a piece of shit who briefly dabbles in transactional friendship after Lucy Gray saves him from the rubble, then shortly thereafter returns to being a piece of shit. Which I still do not find especially compelling.

Even outside of that, it’s one of those prequels that does nothing but make the world feel smaller - rather than expanding on any of the dozens of untouched ideas in the series, we spend a bunch more time in District 12, and show that, actually, it turns out Snow and his hangups are the only reason anything happened in this universe for nearly 100 years. From Katniss’ name to the Hanging Tree song she sings, turns out half the things we learned in The Hunger Games resulted from this one particular guy’s life story. In a series that already felt like the world was too small and was in desperate need of expansion, further narrowing the scope feels like such a misstep.

Why yes, I did need to know exactly what the Kessel Run was!

Odds & Ends

I mostly blocked out my memories of Mockingjay the book from the single time I read it back in the day, because I thought it was booty, but the one thing I remembered liking that they changed up was Finnick’s death. In the book, he’s just there one moment and gone the next, without any fanfare or time to grieve, which serves to make his death feel especially cruel. I suppose it was inevitable, but counter-intuitively, the Big Hollywood Death Scene they gave him here felt a lot less impactful.

-------

A point about the series in general: boy did the costume design bother me. It’s interesting, because all I remembered about it from when this series blew up was the gaudy Capitol style and how crazy the internet was about it. Watching these movies again, I feel like that success was a total fluke, because everything else is goofy as hell. The way that every district has their own bespoke fucking Civil War re-enactment outfits is wild - look, the ‘District 11 is just one big Southern plantation’ thing was always really obvious, but seeing each district dressed up like they're from competing historical re-enactment groups was wild.

The prequel turns this up to 11. I feel like someone on the team though they were real clever - this one’s set 60 years earlier, so let’s make all the outfits and design retro! What? People in flapper clothes, the lake scene with their 1940s swimsuits, even the logo and graphic design in the Hunger Games broadcasting room looking like it’s from the 50s - it doesn’t make any fucking sense. Yeah, they’re set decades before the original books - in the year, like, 2300. What, everyone just forgot how to do graphic design again after the war? Fashion is cyclical, but not like this…

--------

Also, movies 1 and 2 in particular definitely have some uncomfortable racial dynamics going on. I was already weirded out that a lot of the districts seem to be separated by ethnicity, but as you go on, it’s hard to ignore how nearly every Black person seems to exist solely to help Katniss along in her quest before dying horribly and usually on-camera. Rue, Thresh, Cinna, even that old man that flashes the salute in District 11… it’s remarkably consistent.

#will's media thoughts / virtual brain repository #movies #the hunger games #catching fire #mockingjay #the ballad of songbirds and snakes

[5hrignold]

lsp episodes ranked by how much they make me want to punch myself in the face out of how upset i am that i cant hug and hold her for 4 hours straight

bad timing is the big one. the entire premise of that episode is basically “what if lsp finally found someone who really likes her and she connects with but it was her fault she lost him” and i love it. it consumes my mind that she could’ve had it all right there. and i really think the cherry on top is the way at the end she begs for bonnie to erase her memory of the whole thing. literally who wouldn’t do the same thing. i would

be sweet is rlly good because it has sweet pea and Also because it addresses that yeah lsp is now on good terms with her parents and doing things for herself and doing well but she still isn’t happy. she still feels alone and disconnected from other people and she regrets choices she’s made that make her feel like she isn’t worth good things other people have. it matters a lot to me because that specific thing of hers pretty much is never brought up any other time ever except in this episode so it’s special. also the part near the end where she sings the little lullaby to sweet pea Aaaaaaa. ya! her soft voice is my fav thing eever 😊😊😊

slime central is another one where it kinda revolves around her self esteem being put into a blender on highest speed lol. her idea of perfect is skating with her friends and having a boyfriend Basically. and that just gets taken away with her, she’s rejected and called terrible and humiliated. and yet after that she’s still herself because like. she has to be. the 2 biggest moments in that ep is when she falls over and everyone in booing and she’s just laying on her back in the dark looking absolutely mortified and after they get kicked out where she’s crying about never fitting in

