#<—— by the way to be clear this is just nitpicking the show is clearly a 10/10

[idolomantises]

I really love scavenger’s reign and I want more people to watch it but there’s one thing that’s been bugging me about that show.

Why didn’t the lesbian fuck the robot.

[slow-reader-reads-books]

Lesbingyuan au where it’s the normal set up of post extras Bingge dimension traveling into another universe to find his own Shen Yuan. Except the world he arrives in (and is stuck in, can’t opt out of this gender journey) is a slightly genderbent one.

(hidden under a read more bc this turned basically into a wonkily grammatically tensed mini-fic)

Our darling Peerless Cucumber is a 20 something self-proclaimed straight girl with untapped soft butch potential, and is currently recovering from the harrowing trauma of the sunk cost fallacy. She’s spent a lot of time spending money on, reading, and participating in the online fandom of Proud Immortal Demon Way, and she’s currently also dealing with the fact that all her hard work in making herself heard to Great Master Airplane was seemingly for nothing. You see, Shen Yuan had the brilliant idea to create an account that appeared to be a perfectly demographically targeted straight male fan of YY novels who could critique Airplane Shooting Towards the Sky as his fellow but also his better and be listened to and receive great accolades from all frequenters of Zhongdian Literature and be validated for her hate of his writing.

“Airplane’s stupid pen name is a dick joke, I guess I gotta make mine one too… Just to, you know, seem legit and like we have common ground.”

What this charade accomplished was very little, but Peerless Cucumber did become very infamous for three things. One, his nitpicking (“It’s hardly nitpicking if it harms the integrity of the whole story1!!”). Two: his Luo Binghe fanboying (“As a protagonist he’s clearly just a cut above the rest when it comes to soul and wit, the story just rarely ever shows it off”). And three: his skipping of the steamy scenes (“I highly doubt this near identical scenario that also happened twenty chapters back but with a different wife of the week with this exact same cliffside flower giving off the same aphrodisiac mist to Bingge and new wife below will now suddenly be of any plot consequence for the next arc. It didn’t last time either, SKIP!”).

His fervent online activity garnered him the reputation of being an Airplane anti-fan, but also the assumed personality of a submissive simp who hates the easily dominated women that populate Luo Bingge’s harem. 

“lol thats why he must like mingyan so much. she never let bingge push her down. cucumber-bro must want a girlfriend who’ll chain him up and whip him! hes a pervert just like the rest of us, just a worse type kek.” 

Shen Yuan, when looking at such reply comments, gets shiver-inducing flashbacks to when her meimei left her BL comics out for everyone and the Buddha to see. She accidentally witnessed frightening scenes of thin, long-limbed men pushing each other down, tying each other to beds and cracking whips on skin until they shed blood, tears and semen, the shou begging for the gong to stop and the gong never listening. 

Shen Yuan tries to put such things out of her mind if only to preserve in amber the precious, innocent image of her meimei she knows to be true, but also secondarily to focus on the insulted male pride she’s supposed to be feeling after being accused of being a wussy submissive deviant in bed. That sort of accusation requires an in-depth 10,000 character response in order to remain in character as a straight male YY novel connoisseur.

Shen Yuan, as Peerless Cucumber but also as her true self, was undoubtedly straight. Staying in character, Peerless Cucumber made sure to extol the beauty of characters like Liu Mingyan— “She’s an intelligent and cold beauty and is written with a clear and vivid personality! A true equal for our Bingge on the battlefield and in matters of the heart!” As well as occasionally Ning Yingying— “She’s not the boring choice, you all just don’t know the special value a loyal shijie character brings, even if she does lose 99% of her personality to that one singular trait…”

But don’t get it twisted! This is a part of her performance! In real life, logged off and touching grass and breathing fresh outdoor air, she’s your run-of-the-mill average girl who is just a part of the pack. 

Her goals in life are simply not ambitious, is all. If there was a competition with ten available spots to win, she’d have no qualms placing tenth and simply feel honored to have participated. If there are ten girls and nine of them bag a good boyfriend, Shen Yuan doesn’t mind being the tenth who gets unlucky. She’s just kind to her meimeis and jiejies like that! As if she’d take that away from them! They'd probably been wanted those boyfriends for a long time! 

Shen Yuan is hardly a sore loser, and she knows the great importance of girl code and female friendship.

So, Shen Yuan being the normal average and totally straight and cisgender girl that she is decides to wallow in her Airplane-induced misery by going to a con, donning her homemade Mobei-jun cosplay. She worked hours of her life learning how to sew just for this project to the point her family thought she was finally thinking about settling down and learning wifely skills. 

