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shortnotsweet · 3 years

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Bakudeku: A Non-Comprehensive Dissection of the Exploitation of Working Bodies, the Murder of Annoying Children, and a Rivals-to-Lovers Complex

I. Bakudeku in Canon, And Why Anti’s Need to Calm the Fuck Down

II. Power is Power: the Brain-Melting Process of Normalization and Toxic Masculinity

III. How to Kill Middle Schoolers, and Why We Should

IV. Parallels in Abuse, EnemiesRivals-to-Lovers, and the Necessity of Redemption ft. ATLA’s Zuko

V. Give it to Me Straight. It’s Homophobic.

VI. Love in Perspective, from the East v. West

VII. Stuck in the Sludge, the Past, and Season One

Disclaimer

It needs to be said that there is definitely a place for disagreement, discourse, debate, and analysis: that is a sign of an active fandom that’s heavily invested, and not inherently a bad thing at all. Considering the amount of source material we do have (from the manga, to the anime, to the movies, to the light novels, to the official art), there are going to be warring interpretations, and that’s inevitable.

I started watching and reading MHA pretty recently, and just got into the fandom. I was weary for a reason, and honestly, based on what I’ve seen, I’m still weary now. I’ve seen a lot of anti posts, and these are basically my thoughts. This entire thing is in no way comprehensive, and it’s my own opinion, so take it with a grain of salt. If I wanted to be thorough about this, I would’ve included manga panels, excerpts from the light novel, shots from the anime, links to other posts/essays/metas that have inspired this, etc. but I’m tired and not about that life right now, so, this is what it is. This is poorly organized, but maybe I’ll return to fix it.

Let’s begin.

Bakudeku in Canon, And Why Anti’s Need to Calm the Fuck Down

There are a lot of different reasons, that can be trivial as you like, to ship or not to ship two (or more) characters. It could be based purely off of character design, proximity, aversion to another ship, or hypotheticals. And I do think that it’s totally valid if someone dislikes the ship or can’t get on board with his character because to them, it does come across as abuse, and the implications make them uncomfortable or, or it just feels unhealthy. If that is your takeaway, and you are going to stick to your guns, the more power to you.

But Bakudeku’s relationship has canonically progressed to the point where it’s not the emotionally (or physically) abusive clusterfuck some people portray it to be, and it’s cheap to assume that it would be, based off of their characterizations as middle schoolers. Izuku intentionally opens the story as a naive little kid who views the lens of the Hero society through rose colored glasses and arguably wants nothing more than assimilation into that society; Bakugou is a privileged little snot who embodies the worst and most hypocritical beliefs of this system. Both of them are intentionally proven wrong. Both are brainwashed, as many little children are, by the propaganda and societal norms that they are exposed to. Both of their arcs include unlearning crucial aspects of the Hero ideology in order to become true heroes.

I will personally never simp for Bakugou because for the longest time, I couldn't help but think of him as a little kid on the playground screaming at the top of his lungs because someone else is on the swingset. He’s red in the face, there are probably veins popping out of his neck, he’s losing it. It’s easy to see why people would prefer Tododeku to Bakudeku.

Even now, seeing him differently, I still personally wouldn’t date Bakugou, especially if I had other options. Why? I probably wouldn’t want to date any of the guys who bullied me, especially because I think that schoolyard bullying, even in middle school, affected me largely in a negative way and created a lot of complexes I’m still trying to work through. I haven’t built a better relationship with them, and I’m not obligated to. Still, I associate them with the kind of soft trauma that they inflicted upon me, and while to them it was probably impersonal, to me, it was an intimate sort of attack that still affects me. That being said, that is me. Those are my personal experiences, and while they could undoubtedly influence how I interpret relationships, I do not want to project and hinder my own interpretation of Deku.

The reality is that Deku himself has an innate understanding of Bakugou that no one else does; I mention later that he seems to understand his language, implicitly, and I do stand by that. He understands what it is he’s actually trying to say, often why he’s saying it, and while others may see him as wimpy or unable to stand up for himself, that’s simply not true. Part of Deku’s characterization is that he is uncommonly observant and empathetic; I’m not denying that Bakugou caused harm or inflicted damage, but infantilizing Deku and preaching about trauma that’s not backed by canon and then assuming random people online excuse abuse is just...the leap of leaps, and an actual toxic thing to do. I’ve read fan works where Bakugou is a bully, and that’s all, and has caused an intimate degree of emotional, mental, and physical insecurity from their middle school years that prevents their relationship from changing, and that’s for the better. I’m not going to argue and say that it’s not an interesting take, or not valid, or has no basis, because it does. Its basis is the character that Bakugou was in middle school, and the person he was when he entered UA.

Not only is Bakugou — the current Bakugou, the one who has accumulated memories and experiences and development — not the same person he was at the beginning of the story, but Deku is not the same person, either. Maybe who they are fundamentally, at their core, stays the same, but at the beginning and end of any story, or even their arcs within the story, the point is that characters will undergo change, and that the reader will gain perspective.

“You wanna be a hero so bad? I’ve got a time-saving idea for you. If you think you’ll have a quirk in your next life...go take a swan dive off the roof!”

Yes. That is a horrible thing to tell someone, even if you are a child, even if you don’t understand the implications, even if you don’t mean what it is you are saying. Had someone told me that in middle school, especially given our history and the context of our interactions, I don’t know if I would ever have forgiven them.

Here’s the thing: I’m not Deku. Neither is anyone reading this. Deku is a fictional character, and everyone we know about him is extrapolated from source material, and his response to this event follows:

“Idiot! If I really jumped, you’d be charged with bullying me into suicide! Think before you speak!”

I think it’s unfair to apply our own projections as a universal rather than an interpersonal interpretation; that’s not to say that the interpretation of Bakudeku being abusive or having unbalanced power dynamics isn’t valid, or unfounded, but rather it’s not a universal interpretation, and it’s not canon. Deku is much more of a verbal thinker; in comparison, Bakugou is a visual one, at least in the format of the manga, and as such, we get various panels demonstrating his guilt, and how deep it runs. His dialogue and rapport with Deku has undeniably shifted, and it’s very clear that the way they treat each other has changed from when they were younger. Part of Bakugou’s growth is him gaining self awareness, and eventually, the strength to wield that. He knows what a fucked up little kid he was, and he carries the weight of that.

“At that moment, there were no thoughts in my head. My body just moved on its own.”

There’s a part of me that really, really disliked Bakugou going into it, partially because of what I’d seen and what I’d heard from a limited, outside perspective. I felt like Bakugou embodied the toxic masculinity (and to an extent, I still believe that) and if he won in some way, that felt like the patriarchy winning, so I couldn't help but want to muzzle and leash him before releasing him into the wild.

The reality, however, of his character in canon is that it isn’t very accurate to assume that he would be an abusive partner in the future, or that Midoryia has not forgiven him to some extent already, that the two do not care about each other or are singularly important, that they respect each other, or that the narrative has forgotten any of this.

Don’t mistake me for a Bakugou simp or apologist. I’m not, but while I definitely could also see Tododeku (and I have a soft spot for them, too, their dynamic is totally different and unique, and Todoroki is arguably treated as the tritagonist) and I’m ambivalent about Izuocha (which is written as cannoncially romantic) I do believe that canonically, Bakugou and Deku are framed as soulmates/character foils, Sasuke + Naruto, Kageyama + Hinata style. Their relationship is arguably the focus of the series. That’s not to undermine the importance or impact of Deku’s relationships with other characters, and theirs with him, but in terms of which one takes priority, and which one this all hinges on?

The manga is about a lot of things, yes, but if it were to be distilled into one relationship, buckle up, because it’s the Bakudeku show.

Power is Power: the Brain-Melting Process of Normalization and Toxic Masculinity

One of the ways in which the biopolitical prioritization of Quirks is exemplified within Hero society is through Quirk marriages. Endeavor partially rationalizes the abuse of his family through the creation of a child with the perfect quirk, a child who can be molded into the perfect Hero. People with powerful, or useful abilities, are ranked high on the hierarchy of power and privilege, and with a powerful ability, the more opportunities and avenues for success are available to them.

For the most part, Bakugou is a super spoiled, privileged little rich kid who is born talented but is enabled for his aggressive behavior and, as a child, cannot move past his many internalized complexes, treats his peers like shit, and gets away with it because the hero society he lives in either has this “boys will be boys” mentality, or it’s an example of the way that power, or Power, is systematically prioritized in this society. The hero system enables and fosters abusers, people who want power and publicity, and people who are genetically predisposed to have advantages over others. There are plenty of good people who believe in and participate in this system, who want to be good, and who do good, but that doesn’t change the way that the hero society is structured, the ethical ambiguity of the Hero Commission, and the way that Heroes are but pawns, idols with machine guns, used to sell merch to the public, to install faith in the government, or the current status quo, and reinforce capitalist propaganda. Even All Might, the epitome of everything a Hero should be, is drained over the years, and exists as a concept or idea, when in reality he is a hollow shell with an entire person inside, struggling to survive. Hero society is functionally dependent on illusion.

In Marxist terms: There is no truth, there is only power.

Although Bakugou does change, and I think that while he regrets his actions, what is long overdue is him verbally expressing his remorse, both to himself and Deku. One might argue that he’s tried to do it in ways that are compatible with his limited emotional range of expression, and Deku seems to understand this language implicitly.

I am of the opinion that the narrative is building up to a verbal acknowledgement, confrontation, and subsequent apology that only speaks what has gone unspoken.

That being said, Bakugou is a great example of the way that figures of authority (parents, teachers, adults) and institutions both in the real world and this fictional universe reward violent behavior while also leaving mental and emotional health — both his own and of the people Bakugou hurts — unchecked, and part of the way he lashes out at others is because he was never taught otherwise.

And by that, I’m referring to the ways that are to me, genuinely disturbing. For example, yelling at his friends is chill. But telling someone to kill themselves, even casually and without intent and then misinterpreting everything they do as a ploy to make you feel weak because you're projecting? And having no teachers stop and intervene, either because they are afraid of you or because they value the weight that your Quirk can benefit society over the safety of children? That, to me, is both real and disturbing.

Not only that, but his parents (at least, Mitsuki), respond to his outbursts with more outbursts, and while this is likely the culture of their home and I hesitate to call it abusive, I do think that it contributed to the way that he approaches things. Bakugou as a character is very complex, but I think that he is primarily an example of the way that the Hero System fails people.

I don’t think we can write off the things he’s done, especially using the line of reasoning that “He didn’t mean it that way”, because in real life, children who hurt others rarely mean it like that either, but that doesn’t change the effect it has on the people who are victimized, but to be absolutely fair, I don’t think that the majority of Bakudeku shippers, at least now, do use that line of reasoning. Most of them seem to have a handle on exactly how fucked up the Hero society is, and exactly why it fucks up the people embedded within that society.

The characters are positioned in this way for a reason, and the discoveries made and the development that these characters undergo are meant to reveal more about the fictional world — and, perhaps, our world — as the narrative progresses.

The world of the Hero society is dependent, to some degree, on biopolitics. I don’t think we have enough evidence to suggest that people with Quirks or Quirkless people place enough identity or placement within society to become equivalent to marginalized groups, exactly, but we can draw parallels to the way that Deku and by extent Quirkless people are viewed as weak, a deviation, or disabled in some way. Deviants, or non-productive bodies, are shunned for their inability to perform ideal labor. While it is suggested to Deku that he could become a police officer or pursue some other occupation to help people, he believes that he can do the most positive good as a Hero. In order to be a Hero, however, in the sense of a career, one needs to have Power.

Deviation from the norm will be punished or policed unless it is exploitable; in order to become integrated into society, a deviant must undergo a process of normalization and become a working, exploitable body. It is only through gaining power from All Might that Deku is allowed to assimilate from the margins and into the upper ranks of society; the manga and the anime give the reader enough perspective, context, and examples to allow us to critique and deconstruct the society that is solely reliant on power.

Through his societal privileges, interpersonal biases, internalized complexes, and his subsequent unlearning of these ideologies, Bakugou provides examples of the way that the system simultaneously fails and indoctrinates those who are targeted, neglected, enabled by, believe in, and participate within the system.

Bakudeku are two sides of the same coin. We are shown visually that the crucial turning point and fracture in their relationship is when Bakugou refuses to take Deku’s outstretched hand; the idea of Deku offering him help messes with his adolescent perspective in that Power creates a hierarchy that must be obeyed, and to be helped is to be weak is to be made a loser.

Largely, their character flaws in terms of understanding the hero society are defined and entangled within the concept of power. Bakugou has power, or privilege, but does not have the moral character to use it as a hero, and believes that Power, or winning, is the only way in which to view life. Izuku has a much better grasp on the way in which heroes wield power (their ideologies can, at first, be differentiated as winning vs. saving), and is a worthy successor because of this understanding, and of circumstance. However, in order to become a Hero, our hero must first gain the Power that he lacks, and learn to wield it.

As the characters change, they bridge the gaps of their character deficiencies, and are brought closer together through character parallelism.

Two sides of the same coin, an outstretched hand.

They are better together.

How to Kill Middle Schoolers, and Why We Should

I think it’s fitting that in the manga, a critical part of Bakugou’s arc explicitly alludes to killing the middle school version of himself in order to progress into a young adult. In the alternative covers Horikoshi released, one of them was a close up of Bakugou in his middle school uniform, being stabbed/impaled, with blood rolling out of his mouth. Clearly this references the scene in which he sacrifices himself to save Deku, on a near-instinctual level.

To me, this only cements Horikoshi’s intent that middle school Bakugou must be debunked, killed, discarded, or destroyed in order for Bakugou the hero to emerge, which is why people who do actually excuse his actions or believe that those actions define him into young adulthood don’t really understand the necessity for change, because they seem to imply that he doesn’t need/cannot reach further growth, and there doesn’t need to be a separation between the Bakugou who is, at heart, volatile and repressed the angry, and the Bakugou who sacrifices himself, a hero who saves people.

Plot twist: there does need to be a difference. Further plot twist: there is a difference.

In sacrificing himself for Deku, Bakugou himself doesn't die, but the injury is fatal in the sense that it could've killed him physically and yet symbolizes the selfish, childish part of him that refused to accept Deku, himself, and the inevitability of change. In killing those selfish remnants, he could actually become the kind of hero that we the reader understand to be the true kind.

That’s why I think that a lot of the people who stress his actions as a child without acknowledging the ways he has changed, grown, and tried to fix what he has broken don’t really get it, because it was always part of his character arc to change and purposely become something different and better. If the effects of his worst and his most childish self stick with you more, and linger despite that, that’s okay. But distilling his character down to the wrong elements doesn’t get you the bare essentials; what it gets you is a skewed and shallow version of a person. If you’re okay with that version, that is also fine.

But you can’t condemn others who aren’t fine with that incomplete version, and to become enraged that others do not see him as you do is childish.

Bakugou’s change and the emphasis on that change is canon.

Parallels in Abuse, EnemiesRivals-to-Lovers, and the Necessity of Redemption ft. ATLA’s Zuko

In real life, the idea that “oh, he must bully you because he likes you” is often used as a way to brush aside or to excuse the action of bullying itself, as if a ‘secret crush’ somehow negates the effects of bullying on the victim or the inability of the bully to properly process and manifest their emotions in certain ways. It doesn’t. It often enables young boys to hurt others, and provides figures of authority to overlook the real source of schoolyard bullying or peer review. The “secret crush”, in real life, is used to undermine abuse, justify toxic masculinity, and is essentially used as a non-solution solution.

A common accusation is that Bakudeku shippers jump on the pairing because they romanticize pairing a bully and a victim together, or believe that the only way for Bakugou to atone for his past would be to date Midoryia in the future. This may be true for some people, in which case, that’s their own preference, but based on my experience and what I’ve witnessed, that’s not the case for most.

The difference being is that as these are characters, we as readers or viewers are meant to analyze them. Not to justify them, or to excuse their actions, but we are given the advantage of the outsider perspective to piece their characters together in context, understand why they are how they are, and witness them change; maybe I just haven’t been exposed to enough of the fandom, but no one (I’ve witnessed) treats the idea that “maybe Bakugou has feelings he can’t process or understand and so they manifest in aggressive and unchecked ways'' as a solution to his inability to communicate or process in a healthy way, rather it is just part of the explanation of his character, something is needs to — and is — working through. The solution to his middle school self is not the revelation of a “teehee, secret crush”, but self-reflection, remorse, and actively working to better oneself, which I do believe is canonically reflected, especially as of recently.

In canon, they are written to be partners, better together than apart, and I genuinely believe that one can like the Bakudeku dynamic not by route of romanticization but by observation.

I do think we are meant to see parallels between him and Endeavor; Endeavor is a high profile abuser who embodies the flaws and hypocrisy of the hero system. Bakugou is a schoolyard bully who emulates and internalizes the flaws of this system as a child, likely due to the structure of the society and the way that children will absorb the propaganda they are exposed to; the idea that Quirks, or power, define the inherent value of the individual, their ability to contribute to society, and subsequently their fundamental human worth. The difference between them is the fact that Endeavor is the literal adult who is fully and knowingly active within a toxic, corrupt system who forces his family to undergo a terrifying amount of trauma and abuse while facing little to no consequences because he knows that his status and the values of their society will protect him from those consequences. In other words, Endeavor is the threat of what Bakugou could have, and would have, become without intervention or genuine change.

Comparisons between characters, as parallels or foils, are tricky in that they imply but cannot confirm sameness. Having parallels with someone does not make them the same, by the way, but can serve to illustrate contrasts, or warnings. Harry Potter, for example, is meant to have obvious parallels with Tom Riddle, with similar abilities, and tragic upbringings. That doesn’t mean Harry grows up to become Lord Voldemort, but rather he helps lead a cross-generational movement to overthrow the facist regime. Harry is offered love, compassion, and friends, and does not embrace the darkness within or around him. As far as moldy old snake men are concerned, they do not deserve a redemption arc because they do not wish for one, and the truest of change only occurs when you actively try to change.

To be frank, either way, Bakugou was probably going to become a good Hero, in the sense that Endeavor is a ‘good’ Hero. Hero capitalized, as in a pro Hero, in the sense that it is a career, an occupation, and a status. Because of his strong Quirk, determination, skill, and work ethic, Bakugou would have made a good Hero. Due to his lack of character, however, he was not on the path to become a hero; defender of the weak, someone who saves people to save people, who is willing to make sacrifices detrimental to themselves, who saves people out of love.

It is necessary for him to undergo both a redemption arc and a symbolic death and rebirth in order for him to follow the path of a hero, having been inspired and prompted by Deku.

I personally don’t really like Endeavor’s little redemption arc, not because I don’t believe that people can change or that they shouldn't at least try to atone for the atrocities they have committed, but because within any narrative, a good redemption arc is important if it matters; what also matters is the context of that arc, and whether or not it was needed. For example, in ATLA, Zuko’s redemption arc is widely regarded as one of the best arcs in television history, something incredible. And it is. That shit fucks. In a good way.

It was confirmed that Azula was also going to get a redemption arc, had Volume 4 gone on as planned, and it was tentatively approached in the comics, which are considered canon. She is an undeniably bad person (who is willing to kill, threaten, exploit, and colonize), but she is also a child, and as viewers, we witness and recognize the factors that contributed to her (debatable) sociopathy, and the way that the system she was raised in failed her. Her family failed her; even Uncle Iroh, the wise mentor who helps guide Zuko to see the light, is willing to give up on her immediately, saying that she’s “crazy” and needs to be “put down”. Yes, it’s comedic, and yes, it’s pragmatic, but Azula is fourteen years old. Her mother is banished, her father is a psychopath, and her older brother, from her perspective, betrayed and abandoned her. She doesn’t have the emotional support that Zuko does; she exploits and controls her friends because it’s all she’s been taught to do; she says herself, her “own mother thought [she] was a monster; she was right, of course, but it still [hurts]”. A parent who does not believe in you, or a parent that uses you and will hurt you, is a genuine indicator of trauma.

The writers understood that both Zuko and Azula deserved redemption arcs. One was arguably further gone than the other, but that doesn’t change the fact that they are both children, products of their environment, who have the time, motive, and reason to change.

In contrast, you know who wouldn’t have deserved a redemption arc? Ozai. That simply would not have been interesting, wouldn’t have served the narrative well, and honestly, is not needed, thematically or otherwise. Am I comparing Ozai to Endeavor? Basically, yes. Fuck those guys. I don’t see a point in Endeavor’s little “I want to be a good dad now” arc, and I think that we don’t need to sympathize with characters in order to understand them or be interested in them. I want Touya/Dabi to expose his abuse, for his career to crumble, and then for him to die.

If they are not challenging the system that we the viewer are meant to question, and there is no thematic relevance to their redemption, is it even needed?

On that note, am I saying that Bakugou is the equivalent to Zuko? No, lmao. Definitely not. They are different characters with different progressions and different pressures. What I am saying is that good redemption arcs shouldn’t be handed out like candy to babies; it is the quality, rather than the quantity, that makes a redemption arc good. In terms of the commentary of the narrative, who needs a redemption arc, who is deserving, and who does it make sense to give one to?

In this case, Bakugou checks those boxes. It was always in the cards for him to change, and he has. In fact, he’s still changing.

Give it to Me Straight. It’s Homophobic.

There does seem to be an urge to obsessively gender either Bakugou or Deku, in making Deku the ultra-feminine, stereotypically hyper-sexualized “woman” of the relationship, with Bakugou becoming similarly sexualized but depicted as the hyper-masculine bodice ripper. On some level, that feels vaguely homophobic if not straight up misogynistic, in that in a gay relationship there’s an urge to compel them to conform under heteronormative stereotypes in order to be interpreted as real or functional. On one hand, I will say that in a lot of cases it feels like more of an expression of a kink, or fetishization and subsequent expression of internalized misogyny, at least, rather than a genuine exploration of the complexity and power imbalances of gender dynamics, expression, and boundaries.

That being said, I don’t think that that problematic aspect of shipping is unique to Bakudeku, or even to the fandom in general. We’ve all read fan work or see fanart of most gay ships in a similiar manner, and I think it’s a broader issue to be addressed than blaming it on a singular ship and calling it a day.

One interpretation of Bakugou’s character is his repression and the way his character functions under toxic masculinity, in a society’s egregious disregard for mental and emotional health (much like in the real world), the horrifying ways in which rage is rationalized or excused due to the concept of masculinity, and the way that characteristics that are associated with femininity — intellect, empathy, anxiety, kindness, hesitation, softness — are seen as stereotypically “weak”, and in men, traditionally emasculating. In terms of the way that the fictional universe is largely about societal priority and power dynamics between individuals and the way that extends to institutions, it’s not a total stretch to guess that gender as a construct is a relevant topic to expand on or at least keep in mind for comparison.

I think that the way in which characters are gendered and the extent to which that is a result of invasive heteronormativity and fetishization is a really important conversation to have, but using it as a case-by-case evolution of a ship used to condemn people isn’t conductive, and at that point, it’s treated as less of a real concern but an issue narrowly weaponised.

Love in Perspective, from the East v. West

Another thing I think could be elaborated on and written about in great detail is the way that the Eastern part of the fandom and the Western part of the fandom have such different perspectives on Bakudeku in particular. I am not going to go in depth with this, and there are many other people who could go into specifics, but just as an overview:

The manga and the anime are created for and targeted at a certain audience; our take on it will differ based on cultural norms, decisions in translation, understanding of the genre, and our own region-specific socialization. This includes the way in which we interpret certain relationships, the way they resonate with us, and what we do and do not find to be acceptable. Of course, this is not a case-by-case basis, and I’m sure there are plenty of people who hold differing beliefs within one area, but speaking generally, there is a reason that Bakudeku is not regarded as nearly as problematic in the East.

Had this been written by a Western creator, marketed primarily to and within the West (for reference, while I am Chinese, but I have lived in the USA for most of my life, so my own perspective is undoubtedly westernized), I would’ve immediately jumped to make comparisons between the Hero System and the American police system, in that a corrupt, or bastardized system is made no less corrupt for the people who do legitimately want to do good and help people, when that system disproportionately values and targets others while relying on propaganda that society must be reliant on that system in order to create safe communities when in reality it perpetuates just as many issues as it appears to solve, not to mention the way it attracts and rewards violent and power-hungry people who are enabled to abuse their power. I think comparisons can still be made, but in terms of analysis, it should be kept in mind that the police system in other parts of the world do not have the same history, place, and context as it does in America, and the police system in Japan, for example, probably wasn’t the basis for the Hero System.

As much as I do believe in the Death of the Author in most cases, the intent of the author does matter when it comes to content like this, if merely on the basis that it provides context that we may be missing as foreign viewers.

As far as the intent of the author goes, Bakugou is on a route of redemption.

He deserves it. It is unavoidable. That, of course, may depend on where you’re reading this.

Stuck in the Sludge, the Past, and Season One

If there’s one thing, to me, that epitomizes middle school Bakugou, it’s him being trapped in a sludge monster, rescued by his Quirkless childhood friend, and unable to believe his eyes. He clings to the ideology he always has, that Quirkless means weak, that there’s no way that Deku could have grown to be strong, or had the capacity to be strong all along. Bakugou is wrong about this, and continuously proven wrong. It is only when he accepts that he is wrong, and that Deku is someone to follow, that he starts his real path to heroics.

If Bakudeku’s relationship does not appeal to someone for whatever reason, there’s nothing wrong with that. They can write all they want about why they don’t ship it, or why it bothers them, or why they think it’s problematic. If it is legitimately triggering to you, then by all means, avoid it, point it out, etc. but do not undermine the reality of abuse simply to point fingers, just because you don’t like a ship. People who intentionally use the anti tag knowing it’ll show up in the main tag, go after people who are literally minding their own business, and accuse people of supporting abuse are the ones looking for a fight, and they’re annoying as hell because they don’t bring anything to the table. No evidence, no analysis, just repeated projection.

To clarify, I’m referring to a specific kind of shipper, not someone who just doesn’t like a ship, but who is so aggressive about it for absolutely no reason. There are plenty of very lovely people in this fandom, who mind their own business, multipship, or just don’t care.

Calling shippers dumb or braindead or toxic (to clarify, this isn’t targeting any one person I’ve seen, but a collective) based on projections and generalizations that come entirely from your own impression of the ship rather than observation is...really biased to me, and comes across as uneducated and trigger happy, rather than constructive or helpful in any way.