I KNOW loyalty to the king is not an lsp episode but what there IS of her is really good. just that one scene of her wanting to be whatever the nice king finds most convenient for him and straight up PUNCHING HERSELF to force her body to be smooth.. Its a lot. its a good chunk of her character summarised like yea that 30 second scene is literally her

the monster is super important because it’s the 2nd super lsp centric episode and it does a good job summarising what she goes through throughout the series. trouble in lumpy space is like a basic introduction of her life in the most neutral “nothing has happened yet” state and this episode shows what happens afterwards and how it makes her feel. she craves the feeling of being in control of her life but it’s either not getting that or upsetting her parents so that’s already like. she’s in a bit of an emotional corner. so she runs away and is met with nothing but what feels like just more punishment for just wanting to prove to herself that she can do things on her own. also this episode im PRESUMING is where she discovers her love and deep connection to animals!! which is absolutely one of my favourite aspects of her so fuckin awefomeee

the prince who wanted everything is really really good bc it’s an entire episode basically of her venting her feelings through her fionna and cake fanfic of her oc. it’s mostly reflective of her feelings towards finn, how he was the one who made her really realise her worth, but also stuff about how she prefers to do things that make her feel good and free in the moment, and how she views her parents, even if just internally. also people take the line about lumpy space prince only being able to date “someone who is so much like me she doesn’t even exist” as another like ohh classic self absorbed lsp Moment haha! but i really really like it bc it resonates with me lowkey . lol

princess day is another one that revolves around her guilt for acting the way she does and it being all she knows how to be. from the very start of the episode her mere presence is seen as an offense and an insult to everyone around eachother and so, having not much else to do in that position, she lashes out on breakfast princess. which AGAINNN again is very much a summary of her entire character. people hate her no matter what so she resorts to doing all she knows - being loud and assertive to make people respect her at the very least. this episode is also super special bc it shows us the exact moment her and marcy meet !!! in my mind she’s kinda the first to person to really listen to what lsp has to say, and her troubles and stuff, and she genuinely enjoys her company and lsp is absolutely flattered by how fondly marcy treats her and frankly never stopped being super cautious of it for a while until she Knew she really likes her

summer showers is kind of a blur to me but it is super good. i really like viola and her dynamic with lsp in this episode is cute. we get a whole scene where lsp just ends up venting to viola pretty much completely on accident while trying to tell her how to get the raindrops just perfectly right, because everything in the play has to be top tier since it’s very important to her. this episode gives another peek into how much of a little nerd lsp is which NO ONE talks about. she loves writing, she loves acting things out and being super dramatic and getting really into playing characters, she gets invested in silly things, she’s like best friends with turtle princess for crying out loud. she is cringe!!!!! and it’s adorable and wonderful of her!!!

i talked about trouble in lumpy space before so continuing. i do like that basically her first act in the show is screwing something up completely on accident without her being able to control it (her ability to float suddenly disappearing and that resulting in her biting finn). it’s really really good lol. i love this episode so dearly for 2 huge reasons ; it’s the most we see of early seasons lsp, and it establishes what her life was like before she started being more independent. the people she knew, where she went and how her people view her, her relationship with her parents and her friends and stuff. i feel like without all the stuff we learn about lumpy space in this episode there’d be WAY less to lsp. im just extremely grateful for it because the damn place pretty much never appears again in the entire series apart from the happy place thing in elements and lsp’s scene in the come along with me ending sequence

the creeps, again, not at all An Lsp Episode, BUT it does have a scene that reveals some stuff about her that’s important, which is her inability to really commit to relationships without being afraid. she objects to talking about why she broke up with brad at first but while finn is talking to bonnie she just completely falls apart to the pressure (which is absolutely nothing) and breaks out rambling about how much she regrets it and how she thought all you needed to do to be a good girlfriend was to look pretty. which lfhfhfbfdbdbfbfbfbbfbf. my Girl…………….my poor girl

i dont really have anything to say about from bad to worse lol. she’s cute in it! the way she snatches the instructions immediately and pouts at everyone while doing so and the way she shoves everyone aside talking about how she should go first… So good. also she looks so fucking good with wings can we talk ab that maybe some time

gotcha is like Maybe perhaps my favourite out of all of these. and it’s probably because while a lot of these make me sad with the stuff they all imply about lsp and her insecurities, this one makes me SO happy. how she is at the beginning, how confident she is waltzing toward the treehouse talking about how finn won’t be able to resist her because of how beautiful she is, the way she makes the treehouse cozy for herself without anyone’s permission, her friendship with turtle princess sprinkled throughout the episode, the part with finn tucking her in, THE WHOLE PART WITH HIM SAVING HER SND THEN TELLING HER SHE DOESNT NEED TO BE PRETTY PHYSICALLY FOR PEOPLE TO LOVE HER. AHHHHHH . Good Episode. GOOD. Episode.

sorry for the tone change but as for those last three episodes i really dont have much to say like at all. absolutely all she is in them is a device used for a joke. WHICH IM FINE WITH. ADVENTURE TIME IS A KIDS SHOW AND AN OFTEN LIGHTHEARTED ONE AT THAT I DONT CARE. sorry this description really makes it seem like i dislike how she is in these eps. idk if you could tell but i fucking love lsp always. she could do the most heinous things and id defend her and adore her for it always. she has never done a single thing i dislike NOT an exagggerarion. at all. /srs there ill even say that if it makes you believe just how much i love her. space girl help me

#SPACE GIRL HELP ME!!!!!!? #❤️ya um. if you fucking read all of this i officially love you and i owe you thousandfold #heheheeeeee eher #adventure time #lumpy space princess #<- ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ #<<- 💓💓💓💓💓💓💓💓💓💓💓💓💓💓💓💓💓💓💓💓💓💓💓💓💓💓💓💓💓💓💓💓💓💓💓💓💓💓💓💓💓💓💓💓💓💓💓💓💓HEEEHEHEH #long post

[vanillapie-80]

Two things for TOA; who's your favorite character and why, and what part of the franchise do you think had the most wasted potential?