Unfortunately for her ignorant family she’s actually just investing in a really elaborate excuse to cross dress. Well, it’s not really crossdressing, it’s just cosplay! Cosplay is totally different and not about taking on the gender of a character, but their larger identity! She didn’t want to explain this to them, and internally felt afraid and hesitant about it, as if they’d view her as weird for wanting to do this, so she didn’t bother to try at all.

So, Shen Yuan in her 160 centimeter/5 foot 3 inch glory decked out in dark blues and blacks, fur lining the shoulders of her outfit for style points, and wearing a long white wig styled mostly loose but with a few thin braids, chances upon a particularly striking Luo Binghe cosplayer. Not just any Luo Binghe cosplayer, but the best one! He’s tall, must be over 180cm/6 foot but also svelte and willowy in surprising ways. His hair is long and flows down his back from a ponytail ornamented at the base with a thin metal guan. Parts of his cosplay seem very benign, but others seem meticulously crafted and exquisite in quality, especially that sword at his hip! Just looking at it intimidated her, yikes! Job well done, cosplayer!

This Luo Binghe also had the most beautiful and delicately boned face she’d ever seen, eyes dark and deep and highly reflective like that of a lake on a dark and starry night. The cosplayer’s voice was also deeply melodic and enchanting.

This cosplayer… is also a woman! Shen Yuan nodded to herself internally, yes that must be it! No man looks like this in reality, this is a fellow female sufferer of Proud Immortal Demon Way impersonating a fictional man for similar psychological reasons as her. A surge of female loyalty spawns in Shen Yuan’s chest, and she doesn't even bother resisting the urge to walk over and strike up a conversation with this Luo Binghe.

She spat out her name in quick order and immediately started on the topic of female character writing in the novel. The Luo Binghe cosplayer was looking at her quietly and with a heavy amount of gravity, ink-brush eyebrows sitting elegantly low above her eyes in attentive focus. What a good listener this lady is, Shen Yuan thought. She can’t remember when someone last listened to her this closely. She hypocritically chooses to not pay attention to that train of thought any further. “In a world like Proud Immortal Demon Way,” Shen Yuan began with slight smarm, “who would choose to be a woman? I certainly wouldn’t if I wanted to see the interesting parts of the world that drew me into the story in the first place. A male protagonist can explore it freely, but the female characters are all locked away in either the marriage bedroom or the highly isolated harem palaces. Great Master Airplane clearly didn’t eat enough walnuts as a child, he must have some sort of brain deficiency when it comes to writing proper characters— ” 

The tall Luo Binghe cosplayer suddenly spoke up. “Choose?” “Hm? Yeah, I mean, in a world like that, there’s basically no choice, yeah? Gotta serve the narrative and readers and all. But the real world doesn’t have a narrative, we only have ourselves and each other to guide us. So we just do what we want, figure it out as we go. Like us two! We wanted to dress up as these male characters from this asinine story and attend this con and we figured out how to do it! We’re kindred spirits, you and I, we’re zhiyin!” “So when you leave this con, you will also choose to take this manner of dress off and wear something else?” “Obviously. Though, my go-to outfit is just a big t-shirt and sweatpants, or athletic shorts. This kind of thing is the extent of me dressing up.” Shen Yuan didn’t notice, but the Luo Binghe cosplayer’s eyes mildly glazed over in irritated confusion at the unfamiliar terms. Nor did she notice the slight expression of planning that developed in that gaze, as if they were imagining a future shopping expedition to find an outfit Shen Yuan would want to dress up in that wasn’t a facsimile of Luo Binghe’s right hand man.

“I… also want to leave this con and wear something else.” “The busyness getting to you, huh jiejie? You must have gotten here a lot earlier than I did, you poor thing. I guess this is it, it was nice talking to you—” “I don’t have any other clothes with me, and am unable to go back home. Can you help this poor one, jiejie?” “Jiejie—” Shen Yuan coughed. “Am I… wait you can’t go back home? Did your ride ditch you or something, aiyah what a scummy thing to do! I do have extra clothes on me, though I don’t think they’ll fit you. But let’s go find out. I guess if I have to take care of you like this, it does make me feel like a jiejie. Your height made me assume you were older than me, haha.”