I’m not saying someone has to ship anything, or like it, in order to be a ‘good’ participant. But inserting derogatory material into a main tag, and dropping buzzwords with the same tired backing behind it without seeming to understand the implications of those words or acknowledging the development, pacing, and intentional change to the characters within the plot is just...I don’t know, it comes across as redundant, to me at least, and very childish. Aggressive. Toxic. Problematic. Maybe the real toxic shippers were the ones who bitched and moaned along the way. They’re like little kids, stuck in the past, unable to visualize or recognize change, and I think that’s a real shame because it’s preventing them from appreciating the story or its characters as it is, in canon.

But that’s okay, really. To each their own. Interpretations will vary, preferences differ, perspectives are not uniform. There is no one truth. There are five seasons of the show, a feature film, and like, thirty volumes as of this year.

All I’m saying is that if you want to stay stuck in the first season of each character, then that’s what you’re going to get. That’s up to you.

This may be edited or revised.

#bakudeku #meta #my hero academia #boko no hero academia #bnha #mha #bakugou katsuki #izuku midoriya #ok these are just my general thoughts in response to the people who have hang ups about this ship #like y’all need to pls chill tf out ok #this is also not comprehensive and could definitely be elaborated on #but it’s just general thoughts #it’s just addressing general opposition I’ve seen #I never thought I’d ever write this much about this ship wtf

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inspector-montoya-fox · 3 years

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so... why did Honor Among Thieves disappoint?

and i’m talking about the episode, not the game. as usual, i’m popping off on something based on my opinion, because i’m aware a lot of you like that episode. but i feel like conclusion levels aren’t SP’s forte ? let’s take a look:

Setting: if you’re gonna base an entire game on breaking into an island fortress, you better let us play in that island fortress. and that’s not the case. the setup was perfect: an evil island citadel, kinda paying homage to Clockwerk’s lair, heavily guarded by mutated animal hybrids, but inside, the entire Cooper legacy. so why did it end up being a pool of acid? and why do most preparatory missions take place around the island instead of on it? circling back to the Clockwerk level similarities, i really like the linear structure for final episodes, i think it ups the ante and the tension. the sense of choice and safety granted by optional mission order or the safehouse is stripped and with each level we get closer to the main baddie. but here, the missions feel detached because of the gang being all over the place. Sly first loses his cane and is unconscious and then the original gang disbands before entering the vault. i didn’t appreciate SP’s choice to sacrifice platforming for other modes of gameplay. i know that when game devs introduce new gameplay, they’re usually really proud of it (Arkham Knight’s over-dependence on the batmobile...) but giving us a single platforming mission in the entire final level was kinda sacrilegious, imo. i’ll touch upon the reason behind this in the next section, but this was supposed to be Sly’s level, maybe even the gang’s. but, until we get to the vault, there’s Carmelita shooting, Penelope RC, Guru brainwashing, Dimitri diving, plane fight, Murray brawling and Bentley grapple cam. i think that simply diluted the importance of this episode, and made it lacklustre. i’d rather play as Sly breaking into the island 100%. if you follow me, you probably know how i feel about TiT, but i want to reference the Feudal Japan map here: it really conveyed the sense of a palace fortress. yeah, it was a village, but throughout its circumference there were imperial structures to remind us that we were actually surrounded by the stronghold. i think it would be much more effective to have Kaine Island be some kind of military base or evil tech lab instead of a vat of acid. the game’s tutorial mission was loads of fun and very intriguing because we got to enter the island and look at its interior. that should have been maintained for the final episode. and even if SP didn’t have this vision for the island, dumping neon green liquid mass everywhere seemed lazy. if they wanted it to be desolate, they should have emulated Clockwer’s volcano exterior which was full of lava but had clear characteristics.

Themes: the reason behind the various modes of gameplay was probably to express the theme of camaraderie and show that even if this is Sly’s legacy, all thieves are honourable. everyone gets to help out in some way, and that help is elevated further when Sly, the gang’s supposedly best asset, is benched. i really admire this, i think it’s a nice concluding message to a game which focuses on teamwork and how everyone is a unique individual, despite belonging on a team. that being said, the gameplay came across as repetitive, like Penelope and the Guru’s sections, or abysmal, like the underwater bossfight. i feel like they could have showed that message in a better way, one which wouldn’t require an entire gameplay section. although it was quite “silly”, having the Panda King transport the RC car and the van was an efficient way to show how he helped out without having us endure more firework gameplay. this way, there’d be more room for, again, platforming, which is much needed in this episode. at least the theme is explored well this way, like no one would doubt that the team cares for each other now. the other major theme is, obviously, legacy. unlike the camaraderie theme, this was explicitly presented. you literally go through your dead ancestors belongings. the mission is pretty cool too, i don’t have many complaints. i like how Sly has to channel each ancestor and their signature move in order to get through the obstacles they’ve set. and when the time came to go through Conner’s section, and Sly asked him what to do because he genuinely didn’t know... i lowkey kinda felt so emotional. the theme shows how Sly has come full circle, despite his minimal character development. we start off the series by collecting Thievius Racconus entries from ancestors he only heard about when he was a child, to coursing through what they left behind for us specifically. it’s really nice, and i think it’s what prevents this episode from being a complete disaster, like it’s the highlight of the whole thing.

Plot: my main beef with this episode was Bentley and Murray not entering the vault, despite SP putting in so much some work to portray them as equals. i’ve said time and time again that i absolutely love the Bentley x Dr Matt conversation because it hinted at an older version of the gang, and that Watchmen dynamic is so powerful, especially when the predecessor reaches out to their successor in a messiah kind of way (long sentence, sorry if i’m not making any sense). point is: why would they have this conversation if Bentley and Murray ultimately ended up staying behind? i get that Bentley inherits the Thievius Raccoonus at the end, but that’s a whole different discussions. like, they should have gone into the vault to show how they are as much a part of the Cooper legacy as Sly. i’m not sure how the gameplay would be, like maybe they’d get separated and meet up at the end, but i seriously wish they had followed Sly. but anyway, they didn’t, and then the amnesia thing happens... the perfect way to describe that is ‘bittersweet’. on the one hand, the entire vault and legacy come crushing down; on the other hand, Sly gets with Carmelita. this is perhaps the most development he gets throughout the course of three games. the Coopers are obviously obsessed with maintaining traditions and the lineage (which is weird when you consider all of them dropped like flies at the sight of Clockwerk, like you’d think after a few generations the fuckers would have some sort of back-up) so it’s interesting to think that Sly is the anomaly. he doesn’t have his own cane, he’s in love with a cop, he never introduced his own move to the book, and he ultimately decided he didn’t want to upkeep the Cooper legacy but reinvent it and start anew. so yeah, like that was a nice touch but everything happens so quickly and it’s a lot to take in

i don’t want to say that Honor Among Thieves is a bad case, but i think it doesn’t live up to the build-up of the entire game. one of the reasons why Sly 2′s ending was better was because the game went out of its way to establish a specific course the events would supposedly follow by telling us ‘here are the villains’ at Rajan’s ball. and then, as a direct result, Arpeggio’s death and ClockLa’s genesis came as such a big surprise. but here, we were promised a vault so difficult to get in that we needed to recruit outcasts from all over the globe, and at the end there wasn’t a twist. that’s just literally what happened. holy hell that was blunt.

#the remnants of The Episode Project are somewhere echoing in the background #spent my entire morning thinking about how Gen 9's starters should be fairy/ dark/ normal to play on morality instead of water/ fire/ grass #and then have three legendaries and make them water/ fire/ grass #or remove starters altogether? not sure about how that would work though #lots of thoughts head empty #and they have lots of time to actually implement change (not that they necessarily will) because of the Gen 4 remakes and Legends: Arceus #Legends: Arceus doesn't look promising i'm sorry babes... with that 1 FPS !? no no absolutely not #i showed my friend the trailer and i noticed that when a ball is thrown at the Shinx the one next to it doesn't even flinch...#unconventional opinion: pokemon should react like animals in the wild? interacting with each other and their surroundings? insane right?#sly cooper #lol i'm such a clown sometimes

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i-need-entertainment · 3 years

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Chronostasis + “If the world was ending”

This is the 19th Oneshot for the Valentines Day Event, thank you so much to @purplefrost21 for requesting Chrono! I went ahead and picked a song, I hope this is okay! If you would like something different, feel free to message me!!

Starting now, I will also be splitting the writings into paragraphs, thank you to the anon who requested this, I appreciate it!

**Also, I wrote the hassaikai how I usually write it, slightly edited cause, ~plot reasons~ Overhaul will be not OOC, but a decent person and yeah**

Warnings- Pregnancy, allusions to iNtiMaCy but obviously no actual smut cause I don’t write it, eensy teensy amount of suggestiveness i gUess??? Not really?? idk but i’ll put it here anyway

Character: Chronostasis x reader

It’s been one year since you and Chrono had decided to call it quits. It’s also been one year since you decided to leave the hassaikai. You had known Chrono since you were 18, you had been down on your luck and had no where to go. That is until Pops found you and brought you in. You were quick to make friends with Chrono, matching his teasing and laid back personality nicely with your own. Four years later and you and Chrono’s friendship had developed into a different type of relationship.

You often spent your nights together, sneaking around and keeping your relationship under wraps. You loved Chrono, in every sense of the word. You had given him your everything and he had given you his. You both were deeply and madly in love with each other, and you both could honestly see yourselves with each other for the rest of your lives.

At least, that was the plan...”I think we need to break up.” You remember how the sound of your heart cracking echoed in your ears, your chest felt like 2 tons had been dropped onto your lungs, and time slowed to a pitiful stop. “...what?” He sighed as he took your hands into his, head hung low as he neglected to look you in the eye. “...The hassaikai isn’t what it used to be, it’s not safe for us to have a relationship anymore...I’m sorry Y/n, but I don’t think we should see each other anymore, any pursuit of a relationship would only be a distraction, it’s best if we...don’t see each other any more.” You hastily brought your sleeve to your eye to wipe the tears that had started to fall, trying to keep a smile on your face as you nodded.

“...okay..” Chrono’s eyes widened, “Are you su-” “Yes.” You patted his knee as you stood, walking to the door of his room, giving him one last ‘smile’, “Good bye Hari.” You left his room, walking to your own and closing your door with a sigh. You sat down on your bed, hands grasping your knees as your sobs broke through, wet tears sliding down your face and onto the jeans you wore. You sat there, painful realization after realization came crashing down on you. ‘we’re done’..’he broke up with me’...’I-I have to do this alone’....’I can’t stay here.’

You hiccuped as your eyes widened, you stood and moved to kneel beside your bed, dragging your old suitcase out from under your bed. You packed as much as you could into it- not like you had much, before you rolled it to sit beside your door. You walked out and headed towards Overhaul’s office. You knocked on the door and entered when you heard a ‘come in’. You walked in and stood in front of his desk. “L/n..what can I do for you?” He leaned his chin on his fist as his elbow sat his his desk, his gold eyes looking as bored as they usually do.

“I’m sorry for the short notice, but i’m going to have to leave the compound for awhile..” His eyebrows raised as he sat up straight. “..Are you wanting to leave the Hassaikai?” You shook your head, “No, but, I’m going to need some time away...I’m pregnant.” He slowly nodded, “Maternity leave?” You nodded as you kept your gaze towards the floor, “Very well, I’ll give you an assignment further away, one that’ll keep you out of the field.” You nodded, saying a quiet ‘thank you’ as he wrote down the information/permissions you’d need.

You turned to leave, but before you could he spoke. “...does he know..?” You shook your head, “...no...but..I...I think it’s better if he doesn’t..not yet anyway...” He hummed as he sighed, “Well, if that’s what you think is best, you’re dismissed.” You nodded as you opened the door and left, walking to your room to get your suitcase before you left.

It’s been a year since you last saw Chrono. You had tried to let him go, to forget and leave him in the past. But that was a lot harder than you had originally anticipated. Because you still loved him. You would have thought that after a year of not having seen him after he broke up with you, you’d be able to leave him in the past. But you couldn’t. Cries took you out of your critical thinking. You shook yourself out of it before walking over to your little boy, Hayato. He was only 3 months, so he was still little...and quite the crier..But no matter how many sleepless nights or mini breakdowns you might have trying to get him to sleep, your entire heart belonged to your son, your little Hayato.

You came in and softly spoke to your crying baby, softly picking him up and holding him by his bottom, softly cradling his head where it laid on your shoulder. You slowly swayed side to side as you held him, softly humming as you did this. His cries subsided, soft little *cute* hiccups escaping his small body as you rubbed his back. Sometimes nothing was wrong, he just needed to be held, comforted...you knew the feeling. You cuddled him for a little longer before you felt him calm down, and seeing as it was 10 past midnight, you set him down in his crib, making sure his stuffed elephant was close by.

Giving his forehead one last kiss you walked out of his room, cracking the door and going to the kitchen to finish making the tea you were going to drink. Blowing on the hot cup you sat down on the couch, turning so you could look out the tall windows that were almost floor to ceiling. You only had a few lights on so the view of the city at night was clear. You sighed as you brought the tea cup to your mouth, taking a slow sip while your feet came up onto the couch with you. You sat there in the silence, the buzzing of various electronics in the background and the occasional sound of your sips the only noise filling the room. You smiled as you took a peak at the baby monitor you kept on the small end table, your little baby snuggling the small animal your boss, a good friend of Pops, gifted your son when he was born.

All things considered, you were doing quite well for yourself. You had a high paying job as an assistant for a, despite being a hassaikai leader, kind boss who gave you a few months off to care for your child. You were able to live off compound in a good school district in a nice safe area. You were set on giving your baby the best life you could, the life you never got to have. *Knock knock* You slowly set the cup down on the table, moving the baby monitor into a drawer (you always made sure to hide it when ever business partners or anyone work related came, your sons safety was your utmost priority). You walked to the door and took a look through the peep hole, when you did your heart sped up, heart sinking to your gut. Because the man on the other side of the door was someone you didn’t expect to see for a long, long time.

**2 hours ago in the Shie Hassaikai base**

Chrono groaned as he sat down in the couch in Overhaul’s office, mask sitting beside him on the couch as he leaned his head back to rest against the back of the couch. “You look dead.” Chrono scoffed as his hand came to rub at his eyes. “Gee thanks, I really needed to hear that. I almost forgot my life sucked- thanks for the reminder.” Overhaul shrugged, leaning back in his chair and closing his eyes. “...When was the last time you saw her?”

Chrono sighed, “....when she left the hassaikai...I haven’t heard from her since..I screwed up bad.” Overhaul now sighed as he reopened his eyes, turning his gaze to Chrono. “I’d say...” Chrono shot a glare towards his friend, Overhaul simply shrugging. “....she asked me not to tell you, but seeing as you’re miserable and I know you, i’m going to tell you anyways...” Chrono raised an eyebrow as Overhaul stood from his desk, leaning down to write something on a small piece of paper. He walked over to the couch, tossing the paper onto the couch beside his friend.

Chrono picked it up, eyes narrowing as it listed an apartment complex and a suite number. “..The heck is this?” Overhaul walked back to his desk and sat down. “Her address....I’d prepare myself if I were you, she’s not the only one you left behind.” Chrono narrowed his eyes at the man, “What do you-” “Tell me Kurono, why did you think she suddenly left, to do office work nonetheless, right after you broke up with her?” Chrono looked down, “I’m not sure....I figured she was mad, upset..figured she just didn’t want to see me anymore.” Overhaul hummed, “Well, that’s partly true, but no. She left because she wasn’t the only one she had to look after anymore.��

Chrono looked towards Overhaul, “...what are you saying?” Overhaul frowned (yes he’s still wearing a mask cHill) “..I’m saying there’s someone else in the picture now, your picture.” Like a flip being switched his eyes shot open. “...I got her pregnant..” “Bingo.” “...and I broke up with her..” “Yup.” “..I have a son i’ve never met..” “Or daughter.” Chrono glared at Overhaul, who was finding the situation unnervingly amusing. “We can keep bantering back and forth or you can go, I don’t care either way, but I do have work to do.”

Shakily sighing Chrono stood, walking to the door. Turning around he looked to his old friend, “...thank you.” Overhaul waved him off with a sigh, “Thank me when you finally get your life back together.” Grinning Chrono walked out of the office, paper in hand and heart filled with determination. He was going to make this right.

**Back to present time**

Undoing the chain and bolt you unlocked the door. “...Hari..?” Everything he had prepared to say flew out the window when he saw you. You looked different..not in a bad way, but he could tell you had matured. You had your hair pulled back and held loosely by a clip, you were wearing a loose t-shirt and some leggings. “..Y/n..” You both stared at each other, neither one believing that the other was actually there. Snapping yourself out of your daze you spoke, “Uhm, what are you doing here? Not that it’s not great to see you! I just- I didn’t expect you to be...here..”

He nodded, hands going into his pockets to hide how shaky they had become. “..I....I needed to talk to you...I need make things right.” You looked at him with a nervous expression, arms coming to cross in front of your chest, not in anger or frustration but to try to ground yourself. “I love you Y/n, and I don’t know what was going through my head when I broke up with you, but please believe me when I tell you it was the stupidest thing i’ve ever done. I never stopped loving you either, when I ended things it was because I thought it was the best thing to do at the time, I thought you deserved better...I didn’t think I could give you better...I’m so sorry. I was selfish and I hurt you and i’m so sorry.”

You started to tear up, one of your hands coming up to wipe the tears that escaped. Shaking your head you gave him a small smile. “I never hated you...I don’t think I can. And I definitely never stopped loving you...This past year has been harder than you know, well, you might, you don’t look too good.” Chrono just chuckled as he shook his head, you lightly laughing. “..Just promise you won’t do that again..? I don’t want to be alone, and I don’t want to do this alone anymore either.” He looked confused for a second. “Wait here...there’s someone who wants to meet you.”

His heart sped up as you walked back to your sons room, him walking into the small entryway and shutting/locking the door behind him. He wring his hands together, heart rate speeding up and his mind racing. He took a shaky breath in as you walked out of the room, but it caught in his throat when his dark eyes met identical ones. His gulped as he looked up to see you, silently asking for permission. Smiling you walked over to him, gently holding you- well, the two of you’s son out to him. He very carefully brought his son into his arms, holding him with his left as his right softly traced over his small features.

He almost broke when his son latched onto his finger, he smiled towards his son, shoulders shaking as he held back tears. “His name is Hayato.” He looked to you and smiled, before looking back down to his little baby. “Hi Hayato...it’s nice to meet you...sorry i’m a little late...daddy was busy being an idiot.” He playfully glared when you said ‘Yeah he was’ before softening his look when he returned his gaze to Hayato. “But i’m here now...and I’m never going away again..I promise you that.” He looked up to you, meeting your glassy e/c eyes with his own gray ones. “Both of you.”

After a good hour of holding his son you both put him to bed. Slowly cracking his door closed once again, you both moved to sit in the family room. But before he could sit you softly grabbed his arm. He turned around, stumbling when you threw yourself towards him, wrapping your arms tightly around his waist. He wrapped his arms around you, pulling you as close to him as he possibly could, head nuzzling into your shoulder. “...I was really scared you’d never come back...when you left, I knew I screwed up big time, but I thought you needed your space...but shoot, if I had known you were pregnant-” You shook your head, pulling away to look him in the eyes, hands coming to rest on his chest while his remained on your waist.

“No, that parts my fault, and don’t even refute it...I didn’t tell you because I thought it would hold you back...that I would hold you back..and I didn’t want to keep you in a relationship you wouldn’t be happy in...but he’s your son, I should have told you.” He leaned down to rest his forehead back on your shoulder. He sighed as he chuckled, “We both made some pretty dumb choices, let’s leave it at that.” You laughed, cradling his head and running your fingers, carefully, through his hair.

You were just enjoying the moment when he started to softly kiss your shoulder, before he stood to his normal height and kissed your lips. His hands moved down to your hips, yours around his neck when you pulled away. “Uh uh, I know where this is going- I just had a kid 3 months ago, the last thing I need is another one!” Shrugging he leaned down to kiss your cheek, you almost gave in to the moment, caught up in the sheer romance of the gesture before he leaned closer to your ear, “The more the merrier~” Him laughing when you squealed as he picked you up and slung you over his shoulder.

You started to slap his back in protest before he ‘gently’ set you down on your bed, him climbing to the side of you to pull you in close, holding you like at any moment he’d wake up, this having all been a cruel dream. But when you wrapped your arms around him and burrowed into his chest he knew, he wasn’t too late. And as he drifted off to sleep that night, with you finally back in his arms, he couldn’t help but think that maybe it was luck, or even fate, but whatever it was that brought you back together, Chrono knew he would always find his way back to you.

“If the world was ending You'd come over, right?”

#chronostasis #chrono #chronostasis x reader #hari kurono #hari kurono x reader #BNHA #bnha x reader #bnha fanfiction #bnha villains #shie hassaikai #Valentines Day Event 2021 #y/n

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popculturebuffet · 3 years

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Goof Week: Goof Troop: Forever Goof Review (Everything’s Coming Up Goofy, Good Neighbor Goof, Gotta Be Gettin Goofy) (Commission for WeirdKev27)

Yahhahhooooeeeey all you happy people! WELCOME TO GOOF WEEK! Now normally when a character who got their start in theatrical shorts has a birthday, I do a marathon of them. I have since last year with Donald and it’s one of my favorite things: it allows me to explore Disney’s rich history of them I was largely unaware of till Disney+, and allows me to revisit the shorts I grew up with in the case of The Looney Tunes or Tom and Jerry while discovering new favorites. SO naturally with Goofy’s birthday in two days I intended to do the same for him, especially since I’d covered Donald and Mickey the same way.

But fate had other ideas. Not thinking about this tradition, Kev, my patreon, friend and the guy who commissions a LOT of reviews from me ($5 an episode if your curious and I WILL make room on the schedule so your commission gets done as soon as possible), suggested reviewing the Goof Troop pilot movie Forever Goofy, later split into the episode Everything’s Coming Up Goofy and Good Neighbor. I loved the idea since I genuinely loved Goof Troop, and decided to do both that week.

It’s then I got a great idea.. why limit myself to JUST doing two things? I hit my 15 dollar patreon stretch goal, so a review of the Goofy Movie was on the Horizon anyway, and for it’s anniversary year Kev has been commissioning House of Mouse Episodes, so it wouldn’t be THAT much of an ask (and it wasn’t) to simply randomly select from a pool of Goofy-Centric episodes instead of all the episodes.

Thus GOOF WEEK was born, and Kev once again proved vital to all this by suggesting the special Sports Goof from the 80′s. I’d like to give him special thanks as outside of the Shorts Special, which as a patreon he still got to pick one and if you’d like to pick one for Donald’s special, sign on up even one dollar patreons get the honor. , this week is either entirely paid for by him or in the case of A Goofy Movie, is partly thanks to him. I wouldn’t be able to do NEARLY as many reviews nor make money off this without you bud, so thank you.

So naturally given the idea to do this two parter gave me the idea for this week and that Goofy Movie makes a logical finale for said week, it only made sense to start the week with Goof Troop. Bop-dop-da-da-do-bop, YEAH.

Goof Troop is the first Disney Afternoon show I ever watched and the only one I watched when I was younger, as Disney Channel used to play it ocasinally when I was younger and Toon Disney would do the same and I even got to Marthoon it when Disney XD did a weekend marathon. Given it starred my faviorite Disney Character, Donald hadn’t worked his way up to tying with him quite yet, I loved what I could grab of it. And as an adult.. it still holds up. It has problems i’ll get into, but it is a real good time so I was exastic to get an excuse to watch some of it and much like with Darkwing wish I had sooner.

Before I can h-h-h-hit it though, I have to talk about the series history. I ALMOST didn’t find anything: much like the other Disney Afternoon shows there really wasn’t much on the Disney wiki nor wikipedia, google turned up nothing... it wasn’t till I went to the Tv Tropes Trivia Page for the series, where i’d remembered reading about some early versions of the show, that I hit gold: A two part behind the scenes blog post by series co-creator Michael Peraza. You can find part one HERE and part two HERE. It’s a short but fascinating read.

Speaking of fascenating Peraza himself is someone i’d never heard of till reading this article but damn if he isn’t a legend. Seriously the guy’s career is as an unsung hero, starting work under the Legendary Nine Old Men, and working on some of disney’s greatest films: The Great Mouse Detective, Aladdin, The LIttle Mermaid, and Beauty and the Beast, along with live action cult classics Tron and Return to Oz via concept art. And concept art is where he’d hit his stride: he did conceptual work for all the big Disney Afternoon shows apart from Gargoyles, being one of the key guys in the early days of Disney Television animation. He didn’t stop at just designing things either as he worked as Art Director for Ducktales, The Proud Family and of course given how vital he was to it’s creation, Goof Troop, and to this days gives lectures with his wife to aspiring animators. He even did some guest work for the 2017 Ducktales Episode “Treasure of the Found Lamp!”. So yeah dude’s awesome

So how did he come to be a key part of this show’s creation? Well he’d just finished up some concept work on some other Disney Afternoon shows, and being a company man was glad to report to the Goof Troop..ers to help as the show was having trouble getting off the ground. The reason for this was the creative exec, who Peraza didn’t name out of kindness as the guy wasn’t a BAD person.. just a clueless one, this being his first job in film and tv. As such rather than work hard to develop around goofy or focus on his strengths the kid threw out one concept after another: The series got it’s name from a pitch that had Goofy as a scoutmaster, something I was glad to finally know. To quote Peraza

“ Although while I was doodling versions of the show that were destined to never see the light of the TV screen, the pitch date remained etched in stone and kept creeping closer. Various versions would find their way to the surface only to sink again into the wasteland known as the roundfile (trashcan). One moment Goofy was the Captain of the Fire Department, the next day a detective out of the Maltese Falcon mold, or a swash buckling hero fighting The Flying Dutchman.

The supporting cast he came up with really wasn't very supportive when you consider they sometimes included alien dragon babies with wings along with a large gorilla. Somebody at Walt Disney Television Animation must have really had a thing for giant gorillas around this time as they were plugged into almost every concept we assembled.”