Now I'm sure, if you know me, that it's pretty damn obvious that Jim is my favorite character, so I'm just going to be brief about this. One of the main appeal to me is the monster trope that is associated with him, because that's how I got into toa in the first place. I think it's one of the things that really makes him stand out to other protags that are similar to him. It's also really fun to explore cause it's a trope that's really underrated and one that I don't see much in media sooo-

For other characters it's Douxie, his design is solid and I love the the journey he goes through in wizards. I believe Claire too, cause I draw her a lot. Idk I just really like the a good chunk of the main characters in these shows. It's a chaotic friendship and I love that.

The second question- ooooo boy. I think, although it being the most obvious answer, it's rott that has the most wasted potential. For wizards, I would say that I'm fairly satisfied with Wizards (with my only real issues being the twist with Jim and that the didn't really include elements involving 3 Below all that much, I'll touch more on this later) but with rott, it had a lot of potential with the premise it had.

Deities wishing to reset the world because they've grown tired of humanity creating an imbalance and forcing magical creatures out of their land and persecuting them over the years, that's such an interesting premise that can easily be equated to real world issues. But no, it's just a typical adventure story with a black and white heroes vs villains with no nuance whatsoever (And since the story can easily be equated to real world issues, it makes the implications kind of messy ngl). Also we just don't get that much interactions between different characters, most of that time it has to something in relation to Jim which is fucking boring story wise.

Literally I can't think of a single moment where one of the other main characters have a moment that relates to an arc of their own. Which really cause there are some characters that are soo due for a character arc of their own.

Another is just the refusal to use any of the worldbuilding from the different installments. I'm going to start with 3Below. There's been this issue where the writers don't put in enough effort to include and tie in 3Below's characters and worldbuilding to the overarching stories. I see people say how 3Below doesn't fit or belong in the series as a fault of the show itself which I don't agree with. I think it's more of the fault of the writers because they have every opportunity to include 3Below to the story if they really wanted, especially in rott. (I would also like to mention that in an article, Diego Luna said there was going to be an arc for Krel in wizards, but it was cut).

For wizards it was more like rott didn't build upon what it brought to the table, especially when it comes to information regarding to the Arcane Order. Like who are they? What are they? How the fuck did the Genesis Seal came to be? Are they demigods or wizards? Did Nari create the Kronosphere or Heart of Avalon? What the fuck were Bellroc and Skrael doing during the centuries after the Battle of Killahead? There so much but no new information is given to the world.

WHEW, THAT WAS A LOT. I'm going to leave it that that but yeah, there's a lot of wasted potential towards rott SDKJASALK-

#tales of arcadia #3 below #toawizards #vanilla rambles

[firstagent]

Ghost Game #46

Let’s see if you’ve heard these before: story kicks off with Kotaro being horny. Oh so much body horror! Malicious Digimon visiting children in the night. Kids investigate and somehow don’t immediately conclude there’s a Digimon involved. Stakeout time! Female-presenting Digimon has a creepy fixation on a male child. Angoramon suddenly recalls important information just in time. Someone’s obvious ruse inexplicably works on the villain. Callback to something earlier in the episode turns the tide in battle. Kids let enemy Digimon off with a promise not to misbehave again. Oh, and it was all Hiro’s dad’s fault. Literally the only new thing here was the featured Digimon. Some of these are chestnuts that will never not be entertaining, but without advancement in the plot or characters, it’s clear the show is running out of novel ideas for its initial premise.

Really, the only thing keeping the episode remotely afloat is that we’re spared the introduction of a new character. We know Kotaro’s deal, and yet we don’t feel a whole heck of a lot of sympathy for the delicious horror that he hallucinates, leading him to hole himself away for a fortnight with no exposure to water. A new character would be cluttered with background and anyone else we might be forced to actually worry about. Kotaro gives us the freedom to observe his suffering rather neutrally, leaving all the concern to the main trio. It doesn’t make up for lackluster storytelling, but it could have been so much worse if it wasn’t able to cut these corners.