It was clear that while Goofy COULD fit into just about anything, this exec was just throwing everything at the wall, nothing was sticking, and rather than try to refine his supporting cast, they kept having to throw them out and start over. And dont’ get me wrong, cartoons go through a lot of development and changes as they go.. but it’s usually born from a concept and usually by this point, they at least have what the show will be ABOUT in stone. While i’ve had the same creative changes and what not when coming up with projects that ultimately never saw the light of day, and currentlly some I hope to but might not, I’m not being paid by a studio to do this nor had a hard deadline. I was just spitballing trying to get something anything off the ground before reviewing gave me a steady outlet for my creativity and thus ballanced me to take my time with stuff. Peraza WAS turning out amazing art, like this concept art for the fireman pitch that honeslty makes me want to see it as a series. Who DOSEN’T want to see 9-11 with Goofy as the main character? Throw in Donald and grown up versions of Max, PJ and PIstol (And even not THAT much for the former two, as they did go off to college and all), don’t forget Roxanne this time out and you have a worthy goofy movie sequel.

So yeah this wasn’t working and the latest pitch was not great: Putting Goofy in ToonTown as a cabbie driving the Cab from Who Framed Roger Rabbit. As Peraza TRIED to point out to the exec, putting Goofy in a naturally goofy setting didn’t really play to the characters strength, his whole shtick being a goofus in a normal world. Enough of an every man to root for but also a slapstick joly weirdo.

The executive’s INCREDIBLY douchey response, especially since Peraza was a Disney Vetran at this point and had spent quite a lot of time on Ducktales, so he knew what he was talking about was “Do it anyway and leave the “Visionary” part to me”

As you can tell by MR. OOC there, this might be one of the most punchable sentences i’ve ever read.

So Peraza wasn’t in a great place and was naturally terrified when he got a call from Gary Krisel, president of Disney TVA, asking about the show and to see him about it.

Turns out though Krisel was a nice guy who already had a great working relatinship with Peraza, and genuinely wanted to know what was going on there and wanted his honest opinion. It’s why i’m not AGAINST executives in animation as sometimes they can come in when somethings clearly not working or allow a smooth transition of power if a propelmatic creator has to be booted off their own show so the show and i’ts crew don’t suffer as a result. It’s just more often than not they cause headaches or cancel shows for entirley stupid or self motivated reasons. But I will give credit where it’s do and point out times where there NOT stupid or homophobic or what have you and this is indeed one of those times.

Peraza was indeed straight with him: pointing out all the concepts they’d gone through, and like with the other guy honestly gave his opinon the ToonTown Pitch wasn’t working.. and he not only agreed but asked Peraza himself, actually respecting his experince instead of yelling at him that he has a vision that wouldn’t last the end of the day probably.

Peraza was HOPING this was where this was going and gladly gave him a far less high concept pitch and one truer to the character, quoted in full bellow:

“ My spiel went as follows, "Goofy is a recognized star of Disney animation, so why re-invent the wheel? His son is an average kid dealing with many of the usual issues they face: peer pressure, young love, grades, school bullies, and so on. On top of all that, he has the zaniest, wackiest GOOFIEST dad to live down. No matter how insane the situations get though, they will always love each other. They're a family." Gary asked how I would pitch it and I replied, "It's ONE day in the life of Goofy and son. From getting up in the morning to fixing breakfast, we see their difference side by side as his son tries to distance himself. No matter what though he knows deep inside that his father will always be there for him, whether he likes it or not."

If your wondering if Peraza noticed that that original pitch line is basically the peremise and emotioinal core of The Goofy Movie down pat.. your extremley correct and he notes that the film was based on said pitch even if he had no involvment with it that I could tell. The series would still use this but the whole embarasment aspect was toned down, and honestly fit a teenager better than an 11 year old..

So the exec loved it and Peraza shaped the core of the series: the idea of having Pete as his nemisis, pete having a nuclear family including a gorgeous wife, and the show being more slice of life and what not. He made some great sketches, got roaring approval and then pitched it to rousing success and the rest is history. Goof Troop was a moderate success and The Goofy Movie after it is a classic beloved by all. We have this wonderful man to thank for all that and I also thank him , on the offchance he ever sees this, for bringing Goofy into modern times in a way that did the man-dog justice. It’s thank to you we got this fun series, two great movies, and a goofy the way he is today: the best of everything about him rolled into one. Thanks man, free review.. not htat you NEED It since you’ve worked on things i’ve covered and what not, but I feel like I should offer. Outside of Peraza, I found one last bit of making of stuff before I get to the premiere proper. These two early concept shots:

The first has Max who both looks older and has red hair like he did in the shorts. Honestly I see a lot of his Goofy Movie self in thiis design, the only diffrence obviously being the red hair which was wisely changed to make the boy look more like goofy, something kept for the movie.

The more intresting one is this shot of the Pete’s. Starting with Pete he’s more athletic and has a perfectly tacky outfit. While changing him to be a bit more slovenly honestly fit this version of the character better, I do wish they’d kept hte outfit as the tacky gold and green jacket, the gold chain, the open ollar.. it all fits this version of pete so well, as well as his illusion of being a big shot when he is in fact a medium one. Peg is both slightly younger looking and far more doting and is so different I swear this picture looks like Pete remarried after the divorce and got some lipo. Pistol has about the same design but with a vastly different, more Isabella-ish outfit. Finally we have PJ who looks the same, but has a diffrent outfit and a far more sour demeanor, probably meant to be a bully. My best guess is sthis stuff comes from the pitch, and was likely made to simply get the basic premise across before fine tuning the characters for series

So with all of that out of the way i’m calling eveyrone to join in the fun under the cut and report to the Goof Troop.

Everything’s Coming Up Goofy:

Our first episode opens in a small but cozy trailer, where Goofy’s cooking up lunch as only goofy could: by making osme meatballs then serving them to his son over a game of table tennis, with Max doing the same. It’s really freaking adorable, and a dynamic i’m not used to since i’m more familiar with Teen Max. Seeing Max genuinely get into his dad’s hyjinks and enjoy them.. it just warms the heart and adds weight to The Goofy Movie by knowing there was a time the two really were thick is thieves before the stygian hole that is high school drained all that out of him.

So the two are like buddies and pals until the Mailman arrives, not even phased at this point. Turns out it’s a Diploma, and with this Goofy can get a job he’s been up for in Spoonerville and plans to move immediately. Max is devisated he’ll loose his friends and runs away to use a magical mystery box to keep them together only to end up in a land full of frogs with an old man who sounds like his dad minus the drawl and two other tinier frogs and ... I may have the wrong show. In fairness you try dislodging a finale where Keith David runs a 13 year old through with laser sword and then talk to me.

Goofy is sympathetic though: While he seems a tad oblivous to Max’s worries, it’s very clear he’s jumping on this job and this move so far to give his son a better life. Sure he runs through all the cartoon moving away talking points that don’t work in real life or most other cartoons such as there being a nice lake and that max can make new friends, and Max accepts it weirdly fast because this episode is only 22 minutes and they don’t have time for that subplot... but it’s clear the idea of a better paying job, a secure home not in an alleyway, and some stablility for his son is the real reason Goofy’s doing this, and he probably wants to simply give the boy the childhood he had growing up.

Meanwhile in Spoonerville, we meet Pete. To my shock this is where Jim Cummings took over the roll he was born for and has played since and with good reasons as Cummings is just amazing with Pete no matter the incarnation and excels here his penchant for playing jerks, hams and gravely voiced guys all coalesicing. Pete is planning on building what modern toxicly masculine weirdos such as himself would call a Man Cave on his lawn, because Pete is a very SPECIAL kind of douchebag. He also plans to stretch it into the neighboring property, tear down the house there and set it up.

This is news to his wife Peg, played by fellow voice acting Legend whose stillg ot it, April Winchell in her star making role. Peg is Pete’s strong willed wife who dosen’t put up with her husbands crap.. you know that trope that infected sitcoms for kids and adults of the doofy husband whose either a manchild , a skeevy self serving quipy asshole or some horrible combination of the two. The kind that has still been so prevealant the wife from one of said sitcoms helped produce a show about the wife finally doing the logical thing and plotting to kill the bastard. No really.. that’s an actual thing that’s happening. It’s even got a Little Bit of Alexis as Anne Murphy plays the poor, poor wife.

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And why yes the series is called Kevin Can Fuck Himself. And why yes said former sitcom wife was the same one on a sitcom called Kevin Can Wait who was fired because they wanted to retool the show with the wife from Kevin James other sitcom. That also is very really a thing that happened. Payback is a bitch aint it? Fun too.

But yeah from minute one Pete is a terrible husband: Peg is a realtor and thus is trying to sell the house because it’s her fucking job instead of letting her husband throw their family deep in debt to very likely illegally demolish a house so he has a giant yard to play in. I mean even if this is all played for jokes i’ts just not funny enough to not make him an utter bastard. The fact his response to her VERY valid criticism and subtextual worry he doesn’t’t take her career seriously is to fake a panic attack, from a very REAL tendency he turns out to have giant breakdowns under stress, to try and guilt her into letting him have his giant public man cave just backs this up.. as does the fact she simply glares at the camera as he’s clearly DONE this before.

Since I have to put up with this version of him for the rest of this episode, the next, AND a portion of the movie, i’m proudly introducing the Pete Sucks Counter. This will carry over to any other appearances of the guy from here on out. So that’s one for his insane plan, one for disrespecting his wife’s career and one for faking a panic attack to try and win an argument Pete Sucks Counter: 3

So because this episode ran short Peg caves and compromises: He can have the property if it isn’t sold by 9. So Pete does what ANY husband would do: uses his spy camera and booby traps he’s set up in the other house to try and scare away prospective buyers.

Yeah.. while the show TRIES to have Pete not as his old-timey villian self.. they traded in for him being fucking MODOK. I mean he is a grotesque monstrosity who has a nuclear family and spends all his time in a chair thing and can barely function as a Husband or Father. Though at least I can belivie MODOK LOVES his family which not so much with Pete.

To prove this Pete tries using a fake spider to scare some buyers then CALLS THEM TELLING THEM PEG IS A CON ARITST. I.e. something that if they mention to her bosses could get her FIRED. He respects his wife’s autonomy, what she wants and what she’s asked him for, which is a fair shot to sell the place before he tries to wreck the place, as well as likely what his neighbors want. I mean I can accept breaks from reality for comedy, snakebird is my boy.

So I can accept pete has this stuff.. I just can’t find it funny when these shenanignas very transparently show that while he surface level loves his wife he dosen’t respect her or actually listen to her except when she gets angry. He IS the villian so he’s still a slight step among monst sitcom dads but i’ts not great. I can find it funny that his den also functions as a super villian lair though. That shit will never not be great. Also Pete Sucks Counter: 6 For the record: one for the spider itself, one for having traps set up in a property hat both isn’t his and his wife is trying to sell and another for threatening her job and her self esteem as she is baffled at what she possibly did wrong.

So Goofy and Max get on the road, leaving moving the rest of their stuff to an old coot whose a friend of theres. So it’s goodbye Duckburg, Hello Spoonerville! And yes I headcanon this as Duckburg. Goof Troop is one of two shows that very clearly happened in SOME form, the other being Tailspin, the only difference being the time period (Goof Troop taking place in the 90′s and Tailspin in the 30′s or 40′s) and any adjustments for clashes with the 2017 verse. So going off that, we also know Donald and the boys KNOW goofy and didn’t remotely question his presence, as did the rest of the cast.

So figuring out the timeline, Goofy likely met Donald in college, even if he never finished college as per an Extremley Goofy Movie, which may not happen the same exact way given Goofy still has his old job and may not loose it in this timeline, though i’d like to think he still meets Sylvia. But point is he drops out, possibly to marry Max’s mom, they end up moving to Duckburg for her work, she sadly dies, and Goofy is left raising Max alone. Donald and Goofy likely bonded as single parents struggling in low paying 9-5 jobs. Goofy left here, likely said goodbye to Donald and the 5 or so year old boys offscreen , and left. As for how anyone else knows him that’s simple: he probably visits whenever he can. He’s a good friend, genuinely loves Donald like a brother in all continuities, and of course would show up with a progressively more then less grumpy Max every time. As for what I think the rest of the cast would think of him: Scrooge would hate him for his disaster area ways, but at least respect him as a hard worker, he just wouldn’t personally hire him which is.. it’s fair. Beakley would be aggravated by him. Webby would of course like him because she’s essentially him but competent and gay, and Launchpad and him .. god that’d be a joy to see. And drive up Scrooge’s insurance. Della would also like him obviously. I”m really disappointed we didn’t get a season 4 if for nothing else the fact we probably would’ve got another Goofy episode. It also feels weird he’s not in the finale in any way shape or form you know? Why have such a big guest spot for him and then just not bring him or Max back? GIVE ME MORE MAX DISNEY DAMN YOUUUUU So they move right along with Goofy excited to get back to where he once belonged, and to call Pete with the good news on his 90′s cell phone. Pete is utterly TERRIFIED finding out Goofy Comin and tries to send him off course to prevent it. Naturally despite nearly running into a truck, Goofy makes it to Spoonerville by evening anyway and we get a delightful bit that shows off BilL Farmer’s comedy skills as he rapidly lists off all the things in town while driving Max through town. It’s so damn smooth. This also is notable since before this farmer had just played the character in some DTV music videos, which stands for Disney not Denton but god I now want Shock Treatment with the Disney Crew. I mean who wouldn’t want Donald as Brad, Daisy as Janet, and Gladstone as Farley Flavors I ask you. Not sure who every one else would be i’m sorting that out. And if you don’t know what Shock Treatment is, here have this trailer with a nightmarish opening.

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Dammit now I want to watch Shock Treatment again... so I am. Found it in full on YouTube, and I feel no shame in sharing that as it’s not on VOD, nor any streaming service, the DVD, which I own, is out of print, and the Blu Ray is a UK exclusive. This film both needs to be seen more and needs another proper US release damn it!

So naturally Goofy somehow finds Pete’s house.. I dunno maybe Peg’s been sending him letters. Can’t blame her for having a wondering eye long as she dosen’t act on it. She’s married to a walking lump of ego, selfishness and cholesterol and likely only held on as long as she did for the kids. Which for the record Peg as a child of divorce whose parents got divorced rather than keep up a sham marriage or anything.. it’s not worth it. I was MUCH happier that way in the long term.

Anyways Peg and Goofy happily reunited while they awkardly try to get the kids to meet, with Goofy and PJ not warming up to each other at first, likely because Max just lost all his friends, and PJ clearly had none going into the series from context we’ll get later in the pilot. We also get a hilarious bit where Peg alternates between warmly greeting the goof’s and hilaroiusly shouting at Pistol to not play with worms.. in what honestly sounds like a protype for Miss Finster’s voice.

Meanwhile the kids try to hide a small crack in Pete’s boat.. which he notices as he’s just about to steamroll the house despite NOT having asked Peg if she sold it yet and just assuming, possibly opening himself and her to a lawsuit

Pete Sucks Counter: 7

Discovering his boat is trashed, he has a comical panic attack, which I can forgive since this was 1992 and they weren’t as well known as a serious problem. Seriously while pete is a bastard man.. the animation on him is GORGEOUS as it is HILARIOUS, while Jim Cummings brings the hell out of it. He’s kept the roll for three decades as of next year for a reason. Goofy ends up accidently destroying his boat in the process of trying to help him as you’d expect.

So Pete reluctantly lets the goofs sup with them.... and by reluctantly I mean he don’t wanna but Peg’s forcing him, which is pretty much the other half of their relationship in a nutshell: When pete isn’t lying and betraying her, Peg is forcing him to do stuff. As you can probably guess by how harsh i’ve been this aspect has aged INCREDIBLY poorly for me. This is your standard sitcom setup: asshole or dumbass or both dad, put upon wife who has to keep him in line.. but it’s just not how a GOOD marriage works and got so damn draining over time. Again and again we got things saying marriage is awful, comitting sucks unless your young, again and again. It’s why i’m REALLY happy we’ve been getting far better sitcom dad’s and marraiges lately. Bob’s Burgers is naturally the example, with the wife being the less sane one but both having their quriks and neither being so entirely dysfunctional you ever question the marriage. The Louds are another good example: Lynn Sr. And Rita NEVER right with each other that i’ve seen, have a perfectly happy relationship despite 11 kids, and wholly support each other, with Rita happily giving her husband the go ahead to quit his soul draining desk job so he could pursue his deream as a chef, and later letting him take a massive fincial gamble and open up a restraunt, purely because she belivied in him. Finally we have the Williams from Craig of the Creek who are easily one of the best married couples i’ve seen in western animation and one of them’s played by Terry Crews so that shoudln’t be a shock. I could prabobly find more but my points made: this trope REALLY ages the show poorly, more than any of hte 90′s specific tech or swinging theme song I just realized I forgot to talk about. Eh i’ll save it for the next episode.

I have NEVER liked this trope anyway: only simpsons has really made it work for me and Family Guy did until they just stretched it too far, and with Simpsons at least they freqeuently have episodes pointing out how unehalthy it is. It dosen’t help this trope somehow STILL isn’t dead, as evidenced by the fact Rick and Morty has it in spades and for SOME damn reason got them back together.. I mean they don’t fight anymore but it dose’nt fix the problem. So yeah while I’m not holding against the show TERRRIBLY as this trope wasn’t as widespread at the time, it still dosen’t make it GOOD even at it’s core.

Things get worse for Pete though as while Goofy praises him (And the Pete Kids rightfly wonder if Goofy is from space given the logic of ANYONE being that fond of pete. ) Pete finds out GOOFY bought the house he was going to demolish and will be staying with them till they move in. I have only one response to his misery....

Max also futzes with the tv which you THINK would lead to Peg finding out her husband is the antagonist of a Blumhouse movie but instead just does nothing.

So then we have Dinner where we find out SUPRISINGLY, Pete actually has a somewhat valid reason for resenting Goofy: Goofy cost him the big game in high school as Goofy and Peg were on the cheerleading squad together and Goofy accidently kicked pete in the face at a crucial moment, which Pete got the blame for. Granted I did say SOMEWHAT: Goofy is genuinely apologetic and says Pete shouldn’t of been blamed and Pete’s apparently been hiding the truth from his kids this whole time. I do call bullshit on that as while admittedly i don’t get into local football or any sportsball, Pete works at a dealership. At least one asshole would bring it up to either rile him up or out of genuine rage at something that happened at the very least a decade and a half ago. Pete hasn’t let go of this footbullshit DESPITE owning a successful dealership, having two wonderful children, an even more wonderful wife, and a friggin nice boat. But really.. it speaks to Pete’s character in any version: His ultimate undoing is his greed, his tendency to keep going and never settle. It’s something he oddly shares with Donald but Pete lacks Donald’s’s heart or redeeming moments. Pete just wants and wants and wants no matter who gets hurt because he’s inehently selfish and will simply TAKE It if he can’t get it. But it’s why he’s miserable, and ultimately ends up divorced: He can’t be satisfised so he often looses what he has.

So with Pete on the rampage Peg sends the boys upstairs. It’s here we get PJ’s first Woobie Moment: He has a room FULL of cool toys, comics and what not but his dad is such a greedy asshole he refuses to let the kid actually use them. He even knows this isn’t normal but is just resigned to it. Rob Paulsen is phenomenal as PJ, being funny and energetic, snarky and off to the side or depressed and fearful all with grace and ease and all making this all feel like the same sweet kid.

I mention this because Paulsen’s action is so good it highlights an issue with PJ: the writers lean way too hard into how much a hardass Pete is, to the point the series, likely intentionally, HEAVILY implies he physically abuses pete and the stuff on screen isn’t over the top enough, at least for tehse episodes, to get away with how he emotionally abuses him either. He talks down to him, doesn’t let him play toys and as seen by various episode synopsis and the next episode, uses mind games to keep him in line. THIS is why I can’t stand this version of Pete. He’s an abusive monster to this poor boy and I won’t stands for it, nor it being played off as a joke, especially since they try to ping pong between using it for comedy and using it seriously which just.. doesn’t work.

So Max earns his future best pals’ friendship by trying to help him.. and succeeding by pointing out that while he said not to use the Tank anywhere on the ground.. he didn’t mention the celling or walls and has the tank going up the walls. And clearly by the fact PJ is seen sleeping with it later, despite Petes’ss anger at this, Peg presumably ripped him a new one once she found out about the toys thing.

So that night Pete can’t sleep with Goofy tromping around the house and tries to whack him with a Golf Club. I’d give him another sucks count..

But given my brother lives in the basement and I sometimes accidently wake him by tromping overhead without meaning too, I DO get getting a bit fed up with someone clomping around and waking you up, and it is a slapstick cartoon so trying to physically assault someone is less of a crime here and more a setup for a punchline.

So get an UTTERLY hilarious scene as teh combination fo tripping on golf balls and Goofy singing his family lullabye, camptown races with lyrics

So Pete proceeds to have another freak out this time RUNNING ALL THE WAY TO DUCKBURG, THROWING THE OLD MAN OUT OF THE CAR AND THEN BRINGING IN THE GOOF’S BEDS AND BOXES BEFORE TOSSING THEM IN THE HOUSE. It is truly an amazing combination of Jim’s utter talent as he babbles hialriously and the animators as they just make it sing. It’s a great climax to part one. So with that the goofs are home and Pete semeingly gets to go to sleep.. until they start working on unpacking.

Final Thoughts On Good Neighbor Goof:

This is an excellent start to the series. The jokes are really well paced, the characters well introduced and the humor top notch> I had my complaints obviously.. but i’ts more systemic issues with the series, and stuff that honestly it dosen’t hamper my viewing experience for the most part. The PJ stuff does, but it’s not as big a deal this episode as he barely interacts with his Dad, but otherwise it’s stuff that just hasn’t aged well and they can’t be faulted for not seeing a deluge of terrible sitcoms a comin. The cast is top notch: I didn’t get to them in the proper review so Dana HIll deserves praise as Max, giving just the right amount of 90′s TV Kid mixed with real honest emotion and i’ts a tragedy she’s gone. She would’ve been right up there with the rest of this amazing cast in history. Though at least she got a worthy succesor.. but that’s not for now. For now we’re taking an interlude to look at the wonderfully 90′s music video that was aired along with this special:

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Gotta Be Gettin Goofy:

This was my raw reaction to this video. Now is it bad? No the song has great flow it somehow manages to scratch Bill Farmer’s goofy vocals with the beat, the rapper makes the cheesy lyrics work, and the chorus of “gotta be getting goofy” backs a great bit. It’s not a bad SONG.. but the video is a hilariously insane mess. We have two of the poor dancers forced to wear just.. HORRIFYING looking Goofy costumes that look like the Dog based sequel to cats that thankfully only exists in my nightmares

I pityt hose poor dancers. Meanwhile the rest of the dancers are wearing Goofy Baseball uniforms and letterman jackets for some reason. is it beause Goofy likes sportsball. I thoguth they just had them lying around but now I see the g’s on the uniform. They CHOOSE to do this. Max also does a shredding guitar solo, not the max up there the animated max. Combine that with LOTS OF random clips from the show and you get this thing.. and i’ts worth a watch> it’s just hilarously what the shit.. not the most hilariously what the shit thing i’ve seen.. not even this week... that would be this thing from the Eurovision Song contest...

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Your welcome. So moving on because this is already badly behind.

Good Neighbor Goof:

So our second episode opens with the Goof’s trying to move in and pete being upset their being loud. Now being upset your neighbors are being loud is one thing: Mine set off fireworks all week around fourth of July. Granted Pete would probably be the one doing such nonsense but still, I get it.. but it’s fair to have a lot of noise when your moving in and in Goofy’s case also trying to patch up a massive hole in the place.

So he does what any reasonable man would do and activates the earthquake machine he hid in the basement.

I wasn’t kidding about the MODOK comparisons. Granted the thing uses a belt to somehow do this.. but it’s designed to SIMULATE AN EARTHQUAKE AN DDOES SO WELL. The only reason Goofy’s not dead is that pete uses a low setting that instead ends up unpacking everything. IT’s a neat gag but again... PETE HAS AN EARTHQUAKE MACHINE.

Which Goofy accidently destroys his boat with. Meanwhile the boys try to talk over tin can phones only for Pete to notice and try to stop it because he’s a dick and doesn’t want his son to be happy because he hates Goofy. So Pete’s idea of a punishment is for PJ to wear the family shoes to go crush cans while wearing a helmet and given Pete mutters to himself about this keeping PJ away from Max i’ts likely something that he made up to torture his son soooo..

Pete Sucks Counter: 8 Max being a good pal agrees to help his friend crush the cans down to recycle for money and comes up with a zany scheme to do so

Meanwhile we get a few scenes of Pete trying to eff with Goofy’s day: Peg is making food for Goofy like a good neighbor/someone planning for their eventual divorce, so Pete makes him some too with tons of hot sauce. By the laws of classic cartoons, naturally Goofy loves it and wonders if Pete has hot sauce, while Pete trying it explodes his head Scanner’s style.

He then tries giving Goofy a chainsaw loaded with some kind of explosive or something... so yes he’s esclated to MURDER over.. Goofy annoying him a bunch as he’s apparently given up on the whole taking over that lot thing.

Pete Sucks Counter: 9 But it is hilariously petty and naturally backfires again by cartoon law as Pete ends up starting it for Goofy who can’t get it going.

Meanwhile PJ and Max inact the plan which is to drop a bolder with a rope on the cans, but end up having to ride the cans down when PJ lets it go too early and it ends up sweeping both boys on top of the box. They have fun though, with PJ actually getting to enjoy life for once and loving having a new friend.

So as his lot in life Pete has to ruin it by yelling at PJ for getting diryt, then for hanging out with max as he can SMELL the goof on him.. which means he’s either exaggerating or he knows what goofy smells like.

So he forbids PJ to see him insluting max.. while Max is hanging out the window and ends up crying. Oh and Peg never gets involved in any of this across both parts, likely because she dosen’t know.. which makes it even MORE horrifying as it gives off the implication Pete gets away with his abuse of his son because he hides it, like a real world abuser. But even then some things like trying to break up his and Max’s friendship or the toys thing you’d THINK she’d notice.

So we get more untetionally telling stuff as PJ says he’ll treasure this day and the only time he was happy.

Pete Sucks Count: 14 2 for the last scene, 3 for ALLL this one implies. But Max won’t give up the ghost no he won’t give it up. They haven’t the strength to hold on for long but if they both hold on together they can make each other strong. So he has a plan: have Goofy throw a Luau and invite the petes.

Peg naturally forces him to attend and Pete is a dick about it at first, but eventually enjoys himself when they do a conga line. The pets, Waffles and Chainsaw get into some antics. I do love Waffles because I love a kitty. Chainsaw is okay even though I love me a good doggo. Especially this one.

You are a Good Boy, Good Boy. But eventually while playing a party game about passing coconuts, Pete considers the coconut and considers the trees but dosen’t consider Goofy kicking him in the face AGAIN

So Pete is naturally a dick about this despite it being you know, an accident. But he takes it a step further by insulting Max Pete Sucks Count: 15 So Goofy gets mad. But here’s where a rather sizeable flaw shows up in the episode as Goofy.. acts exactly like Pete does about the insuing feud. He forbids Max to see PJ makes up rules and is generally petty and vindictive. And look Goofy could be in the shorts. He’s endlessly adaptable.. but here nothing about his character has shown he’d sink to this and it feels forced to bring abotu the climax.

Thankfully said finale salvages thing: That night Max pulls PJ into his room via the cans, and comes up with a plan.. weirdly asking PJ to hit him with a muffin to save their friendship... but it’s not random it turns out. His plan.. is brilliant. While I really don’t like these types of feud between neighbors make our kids suffer by making them not be able to be friends because we’re being petty children plots, this one has a REALLY clever solution to that: Max and PJ FAKE an oversclated fued similar to their parents, starting with insutls and throwing mulch and escalting to taking down each others fences and then throwing food at each other, before injuring their dads with planks and stuff, nothing serious just slapstick stuff, all to get both to settle down and try and get the boys to stop fighting.. it works like a charm, it’s full of great bits like Peg offering the boys pie only for Max to use it as amuination and i’ts just a great way to end one of these episodes. Not that I WANT more of these episodes but if your going to do this stock plot you might as well be creative with it.

So we end on the Petes and Goofs having a BBQ, all friends again, with Pete having his marina and Goofy nearly burning Pete’s house down and us getting a photo to end the episode.

Final Thoughts:

This one was a step down. Pete’s abuse is REALLY highlighted here and the plot is very paint by numbers and forces Goofy to be out of character for the last act for it to work at all. He just strikes me as too genuine and noble to hold onto a grudge this easily. Peg is also reduced from her usual feisty self to being oddly useless, not stepping in at ANY point to stop any of this depsite it being grossly otu of character. There’s a few great gags and a great climax, but the whole product is just okay

Later Today: Goof Week and Goofy’s birthday continue as I complete the trilogy of Shortstaculars with one about my boy! Featuring Goofy’s first apperance, his first short and the first apperance of what would eventually become Max!

If you liked this review, follow me for more and consider joining my Patreon which you can find RIGHT HERE. Even a buck a month helps me keep doing these and more gets me to my stretch goals, the next one up being the two remaining ducktales mini series, a darkwing duck episode a month and a reivew of the danny phantom film the ultimate enemy. And even a buck a month gets you access to exclusvie reviews, my patreon exclusive discord and to pick a short any time I do one of my shortstaculars. My next one is for Donald’s birthday next montha nd there’s only 6 days left to get on that pay cycle so if that sounds good to you get on in NOW while you still can and i’ll see you at the next rainbow.

#goofy goof #goofy #goof troop #max goof #P.J. Pete #PJ Pete #Pete Pete #Peg Pete #Pistol Pete #Sponerville #Gotta Be Getting Goofy #disney channel #the disney afternoon #disney afternoon #disney xd #disney plus

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ineloqueent · 4 years

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Starstruck: Part 17

Brian May x Fem!Reader

This is Part 17 of a multi-part fic. Click the links below to read the Masterpost, the previous part, or the next part of the fic :)

Masterpost / Part 16 / Part 18

Summary: When studying at Imperial College in the 1970s, your path is crossed by a beautiful boy as much in love with the stars as you.

Warnings: swearing, sentiments of sadness

Historical Inaccuracies:

SO. This is more of a disclaimer than an inaccuracy. But it’s very important...

I have written Mary’s character on basis of Lucy Boynton’s portrayal of her in Bohemian Rhapsody. I make no assumptions concerning the relationship between Freddie and Mary, and nor do I condone the things Mary has done in the wake of Freddie’s passing.

Please remember that this is but a fictionalisation. But anyway. I’m not here to talk about that; I’m here to write fanfic. Let’s go!

Word Count: 2.6k (can i get three cheers for the shortest chapter ever)

⁺˚*·༓☾ ☽༓･*˚⁺

You found her soon enough. She hadn’t even made it fully up the stairs.

A pitiful sight, she was, sitting with her knees pulled up as she wept quietly into the velvet of her trousers.

“Mary,” you began gently, and she lifted her head.

Her eyes were puffy, and tears had drawn angry red lines down her round cheeks. Her hair, which had previously been up, fell about her face in blonde wisps as her lower lip trembled and her eyes filled anew with tears.

You made your way over to the corner where she sat and she watched you raptly, like a frightened animal. You knelt beside her.

“Hey, what was that all about?”

Mary only shook her head, blinking rapidly in an attempt to stem her tears.

You offered her a hand up, and after a few moments of contemplation, she took it and stood.

She stared at you a moment before rivulets came running down her face again.

“Come on,” you said. “Let’s get some air.”

You led her up the final stairs and pulled open the door at the landing, guiding her outside onto the rooftop terrace.

The night air was cool, and from the heated rush of emotions that still seemed to cloud your mind to the giddiness that still occupied your stomach, the breeze on the roof was one you welcomed.

Mary seemed to relish the sudden cold as well, going as far as to lean out over the railing and close her eyes in the onslaught of the wind.

Thinking that you should probably not allow her to do any leaning given the mental state she was presently in, you came to stand by her side.

“Do you want to tell me about it?”

Anger flashed across her face, and she wiped her eyes with a frustrated air, only more infuriated by the fact that she was crying.

You were about to assure her that she needn’t say anything at all when she blurted,

“I found Freddie with another man.”

“Oh,” you said. You pressed your lips together, trying to gauge how it was you were to handle this.

“I just can’t believe that he’d lie to me.”

You were reminded of Deacy’s comment about Freddie being ‘nearly pathological’ with respect to lying, but that was hardly helpful right now, and you could only imagine the crushing betrayal Mary must have felt.

“I can believe that he would lie,” she elaborated, fingers curling around the railing, “but not to me. I just— oh, I suppose I thought I was different.” She gave a shudder. “I’d had the feeling that something wasn’t quite right, and I tried to talk to him, tried to tell him that he could tell me anything, and that even if I was mad about whatever it was when he told me, I wouldn’t stay that way.”

Mary turned to you, and the wind tossed her hair wildly, and with the way her eyes still ran with saltwater, she seemed a maiden from some sort of Greek tragedy.

“I love him,” she went on. “But I’ve always felt that I loved him more than he loved me. Now I understand why.”

She slumped to the ground again, her expression dark. “I’m not even angry that he didn’t come out to me. I understand that, because how the hell do you begin to tell your fiance that you want to break of the wedding because you’re gay?

“Freddie’s got this kindness, and sometimes, it’s like he’d lie to a court if it meant that he spared the feelings of those he loves. So I guess, in a way, he does love me. I only wish he’d have tried to break it off with me, instead of waiting until I walked in on him.”

She sighed, and you sat down across from her, folding your legs beneath you.

“So, what now?” you asked, because it seemed that Mary had thought a lot about this already.

But she dropped her head to her hands. “That’s the one thing I can’t work out. Where do I go from here?”

“Have you talked to Freddie, properly?”

She shook her head. “It’s going to take me a long time to forgive him. I just hope he knows why I’m angry, and that it’s not because he’s gay.”

There. That was it. That was where she had to go. “Maybe you should tell him that.”

Mary looked at you, her face wrought in scars of mascara and eyeliner. She lifted her chin and nodded. “You’re right.” She chewed her lip a moment. “But not tonight. I don’t think I can do that.”

You nodded in understanding, because with the way sobs had wracked her body, there would be no energy left for her to have a conversation with Freddie without it dissolving into a bitter argument, even with good intentions at heart.

“Y/N, would it be okay if I stayed in your room for the night?”

“So long as you promise me you’ll talk to Freddie tomorrow,” you said. “Don’t leave him wondering.”

“Yeah.”

You stood. “Let’s just go, then. It’s past midnight anyway.”

Later, when Mary was sound asleep on one of the beds, bundled in the various extra blankets you’d scavenged from cupboards, you lay with your eyes wide open. You’d been kept awake by the sounds of the dwindling party upstairs, which had carried on for long after the scene had been abandoned by its host.

You wondered where Freddie had got to.

And where Brian had.

You’d considered going to find him many times, and had even gone so far as to stick your feet out of bed and set them on the cold hardwood floor, but in the end, you’d made up your mind to do what you always did: nothing.

He’d left you standing in the dance hall, without so much as recognition in his eyes for evidence of having kissed you. And now he was going to tell you that he’d meant nothing of it, a rush of emotions in an exhilarated situation, and you couldn’t bear to hear that.

You’d rather be left wondering than have such a finality imposed upon your mind.

⁺˚*·༓☾ ☽༓･*˚⁺

It had been days, now. They’d been tiptoeing around each other for days.

It was ridiculous to the point where I began to feel the need to take matters into my own hands.

The situation was now ultimately worse than it had been before, because very obviously, something had changed. And I’d wager that something had happened on the first night of tour. They were different now, almost shyer, more fragile in their vulnerability to each other’s charms.

He had pined for her since the late sixties, she had been oblivious since day one, and I doubted that, despite their respectively vast vocabularies, either of them knew the meaning of the verb ‘to converse’. It was all longing looks and unuttered promises, a brush of a hand and staring pensively when the other was unawares.

I was almost offended that they couldn’t pull themselves together, when they were fortunate enough to have each other.

Veronica and Robert would get farther and farther from me as each day of tour escorted us more remotely from London. It hadn’t been an option to bring my wife and our tiny child with us on tour, so I could do nothing now but miss them.

But our two resident idiots, Y/N and Brian, did have each other. And they took it completely for granted.

The open road was quiet and dark, and seemed half-asleep, the trees that blurred past the window swaying to some secret song. A flock of birds streamlined the puffy clouds overhead as the moon greeted the sun in its eternal celestial shift, light yielding light to comfort the earthly beings who feared the darkness. Though I did not fear the dark as such, it was easy to imagine lurking figures between the lone houses by the roads, creeping souls amongst the woods by the road; there was something consuming about this early-morning quiet.

On a stop between Bristol and Cardiff, I left the loos to find Freddie smoking by a payphone, notably absent from the rest of our entourage.

The morning air was chilly, and I wound the scarf around my neck in its second loop, buttoning up my jacket with a shiver. No one was out here other than out of necessity, so I made my way over to Freddie and leaned against the wall beside him.

I turned to face him. “How are you?”

Freddie pursed his lips, tapping ash from his cigarette. “Not at my most fabulous, dear.”

I nodded understandingly, burying my face further into the scarf. “It’s okay, you know. You can’t always be.”

“But that’s why I became Freddie Mercury,” he said quietly, his words nearly carried away by the wind. “I became a legend so I wouldn’t feel like this.”

“Freddie,” I began, “I’m pretty sure being legendary means you have a lot more to feel than you would otherwise.”

He smiled a thin-lipped smile, tossing his spent cigarette into the ashtray mounted atop the rubbish bin. “You are of course right, darling, but right now I’d give anything to feel nothing at all.”

“You don’t mean that.”

Freddie sighed. “I don’t know what I want.”

It was despair in his voice; I recognised it. And I understood it. Because where do you start if you don’t know what you’re working toward?

I placed a hand on his shoulder and he turned his sad brown eyes on me.

“You’re a legend, Freddie,” I reminded him. “You’ve got forever to figure it out, okay?”

He nodded.

“And you can talk to me if you need to.”

“Thank you, Deacy,” he patted my hand. “I think I’ll keep a bit to myself for a while, though, at least until we reach the city.”

“Okay.”

“Now, let’s get out of this cold. I’m freezing my tits off!”

I laughed. “Okay, Freddie.”

And though the open road was quiet and dark and I missed my wife and son, I had my friends. The second half of my family.

⁺˚*·༓☾ ☽༓･*˚⁺

You ached to kiss Brian again. To wind your fingers through his hair. To hold him close, because with the worry that wove itself through his brow on behalf of Freddie, he looked so lost, so far away, as though he needed someone to bring his floating self to the ground where his thoughts could wander amongst the living, and not dwell up in the sky with that which he had lost.

Perhaps that was why he looked to the stars so often; he’d lost so much, and they were a constant.

He deserved to have something brought back to him. And if you could return to him some of the light in his eyes instead of stealing it away, then nothing in the world would make you happier.

The mornings on the bus were tense, to say the least.

Without discussion, it seemed that you and Brian had established an agreement to keep Mary and Freddie apart until they had the time and privacy in which to talk. But it was a difficult arrangement, given that the tour bus was not exactly spacious. And given that it meant you had to keep your distance from Brian.

Presently, though, you came second to the efforts of protecting Freddie and Mary from themselves, which meant that Brian did as well. So for now, all you could give to him were silent glances and small smiles.

But Brian seemed to have other ideas.

On the leg from Cardiff to Taunton, just as you were getting back on the bus, someone grabbed your hand and pulled you around the corner.

You tensed, whirling around with your other fist raised, your heart hammering.

But your defenses were instantly disarmed, because there was Brian with his mass of curls in disarray from the wind, his lips parted as though he had been about to say something.

“Are you trying to kill me?!” you cried, your heartbeat still in your throat.

“No,” Brian said, “I’m trying to kiss you.”

“You’re—”

He pulled you to him, melding himself against you, and kissed you soundly on the mouth, his arms winding around you. Your response was immediate, and you leaned so far into him that he stumbled. His laughter tickled your lips, a rush of breath over your skin as he clutched you to stop you from falling with him.

But you pushed him against the wall instead, and his hands rose to your cheeks to kiss you more deeply, devouring— senseless. Precisely as you had once wished for him to kiss you.

There were so many things you wanted to say, but it seemed the most of them were covered in how you moved with him, vulnerable and uninhibited, purely driven by the desire to hold him close, to make him understand with your proximity how much it was you cared for him. How much you would never be able to explain the gravity of your affections for him.

Brian reversed your positions and only the existence of the wall and his arms kept you on your feet; you were dizzy with the surge of excitement that withered you where he touched you.

And his touch was everywhere.

His lips moved from your mouth to your jaw, from your jaw to your cheek, to the shell of your ear, and then in a tender trail down your neck. His fingertips fluttered at your sides, warm on your skin, but you shivered, because no one had ever touched you with such a gentleness as this, such desire, such love.

Then abruptly, he pulled back, short of breath and flushed from head to toe, with swollen lips and loose curls sticking up where your fingers had interfered with their natural fall.

The world spun as his eyes flickered between yours.

“I’m sorry if I scared you,” he hummed.

“You did a bit,” you replied. “We’re on the open road. It is sort of scary out here.”

“I’m sorry,” he said again. “I just missed you. I miss you. I feel like we’re apart, you know?”

You nodded mutely.

He asked softly, “We’re not keeping this a secret, are we?”

You couldn’t believe that he was asking, after everything. But you supposed that was how he was, considerate to the point where he doubted himself if the circumstances favoured you.

“Brian,” you said, “I don’t think I could hide the way I look at you if I wanted to.”

A smile flickered across his face.

Then the rain began to pour.

“Come on, back inside,” you said, taking him by the hand.

“Hang on,” he pulled you back. He lingered a moment, gazing at you aimlessly, and he looked at you the way he looked at the stars.

“What?”

Brian cradled your face in his hands. Then he pressed a gentle kiss to your nose, brushed the pad of his thumb over your skin. “I just wanted to look at you.”

You couldn’t help but smile.

“My evening star,” he murmured.

You shook your head, finding it very hard to believe that this man, who spoke so beautifully, was yours. “You’re a poet, Brian.”

His response would have been enough to flood the coldest land with a wealth of warmth, as absolutely as that which blossomed in your chest.

“And you’re my muse.”

⁺˚*·༓☾ ☽༓･*˚⁺

A/N: two more parts and an epilogue m’dears :)

taglist: @melting-obelisks @retropetalss @hgmercury39 @topsecretdeacon @joemazzmatazz @perriwiinkle @brianmays-hair @im-an-adult-ish @ilikebigstucks @doing-albri @killer-queen-87 @n0-self-c0ntro1 @archaicmusings @cloudyyspace @annina-96 @themarchoftherainbowqueen @annajolras

Masterpost / Part 16 / Part 18

#tina's writing #starstruck #brian may x reader #fic

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natsubeatsrock · 3 years

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What Mashima Could Have Done To Improve Nalu (And What He Should Do With Nalu Now)

What could Mashima have done to make Nalu work for someone like me?

Wait, this isn't the rewrite...

I've wanted to make this post for a while. More accurately, I've wanted to make a post about this topic for years. Recently, I've gone through several different drafts of this post with drastically different types of approaches to this topic. However, I feel like this is the right direction to go about this topic.

Obviously, the vast majority of fans like this ship already and are counting the proverbial days until it becomes canon. But I know I'm not the only one who thinks the ship could have made more sense. And, it doesn't seem like Mashima isn't against playing around with the idea of this ship. (I'm not talking about specific spoilers here.)

So, I've decided to point out a few different ways Mashima could have worked Nalu into a better sense of becoming canon through the course of the original series. These are based on what I've heard regarding Nalu on both sides. Near the end, I'll include my suggestion for the best possible route Mashima could take regarding Nalu, especially at this point in the sequel.

Change #1: Natsu Leaving at Chapter 416

Let's get this one out of the way now. The big thing that turned me off to Nalu is how Natsu left at the end of the Tartarus arc, and I know I'm not alone in this. There are two camps of logic about why this is bad. Most people are in the Lucy camp which focuses on Lucy's broken bond with her friend. I'm more in the Natsu camp and focus on how his leaving betrays his ultimate goal of protecting his friends. Either way, Mashima didn't do much to make people who didn't already love the ship like it.

I don't think the argument should be made that Natsu shouldn't have left. He needed to leave to get stronger and if the guild was going to break up, their splitting up was inevitable. There are ways that Mashima could have handled Natsu leaving Lucy that aren't "write her a letter and leave". Given their relationship, he absolutely should have told her to her face that he had to leave and why. That's just a matter of being a good friend.

That's another reason I feel like it's important to start here. Mashima could work to further their relationship from a friendship to a romantic one. However, if their friendship is strained, there's no reason to start that in the first place. With that out of the way, let's talk about how Mashima could have made their relationship more romantic.

Change #2: Clearly Change their View of Each Other

It's not as if Natsu and Lucy's views of each other were consistently positive. It's weird to see that Natsu was dismissive and kind of exploitative was of Lucy early on in Fairy Tail. Of course, this changes throughout the series. Natsu and Lucy come to have a really cool friendship and one of my favorite partnerships in anime and manga.

However, there's no moment where Natsu or Lucy comes to a definite "Oh, I love them" realization. While the other ships in the Big 4 have at least one moment you can point to where the perception of a character towards the other noticeably changed, Nalu doesn't have that. The idea that they could be a couple is brought up every now and then. However, it's always treated as a joke and dismissed almost as quickly as it's brought up. If Mashima were to take Nalu seriously, this kind of moment would be crucial to their progression from great friendship to definite romance.

It's not even as if this couldn't happen. I've seen Nalu fans point to a few different places as possible moments for this to happen. However, my personal favorite moments happen during the Tenrou Island arc. At the beginning of the arc, Lucy looks at Natsu as he's sleeping and mentions how cute he looks. Later on, Natsu sees Lucy struggle against Kain and hears her say "It's more fun when we're together". I think both moments could have been reworked to start them on the trend of starting a romantic relationship with each other.

Change #3: Define Natsu and Lisanna's Relationship As Platonic

Depending on who you ask, we already got this during Tenrou Island. After all, Lisanna told Lucy to take care of Natsu before they went to fight Hades. A lot of people see this as the sign that Lisanna gave up on being with Natsu romantically. (If you can't tell, I'm restraining myself from arguing against this.) Mashima could have made this purpose of the moment more obvious.

Regardless, we didn't get a similar moment where Natsu and Lisanna realize their relationship has changed since Edolas and can't currently be romantic. All we got is a moment that might indicate that Lisanna thinks Lucy is a better romantic fit for Natsu. As someone who's been advocating for more of Lisanna, this change could lead to some interesting moments. Lisanna doesn't have problems with either Natsu or Lucy that would result in any ill will between them. I don't think that should change regardless of how feelings are written regarding Lisanna and the duo.

[insert discussion about Mashima's comment in France here]

Change #4: Give Us A Real Confession

I've said this plenty of times already. We did not get a confession from Natsu at the end of Fairy Tail. The fact that people are arguing that a straight-up confession would be "out of character" for Natsu and Lucy is proof enough of that. If Nalu was meant to be, this would be an obvious inclusion.

Opinions are all over the place regarding how that ought to play out. Should Natsu confess first or should Lucy? Will their confession be more composed or frenetic? That's not so much of my concern. What matters most is that a confession actually happens for the reader to see.

Honestly, it's a shame that so many different romantic ships can get away with happening without seeing definite romantic confessions, especially in battle action shonen series. I've gone through 11 years of nonsense with these characters. If they end up a couple, I want to see the confession, at the very least.

And those are my suggestions for changes.

You'll notice that I haven't talked about romantic progression in this post. That should be obvious when talking about this kind of thing. I think it's hard not to write characters falling in love if you know you're building to a couple being romantic. Fans are more likely to see it in places it isn't happening. Mashima has proven himself capable of writing good romance time and again in both of his big running series. Of course, we're waiting to see if he'll do it again with Edens Zero.

Though, these are changes that would have to take place regarding the original series. If Mashima wanted to do any of these things, it would be too late to properly do them. With that in mind, here's what I think is the best thing Mashima could do with Nalu, especially at this particular time in the sequel.

Destroy Its Chances.

No, seriously.

To be clear, I'm not advocating for Mashima to give us less ship tease fakeouts or meaningless rejections. I'm not asking that he simply not make Nalu canon. I seriously wish that Mashima would make explicitly clear that Natsu and Lucy cannot and will not ever enter a romantic relationship with each other. I simultaneously wish he would stop playing with the idea that they may start one in stuff outside of canon, like Twitter sketches, omakes, and spin-offs.

I've had a lot of time to sit with Nalu as a possible ship. I've thought over and over about what's wrong with it. And I can't think of anything fundamentally wrong with Nalu. The worst thing about it is the nonexistent progression from friends to lovers and Natsu leaving in chapter 416. I'd add fanservice, but pretty much every Fairy Tail ship has egregious fan service moments.

When people talk about Nalu not being a good ship, there are worse things they could be talking about. They could talk about how one person is clearly pushing for a relationship the other isn't interested in. They could talk about how their relationship started off with one brutalizing the other. They could talk about how Nalu is incestuous or pedophilic. However, when we talk about the ships in Fairy Tail, these topics don't come up regarding Nalu.

Like, people don't like Gruvia because of the dynamic between them. For people to like that ship, you'd basically have to rewrite their dynamic entirely. I know someone who would only make Gruvia canon in its current state if it were an abusive relationship. My suggestions for Nalu don't even change that much about their relationship.

The real issues I have with the ship stem from the fandom itself. The Nalu fandom considers any and all moments that involve Natsu and Lucy as a sign that they can become a couple soon. This ranges from "understandable arguments regarding certain scenes in canon" to "irrational interpretations regarding Twitter sketches". All of it's treated with the same cavalier attitude of Nalu's impending canonization. This is all despite no confession, no indication of romance on either side, and an omake literally made to dissuade people from this idea.

I can't say that Mashima will never make Nalu canon. But if he plans not to make it canon, I want it to be clear that Nalu is never going to be a thing. Leave no sense of ambiguity for readers to argue that it might happen in the future after the series ends. When I read the last chapter of the sequel, I want Nalu's prospects to end with the series.

"But what about the fans who spent years following the series hoping for the ship to happen?"

What about them?

I'm not saying this as someone who has no interest in the ship or empathy for its fans. I could and probably should, especially given the stuff I've seen happen over the years. But I'm not. (People can just as easily point to any of the various extreme Nalu haters like... a certain someone.) No, I have no patience for this view considering another perspective I hold.

I came into the fandom enjoying Fairy Tail. I started this blog because I wanted to talk about the things I liked about it and places I disagreed with fans about it. As time passed, I started to like the series less and see more issues with it. Many of the things I came to like about the series started to annoy me more and talking about this series became more of a chore than anything else.

However, I came to have a renewed sense of love for the series as I revisited it. I found new things to like about it and reconfirmed my enjoyment of the things that previously annoyed me. Consider the ship I talk the most about positively on this blog is likely not going to be canon officially. I'm still here and I still love the series.

I find it hard to believe that fans can come this far into the series only because they want to see their ship happen. I get that this sentiment is popular to hear fans say. However, I can't believe that all those people are so deeply invested in Nalu being canon, as opposed to other aspects of the series, that the series would be ruined for them if it didn't happen.

This is a series that's almost a decade and a half old. We've had more spin-offs, omakes, and tie-ins than series many times more popular than Fairy Tail have received. We just got an anime game that actually isn't just another arena fighter and a sequel has been greenlit. There has to be SOMETHING that these people can come back to and appreciate about this series OTHER than Nalu.

And if there really is nothing they can come to like about this series than Nalu? If they really come to hate the series over their ship not happening? If we really see a fan meltdown over the ship not happening, then...

Good riddance to them!

I know plenty of fans who bowed out of the series after realizing the series wasn't great. I'm still following a few of them for other stuff. Almost every one of them came to the conclusion long ago that the series wasn't as great as they'd like it to be and moved onto other things that interested them. They handled it calmly and left the fandom without a ton of drama. A couple of them even drop in to make new fan content every now and then.

I can respect a perspective that acknowledges a series isn’t doing what you want it to do and decides to engage with only the elements that matter most to an individual. I can respect a similar perspective that decides to cut ties with a series or fandom over how canon plays out. I can’t respect or sympathize with a perspective that says canon is worse because one’s wishes for it weren’t fulfilled.

I'm not even saying that it's wrong to not like how Mashima handles a ship. I still don't like how Graytear played out. You're allowed to feel that Mashima's handling of any part of a series isn't great. However, I don't think the series is worse for what it did to Graytear. Fairy Tail wouldn't be worse if Nalu didn't happen.