The only real thing we have to take away from this is just how frequently Hokuto is messing everything up. It’s not notable since it’s not the first time and clearly won’t be the last, but we’re at the point where even the characters themselves are getting annoyed by it, and not just Hiro. This would have better served as an early running gag that became a Ghost Game trope as quickly as enemy Digimon reforming themselves rather than being punished. That way we could hope to be at a point where we’d expect subversions to the joke or even the logic of how Hokuto misleads everybody growing outright farcical. That way Espimon’s “he said Hiro looked just like him” bit could be appreciated for the absurdity it is. You know, like the comic absurdity of shrugging off a Digimon that just attempted to eat Hiro’s friend. That should be hilarious.

Initial Grade: C-

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#digimon #digimon ghost game #quick reaction

[therealjammy]

just saw your amazing villain writing advice and thought I should ask Jamie this! First of…your writing is impeccable. Truly. The way you write the relationship between Alicent and Rhaenyra has me In a chokehold all the time! Which is actually why I’m asking your advice. My story is set in multiple different eras, but the one I’m having trouble with is my 17th century era. My main character Alice Howe lives in New England, she’s kind of like a young Rhaenyra in the sense that she’s just so cocky and often at times gets in trouble simply because she’s so playful. Alice is very protective as well, she’s loyal to a fault, and is tomboyish as you could get in the 17th century(she was the child playing knight with the boys in the town square and making them all cry) 😂 but she’s also rash and often does not think decisions through (a fault Elizabeth has trouble with often) She’s the villain in the series so it’s really important that I get it right 😂😂 Her childhood best friend Elizabeth is the daughter of a local judge and she’s very quite and sweet. They’ve grown up together but when Elizabeth begins to court…that’s where the tension comes in. They’ve always been very close and they depend on each other for everything. It’s the typical growing up growing pains. Elizabeth is very dutiful and feels it is her job, by doing this she is pleasing her family (who have had rough patches through the years) but she’s also hurting herself by hurting Alice (who sulks like a baby and tries everything to get rid of suitors)

we love our troublemaking gal.

Do you have any advice on writing love confessions? How do you write childhood friendships that turn into a deep admiration of love? (Literally Alicent and Rhaenyra in a different font) And how do you show it? 😂 apologies if this is to long. Im pulling my hair out with this story, I’ve been working on it for months now. Thank you Jamie!!! ❤️

Hi other Anon! Thank you, firstly, for your kind words about my writing; I'm so glad you've enjoyed my take on Alicent and Rhaenyra's relationship! There's more to come, I assure you, hopefully sooner rather than later xD

As for your story I think you've got an excellent premise so far, and a solid foundation for your two main characters and how they're similar but different; plus the time period your story's set in is one I don't see very often!

And love confessions, I think, are very hard to get right. Even I struggle a lot with them, because there are different kinds and you have to really examine your characters (whether they be yours or in fan fiction) and determine how they would confess their love for another person. You also have to think about the pacing of your story and the timing of that confession, i.e. knowing when the right time is for it and how to make it feel as natural as possible.

What usually helps me with love confessions is, yes, examining my characters and their love languages, and brainstorming how they might go about confessing. Is it subtle? Is it written in a letter? Said aloud in a stumbling, passionate speech? BUT before that, I always ask myself what the circumstances surrounding that confession are. How long have the characters known each other? What has led to them being so full of love they're about to burst with it? What was the moment they realised they were in love with this person? (The oh moment we fic writers so love!)

Let's use Alicent and Rhaenyra as a little example. Childhood companions, where we can feel their love in every interaction they have prior to Viserys' announcement that he's marrying Alicent instead of Laena. We have the moment beneath the weirwood tree, the ripping of the book page where Rhaenyra proffers it to her and says, 'So you remember.' And we know that Alicent kept that page for years, we know that Rhaenyra still holds tenderness for her even when these two have bandied knives at each other for literal years due to circumstances beyond their control. Those little moments are dotted throughout the latter half of the season, and by the time we reach episode 10, so much has happened with these two, between these two, that Otto giving Rhaenyra that creased page almost feels like a grand confession. 'I haven't forgotten the love we had, nor has mine diminished.' The timing of this confession occurs after major events--the feast in 1x08, Viserys' death and the misinterpreted words, Aegon's crowning--and one can assume these were the things that drove Alicent to send the page with her father, as well as the looming threat of war.

So to sum up my advice: think about your characters and their circumstances, their friendship, examine their love languages, and maybe just draft some different confessions for one or both of them and see which style fits who. When you have one that seems satisfying and feels natural to their character, draft the events leading up to that. Are they major events or minor? And perhaps the most important question: How does the person who hears this confession react? That one specific reaction can change everything!

(And do bear in mind this is what works for me a lot of the time; I won't be offended at all if it doesn't work out for you! Every writer is different and has different approaches!)

Best of luck to you xx

#asks from lovely people #writing things #jamie gives writing advice #i would also suggest reading some classic love confessions; pride and prejudice and persuasion have some great ones #or something more modern if you can find it #just to see how other people go about it #because you really can learn from other authors and try out what they do