I'd argue it would be better, but that's enough for now...

#fairy tail #anti nalu #what could my final suggestion possibly be?#i freaking wonder #i've literally tried to write this post 8 times over 3 years #most of them were in the past 10 months #this was queued #it will post sometime before 2020 ends #probably #update: january 2nd '21

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surveys-at-your-service · 3 years

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Survey #367

“i should warn you that you may fuck me, but chances are i’m gonna fuck you over”

Where was the last place you went for vacation? The beach. When was the last time you wore makeup? Halloween. Do you watch soaps or drama series? If so, which ones? Not currently. What’s your favourite tomato variety? I hate tomatoes. What was your very first pet like? Dad had a dog named Trigger when I was born, but I have no memory of her, so I'm excluding her. I consider our first family pet to be Chance, a cat my mom took in after finding her literally in the trash. She was... god, incredible. She was a loyal friend, and I can imagine no greater mother than she was (she legit fought off a rottweiler head-on to protect her kittens). She was so smart, so gentle, and just simply amazing. I'll always miss her. What was the best school project you remember doing? Looking back, despite the fact it TERRIFIED me before, that would be my senior project presentation. It was about snake misconceptions and fallacies, so I made a slideshow to present to the special ed class. I made drawings for them to color, word searches, all that kind of stuff. They were just the sweetest and seemed really into it. What’s your favourite type of fish to eat? None. What kind of an old person do you think you’ll become? I really... don't like thinking about this. Like I'm weak enough now at 25, I can't imagine how my, say, 60s would be. I hope and just about pray that my physical health will improve, but I'm just going to exclude that part entirely from this answer. Personality-wise and such, I have a feeling I'll be the quiet and sweet kind, the one that loves her (hopeful) spouse like crazy, and comes most alive on Halloween if I live in a place where children come trick-or-treating. I imagine I would LOVE that. I'd love to be the type that goes on morning jogs to help stay spry. Which well-known person’s death shocked you the most, if any? Steve Irwin and Chester Bennington might be tied. Both were so, so sudden. Steve was like, invincible to my childhood eyes, and when I heard about Chester's death, I thought it was just a sick rumor. Two amazing people that died way too soon. What’s the craziest colour you’d dye your hair? That would depend on personal opinions. I want to dye my hair LOTS of colors though, if that tells you anything. What’s the coolest hobby one of your friends has? Uhhhh. Idk. Name a video game you can play over and over again: Shadow of the Colossus. It's a pretty short game if you know what you're doing, and it's super relaxing to me and just so goddamn pretty to look at. Every time I've played it has just been a pleasant experience. Do you like meatloaf? Yeah, it's fine. How about Meatloaf? I know who he is, but I've never really listened to his music. Do you take time to do charitable work? If so, what do you do? No. ;_; Especially with all the free time I have, I really should... What is something that will make you laugh instantly? Okay, don't ask, but if I for a SECOND see that commercial of Mr. Clean dancing while he's cleaning, I will die because of memories. What is something you hope you will never inherit from a specific relative? Diabetes. It runs heavily in my family. Name a movie you wouldn’t watch solely based on its name: The Human Centipede. No. Thank you. Have you ever played in a stack of hay bales? No. What’s your dearest souvenir? The stuffed moose I got at Cabela's during a visit to Ohio. I named him Brownie, and he was my "childhood plushie" we all have. Is there a lot of graffiti around your neighbourhood? Not in the actual area I live in, but there are DEFINITELY places where it's a pigsty of distasteful shit. Have you ever made your own soda? (Soda Stream doesn’t count!) No. Do you have a hobby that forces you out of the house? If so, what is it? Nature photography. Have you ever been part of a theater group? No, that stuff doesn't interest me. What’s the most ecological thing you do? We recycle, and I also use metal straws. Would you stop eating meat, if you had to raise and slaughter it yourself? Absolutely. There is no fucking way I could do it. What’s your favourite board game? Why do you like it best? I like Clue just because of the mystery-solving factor, and I think it's kinda cool how you can think ahead and use other's findings to your own advantage to win the game pretty early. Besides English, what other languages can you speak? Some German. It's gotten pretty weak with neglect, though. Besides English, what other languages can you read? I can read German well. What thing/person/happening has made you the happiest you’ve been? This is a complicated answer that I just don't feel like elaborating on. What’s the most freeing thing you’ve ever done? Letting Jason go. Have you ever had a restaurant dish that was made with bugs? If not, would you even want to try one? No, and I'm not interested. Have you ever tasted birch sap? No. How about the young buds/shoots of spruce trees? No. Which edible flowers have you tasted? Honeysuckles. What has been your worst restaurant experience? Well, it's a fast food restaurant, but lemme tell you about my vegetarian encounter with Burger King. I ordered their veggie burger. Which they have. It's not a secret. These idiots gave me a bun with tomato and lettuce, and I think mayo on it, after sounding confused when Mom was ordering for me. Mom went back in there of course to tell them, and oh god was the manager pissed, lol. I got my veggie burger in the end. What’s the most immature, adolescent thing that still makes you laugh? Some sexually inappropriate jokes can still get me sadly, lol. Have you ever had a life-threatening condition? If so, what was it? Not literally, but boy do I think depression counts. Do you ever compare your life to somebody else’s? If so, why? Y E P. I can't tell you why, I just... do it. I look at other's successes and am just like, "Why aren't I there yet?", and beat myself up about being a failure. What is a food item or a dish you absolutely cannot stand? Brussel sprouts, asparagus, runny eggs, many other things because I'm just mega picky. Have you ever had a custom print done on a shirt? If so, what was it? Just the spray paint kind that vendors like to do at the beach and stuff. I don't remember any I got, though. What does your favourite mug look like? It's black with a Markiplier quote on it, given to me by Sara. :') Do you ever read other people’s survey answers? Yeah! Friends', anyway. I love learning all the obscure things about them. Do you like daytime or night time better? Why? Daytime, specifically early morning, because it's better for my depression. Are you more comfortable as a leader or a follower? A follower that isn't afraid to speak up when I'm really against something. What is your favourite song right now at this very moment? I've been really into "7empest" by Tool lately, and the synthwave edit of "Voices" by Motionless In White. If you watched The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, who was your favourite character? I don't remember it well, but I think I liked the butler. Was there even a butler? Who was your first online friend? Emma. :') Do you have any plants in your home? No. If you wear makeup, what’s the most outrageous colour you use? I only ever use black. What was the last photograph you took? My cat being adorable while sleeping. <3 Have you ever submitted a video to Funniest Home Videos? No. What was the first sport you learned how to play? I want to say soccer? I absolutely hated it. Do you have a headache at the moment? Yes, actually. I've really been attacked by the Covid shot side effects. Are your parents still together? No, thank god. What was the last hot food you ate? I made a chicken and I think pesto (some Italian noodles, idk) Healthy Choice bowl for dinner last night. Have you ever seen a meteor shower? No. :( Do you ever feel afraid people will question your sanity? I'm sure people have before, and back then? Rightfully so. Which X Factor audition(s) was/were your favorite? Never watched it. Were you a straight A student in spelling and grammar? Always. It's so weird how it's gotten worse with time since leaving school, even though I write... Were you a straight A student in math? Yeah, no. I usually got Bs or Cs. What is your favorite shade of yellow? Pastel. I don't really like yellow. What is something you want to accomplish before you turn 30? Have a stable job. Are you afraid of getting yelled at? YES. Do you feel a connection to the moon? It's not something I think about, so not really, but I do believe all things in the universe are connected in some way. We are simply a part of nature, as all else is. What does your heart long for? Contentment in who I am and where I am in life. I know I also miss being in love. Do you know what your purpose in life is? We have no innate purpose; we make our own, and I want mine to be to show others that there is always hope for yourself in yourself, and also to spread the message of love of all animals. Did you decorate a pumpkin this year? Last year I didn't. I really should change that this go around. Have you ever seen a fox? Yes! They're a kind of rare sight here sadly, so when I had the opportunity to photograph a fox tragically as roadkill, it was a photographic experience I won't forget. God, I wanted to pet it (I obviously didn't), but I did talk to it about how beautiful (s)he was as I got some shots. I never had a harder time leaving one of those angels I've taken pictures of. Do you find Halloween fun or scary? FUN!!!!!! Is there anything about Halloween you find offensive? Not at all. What do the trees look like where you live? I mean, there's a variety, but the staple that you see literally everywhere are pine trees. What is your dream vacation? Somewhere with mountains, clear lakes, cool weather, beautiful and various wildlife... What was the best vacation you’ve been on so far? Disney World as a kid. What is the best class trip you’ve been on? The zoo in the 5th grade. It was the one occasion I got to see meerkats. Did you like field trips when you were a kid? I lived for them. Do you find museums boring or interesting? I find science museums to be very, very fascinating. Art ones are great, too. What are three issues you are passionate about? LGBT rights, the pro-choice movement, and wildlife conservation, to name a few. Would you ever wear a shirt with your country’s flag on it? No. I'm not patriotic enough at all. What size is your bed? Queen. What’s a medicine that makes you sleepy? When we were experimenting with my Klonopin dosage, I learned that 3mg was enough to knock me on my ASS. Do you like bath bombs? I mean they're pretty, but I wouldn't waste money on 'em. Who are your favorite small YouTubers? Yikes, a looooooot. But this also depends on what you think qualifies as "small." Most of my favorite "small" YTers are tarantula keepers or sub-1M let's players. Who are your favorite big YouTubers? Markiplier obviously, Snake Discovery, Good Mythical Morning (even if I don't watch them anymore, they are veeery dear to my heart and I will always support them), Sam & Colby... Again, there's a lot. When you don't watch TV and YT instead, you really get attached to a lot of them. What was your favorite girl group when you were growing up? Would you believe me if I said Pussycat Dolls? haha Do you like Disney movies? Um, DUH. Were you ever in the popular crowd? No. Have you ever used an outhouse? UGH, at like childhood sports games, yes. I could NEVER nowadays, oh my god. Could you possibly write a successful novel? I think I have the creativity to, but not the dedication. Are there any foods that make you gag? Beans, for one. I just canNOT with them. It's a completely involuntary reaction. Have you ever had blonde highlights in your hair? I think I did? Who was the last person you video-chatted with? The lady who was seeing if I qualified for TMS therapy. Do you think sleeve tattoos look trashy? Definitely not, I love those. If you had to get a portrait tattoo, who would it be of? I don't actually want one, but if I did, I'd go to a serious professional to get THE Darkiplier smile. :') If u know u know. Do you have any stickers on any of your electronic devices? No. Do you think half blonde/half dark brown hair is attractive? It looks great on some people, but it's not my favorite combo.

#survey #surveys #questions #lyrics: ''leave a scar'' by marilyn manson

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nickcifonie · 3 years

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In 2021, Anyone Can Make $ Playing Video Games!

I grew up playing games like Risk, Monopoly, a little Chess... and still remember buying my first computer somewhere around 1986 solely to play a computer game on. It was an Apple IIc, and that first game was some type of Pirate Adventure. I wish I remembered the name. It wasn’t all that good, but still, I was hooked!

Since that first adventure, I’ve spent thousands of hours as well as dollars playing just about every type of digital game that has followed! PC games, Atari, Wii, mobile games... you name it, I play it! I’d always generalize the cost (to myself at least) thinking “some guys play golf 3 days a week at $100 a round... I play computer games”.

That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it! However, the story has changed...

“Pay to Play” has become “Play to Earn”!

If you would be to search terms like “crypto games”, “blockchain games”, “make money playing video games”, and others, you’d find some really incredible statements. Today, quotes like the ones below are becoming more and more common!

“I made $400 last week playing a computer game” “I just sold my RPG character for $200 profit”

“I was offered $1k for a skin for my laser rifle of doom” (I made up the “laser rifle of doom” part)

“I bred my pet thingamajig yesterday and sold the baby!” (it’s digital, for those of you wincing)

In 2021, thanks to the blockchain, there’s a growing community of gamers who are making real dollars daily, mining, fighting, shooting, jumping... all while playing the same type of mobile and PC games that you had to PAY to play just a short while ago...

...but let’s start at the beginning.

You paid $172,000 for a what!?

Yes... all the way back in 2018 a CryptoKitty named “Dragon” was sold for an incredible $172,000. (300 ETH) Don’t be too surprised, it’s justified! It’s an adorable digital image, or “NFT” of a cat, after all.

It’s a lot of money, but for NFTs and blockchain gaming, flipping a Kitty today may as well be considered the stone ages. It’s still a record, but while you can still get started collecting these digital felines for as low as a couple of dollars, big-dollar trades still happen daily.

On the flip side of mortgaging your home to buy a digital picture of a CryptoKitty, Bored Ape, or CryptoPunk, you may feel better if you begin your adventure into making crypto (it’s real money, dear!) by playing a video game where you can “make money” instead of spending it.

I’m not saying owning a CryptoKitty or any of a plethora of “Avatar NFTs” we see popping up on various exchanges isn’t one way to do it... I’m saying to me at least, as a life-long gamer I’d much prefer playing a mobile, console, or PC game to collecting pictures in a digital wallet.

So what the heck is an NFT?

I could go into a long explanation... but since this article is about gaming and not cryptocurrency, I’ll tell you an NFT is a “non-fungible token”, and leave you google it if you really want to dig in deep. I do want to share more, so I’ll ‘splain it as simple as I can for you Lucy!

A CryptoKitty, as stated above, is a type of image called an NFT. (the collection is called “CryptoKitties) It’s a digital picture of a cartoon cat. There are thousands of different ones that have different shapes, colors, expressions and traits. (kind of like a real cat, but eats less)

The difference, is only one of each design is actually a legitimate “CryptoKitty”. (or a legitimate whatever type of image it happens to be) To be clearer... each NFT is a “one of a kind”, so if you’re thinking “but can’t I just make a copy?”, nope you can’t.

I mean... you “can” make a copy of it if you really dig the design and want it on your desktop, but it would only be a copy of that particular NFT, not the real McCoy! Ok... so what makes one real, and the rest fakes? The blockchain.

Now, I’m going to be true to my word and keep my promise of not making this an article about crypto or the blockchain, so just know this: the difference between an image that is an actual NFT, and a copy of one, is there is an underlying digital code that designates the real thing.

So real in fact, that artists are creating or importing their paintings and creations to the web as NFTs, numbering them as they would a lithograph, and selling their entire collections. So if you are an art fan, check with your favorite creators... you may be surprised to find all of their “works of art” on an online marketplace!

NFTs are viewed on certain marketplace websites and digital wallets where the copies cannot be displayed, so that is how we know one is real, and the others are not! Having said that, sure, there’s more to it, but just know that there’s a 100% secure way of knowing an image is a real NFT.

In addition, there can be more than one NFT with the same identical image. However, each has a unique underlying code, so even if they look exactly the same, they are not! Look at it like the playing cards or comic books of old... there may be 1,000 created (or “minted” as it’s called in NFT land) but they will each be numbered 1 to 1,000.

And guess which is more valuable.....? I knew you’d get it!

And these NFT’s make money how?

You’re getting warmer! There are a lot of different types of games coming out these days where you can make money playing. There are RPG’s, MOBA’s, Shooters, games in first person and in third, dungeon crawls... you name it!

If you’re thinking “how did I not know this!”, I was the same until recently! I have been gaming almost daily since I stepped into Ultima Online back in 1997, and I can’t even begin to tally how many hours and/or dollars I’ve invested into gaming.

Now, our hobby pays!

After 30-something years, my wife still thinks I’m bonkers... but I got a totally different look from her a few days ago when I told her I sold my game character for well over $200. Legit. I sold two more yesterday, and another this afternoon.

Some of these only cost me $10 or $15, some much more. Some are free. I sold another NFT character last week for $1,950, and it was sold on the game’s website, not on the black market.

So not only can an NFT be a picture of an Ape, Vegetable, Duck, or Stripper on a pole (we’ll leave it at that) but it can be a character in a game, a weapon, a mount, armor, or more.

One game is giving away free pet turtles with each character. For the uneducated on “pets” in computer games, it’s not the kind you keep in a bowl in your bedroom. It’s a companion that fights with you in an online game and may shoot fire from its eyes, heal you, or similar.

Soon after being handed out for free, they’re now selling for around $60 each.

So an NFT can be an image, a video, music, a meme... or even a shirt or shoes! But we’ll leave the NFT clothing explanation to another article. ;)

Remember that rare skin you paid out the nose for a year ago in Apex? Or the L33T character you built up in Fortnite or Warcraft? If you’re no longer playing that game, it’s money under the bridge. And you don’t own the bridge!

In this new breed of blockchain games, you could have LEGALLY sold that character, skin, weapon, land, house, mount, or whatever it was when you tired of the game. For a profit. Maybe for a LARGE profit.

Yes, in the past we were able to find ways to get around the system and dump our pixels from time to time. We’d sell the account on the black market, or cut a deal with someone like a drug dealer on a Chicago Street corner. Then we’d over who went first...

“You give me the account and weapon first!” “No you give me the money first”. Sometimes the deals even went through. Others well... let’s just say half of the parties walked away happy.

I made good money when after 4 years of daily playing I sold my Ultima Online account for somewhere around $2,000, but I needed to find a trustworthy “go-between” to broker the deal. Even then, I was sweating it!

With today’s crypto games, not only do the games provide the platform to buy, sell, or trade your character and items, but it’s encouraged, and done with good old U.S dollars! I’ve made $ playing 4 or 5 different games already this week, as well as flipping (buying low and selling higher) NFT characters!

How else can I make money playing games?

The way you earn varies from game to game, but each week seems to reveal another new strategy, platform, or idea. Many are new strategies, and while some have “triple A” 3D animation and graphics, others are simpler and use basic one-dimensional graphics for the gameplay.

Some of these games are actually tied to a token on the blockchain. The game developer creates their own token, not too unlike Bitcoin or Ethereum, and it can be bought or sold on the open market as well as used in the game as currency.

Could you imagine if back in League of Legends, Guild Wars or Final Fantasy, when you were ready to move to a new game, you could sell or easily convert your gold to cash? Some of today’s blockchain games encourage it!

Not only can you now buy and sell characters and weapons, the gold in the game can be traded, bought, sold, or saved like real currency, stocks, crypto, or collectables. Never have I been as excited about PC and mobile gaming as I am today!

As an example, I am doing some work for a new game that will launch soon called Pepper Attack. Pepper Attack has its own token or coin... called MYTE. It can be used in the game as currency, but also be traded like Bitcoin. A lot of today’s blockchain games offer this same benefit.

Hi ho, hi ho, it’s off to mine I go!

Just by owning an NFT from the game, you can login on a daily basis and click “mine” earning real-value tokens passively. Your Pepper goes to work like one of the 7 Dwarves mining MYTE, and later on you can convert it to other tokens or cold, hard cash.

There's more to do in this particular game as well. Like any good RPG or MMORPG, each pepper has a unique combination or skills like attack, defense, evade, hit points, and more. As an example of the possibilities, if you have a high attack score, other characters will be able to pay you in MYTE to “train” them, raising their score as well.

In addition, these NFTs have unique physical traits, some are common and some are very rare. This game in particular have toons that look more like anime-ish elves with weapons and a stem... I have to admit the artwork is really spicey! (see what I did there?) Other games are of course totally different.

Some people will simply collect these NFTs/characters as an investment, like playing cards or comics. Others will use them in the game, and still others will do both. Either way, they can be held, or sold for a profit!

Unlike the games of the past, when you’re ready to move on you don’t walk away and lose all the $ you have spent for characters, skins, weapons, potions, and other items. When you’re done, you’ll be able to sell your character and items... possibly for a profit... maybe a lot of profit... and move on.

These are not your father’s computer games!

As we move ahead in the genre, we are seeing AAA studios coming out with big-dollar productions, like Blankos, Mist, Illuvium, Ember Sword and others. Some of these games actually let you buy the land you build on!

Did you have your own house in Ultima Online, Star Wars Galaxies, or Archeage? What if you could have used It as a shop and been paid in dollars for your wares, rented it to another player, or sold it for cold hard cash at a huge profit down the road?

In many of today’s games, not only is it common, but extremely hard to come by, and quite expensive. Not only are people paying thousands of dollars for a plot in some of the games that have land, but they’re paying it many months before the game is even released.

They do it, because in many cases they know that they can easily 2X, 10X, or even 50X their investment a short piece down the road. Seriously? Seriously... and the early bird catches the worm!

Other games with lesser budgets are more graphic-based, but have super earnings potential as well, and are just as fun to play. These include Splinterlands, (a card game like Magic!) Crypto Blades, Axie Infinity and more.

Regardless of if the new blockchain game of your choice is a RPG, MOBA, a card game or racing game... the fact that you can put some coin into your pocket playing adds a whole new element. It’s heckafun making money playing a game!

The early nerd catches the worm!

In many cases, if you can catch a game before it releases, the land, characters, weapons, and other items... in most cases all NFTs... can be grabbed at a tiny fraction of the future value.

Of course, always check out the game details and team first, and be confident it’s a good place to put your money. Not all games are made the same.

If you’re lucky enough to find out about and partake in an early sale, for example, like grabbing a character NFT or two in “Pepper Attack” before the late September launch date, you may be in for a real treat!

There are plenty of new titles coming down the pipe that look to be fun, have great communities, and offer earning opportunities. A web search will find services and websites that will keep you on your toes and alert you of upcoming blockchain game releases, marketplace opening, and more.

As we look forward, the future of gaming on the blockchain is really, really exciting! Not only are the games getting better and more fun, but they’re getting better at making the economics work more smoothly as well.

The games are not without challenges, as they need to be made to sustain themselves economically over the long haul. In addition, they need to have higher levels of security (thanks blockchain!) and of course, work without becoming “pay to win”. Thankfully, the new breed of developers have risen to the challenge!

The next time you look for a new game to add to your phone or desktop, or just want a change of pace, look to a game that pays to play! Your wallet might thank you.

Another perk, is your husband or wife will appreciate it as well! Instead of hearing “are you going to play that stupid game all night again?”, you may start to hear things like “I’ll put the kids to bed tonight sweetheart, so you can get online and play”.

One can only hope...

Author - Nick Cifonie

Nick is a lifelong gamer, who cut his teeth at the local Chicago arcade playing Tetris as a teen. Better known as Znick or Deacon Z, Nick became a Game Master in Ultima Online in 1997, ran a large multi-game guild for 15 years, and now spends his time in the “play to earn” arena. Professionally, Nick is a writer and 4-decade marketer working with the Pepper Attack team, as well as others. Nick is also a Catholic Deacon.

#nftart #nft marketplace #nftdrop #nftgallery #nftnews #nftcrypto #cryptoart #nftcommunity #nftartist #crypto #blockchain #nonfungibletokens #nft games #nft

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skybird13 · 4 years

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What Went Wrong With Clover and Qrow: The Writing Pt. 1

And What CRWBY Could Have Done Better

[Spoilers for all of RWBY Vol. 7]

Now that the final episode for RWBY volume 7 has aired (for first members, at least) and I’ve had over a week to throw my tantrum and air my more emotional grievances, I think now is the perfect time to delve into the mechanics of what I believe went wrong when it came to episode 12, particularly in regards to the writing itself. For those of you who have been following my blog for any length of time, it should come as no surprise to you that in order to do this, we have to go all the way back to the beginning of the volume and break things down. For the rest of you... this is going to be a long post. In fact, it ended up being so long, I’m going to break it down into four parts, focusing on three episodes each up to episode 12.

There are a lot of layers to the anger and hurt surrounding Clover’s death. And while my emotional reaction is still very much there, I really do want to take the time to do this so that people can better understand at least one of those layers. I won’t be getting too much into the shipping aspect in this post or even the queer coding that I personally perceived in Clover’s character. Rather, I’m going to be analyzing the writing decisions and offering my personal suggestions for how CRWBY could have tweaked things to make the events in episode 12, as they happened, far more feasible (i.e. foreshadow Clover’s behavior and remove the flirting, primarily).

Note: This is a critique. I’m not going for negativity here but rather for constructive criticism, where I’ll be acknowledging what CRWBY did well alongside what they could have done better. If you read to the end of part 4 of this series, you’ll find that even after everything, a part of me still very much wants to give CRWBY the benefit of the doubt.

So, without further ado, here we go.

Episode 1 - Clover’s Introduction

I made a whole post breaking down and analyzing Clover’s introductory scenes in episode 1 where I focused pretty heavily on the animation and the framing. You can read it here if you’d like, but to summarize, the way these scenes play out makes it very clear that Qrow and Clover are going to be linked somehow. These scenes worked, and even in light of the events in episode 12, they still work because things are left pretty open. We have no idea if Qrow and Clover are going to like one another, much less get along to any degree. We just know that we, the audience, are meant to connect them. These scenes, in fact, were done incredibly well.

As far as writing goes, they don’t say a whole lot to one another. In fact, Clover doesn’t speak to Qrow directly at all and the only thing Qrow says is:

“Hey, pal, I’m a licensed Huntsman. Just helped save everyone?”

So... pretty par for the course there. Nothing that really needs to be addressed. This is totally something we expect Qrow to say.

So let’s take a look at Clover’s dialogue. I don’t want to quote every single line, at least not in this particular scene, so I’ll just pull out a few that I think do a great job of setting up his character.

In response to Dr. Polendina asking what the Ace Ops are doing in Mantle:

“Well, we heard a report of an unauthorized ship making an unauthorized landing, followed by an unauthorized use of weapons by non-licensed Huntsmen.”

In response to Dr. Polendina wanting to talk it out:

“They’ll be able to talk this out once they get up to Atlas.”

This is a fantastic bit of writing because it establishes several things at once.

1) Clover is lawful good. The reasons he lists for being there, and the way he emphasizes the “unauthorized” nature of it all, makes it pretty clear that he’s there to do his job. He doesn’t respond to Qrow or even check him for a license, and he rebuffs Dr. Polendina’s desire to talk things out right there. Clover arrests the teams because in his eyes they were breaking the law, and that’s all he really needs to know.

2) It sets him up as Qrow’s opposite in ideology, which is a great way to mirror the opposite Semblance reveal later.

3) It also introduces the possibility of negative tension between him and Qrow. The problem with this is that this tension is never once realized throughout the rest of the volume. In fact, the complete opposite happens and they get along very well. My biggest critique here is that CRWBY absolutely put themselves in a position where episode 12 could have made more sense but then never took it anywhere. Instead, they focused on building up their relationship as a positive thing.

Problem Tally For This Episode: 0.5. There’s really nothing I would have changed about this particular scene because I think it was very nicely done. Things are introduced and set up but left ambiguous enough that we have no idea how things between Qrow and Clover are going to go. The 0.5 is an acknowledgment of the potential set up for the episode 12 conflict that went unused.

Suggested Changes Tally For This Episode: 0

Episode 2 - Making Amends

(^^ I had to go with this screenshot, Clover’s expression is way too good XD)

The end of episode 2 is the first time we see Clover and the other Ace Ops since they arrested the main cast down in Mantle. And... this is where things start to go wrong. Or, perhaps it would be better to say, this is where things could have gone differently. While Clover and Qrow don’t interact in this episode, there are still some key decisions made in regards to Clover’s character.

I’ll pull out the relevant lines and analyze them as we go, then offer up my suggestions for changes.

When the Teams come down the stairs after their meeting with James, Clover approaches them and says:

“I’d like to sincerely apologize for the miscommunication down in Mantle. We didn’t intend to-”

We never learn what it was they “didn’t intend” to do because Elm cuts him off when she practically body-checks him out of the way 😆 But the wording of this line immediately shifts our perspective on Clover a little. He’s no longer behaving like the stringent, unapologetic law enforcer, but is instead acknowledging that he and his team probably messed up a little by not listening/talking to the Teams. It’s a small thing, but it’s our first hint that while he is lawful good, he is by no means unreasonable or unreachable. Contrast him with Cordovin in volume 6 who listens to absolutely nothing, doesn’t apologize, and never budges in her determination to stop the Teams until she has no other choice.

Now, because writing often relies on the tension between various characters’ lines, and because characters are often defined by those around them as much as by what they themselves say, I think it’s important to have a transcript of the following exchange between Ruby, Weiss, Elm, Marrow, and Clover:

Elm: I feel so bad, honestly! If we had known who you were, we’d be laughing over a hot meal right now and--

Ruby: I understand. You were just following orders.

Weiss: I mean, you could have asked us some questions first.

Marrow: Questions are for the weak, but we’re all on the same team now. Not that I’m happy about it.

Clover: We just wanted to say we’re sorry, and that we’re looking forward to working with you on our next mission. You might be students, but you’ve been fighting just as hard as we have, if not harder.

There’s quite a bit to tease out here. Some of it good, some of it not so great in terms of the larger picture and the events in episode 12.

First of all, Elm apologizes. This functions as a reflection on Clover. Good writers find ways to define and build character through the people around them as much as from the character’s own actions and behavior. As the team leader, you expect Clover’s teammates to have picked up on some of his more prominent characteristics and ways of thinking. The fact that Elm not only apologizes but insinuates that knowing who the Teams were would have changed the decisions made in Mantle, suggests a certain level of flexibility. It can also be argued that this foreshadows the fact that at least one of them will go through a change thanks to their association with the Teams. On a deep writing level, that foreshadowing is there, and I’ll make an argument in just a second for why Clover is set up to be that changed character.

But first, let’s look at Ruby and Weiss’s lines, which both serve well to introduce the fundamental difference between themselves and the Ace Ops: “make it up as we go” RWBY, JNOR, and Qrow as opposed to “arrest now ask questions later” Ace Ops. This is good. This works well as the first hint that conflict between them is possible. I have no complaints here.

And then we get to Marrow’s line. This is where things get a little murky but maybe that was the intent. He’s definitely posturing for his team, which is behavior that he exhibits throughout the volume. As the youngest member and the only Faunus on the Ace Ops, this line does a good job of exhibiting that he really wants to fit in with the others, and as such it also doubles as a second peek into the “ask questions later” ideology that the Ace Ops hold as a group. Which is probably something that trickles down from Clover himself, considering he’s the leader. This, also, is fine and works well.

But then....

Clover apologizes again. He doesn’t correct Marrow but doesn’t agree with him either. He doesn’t acknowledge Marrow’s assertions at all. He apologizes to the Teams and this simple act works to reinforce the shift in our perception that he’s possibly more flexible and open to admitting his own mistakes than we might have thought in his episode 1 introduction. And this is the very beginning of the dissonance so many of us felt in his behavior in episode 12.

Suggested Change #1:

My first suggested fix is to change the way that Clover’s second apology is framed by changing his initial apology. Even though he gets cut off by Elm, his first instinct is to apologize for the miscommunication in Mantle. Not only does this tie in so well with one of the primary themes of the volume (miscommunication in all its manifestations), it also indicates that Clover’s character itself is tied to that theme. But his acknowledgment that they probably should have asked some questions immediately frames him as a character who is going to change in terms of that theme. The “we didn’t intend to--” part only adds weight to this hint.

So how could they have fixed this? There are a multitude of possibilities but here is the best I came up with:

>>“I’d like to sincerely apologize for what happened earlier. We were only--”

Do you see the big differences here? Two major things change by altering only a few words. First, in this line, Clover does not acknowledge that he and the Ace Ops made a mistake by not asking questions. He’s still be apologizing for what happened but he's not admitting any fault on his or his team’s part. This would have reaffirmed our initial impression of him as a rigid rule follower, rather than dismantling it a little. Second, the “we were only” would have indicated that, despite his apology, he planned to justify their actions. Again, this would have worked very well to maintain the strict lawful good vibe we get from him initially. These minor alterations would have been subtle enough but strong enough to continue building up to the conflict between him and Qrow in episode 12.

Suggested Change #2:

If you don’t want to change that initial apology, change what he says after Marrow speaks. Have him acknowledge Marrow’s assertions that questions aren’t their thing. You could even have done this through animation with a slight nod or a laugh, but since we’re talking about writing, here is one suggestion:

>>“In our line of work, taking the time to ask questions can sometimes be dangerous. I’m sure you can relate. Regardless, we just wanted to say we’re sorry.”

Again, do you see the difference between this and what we got? What we got brings out the possibility that Clover is somewhat malleable. This, on the other hand, effectively but subtly reinforces his “by the books” mentality, which is exactly what CRWBY needed in order to justify his behavior towards Qrow in episode 12.

I have no suggestions for changes to the lines of the other characters. I think those lines function well in pushing against each other and maintaining a level of tension all around, and they’re necessary for building up to the RWBY vs. Ace Ops conflict. But two very minor and simple changes to Clover’s lines would have continued that initial setup for the episode 12 conflict that was established in episode 1. Instead, CRWBY starts to dissolve it from the get-go.

Problem Tally for this Episode: 1 The biggest problem in this episode is really that Clover’s character immediately starts to shift from “strict inflexible rule follower” to someone who can admit he made a mistake and should probably behave a little differently in the future.

Suggested Changes Tally for this Episode: 2

Episode 3 - Aaaaaand Here We Go

This section is going to be loooong. Not only do we get a lot of Clover in this episode, but we get a ton of him and Qrow together. In other words, we get the first beats of their relationship (again, I won’t be arguing for the shipping aspects, because I’ve done that in other posts and you all know where I stand on that, but their relationship, regardless of its nature, is vital to this analysis).

The first scenes we get in this episode are of Clover briefing Qrow, Jaune, and Ruby about the mission. A lot of it is pretty basic and does a good job of establishing him as an organized, efficient military leader. He’s clearly smart and knowledgable with his strategy.

The first line that really stood out to me in this sequence is the one where he is talking about the Geist:

“But recon has identified a powerful Geist that’s managed to evade destruction and take several lives.”

And this pretty much just serves to establish that lost life is a concern for him. A very good thing to know. It adds a little depth to his character.

After this, we get:

“General Ironwood says you’ve seen your fair share of combat. I trust that man with my life, so tomorrow, I’ll be trusting you all too.”

This is actually a great line for a lot of reasons. First and foremost, it establishes his trust in and bond with Ironwood. It’s a line that gets a lot of emphasis both in delivery and in terms of placement (it comes at the end of his monologue), and it’s one that returns in episode 12 as a sort-of justification for Clover’s actions. This particular line also suggests that his trust in the Teams and Qrow, as of this moment, is dependent upon Ironwood’s opinion of them. He trusts them because Ironwood has vouched for them and not because he has any reasons of his own to do so. This actually works really well and I wouldn’t suggest a change.

The problem in the narrative again comes from what happens outside of this line. The tension suggested here is never carried forward or built upon. In light of this, and because of the direction his relationship with Qrow takes, this line doesn’t work well as a foreshadowing of his actions in episode 12. Rather, its narrative function falls more in line with hinting at the potential for change that was introduced in episode 2. It does do a good job of setting up Clover as the one who is going to have to make a choice between his absolute trust in Ironwood and something else (whether that’s his own judgment or his trust in Qrow or whatever), but because of the writing outside of this line, it completely fails to build up to the events in episode 12 in a way that is convincing. In fact, it does the complete opposite. Because of this line and the way Clover is written in the rest of the volume, we are set up to expect an internal struggle from him in episode 12, not blind obedience.

Moving on to the scene where he and Qrow have their first one-on-one interactions. As you can probably predict, here is where things start to go to absolute shit. Up to this point, CRWBY still had what they needed to pull off episode 12 without it feeling ridiculously contrived. Sure, they played around with Clover’s character a little, gave us enough nuance in his narrative to potentially pique our curiosity, but they hadn’t passed the point of no return yet. Here, however, is where they start to.

Because of that, I’m going to quote large chunks of the script between Qrow and Clover, and pull it apart as best I can. Here is their very first conversation of the entire volume:

Qrow: Gotta say, I’m still not really used to working with other Huntsmen in the field.

Clover: But you were on a team before, weren’t you?

Qrow: (sighs) Long time ago. I just found working alone tends to be for the best.

Clover: Well, I think that’s a shame.

[Qrow slips and nearly falls before Clover catches him.]

So there are actually quite a few things going on here and they all contribute to the overall problem with the writing in this volume.

First of all, despite Qrow’s previously established dislike for the Atlas military in earlier volumes, and despite being arrested by Clover in episode 1, there is zero animosity or negative tension here. He seems more than willing to work with Clover and is even comfortable enough to initiate conversation and open up a bit. There is nothing of plot relevance in this scene. It is solely and specifically meant to give us the first hint of what their relationship is going to be like.

The major problem I have with this, in terms of the overall story that pans out between these two, is that CRWBY already had an inbuilt way to introduce a little negative tension. They could have easily called back to Qrow’s not-so-great opinions about Atlas military huntsmen, even if not overtly, and that would have worked really well as a stepping stone to the episode 12 conflict. But that’s not what we get.

Instead, Qrow opens up about something personal (being alone) and Clover is shown to be sympathetic. Clover’s sympathy here is another major mistake made by CRWBY when we take into account one of Clover’s lines in episode 12. I’m not going to watch it right now to get the exact wording, but it’s something along the lines of “There’s that cynicism of yours”. It’s a line that comes across as cruel and impatient, and it comes out of absolutely nowhere thanks in particular to the exchange above, their interactions later in this episode, and the episode 5 truck scene.

Right here is where CRWBY had the opportunity to at least partially rectify that very specific problem, but it doesn’t happen. We are given no indication that Clover thinks any less of Qrow for this reveal, and are instead given a glimpse at the patience and kindness that he is capable of.

Suggested Change #3:

The easiest way to fix this would have been to remove Clover’s sympathy, or at least insert a little condescension into it. This could have been done without making him an outright ass, and therefore CRWBY would have been able to keep us invested in at least wondering where this is going to go between them while simultaneously giving us one of the hints needed to make episode 12 believable. All it would have taken was altering Clover’s final line in that exchange.

Here are a few possibilities:

>> “Hmm” - delivered in a way that communicates his judgment or at least something noncommital

>> “That doesn’t seem like a good idea.” - critical

>> “That’s a bit much, isn’t it?” - dismissive, condescending

>> “I have a hard time believing that.” - dismissive

>> “Is that right.” - dismissive, condescending

>> He says nothing and it’s up to the animators to communicate his judgment.

Suggested Change #4:

The slightly more difficult change they could have made here would have been utilizing Qrow’s established distaste for authority and the Atlas military in general. Here is one potential way that could have gone:

>> Qrow: Gotta say, I’m still not really used to working with other Huntsmen in the field.

Clover: But you were on a team before, weren’t you?

Qrow: Long time ago. Playing with others isn’t really my thing. I found working alone tends to be for the best.

Clover: Well, I think that’s a shame.

In this case, you could keep Clover’s last line because instead of Qrow opening up and being vulnerable, he’s actually being a bit more antagonistic, which would have been plausible given his behavior towards Winter and James in volume 3. Clover’s line, in this context, becomes much more ambiguous and open to interpretation, which would have fed well into the episode 12 build-up.

Moving on again to their next interaction in the mines right after the Geist escapes:

Clover: Thaks for the call-out. That could have been bad.

Qrow: (sighs) I wouldn’t thank me. My Semblance brings misfortune. Sometimes I can’t keep it under control.

Clover: That so? Well, hey, don’t beat yourself up about it. My Semblance is good fortune. Lucky you, huh?

Again, there is quite a bit going on, not only in these lines but in the lead-up as well, so in order to maintain perspective, I’m going to backtrack just a bit to when Clover caught Qrow after he slipped on the ice. The next major beat in their relationship after that event is Qrow warning Clover to prevent him from getting crushed by a falling beam.

These two things paired so closely together suggest that real trust is starting to develop between them. It’s not trust vouched for by someone else, but the trust that comes from being in a dangerous situation together and coming through for one another. At the bare minimum, the foundation for trust is laid here and with nothing to undermine it (because of the writing thus far), there is no reason for the audience to doubt that it will continue to develop and strengthen.

Then we have the lines above.

Again, Qrow opens up about something deeply personal here. He is showing unusual levels of vulnerability for him, which suggests that even if the audience doesn’t quite understand it, Qrow has found a reason to want to open up to Clover. It points towards an immediate level of comfort that we have never seen from Qrow before and that is something that can’t be ignored.

As for Clover, I suppose we could argue about the nature of his response to Qrow’s vulnerability. I know some saw it as Clover being dismissive of Qrow’s pain, and if that had been how the lines were delivered, this might have worked very well in building up to a conflict between them. This is one instance where we need to step outside the words themselves and take into consideration the aspects surrounding the words: the animation and Chris Wehkamp’s line delivery in particular (which I assume were directions written into the script).

One of the biggest problems here is that this was yet another opportunity for Clover’s impatience with Qrow’s cynicism to be established. And yet again, that’s not what we get. Instead, Clover takes Qrow’s Semblance in stride, reassures him that it’s not something he needs to worry about, and then offers up a comparable piece of information about himself: his Semblance is good fortune. There is no indication in the writing, line delivery, or animation that he finds Qrow’s attitude distasteful or annoying, and there could have been.

The other major problem with this is, again, the nature of Clover’s final line. I promised that I wouldn’t get into the shipping aspect and I won’t, but at the very least I think everyone can agree that the “Lucky you, huh?” quip at the end is intended to be friendly. This is the first time we learn something personal about Clover and it’s also the first time that his behavior towards Qrow shifts from being purely professional to something else. This shift is maintained and built upon throughout the volume and I’ll comment more about it in just a bit.

None of this builds up to what happens in episode 12. CRWBY lays the foundation for a healthy and functional relationship between these two, hints at the beginnings of real trust between them, and completely foregoes all opportunities to insert some of the negative tension that was sorely needed for episode 12 to make sense.

Before making some suggestions for changes, I’d like to take a second to really emphasize this point: prior to these two scenes, the audience has little to no reason to believe that these two are going to get along. Clover is elite Atlas military and Qrow is... well, Qrow. We already knew everything we needed to know about them to make the inclusion of that necessary negative tension ridiculously easy. All CRWBY had to do was play them off one another in a way that leaned on this prior knowledge. This is not only sloppy writing in light of episode 12, but this is also the active and intentional subversion of our expectations where these two characters are concerned. This puts us into a bit of a quandary, really, because how can something be both careless and yet so intentionally done? It’s not a question I’m going to try to answer here but I think it’s one worth keeping in mind as we move forward.

Suggested Change #5:

Remove the friendly/flirty nature of Clover’s final lines and instead write them in such a way that he seems a little more callous and irritated with Qrow’s attitude. Again, he doesn’t need to be such a jerk that we hate him off the bat, but including a little hint of negative emotion would not have been difficult here.

For instance:

>> Clover: That so? Well, don’t worry about it. Luckily, my Semblance is good fortune.

See how different that is? Dismissive, potentially irritated, and it brings the focus on to Clover and his Semblance rather than putting the focus on Qrow and what a good fortune Semblance might mean to him, which is how the original script functions. The very last line that I suggest also serves to put Qrow down a bit in a very subtle way rather than having Clover flirt with/be friendly towards him. It’s basically a “whatever, things will be fine despite the fact you’re here”.

Moving on from this, we get the following:

Clover: Charlie, Bravo, you should be able to cut off the target at the heart of the mine. Qrow and I won’t be far behind.

Again, this line is a relatively small thing all on its own, but in context with the scenes that precede it, there is actually a lot more going on here than might appear at first.

I didn’t quote it, but when Qrow and Clover first land at their assigned mine entrance, Clover refers to himself and Qrow as “Alpha Squad”. Here, that changes to “Qrow and I”.

Not only does this support and reinforce the change in Clover’s attitude toward Qrow with the “Lucky you, huh?” line (going from professional to something else), but Qrow is specifically named. There is not only an inherent intimacy that comes with using a person’s first name, but it’s a very subtle and effective way of framing Clover and Qrow together as a pair. This further feeds into that set-up I was talking about in episode 2 where Clover is presented as the most likely character to change as a result of his association with the Teams/Qrow, particularly in the absence of negative tension and the efforts by the writers to subvert our expectations in that regard.

Do you see where things are starting to stack up in the completely wrong direction? It gets worse in just a minute but first...

How do you fix this? Again, it’s easy. Considering Clover is military and codenames are a thing heavily used, it would have made more sense for him to at least refer to the two of them as “we” or even revert to “alpha squad”.

Suggested Change #6:

Make a slight alteration to Clover’s line so that he reverts to pure military professionalism.

>> Clover: We won’t be far behind.

>> Clover: Alpha squad won’t be far behind.

Pretty simple. Either change works. Even though the shift that comes with “Lucky you, huh” would still have thrown us off a bit, Clover’s return to his norm would have signaled to the audience that the perceived change was fragile at best, and possibly even a complete fluke of Clover’s personality. It also maintains a level of emotional distance between Clover and Qrow that we really did need for episode 12 to work. Instead, CRWBY made the choice to close that distance. Significantly.

Now it gets worse. We go into the scene in the main chamber where Clover and the Ace Ops take down the Geist. The obvious bit of dialogue here that merits attention is Clover’s following line after catching the piece of Dust in reference to the other Ace Ops:

Clover: What would you guys do without me?

I think this line might be one of the most disappointing because it could so easily have foreshadowed Clover’s death. But instead, due to what came just before and what comes after, this line sets up an entirely different conflict. In fact, it does a beautiful job of pretty much cementing Clover as the character who will change the most because of Qrow and the Teams, and who will have to choose between Ironwood and his own moral code. Do I suggest that from here on out, him choosing Qrow over Ironwood was absolutely set in stone? Not at all. In fact, that wouldn’t have made sense for the narrative or Clover’s character. However, Clover’s unflinching blind obedience and immediate willingness to arrest Qrow in episode 12 are completely undermined by this set-up. We expect to see him struggle with that decision, regardless of the ultimate outcome, not turn into a drone who does exactly what he’s told.

Additionally, thanks to the set-up we get throughout the volume for the RWBY vs Ace Ops fight, this line feeds into that tension in particular. The problem here is that the second we see the Ace Ops act to arrest RWBY without hesitation, this tension is resolved and we have our answer. We know exactly what they do without him and all that’s left to see is the unspoken second half of this question: What would Clover do without them?

If I could include an illustration of how far CRWBY was leaning away from foreshadowing Clover’s death and callousness in episode 12 up to this point, we’d have ourselves a goddamn Tower of Pisa.

There is no specific fix here because the problem isn’t with this line itself. It certainly could have functioned to foreshadow Clover’s death, but again, because of the rest of the narrative, that’s not what it ends up doing.

I want to step away from the dialogue for just a moment. I know I said I wouldn’t be focusing on animation, but considering animators take their directions from the script and storyboards, it does technically qualify as writing even if I can’t give you word-for-word what those directions were. There is something in the animation in this particular scene that we can’t ignore.

Clover’s behavior directly following the line above (he tosses the Dust to Qrow, gives him a loose and playful salute, and backward swan dives off the cliff into the pit where the Geist is) is a massive, screaming augmentation of Clover’s shift towards Qrow specifically (i.e. away from strictly professional and towards something else). The “lucky you, huh” line and the use of Qrow’s name right before this pulls us very nicely into this new dynamic.... But this dynamic is exactly the thing that makes episode 12 so outlandishly out of place.

Moving on to the final Qrow/Clover interaction for this episode. After the Geist has been defeated and Ruby makes the day-saving catch, we get this:

Qrow: Lucky catch, huh?

Clover: Hm, no. I’d chalk that one up to talent.

One of my issues with these lines is that they serve to once more highlight the shift that has occurred between Qrow and Clover, particularly because it gives us some invaluable insight on Qrow’s feelings towards Clover’s Semblance. Here is another area where the light-hearted delivery Jason Liebrecht (Qrow’s VA) gave factors in a bit. A lot of us had no idea how Qrow was going to react to learning that someone else had a Semblance opposite to his own. He could very easily have been upset or resentful or even self-effacing, but instead, he absorbs the information, takes it in stride, and proceeds to joke about it in a way that I just realized mirrors Clover’s “Lucky you, huh?” line. This is basically Qrow shifting seamlessly into their new dynamic and accepting it.

The other major problem here is, once again, Clover’s characterization. This has all been building up pretty badly to episode 12, as I hope I’ve illustrated, but this final exchange is really the last good chance CRWBY had to pull things back on track a bit. Only they don’t take it. They could have had Clover display a bit of arrogance or dismissiveness in this scene. It would have worked well to at least let us know that the personality he has displayed so far might be more of a front than anything, and if done right, his coldness toward Qrow in episode 12 wouldn’t have been totally unexpected. Instead, we get to see a man who gives credit where it’s due and absolutely believes that his Semblance is not everything. In other words, we get a Clover who is drastically different from the person depicted in episode 12.

Suggested Change #7:

Change Clover’s final line to clue the audience into the fact that he is not what he seems and hint at a darker personality lurking under the surface. Here are a couple of options

>> Clover: It was.

>> Clover: That’s one way to put it.

Problem Tally for this Episode: 14

Further set-up (at least 2 major instances) for Clover to be the one who changes or at least struggles with having to choose between Ironwood and Qrow/disobeying orders. Multiple instances (3 significant by my count) where Clover’s characterization fails to match what we get in episode 12. A failure to lean into the pre-established negative tension between Clover and Qrow by virtue of who they are. An active subversion of the expectations that could have easily supported that negative tension. The shift in Qrow and Clover’s relationship which is never recanted in any way, followed by no less than 4 instances of reinforcement. The beginning of the closing emotional distance between Clover and Qrow. A line that could potentially have acted as foreshadowing undermined by what comes before and after it.

Suggested Changes Tally for this Episode: 5

Total Problems so Far: 15.5

Total Suggested Changes: 7

Do you see where all the little, tiny things are starting to add up? And do you also see where only a few small changes could have been implemented to make episode 12 something that didn’t hit the audience like a freight train? The thing is, not all of these changes would have been necessary. A few of them would have sufficed.

I hope this has been helpful in shedding some light on a portion of the reason why people are so upset by what happened in episode 12. I’m going to continue this analysis as soon as I can, with the next part covering episodes 4-6. With school and everything I’m not certain how soon it will be out, but look for it sometime over the weekend or at the beginning of next week.

#clover deserved better #fair game #clover ebi #qrow branwen #rwby #rwby7 #rwby critique #what went wrong in the writing #blog series

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purplesurveys · 3 years

Text

1115

survey by vintagekid

Name: Robyn.

Happy with it? I am now, but I certainly wasn’t as a kid. Other kids were cruel and would tease me solely for my name, which made it hard for me to socialize. I got the same bad Batman jokes too many times and I also got called a boy. These seem petty now, but as a kindergartener adjusting to life in school, it had been traumatizing and made me wonder if my classmates were going to remain the way they were for the long run which no 4-year-old should be mulling about, really.

Do you wear stilettos? When I get the chance, which isn’t very often at all. But I do love stilettos.

How important are looks to you? I find this question very vague, but generally looks matter to me to a certain extent, like how I’d want to look nice and proper for a job interview or for formal occasions such as weddings. Relationship-wise, I also think I have to feel a level of physical attraction towards someone for me to consider seeing them.

How often do you download music? I don’t anymore. I stream all my music.

Can you name a philosopher? Socrates.

What would you do if two unicorns tried to whisk you off to candy mountain? I just looked this up and this is apparently in reference to an ancient viral video, like it was around before viral videos were even a universally-acknowledged concept. That said, I don’t have a clue how to respond to this lmao.

You became the deciding vote in an election, which party would you go for? I don’t base my voting decisions on parties because the party system in my country is a tragically broken shitstorm in which every single party rallies the same values and principles, just executed in their own – and usually poor and unsustainable – ways. I do my research on each candidate, see how they answer in debates, look at laws they’ve authored, see which marginalized groups they proactively support (if they do), and decide from there.

Do you have a bzoink account? I don’t but I’ve been a semi-regular visitor since like 2009.

How many phone calls do you typically make in a day? Zero. People usually call me.

What song are you listening to? Tell Me It’s Okay by, surprise surprise, Paramore.

Do you understand things others your age do not? I don’t know. Maybe. Everyone’s bound to understand some things better than others.

Do you hate people that label themselves? Why would I hate that? And why would their chosen label be my business?

How many windows do you have open? None. There’s plenty of mosquitoes at night, so even though the cold evening air would been pleasant to have we have to keep the windows closed by nighttime.

How superstitious are you? Not at all.

If you were in Harry Potter, which house would you be in? I’ve been told either Gryffindor or Ravenclaw.

Which comedian can always crack you up? It’s not a habit of mine to watch comedians.

Are you nagged about being on the computer too much? Not since I was a teenager. Since college I’ve been doing most of my work, if not all of it, through my laptop, and I think my parents understand that I have to use it all the time.

Do you feel bad about anything you've done lately? Nothing comes to mind, no.

What's your texting bill typically like? My SIM is prepaid, so it works the other way around. I put load credits in it only if I know I’ll have to call/text/surf regularly.

What song did you/do you want played at your wedding? Turning Page by Sleeping At Last.

Do you have a lot or hardly any lines on your palms? Idk, a decent amount I guess? I don’t think it hits either extreme.

What's your favourite word? Poignant.

Are you allowed to swear in front of your parents? Yeah. They’ll shoot me a glare sometimes, but I’m in my 20s and...they know they can’t really do anything about it anymore lol.

Do you eat apples? No.

What are your addictions? Coffee, I suppose.

What are some words you use in daily life? I use intensifiers often, like very, really, super, absolutely, etc. I’m also big on expressions hahaha like oh my god, seriously, for real, and ugh.

Do you look things up on Google constantly? Yes.

Where do you get your music from? Spotify. Sometimes YouTube if I wanna look for a leak.

What do you think of people with afros? That they are people with afros...? I don’t really know what you’re looking for me to say, lmfao.

survey by charey-chas

Do you like getting your picture taken? Not for the most part. My body instantly gets all frozen and awkward when a camera’s placed in front of me, which I hate because I do wish I could have more photos of myself around. Is your phone anywhere near you? It is not, actually. It feels great and I really should start making it a habit to keep it away from me entirely on weekends. Do you ever enjoy going to school? In my first school, I enjoyed going mainly (and probably only) for my friends; but Catholic school was predominantly a torturous experience. The rigidity isn’t something I look back fondly on, and it felt like being kept on a tight leash for 14 years. College was a lot more enjoyable in every way possible. I liked going to (most of) my classes and learning as much as I loved the vibrant org culture and the general freedom that comes with university life. Have you ever gone on a road trip? Lots. The Philippines is a relatively small country and unless you want to jump to a different island altogether, there are many provinces you can readily travel to by car. Who do you get along with best in your family? Nina, my sister. Then my dad. I clash a lot with my mom and I don’t talk to my brother. Based on your personality, what animal do you think you'd be? Cats and I don’t get along very well hahaha but I think I’m similar to them. Would you ever buy anything from an infomercial? Maybe once, just to be able to say that I have. Have you ever made a snow angel? No, because I’ve never seen snow before. Have you stayed in a hotel in the last month? No. We had a brief getaway in Tagaytay but we switched things up and went to rent a condo, instead of book a hotel room, for a weekend. What's your most comfortable outfit? If I want to go for comfortable, I usually go for my rompers or jumpsuits. Do you text or IM more? IM these days. Would you rather listen to music or play it? Listen. I have no music-playing skills whatsoever. Have you ever been in a hot tub? Sure. Do you like pizza? LOVE IT Are you sleeping in your own bed tonight? Yes. If not here, the couch. But most likely it will my bed tonight. Are any of your friends having a sleepover right now? I doubt it. Angela and Hans had an overnight stay in Batangas a few days ago for their Valentine’s shenanigans though, which I guess kinda counts as a sleepover. Have you ever been to a house party? I don’t think so. That’s something I missed out on in my college days, but I don’t mind. Do you listen to your iPod or the radio when you're in the car? I think I keep a good balance. If my phone’s battery is not very high I’ll rely on the radio; and sometimes I’ll sync my phone’s Spotify to the car as well.

survey by charey-chas

What song is stuck in your head at the moment? RAVI’s BUM. What's your fathers' middle name? He doesn’t have a second name, but I’m not sharing his legal middle name on here either. How many hours a day do you spend on the computer? On work days, I’d say 8-10 hours. On weekends, maybe a little slightly less than that since I do like getting off the laptop sometimes to rest my eyes. Could you live without the internet? People from the past managed to live without it, so I know I can. It would just be extremely inconvenient; and having been dependent on it for such a long time now, I would likely be clueless on how to navigate most activities. What's something you're really into? Learning about cultural differences!! That’s why reading survey answers has always been fascinating to me. I would love a website that dives into the various everyday behavior people observe in other countries, but the ones that do exist use like 20- or 30-year-old sources, so they aren’t even relevant at all anymore. What's the last movie you saw in theaters? Knives Out. Have you ever seen a movie in 3D or in an IMAX theater? Just once. It was Denise and Leigh’s 18th birthday treat and they brought us to watch Doctor Strange in 3D. Do you prefer skirts, shorts, or skorts? Shorts. Have you ever vandalized? Just a few school chairs in grade school, but otherwise I’m too paranoid for vandalism lol. What's the longest you've stayed up? Maybe a little longer than 24 hours. Who'd you have a sleepover with last? Gabie. When's the last time you baked something? Nearly a decade ago. Our oven was new at the time and I wanted to try baking cookies. Do you like to dance? When I’m alone. Do you scratch mosquito bites, even though you're not supposed to? Yup. Are you afaid of spiders or do you like them? I mean I’m not fond of them, but I also don’t scream and run away when I see them. I just don’t care for them for the most part. What's a pet you've always wanted? I’ve only ever wanted dogs, and now I’ve got two of them. Do you like mice? Not really. Would you ever get a tattoo? Sure. I’ve been considering it for a while now; it’s just a matter of being able to save up for one. Do you prefer to walk in the street or on the sidewalk? Street, if it’s bare and safe enough. Otherwise if I’m in a busy city with regulations and all I’d obviously rather be on the sidewalk. What's your favorite t-shirt? My CM Punk Best in the World merch. Who did you last think about? I remembered Deina when I was thinking about the tattoo question. She got a pawprint tattoo on her wrist shortly before her senior dog passed away and ever since learning about it I’ve also been thinking about getting the same tattoo. Do you like giving hugs? I love giving hugs and it’s an automatic response for me whenever I see someone I love, which is why Covid is such a torture for me. Do you prefer hardwood flooring or carpeting? Hardwood. Did you/will you get a car for your 16th birthday? No. I got a car when I was 17, around six months before I started college. Have you ever eaten a worm? No but I’d be willing to try.

#survey #surveys #a few short ones in one post

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winryofresembool · 4 years

Text

Things We Lost in the Fire, ch 8

aka Caleo uni au

Fic summary: Calypso starts studying at a new university, but to her annoyance her new flatmate is a loud mouthed mechanic who also likes to sneak his dog in whenever. But as she learns to know him better, she realizes they might have more in common than what she first thought. Eventually, even the darkest secrets come out…

Chapter summary: Calypso makes another new friend.

A/N: Time to introduce Hazel! Since some of you may be interested in my ToA read, I'm currently reading TTT and it’s reminding me how great Frank and Hazel are. In my fic Hazel is 18 and Frank 20, just for future reference.

Thanks to Cris for helping me out and listening to my rants again, and thanks to the people who commented the previous chapter! I hope you guys enjoy this one too and don't forget that even a short comment like "nice" can make my day!

Characters in this ch: Calypso, Hazel, Leo

Words: 1900+

Genre: romance & hurt/comfort

Warnings: none

previous chapter / next chapter / AO3

...

As the fall progressed, Calypso, who had brought a couple of her favorite paintings with her to her new flat, decided to show some of her art to Annabeth. The architect student complimented them and encouraged her to continue creating art, but Calypso admitted that sometimes it was hard to find the motivation to do it on her own. She preferred making things that she could actually use, such as clothes, but she wasn’t opposed to continuing the art hobby if she found a motivator. Annabeth suggested she join the university art club that had classes for various skill levels and where she’d get feedback to help her get even better. The blonde girl wished she had more time to draw just for fun because her university assignments took a lot of her time, but in Calypso’s case her studies had quite little to do with art so maybe the club would offer her a nice break from history.

And so, only a week later Calypso was participating in her first art class at the university club house. She looked curiously around her to see if she might know someone there from her history lectures, but it turned out that wasn’t the case. However, her attention focused on a girl with curly brown hair, dark skin and eyes so unusually colored that they stood out even from afar. Something about her fascinated Calypso and she decided to approach her.

“Hi!” she greeted.

“Hello. Is this your first time here as well?” the other girl asked.

“Yes! An architect student recommended this club for me so I decided to give it a shot,” Calypso explained.

“Mmmh. I’m not a college student – yet because I’m graduating from high school a bit late – but they graciously let me join when I showed them my art portfolio. I just felt like the high school art classes don’t have much to give me anymore so I wanted to try something different.”

“I see. So, is art something you’d like to do for living? Or just a hobby?” Calypso asked.

“To be honest? I’m not entirely sure yet,” the girl admitted. “Something happened that I was kind of out of it for a few months and that’s why it was hard to think about my future for a while. But one way or another I’ll probably still keep doing art no matter what.”

“Oh. I’m sorry about that…” Calypso said sympathetically.

“It’s in the past now, I’m fine!” the girl reassured. “Uh, I already told you that but I didn’t even ask you your name yet… What is it?”

“Calypso Astal. Yes, I know, like that music style… or that Greek sorceress…”

“I was not going to say that.” the girl shook her head, smiling politely. “I was simply going to say it’s nice to meet you, Calypso! My name is Hazel, Hazel Levesque.”

“Well, nice to meet you too, Hazel,” Calypso said, shaking her hand. “Sorry, I hope I didn’t sound rude… I’m just used to people making weird comments about my name.”

“Oh, don’t worry about it! I can understand that very well. I’m a little too used to people’s comments about anything related to my life at this point…” she said sadly. Now Calypso knew what had drawn her to Hazel in the first place: somehow she had sensed that the girl was an outsider, just like she was.

“So, how long have you been drawing, Hazel?” Calypso decided to change the topic.

“Since I was small. It’s always felt like a good way to express my thoughts and also distract myself when things weren’t that great. What about you, though?”

“I think I’ve always been more or less interested in it, but I didn’t start drawing and painting more seriously until I was in high school. I had a lot of time in my hands then…” Calypso said vaguely.

“That’s cool! What else do you do in your free time?” Hazel asked when she realized Calypso wouldn’t elaborate more.

“I like all kinds of handicrafts – you know, from sewing to building small objects and tending flowers – and I also enjoy singing… although usually I do that just on my own…” Calypso admitted, sounding a little bit embarrassed.

“Wow, sounds like you’re such a multitalent!” the younger girl exclaimed. “I help take care of a horse – his name is Arion and a friend who is good with horses claims that he’s loud mouthed even though I have no idea how he can say that. Arion is just vocal, that’s all.”

Calypso snorted at that.

“Yeah, I believe you. My flatmate would probably claim that he’s entirely capable of understanding everything his dog says, though.”

“Aw, your flatmate has a dog?” Hazel asked.

“Yep, he does, but he is not allowed to have it in our flat. Though he still did, when I arrived, and the dog broke my desk. I wasn’t too happy with my flatmate after that but he hasn’t brought the dog in since then,” Calypso said, now able to smile at the memory.

“I’d love to have one too but for some reason a lot of the dogs seem a little afraid of me. I don’t know why.” Hazel shrugged. “But my, uh, friend studies to become a vet and he’s around animals a lot.”

“That sounds like a cool career. I never really got to be around animals a lot in my childhood… But I do remember enjoying watching birds from the window.” Calypso also remembered wishing she could fly freely like them but she decided to not say that out loud, wanting to focus on more positive things.

The conversation died off because the teacher started explaining the participants the schedule of their meetings and what kind of projects they would make. The first assignment sounded like a fun one in Calypso’s opinion: it was called “If I could be any other living creature”. That meant the students were allowed to draw or paint themselves as any animal or plant they could imagine themselves being. At first Calypso thought about drawing one of her favorite flowers but then she remembered her and Hazel’s discussion only from a moment ago and how she had wished she could be a bird. And that gave her an idea.

The bird she chose was called the Golden Oriole. She had only seen one in her childhood on a trip to northern Greece but she still remembered the yellow feathers and the dark wings very well. Her own hair had been lighter back then as well, more of golden blonde than the caramel brown it was naturally now (before the dyeing) which had really stood out with her dark eyes. That’s why her mother had teased her about looking like Golden Oriole. Thinking about those times made Calypso feel a bit homesick but she decided to channel her emotions into the painting instead of wallowing in them. Once she had gotten started, she took a peek at what Hazel was making. Hazel herself had depicted herself as a horse but somehow she had also time to sketch a bear next to it. That confused Calypso. “What does the bear represent?” she asked Hazel.

“It’s gonna be a panda,” Hazel clarified, “and it’s supposed to depict my best friend. I felt he deserved to be drawn too. He is big and strong like a panda but surprisingly soft inside… I want to show how these two animals, though very different, can get along really well.”

“That’s a great topic. And he sounds like a good guy,” Calypso said approvingly.

“He is,” Hazel nodded and took a look at Calypso’s work. “That looks pretty! So, you consider yourself a bird?”

“Well, at least I’d like to be.” She shrugged. “Maybe one day.”

“I sense something is restricting you,” Hazel commented. “But don’t worry, you don’t have to tell me more.”

“Thanks,” Calypso said with relief, and after that the girls focused on their drawings again.

…

Once the class was over, the girls continued talking on their way to the bus stop.

“I’m sorry, this might be a strange thing to say but… I got a bit different vibe from you than from most people in the class. Do you know why?” Hazel inquired.

“Could be because I’m technically a foreigner,” Calypso replied. “I was also homeschooled so… I haven’t really been in touch with people of my age a lot.”

“Really?” Hazel raised her eyebrows. “Where are you from?”

“Greece. But we moved from there when I was 10.”

“Your English is so good that I wouldn’t have been able to tell you’re not from here. I’ve lived in many places too. I was born in New Orleans but I’ve also lived in Alaska and San Francisco…”

“What brought you here, then?” Calypso asked.

Hazel seemed to hesitate a bit. “Uh, it’s a very long story. One I’d rather not talk about right now. But after I recovered from an accident I’ve been trying to find my place. My best friend moved to study here and he’s the closest family I have so I decided I’m gonna follow him.”

Calypso noticed that Hazel blushed a bit when she was talking about her friend.

“And your parents were OK with you moving?” she asked, having too much experience with overprotective parents.

“Uh…” Hazel started awkwardly. “I don’t really have any. Mom is dead and my dad only shows up when it’s convenient to him. I lived with a relative for a few months before I turned 18 but once I was that old, she told me that I was free to make my own decisions.”

“I’m so sorry. About your parents.” Calypso said sympathetically. For some reason she seemed to be pulling a lot of people with tragic backgrounds towards her.

“It might be awful to say this but I think my mom is in a better place now. She suffered a lot in her life,” Hazel said as an afterthought.

Calypso only nodded, because really, what could you say to that? The other girl seemed to sense her hesitance because she continued:

“But don’t worry about me. Frank is the best and most protective friend I could have. And here I have found some new ones as well!”

“That is good!” Calypso said genuinely. She already felt like she could relate to this girl and wished a brighter future for her. “Um, I have some things I need to do at home but I’ll see you next week, right? And if you ever want to hang out outside the class, just message me.”

“I will!” Hazel promised and waved to her as goodbye.

…

Leo was making something to eat in the kitchen when Calypso arrived and he looked at the package in Calypso’s arms curiously.

“Hiya Sunshine, what you got there?” he asked.

“I was at the art club and did this,” Calypso said, taking the drawing from the bag and showing it to Leo.

“That’s a cool bird,” Leo mumbled while trying to swallow his sandwich. “Is there some deeper meaning to it?”

“Yes, it’s supposed to depict me,” Calypso answered, emphasizing the last word.

Leo looked back and forth between the drawing and the artist.

“I’m not really seeing the connection there.” He narrowed his eyes as if trying to see the drawing clearer. “You look nothing like that bird.”

“Leo Valdez!” Calypso yelled and marched angrily into her room, leaving poor Leo wonder what he did wrong.

“I just meant that you’re way prettier than any drawing of a bird could ever be,” he mumbled to himself before sighing and focusing on his meal again.

#caleo #leo valdez #calypso #heroes of olympus #percy jackson and the olympians #trials of apollo #my fics #caleo uni au

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signor-signor · 4 years

Text

Trending 27th - May 2020

In what cartoon(s) would I like to see Wander make a cameo?

Well, even though Disney still has never given the show the same love Fish Hooks got (i.e. 3 seasons and an actual conclusion - it still baffles me today), Wander’s cameo would have to be in any of the more recent shows from Disney TV Animation. If any of them are like Future-Worm, they would have to give an idea of what was planned for that third and final season (FW showed Wander and Sylvia on the Star Nomad, their new means of transportation). Since I never really bothered to watch any of the cartoons DTVA is dishing out right now, I’ll have to make do with a list.

DuckTales (2017) - I’ve noticed people pointing out its various nods to WOY (made possible by @suspendersofdisbelief). I believe it’ll take more than verbal references and a spirit of Christmas Past voiced by Jack McBrayer to get DT fans interested in WOY. I even prepared DT versions of Wander, Sylvia, Hater, Peepers, and Dominator for the DT crew to consider.

Big City Greens - The two brothers who created this show, @chrishoughton and @shanehoughton, were involved in WOY’s first season, and I assume the titular characters are as rural as Wander himself. If production has not yet been stopped, maybe they could throw him in there as some form of graffiti art or something.

Amphibia - I found there’s already a minor character voiced by Jack McBrayer - if memory serves, he performs Toadie, the mayor’s assistant. If creator Matt Braly (@radrappy) cares about WOY, he might at some point have him wear a big green hat with a star on it and play the banjo or something like that.

The Owl House - Someone pointed out some girl in a hood who bears a striking resemblance to a Watchdog. @danaterrace is just as popular among aspiring cartoonists as @alexhirsch-official, so maybe this show could boost support for WOY with a Wander lookalike. That cameo of GF characters in a Hanna-Barbera in The Cartoon had better not be all for naught.

If Disney got to let us see S3 of WOY, I’d definitely check out the aforementioned shows. That’s not to say I have no support for anyone who works on them, mind you.

Lastly, if there’s one cartoon outside the Walt Disney Company that could include a cameo of Wander, it’s the upcoming Netflix original, Kid Cosmic, created by the one and only @crackmccraigen. I know for a fact both WOY and KC don’t take place in the same universe, but if the PPG silhouettes on Frankie’s shirt, the PPG ending reference in The Boy Wander, and Bloo hidden in the crowd in The End of the Galaxy are any indication, Craig has probably already found a way to throw Wander somewhere in there. If we’re lucky, we might get to learn more about S3 and see what the three new main characters planned for S3 look like.

I mean, come on, does Craig really expect us to live through another four years without finding out exactly what he and his team planned for WOY’s third season before Disney turned it down in favor of something else? (I’m looking at you, frequent reruns of P&F, GF, and SvtFoE.) You’d be a fool if the promising concept of Wander’s post-Dominator adventures is completely wasted on you.

I know many people out there don’t choose WOY as their most favorite cartoon, but we can’t let that dissuade us from letting Disney know how interested we are in the show and the plans made for S3. Those plans exist, and we mustn’t let those who put their heart and soul into them take them to their graves - making them a reality is essentially the final step for SaveWOY. Besides, today is Jack McBrayer’s birthday, and I think it would mean so much to him if the Disney bosses let him perform Wander just once more.

Furthermore, in order to help WOY fans pass the time during the COVID-19 pandemic, I came up with an idea of pre-S3 shorts (featuring Andy the Watchdog) for the WOY team’s consideration. Until then, keep showing your support and maybe one day, we’ll see the true conclusion on Disney+!

@disneyxd

@disneyanimation

#Wander Over Yonder #SaveWOY #Save Wander Over Yonder #DuckTales #Big City Greens #Amphibia #The Owl House #Kid Cosmic #T27th #Trending 27th #Jack McBrayer #Wander

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sad-sweet-cowboah · 4 years

Note

Can you do prompt 81 with Arthur? And if it’s not too much to ask, maybe related to the archeologist!reader commission you did for me? (If not feeling it, anything else is totally fine.)

Number 81:

This is a cute idea! Sorry this took a little longer than usual. I’ve been hopping back and forth between works and I was trying to figure out what to make of this one in particular. Enjoy!

You hadn’t expected to find yourself back out West so soon.

Only a mere month had passed since you’d come back home to New York, initially having missed the urban jungle you called home. With the news of the Viking burial ground delivered, you were praised more than you expected to be. The men who once asked for you to fetch drinks were congratulating you on such a great find. You were listened to more often, and was even given a bigger workspace.

It was exciting to finally move up in the world, elated to finally have your words taken seriously for once. You hoped your endeavors would only continue to drive up hill from now on.

Though despite your happiness, something felt…missing.

You often dreamed of that place out West, the muddy little livestock town surrounded by what you could describe as something God himself had reached down and painted across the landscapes. It was a beauty that could not be appreciated from the tall buildings and cobblestone streets. You missed it more than you’d ever imagined, along with the man whom helped your wish into a reality.

The delicate ivory comb sat on your dresser. Even though you didn’t use it for its purpose, afraid it might bend or break due to its age. However you kept it in pristine condition, wiping the dust that accumulated on a daily basis. For days after your return, your hart would flutter when you set your eyes upon it.

Every day you’d check the mail, hoping for a letter from him. Disappointment would cloud your mind to find there was none, only to silently remind yourself you’d told him to write if he ever found anything else that would capture your interest. Still, you wished you had spent more time with him before coming home. Perhaps one day you’d venture out there again, whether or not it pertained to your career.

Though as your hopes had vanished, you’d received a letter from someone you’d never heard of: Tacitus Kilgore. Your first thought was to toss it until you’d gotten a look at the address, recognizing the origin as Lemoyne. You knew no one in that state, yet something persuaded you to open it.

And you were glad you did.

Turns out Arthur had written the letter. The writing seemed more complex than his simplistic manner of speaking. He explained a new site that he’d found on his travels. He described the location; a small cave deep in the wilderness. He included a rough sketch, including various statues of unknown origin.

You were on the train the very next day.

Sure, Valentine was nothing exceptional, yet it had its charm. You were overwhelmed by the scent of the sheep that carried through the air, followed by the crisp breeze that flowed down from the mountains. The mud squashed underneath your feet as you walked to the familiar hotel.

It didn’t take long for you to settle in, spending little time in your hotel room to get everything sorted. Afterward, you’d headed toward the stables in intent to lease a horse. After picking one and exiting the barn, a voice caught your attention.

“Didn’t think I’d see ya ‘round here again.”

Heart skipping a beat, you turned to see none other than Arthur Morgan himself, leaning against a fence post with a small smile on his face.

You had to staunch your excitement of seeing him, silently calming yourself to offer a smile back, correcting your posture with a lady-like flourish. “Well, you did write me.”

“Jus’ like you asked,” he replied with a slight chuckle. “Glad I ain’t a total fool thinkin’ you wouldn’t respond.”

“Well, you know how I am with new discoveries,” you giggled, strutting closer to him as your horse stepped closely behind you. “Glad you did write. It was nice hearing from you, I certainly missed your company.”

Immediately you regretted uttering that last sentence. Flames erupted in your face as you broke from his gaze. You weren’t sure why it was so embarrassing, you’d only interacted with him twice before. He was merely an acquaintance in society’s standards, though a gentleman for escorting you to the Viking tomb during your first visit. He didn’t have to, hell, Arthur seemed like the type that would pass by without a second glance.

He didn’t seem to notice your fluster. “I ain’t nothin’ but ordinary, Y/N,” he chortled. “I appreciate it though.”

On the contrary he was opposite of the ordinary. You often thought of what would have happened if he hadn’t crossed paths with you. Maybe you would have stumbled upon the site out of pure luck, or perhaps you would have been kidnapped by those hooligans he’d warned you about. Either way, you were glad to have his assistance.

“So, you off to find the place I told ya ‘bout?” he asked.

His reminder brought you back to the present. “Yes, absolutely!” you answered. “Er, how far is it from here, exactly?”

“Come with me,” Arthur gestured with cocking his head to the side. “I’ll show ya myself.”

Your heart began to race from his offer. “W-why?” you stammered, pausing to control your voice. “Wouldn’t I be keeping you from something?”

“You won’t be,” he assured, stepping closer to you. “‘Sides, it’s a bit of a hike, and in a hidden area. Ya may end up lost if I don’t help ya.”

His persistence amazed and excited you. “Alright, lead the way Arthur.”

—

The cold air whipped around your face as you galloped behind Arthur across New Hanover. The land here was breathtakingly gorgeous, green fields, rolling hills and dense forests that appeared right out of a fairytale. Quaint cabins and homesteads dotted the land, surrounded by crops and farm animals. It must be such a simple way of life without the noises and thick air of the big city.

“How often are you out here, Arthur?” you’d asked after a while of silence. Upon the start of your journey, you’d had a quick conversation about what you’d been up to since coming back to New York. He was impressed by your news, happy that you were able to step up the ladder in your career. You’d asked him what he’d been up to, only receiving vague answers. The chatter died after that.

“From time to time.” he answered, slowing down a little to speak clearly to you.

“And you live in Lemoyne?” you continued.

He shrugged. “For the time bein’. I tend to…hop ‘round from place to place.”

That would explain why he seemed so well-traveled. You wanted to ask more questions about his life, until another had pushed its way to the forefront of your mind. “Who is Tacitus Kilgore?”

“Ah, it’s some feller I know. I’ve been stayin’ with him.” Arthur said.

You’d noticed a second of hesitation in his answer. Curiosity piqued as you wondered more about this man. Your thoughts vanished suddenly as Arthur took a sharp turn, urging his horse up the mountain. You followed suit.

“It’s a bit up a-ways,” Arthur called back to you. “Be careful, don’t let your horse slip.”

Arthur expertly navigated the side of the mountain, guiding you along steady paths along rock faces. The air grew crisp and colder with the higher altitude. You huddled over, a shiver passing deep through your body.

More time had passed, seemingly slower as the temperature dropped. Eventually Arthur slowed down, stopping just before a large rock formation. You peered at it with curiosity.

“There’s supposed to be a cave here?” You questioned. “Where’s the entrance?”

He dismounted, gesturing for you to do the same. Once your feet hit the ground, he led you around the mounds of stone, a small pathway appearing between them. He stopped and pointed, “There.”

You followed his finger, eyes scanning the surface until a fissure caught your attention. It was fairly narrow, enough that at first glance it would have seemed like a depression in the rock itself.

“Hope ya don’t mind tight spaces.” He continued. He waited until you did the same before trekking toward the mouth of the cave.

You at first assumed it was much more narrow than it appeared. However, both you and Arthur were able to pass in with ease. It was still a little too enclosed for your liking, however. You stuck close behind him. Having never been inside a cave before, excitement and nervousness flowed through you in anticipation of discovery.

The short tunnel opened up to a small cavern, which was partly illuminated from an opened in the ceiling.

Your eyes widened in surprise. Nude statues on pedestals, all facing inward to what appeared to be a bird in the center. You walked closer, observing the finer features. They were eroded with age, missing their faces or random appendages.

You turned to view the centerpiece, staring in surprise when you realized it wasn’t a bird. It seemed to be a hybrid with a mammalian body and bird wings, yet had the head of a woman.

“What do ya think that is?” Arthur asked, watching you from outside the circle.

In your studies and excavations, you never once came across anything so unique. You weren’t sure what to make of it. Ancient civilizations usually had statues and other builds to honor their deities. Gods and Goddesses of which were said to have many forms, whether human or animal.

“Well Arthur, quite frankly I have no idea.” you answered with a slight chuckle. “Seems to be a deity of some sort from how everything is situated. It doesn’t appear to be from any civilization that I’m aware of.”

He mumbled something about strange deities, along with something about a turtle. Stepping closer to you, he peered up at the standing statues. “Gotta wonder what kinda cult made these.”

“What makes you think it was a cult?” you asked with curiosity.

He gave a small shrug. “Cults make some folk do strange things. Worship strange…creatures.” he briefly gestured to the hybrid statue.

You considered his words for a moment. There was sense in them, you hadn’t personally had any sort of contact with one, though heard about them in your travels. Perhaps it truly was a creation of one. Regardless, you found it interesting.

“How did you find this place anyway?” you asked. “Surely you didn’t just stumble across the entrance, as obscure as it is.”

“You’re right, I didn’t,” he answered, and dug into his satchel for a moment before producing a leather bound book. “I found somethin’ else though, helped me find this place.”

You automatically stepped closer, peering at the pages as he quickly flipped through them, until landing on a page. Heavily sketched, it seemed to be a diagram mirroring the sight before you.

You’d also realized how good of an artist Arthur was.

“Ain’t too sure what it means, and why some feller wanted to draw it on a rock wall…” Arthur said.

You glanced back and forth between the sketch and the statues. Something pricked at your mind, telling you there was something…more to this.

You observed the statues again, your gaze traveling from top to bottom. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary at first, until you spotted something on the pedestal. You approached it, bending down to get a better view. It appeared to be some sort of button.

Glancing around, you took notice that every statue that made the circle had one.

Hm.

“Seems like there’s something more here.” you announced, pressing the button in front of you.

Nothing happened.

Arthur stepped up next to you. “Whatchu mean?”

“Every statue has a button. I wonder why…”

He glanced down at his book again, and gazed around at the other statues. “Think it’s important?”

“Might be,” you said thoughtfully. “Let me see that drawing again…”

He held the page toward you, which you began to study with scrutiny. You noted there were symbols next to every statue. There seemed to be some significance to them. Each symbol had a different amount of what appeared to be feathers attached. All but one, which one statue was missing an entire arm

Taking the journal carefully into your hands, you walked to each one that had been marked on paper. Taking a few minutes to observe every small feature, you came to notice they all had a different amount of fingers.

“They’re all missin’ a different bunch o’ fingers.” Arthur seemed to voice your thoughts.

You nodded, trying to assume a significance here. The mental gears in your head were turning. None of them had the same amount missing. Glancing down at the drawing a final time, you realized the amount of fingers on each statue correlated with the symbols.

You reached out and pressed a button in front of one, watching it depress into the pedestal. Nothing else happened.

Walking around to the other marked statues, you pressed the other buttons. Still, nothing happened. You frowned and stepped back, scratching your head in confusion.

Arthur watched you silently, his own expression puzzled. He scratched his scruffy chin in thought. “Somethin’ ‘sposed to happen?”

“Seems like it,” you rubbed your hair as you tried to think. “Hm…”

You hadn’t noticed Arthur move around more as you pondered the significance. Each statue with fingers missing, each different than the last. The buttons meant there was something to unlock, but what? A clue to what this odd little site was?

“Hey, maybe press ‘em in order?”

You blinked, your train of thought derailed. “What?”

“The buttons,” Arthur pointed to the statue that was missing multiple fingers. “None o’ them are missin’ the same amount, right? Maybe we gotta press ‘em in order of how many.”

You raised your eyebrows. You weren’t expecting that answer, yet it somehow made sense to you. “Alright, let’s give it a shot.”

—

It took much longer than you thought.

You and Arthur spent an immeasurable amount of time pressing buttons in numerical order, only to have fruitless results. By process of elimination you were able to narrow your tries down to a last few.

The entire time you’d expected Arthur to get frustrated and quit. He however was persistent, never once showing an ounce of irritation. He was just as determined as you to figure out this odd puzzle, even if it meant no personal gain for him.

Though by now you yourself were tired, feet aching and stomach growling. Cold began to settle in as the day grew later. You were thankful you’d packed some food prior to coming out here, although sleeping on the floor of a cave was less than ideal.

Taking a deep breath and praying this would be the one, you pressed a button.

Within in instant, an audible click echoed within the small cave. Your eyes widened as you whipped around for the source of the noise, seeming to originate from the center statue.

Glancing at Arthur, you both scurried over to it. As you looked from top to bottom, Arthur made a noise.

“Look!” he exclaimed, holding up an object that glinted even in the last of the sun’s rays. You did so, surprise overtaking you. Three gold bars rested in his hands. “Looks like they were hidin’ valuables.”

Your first assumption was they were offerings for…whatever deity this was. Yet why was there a puzzle? Was it just a clever way to stash them? Gold bars would fetch a hefty price to the right seller, especially for three of them. This only launched more questions surrounding the origins of this place, and why. Maybe there were more clues, or none at all. “Glad we solved that,” you said with a sigh of relief. “I wasn’t expecting gold bars.”

“I ain’t sure what I was expectin’,” Arthur chuckled. “Worth it though…” he held them out to you.

You blinked at his offer. “Why are you giving them to me?” you asked.

“Maybe they’re…I dunno, from some ancient civilization or somethin’.” he said with a shrug, but somehow you could tell it was a lie; even a simpleton could tell these were from modern times.Your eyes traveling from his face to his hands, you took the bars. The cold metal felt smooth against your skin. They were quite heavy, sporting a dull shine even in the dim.

Money wasn’t an important matter to you, never was. You could always sell these and move into a bigger apartment in New York, or find some other uses. Donate one to the museum for additional funding or for display.

You looked back to Arthur, who was gazing at you with a soft expression. You wouldn’t even have these if it weren’t for his diligence in the first place. You held one back out, pressing it into his palm. “You deserve one, too.”

He blinked, giving you a look of confusion. “You sure?”

Nodding enthusiastically, you said, “Of course Arthur! I wouldn’t have even found this place if you hadn’t volunteered to take me up here. Plus, you stuck around to help with the puzzle. I think it’s reasonable.”

A slow smile spread across his face at you words. “Heh, well…thank you.” he said as he tucked the bar away in his satchel.

“No, thank you…” you murmured. A moment of bravery overcame you as you stepped forward to place a kiss on his cheek. “For everything you’ve done so far.”

His smile turned shy, his head tilting down as a surprisingly child-like chuckle expressed from his lips. “No problem.”

---

Send me a prompt!

#writingandsins #prompt request #Arthur Morgan x reader #I admit I only ever found this place online #didn't come across it in story mode

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scarletwellyboots · 4 years

Text

a (semi) comprehensive list of the moments i fell in love listening to the horror and the wild

the rockrose and the thistle

LOVE opening with the howling wind

joey’s northern accent slipping in super strong for “trying desperately to sew / and i know the kindest thing”

madeleine’s almost whispered harmony

“may i, i ask, may i”

the switch to madeleine only for the last two lines

the horror and the wild

how loud and immediate it starts

“you’re the words that i promise i don’t mean”

the growls ! this has been covered but “promise” is. important

the silence for “remember me i ask”

madeleine’s beautiful “day by day” in the back of joey’s verse

FRET NOT DEAR HEART LET NOT THEM HEAR

between “welcome to the storm” and “i am thunder” the drums sound like a clap of thunder

idk music terms but their differing harmonies for “wild”

the strings !! especially how they continue under “remember me”

madeleine’s slower “you passed your fingers” on the last repetition

not finishing “i am the wild”??? letting the instrumentation finish the phrase?? the way the song feels unfinished?? incredible

wild blue yonder

it’s so pretty!! it starts so sunny :)

“without...” “YOU”

“i woulda gone so much blonder” lyrical genius

the build of “so one last time love come and rip my clothes off”

i am in fact a slut for counterpoint duets so i’m in love with this band

“flirting” / “wasn’t flirting”

“halt!” and the silence that follows

the accent on “covers”

listen we talk about “dear heart” but “lover” and “darling” and all the pet names they use are so soft and so delightfully like. fey

“every stone you threw i stood on to better see the view”

the silence after “fear of sound”

“i’m lost” / “i’m found” “in you”

the melody of “so tight i’d bruise you” and like. the lilt in “bruise” !!

i love the background vocals kicking in for “build this world”

“or a robot vampire i dunno” like i said. lyrical genius

“hoooooold melover” i love the drawn-out note followed by how quick the next bit is

so many of their songs feel like they finish on a breath in? they feel like unfinished thoughts and i adore it

welly boots

the soft guitar intro i’m !!

“i am above you and i love you”

“i’ll be with you all along as long as you are kind to those who are not strong and cannot find their scarlet welly boots” i’m

the lilt on “hard” is !

the melody of the section from “when you scream it’s not fair” to “if only you could hear my voice”

the instrumental coming in before the end of “i’m not still there”

and GOD the percussion and the marching feel of the beat

“you were supposed to be my light” ok just rip my heart out thanks

the melody of “when you scream ‘i’m not alright’” to “how could you leave me here” is the same as “when you scream it’s not fair” but stronger and more desperate

“leave me here” feels like a scream

“i know you’re strong enough to do this on your own”

madeleine’s offset repetition of “strong enough to do this”

sometimes she says “stronger on your own” and i. LYRICS

the slowing to the original drum beat to the original guitar

“oh jesus christ you’ll miss me”

the breathlessness of “stairs” fuck me up why don’t you.

“a brand new pair of scarlet welly boots” cool i didn’t need a heart

the guitar outro is so soft !

farewell wanderlust

hello piano !

EVERYTHING about madeleine’s voice in the first verse

the contrast of joey’s almost spoken baritone

the way she hits the ends of syllables

“hey darlin’ hey”

the slide on “say”

the quiet almost heartbeat-sounding percussion

“i promise you i’ll be better”

the growl on “rubbing” and “rugs”

“it’s my curse / to try and make it right but by trying make it worse”

“the jesus of wishing to christ he’ll come back” !!

the quieting to “farewell wanderlust” and the lilt of it

she’s down DUN DUN she’s dead DUN DUN

joey’s “you alright?” and how deep his voice is compared to hers

madeleine singing “something more comfortable” and joey speaking “be our guest”

the piano mimics madeleine’s voice for “hoik! of her bra”

joey’s voice is so throaty it sounds almost like he’s been crying we love an emotive king

“i promise you i’m not broken / i promise you there’s more / more to come, more to reach for, more to hurl at the door”

“this here isn’t makeup, it’s a porcelain tomb”

THIS HERE IS NOT SINGING I’M JUST SCREAMING IN TUNE

the lack of instruments for “i’m just screaming in tune” so that he really is

he’s down DUN DUN he’s dead DUN DUN

the quieter “s/he’s down” section at the end

again it finishes like there’s more to be said

fair

the shuffling of the recording noises i !

the breathlessness! how he speaks/whispers “can’t be said”

“today i somehow understand the reason i was born”

“he’s got so much fucking hair” i’m.

“she is stronger than he’s ever been”

“when i’m actually...really fucking...cross at you for something”

“it’s not fair how much i love you” cool okay back to ripping my heart out

“inundated with the fated thought of you” is So pretty

“darling i was born to press my head between your shoulder blades”

“dear heart it’s me” again with the dear heart !!

“just trying to watch the office....with my yoghurt” lyrical genius

the switch of him/her in the second chorus !

the breaks in joey’s voice for unreasonable i’m weeping like ! he talked once about being allowed to feel like his voice doesn’t have to be perfect and it shows here with the breaks lending themselves to the emotion of the song

for him standing next to her people will think he’s alright but people will think she’s cool which really shows characterizations

the whisper of “darling rooftop wreck”

“that’s what she said” i’m.

madeleine only coming in to the song for “where have you been”

“it’s not fair ‘cause you make me ache you bastard”

that unwanted animal

strap in lads

the almost-whisper of some of the lines is !

the actual whisper of “you light the candle”

“bairns” we love two forest spirits

“to love me” is whispered despite “you try so loud” so of course she can’t hear it

joey’s background line !!!

THE SCRATCHING

joey coming into the main melody only for “what.” and then the “dear” being whispered

“throw the plate at the wall” can you tell i really love the whispered lines

THE INSTRUMENTS and the growling background vocals listen it surprised and amazed me so much this is where i smacked my head on the wall

“but fuck all your plans i’m bored” yes characterizations

“i make shipwrecks out of my dress”

joey’s higher harmonization feels so desperate when usually he’s the lower range of the harmony

“you rip my ribcage open / and devour what’s truly yours”

the repeated lyrics from battle cries but in a different melody i’m so serious what a lyrical genius

the melody matching the beat of the guitar for “it can hear you / it wants me to”

(let me out!)

just. the alliterative sounds of “hollow holofernes”

the fucking. “no not i” please sir you can’t do that to me

the final violin note like a final cry

marbles

MARBLES

lowering madeleine’s parts sounds so much softer and more relaxed

love being able to hear the movement of hands along the guitar neck

counterpoint conversation songs are so ! good !

“i chipped my teeth on every joke you cracked”

“you stole the best years of my life” “i’ll give them back”

“sure as hell can’t lie to me/you now”

i LOVE their different melodies for “i will wait and hope”

also i think they switched melody lines from the beechmast version? not sure though

“your eyes aren’t rivers there to weep but a place for crows to rest their feet”

the little pause before “went”

“oh god” and a little laugh

i miss madeleine’s “do you think i’m sexy” but

WORKIN’ SHIFTS TIL WE CRIED listen i LOVE the lyric change

how quick and natural the back and forth is it feels like a quick conversation it’s delightful

“you’re not flawed darling you’re just a little under-rehearsed”

“you, you’d reply with a drink in your hand/glint in your eye”

“i’m all yours/oh dear god dear heart i’m here”

the humming!!

“i’ve loved you for a hundred years” “certainly fucking feels like it”

NOW I GET TO MEET YOU FOR THE FIRST TIME EVERY SINGLE DAY

the build on that line !!

joey’s sustained notes while madeleine sings the chorus

madeleine’s vocalizations !! queen

joey joining in for just one of her little vocalizations

the song finishes before she’s gotten through even the first half of her vocalization line it feels so unfinished but so good that way

battle cries

COUNTERPOINT

with headphones joey is in your left ear and madeleine’s in your right and i wish they did it stronger but even what we have is so good

“who died” “who’ll save you” and the juxtaposition of “who died and made you king of it all” with “who’ll save you when you fall”

“some fictions we took to mean fate believe me i know” and she says “yes” so that they say no and yes at the same time

“tell the truth to me love!”

“look at me as you say this” “you’re home”

the whole “would be proud to have known” especially considering characterization of her speaker and his

dear heart!! it’s just. so soft

“that creaking you hear in my bones is not pain it’s applause”

the little laugh after the chorus!!

“with you i could summon” “come on love”

“watch them dance out the plays that we wrote from the heart” / “sing your notes, play your part” and the various meanings of “play” they use

“we were gods” “we were kids.”

“our devils broke ranks” “oh dear god”

“binge watch a box set, drink wine, reminisce” just sounds So Nice

“this isn’t a breakup dear heart it’s a season finale!”

the vocalizations!! the background vocals!!

the back-and-forth of “it’s not pain” “it’s applause”

the drums that quiet to the guitar for the last verse

the way joey hits consonants when he sings quietly like this

the rise and crash of the rhythm here is like. it almost feels iambic can you tell i’m an english major studying renaissance lit currently

“now at the end” “at the end of all things”

ending the album with “i’m doing fine” !!!!!

even now it feels like a single beat off from being finished which is a really cool feeling ! like it leaves you wanting more feeling like there’s more to be said like the story isn’t done like there’s something missing idk big fan

#the amazing devil #joey batey #madeleine hyland #the horror and the wild #listen. LISTEN. i love counterpoint duets #will i ever shut up about it? fuck no.#when will tumblr put my posts in the tags #we love a functioning website :)

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paulisweeabootrash · 3 years

Text

2020 mini-review pack

Di Gi Charat (1999)

Episodes watched: 7

Platform: VRV (Hidive)

Di Gi Charat (pronounced like “carrot”) is a series of fast-paced 4-ish-minute shorts nominally about Dejiko and Rabi-en-Rose, rivals trying to be Earth’s greatest idol. Who are, respectively, a catgirl and a bunnygirl. Oh, and also they’re aliens? That’s... uh... certainly a premise, I guess. The actual show consists of self-contained gag-filled episodes with no ongoing story, in almost a sitcom kind of way, throwing the characters into situations without context, but with a stable “baseline” situation (unlike, say, Pop Team Epic, where the characters serve more as stock personalities playing different roles in different sketches). Dejiko is a snarky schemer. Rabi-en-Rose is a snarky schemer whose main activity seems to be bothering Dejiko at work. Puchiko is a small and quiet child and behaves accordingly. And Gema is... something? I have no clue, honestly, and neither does the fan wiki. Other recurring characters fill stock roles such as “manager” and “otaku”. A lot of the humor centers around poking fun at fandom. It’s a show by, for, and about otaku from an era before our current internet culture, and since I’m a millennial and not from Japan, that makes it unusually hard to evaluate.

W/A/S: 8/2?/5?

Weeb: Chibis. Catgirls. Idols. Kappas. Kawaii verbal tics. Akihabara. Low-detail background characters who look like blobs or thumbs with faces. Kanji left on-screen but untranslated. Particular sorts of highly-exaggerated facial expressions we may have become familiar with through emoji, but which still haven’t made their way into American media generally. This is ludicrously Japanese.

Ass: This really isn't that kind of show. Although it is certainly designed for adults, as evidenced by the presence of phrases like “naughty doujinshi”.

Shit: The art is fun. It has style shifts from comic strip to watercolor painting to mainstream 90s anime, and looks better than some of its contemporaries that were, uh, “real” shows. The opening takes up about a quarter of the total runtime and gets annoying quickly (but that's because it’s clearly designed for being part of a broadcast block, not binge-watching). Still, unless I’m missing hidden cleverness on account of not having the background knowledge, there’s not much to it. It’s just okay.

-----

First Astronomical Velocity (band, active 2011-present)

Platform: Spotify, surprisingly

Okay, this one is a bit different, and I’m jettisoning the whole format for it. Remember how I said the music-centered episodes of SoniAni were actually pretty good, even though the modeling-centered episodes were so offputting I never finished the show? Well it turns out that First Astronomical Velocity, Sonico’s band, has released several IRL albums. Physical copies may be a little hard to come by, but official uploads of a lot of their music can be found on Youtube and Spotify. Do your musical interests include at least two of: string arrangements that would be at home in a particularly sappy movie soundtrack, 90s-00s alternative rock, synthesizer beep-boops, and that constricted cutesy Japanese women’s vocal style (you know the one I mean)? Then this is for you. They’re a pretty good... uh... alt-pop-rock band, I guess is what I’d call them.

-----

Interspecies Reviewers (2020)

Episodes watched: the entire 12-episode season

Platform: I plead the 5th. But it’s getting a video release soon, so it will finally be legitimately available in English!

I started this year with a plot-light fanservicey animal-people show, and now I’m ending the year with... a plot-light fanservicey animal-people show. But unlike Nekopara, this show had me cracking up, eagerly clicking “next episode”, and not complaining about the premise. I’m sure a lot of people do have a problem with this show’s premise -- which centers almost entirely on various forms of sex work -- and I understand and respect that they will want to skip this show.

But for the rest of you: Interspecies Reviewers is a wildly-NSFW comedy about a group of fantasy world adventurers who gain fame and fortune reviewing brothels of different species. I expected excessive nudity and fantasy tropes, but I didn’t expect to also get serious thoughts. Like showing, in the golem and Magic Metropolis episodes, some of the unsettling problems that are looming IRL as deepfakes and sex robots are in development -- note especially the contrast between consensually and non-consensually basing automata on real people in those episodes. Or the discussion in the last episode of how much riskier sex would be in a world without magic (i.e., ours). This is a much smarter and more interesting show than you’d expect, considering that it has so much sexual content that it got dropped by two of the networks airing it and even its US distributor.

W/A/S: 5/10/4

Weeb: Although heavily influenced by the Western fantasy media canon of European mythology and Tolkien and tabletop RPGs, familiarity with the tropes of fantasy anime will help you “get” this too, as will familiarity with the -sigh- character dynamics and censorship practices of hentai. Especially because it’s a comedy, there are probably also instances where I have completely missed topical references or wordplay that a Japanese person would get, but I can’t think of any specific instances right now of “there was clearly supposed to be a joke but I missed it”.

Ass: Look, this could not possibly have more sexual content without unambiguously becoming porn. Genitals are (almost) always carefully hidden by viewing angle or conveniently-placed glowing (something lampshaded in one episode as an actual feature of one of the species they review), but otherwise, expect lots of nudity and almost nonstop crude humor. Do not watch this with children. Do not watch this with your parents. Do not watch this with friends you don’t know well enough to know how they’ll react to something like this.

Shit: This show is better-made than it deserves to be. It’s pretty dumb at points, but it’s fun enough to make up for it. The art is consistent and pleasant, and the opening and ending themes are extremely fun, but it’s not a serious standout in any of those departments. Also, I swear the background music is stock music, but I don’t remember what other show(s) I’ve heard it in before.

Stray thought: Crim is a precious and relatable cinnamon roll and I love them.

-----

OreSuki OVA (2020)

Platform: Crunchyroll

So, I know I didn’t cover the whole season in my initial review, but I still want to mention the hour-ish-long finale of this show, which was released straight to streaming. Short version of the rest of the season: Joro starts to actually fall for Pansy, but a new challenger, Hose, appears. He is irritatingly attractive and effortless at maintaining the right persona for the situation, leading Joro to describe him as “the main character”. Hose is the sociopathic manipulator Joro wishes he could be, and Pansy, who has a bad past with him, clearly wants nothing more than for Joro to stand up to him. But, since this is OreSuki, it’s not going to be handled simply. No, instead, strap in for a grand finale of Joro and Hose competing in, and trying to manipulate through rules-lawyering, an absolutely ludicrous competition to win the right to date Pansy. And, on top of it, we also get to finally see how Sun-chan got to be the way he is and what happened at that pivotal baseball game that set off the whole plot. What has Joro learned from the experiences of the past season? You’ll see! And you’ll facepalm about it!

Really, you must watch this if you watched the regular season.

W/A/S: 6/5(!)/4ish

Weeb: Basically the same as I said before. Gags referencing other Japanese media, anime and otherwise, and it's better if you’re familiar with the high school romcoms and harem comedies Joro thinks in terms of.

Ass (and slight content note): -sigh- Why does the camera need to be there? Also, Joro, you just committed a little bit of sexual assault for the sake of this contest. Stop.

Shit: I want to rate this overall better than I did the regular season because I think it’s an excellent finale overall because, even though it ends in a very “let’s leave everything unresolved” way that’s common in media that rely on absurd relationships to propel the plot, it does so in a way that makes sense in character. I personally think it would’ve been stronger if it had, well, confirmed its title, and at least some of the other “challengers” had lost interest in Joro, but I guess they probably want a Season 2, since they have so much more source material to work from. There are... oh god 14 light novels?! That is too many.

-----

Your Name. (2016)

Platform: DVD

Two high schoolers -- small-town girl Mitsuha, from Itomori, and big-city boy Taki, from Tokyo -- find themselves in each other’s bodies for a day. They both think at first it must be a very vivid dream, but when it happens again, and they start finding clues like notes they don’t remember writing and comments by friends and relatives about their out-of-character behavior, they realize the body swap is real. This begins a relationship of mutual understanding that nobody else can really understand -- or would even believe (except Mitsuha’s grandmother, who is... familiar with this phenomenon) -- and the plot then pivots to a tense adventure where they use their connection, some crucial information Taki has, the skills of Mitsuha’s friends, and the intervention of Itomori’s patron deity, to save the town from an impending disaster.

And that’s all I’ll say about that, because I really do think this is something you should go into blind. My only remaining comments are that (1) the red string of fate is critically important imagery, and is particularly interesting to me here because, if I took a particular scene correctly, Mitsuha made her own red string of fate from sheer necessity, which is a very different twist on that trope, and (2) I am now curious about the history of the body-swapping phenomenon in-universe.

W/A/S: 4?/2/2

Weeb: As mentioned above, symbolism of the Red String of Fate shows up throughout the movie, as do the occasional distinctly Japanese quirk like a wildly out-of-place vending machine or a café with dogs, and but for the most part it’s a cross-cultural story of understanding and dealing with someone else’s life, and of forming a connection other people don’t -- can’t -- truly understand, and to some extent of divides between urban and rural and modern and traditional that I think could play out in any country with just the local symbolism tweaked. The significance and content of Shinto beliefs and practices depicted, particularly kuchikamizake, are made pretty explicit, so although foreign to the vast majority of the non-Japanese audience, I feel like this movie also has nearly no barrier to entry for people not familiar with the cultural context, so I don’t want to rate it very high on this scale.

Ass: Look. It involves teenagers switching bodies. What do you think they do? Especially Taki? But it’s played for laughs, not titillation.

Shit: This movie is beautiful and punched me in the feels and was very satisfying. The closest I have to a complaint about any aspect of it is that the musical breaks that I guess are supposed to mark acts of the movie almost make it feel like binge-watching a short series instead of watching a single self-contained movie.

#weeaboo trash #anime review #mini-reviews #happy new year #di gi charat #first astronomical velocity #super sonico #interspecies reviewers #oresuki #Are You Really the Only One Who Likes Me?#your name

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