Shen Yuan laughed, and the Luo Binghe cosplayer rapidly relaxed and took on an easy smile. “An innocent mistake. Jiejie must often be assumed to be younger than her actual age.” Shen Yuan hummed absent-mindedly. “Eh, not really. I’m only 22, and I think I look it. It’s you who looks like a jade immortal, uh, meimei.” She stuttered when she realized she hadn’t yet caught the other cosplayer’s name, and for some reason it felt weird to just call her Luo Binghe without her also LARPing along as Mobei-jun. Shen Yuan by this point had taken the tall meimei’s hand, it pale and slender much like the rest of her, and had been pulling her along towards the public bathroom to make use of her backpack’s change of clothes, walking along the wall to avoid foot traffic. However, the moment she had finished her sentence and called the other one meimei, the Luo Binghe cosplayer suddenly slammed her free hand on the wall and yanked hard on the one Shen Yuan was holding, pulling her in close to herself, caging her in from behind. Shen Yuan squeaked and found herself crowded against the wall. Her back was encased in a warm and dark heat and she could see above her that jade-white hand curled tightly in on itself, heel practically grinding against the wall. It looked like it was trembling slightly. An earth-shatteringly tight grip squeezed the fingers of her still held hand to the point of hurting slightly. Shen Yuan winced at the sensation.

Shen Yuan heard sharp, heavy breathing above her. Not knowing what to do nor quite what was going on, she squeezed back the hand that was keeping hers hostage and leaned back slightly. Comfort is what she’s doing this for, right? Feels like the reason she’s doing it. 

Shen Yuan felt the other cosplayer jolt behind her. After a tense beat, a forehead slowly dropped onto her shoulder. Shen Yuan was wearing fur along the top half of her outfit as a part of her Mobei-jun cosplay, but nonetheless she could feel the vague contour of the other’s nose through it, burrowing deeper into its warmth. Shen Yuan now felt awkward for only bothering with faux-fur for her cosplay. But with that face resting upon her shoulder and an odd sense of vulnerability wafting off of her, a sharp sense of broad awareness filled Shen Yuan's mind mysteriously. Her mind filled up with sensory information on the one behind her, naturally taking note of every detail with ease.

“Meimei…” the Luo Binghe cosplayer trailed off, muffled slightly by Shen Yuan’s cosplay, but also seemingly by her own emotions being stuck in her throat. “Can I really be jiejie’s meimei?” Shen Yuan didn’t really know what to do or how to respond, so she simply continued to lean her weight back onto the other. She then pulled on the elbow that led to the hand positioned above her until it was brought down far enough for her to grab properly. Shen Yuan took both hands in hers and placed them in front of her in a comfortable position. They were slightly cold, so she rubbed at them with her thumbs.

The Luo Binghe cosplayer picked her head up and looked down at the sight with watery eyes and a warbling lip. Both of her hands were cradled in that grip, gently held in front of the shorter’s stomach in a tender and intimate fashion. Their arms were bent parallel and their front and back slotted together in a way that, to the taller one, felt predestined.

“Can you, what kind of question is that, of course you can. But, I’d like to have your name too, if you don’t mind? Only calling you meimei sounds like I’m calling out to my real little sister.” Shen Yuan laughed and looked up over her shoulder nonchalantly. 

Somewhere in the distance, she can hear people giggling and snapping pictures of the two. She felt a twinge of embarrassment. Of course this moment looks compromising from the outside, they’re cosplaying Luo Binghe and Mobei-jun!

Shen Yuan was suddenly working very hard to maintain a cool poker face in front of her very tall and newly minted meimei.

Bringing up her real little sister and then suddenly being thrust into this type of self-aware of cringe violently and nonconsensually summoned forth invented images of a dog blooded BL scenario that wouldn’t be out of place in her real meimei’s leisure literature.

Fellow con goers, please have mercy on us two women and don't be thinking of what I'm thinking! We’re merely having a pure hearted, early friendship bonding moment! Skinship is very much common and normal between people like us, disregard the kabedon! Totally normal female friendship is blossoming here, get your homoerotic dog blood tropes out of our personal lives!

“This one is called… Qiu Bingbing.” Her voice hitched and quavered with some sort of ineffable, delicate emotion. “Bingbing, ah? Written with the same character as Binghe, meaning ice? And Qiu, is that with the character meaning the autumn season or the character meaning a grave mound?”

Qiu Bingbing hummed and nodded lethargically to the first question and spoke up for the second, hesitating slightly. “Qiu as in autumn.” “What a pretty name, “autumn ice”. You fit the bill of Luo Binghe perfectly, but with a name like that it’s nearly a pity to go by something else. You’re a miraculous find in a place like this, Bing-mei.” Shen Yuan complimented with abandon, eager to make her new friend feel good, and turned around. Still holding one hand, she impulsively took the chance Qiu Bingbing’s still bowed head offered and patted it softly.

She did that for a while, not paying attention to anything else. A euphoric smile opened on Qiu Bingbing’s lips. She was lost in the moment too. 

The rest of the world fell away. As long as Luo Binghe, no, as long as Qiu Bingbing can worm her way into every crevice of Shen Yuan, she’ll be fine. He before was always grasping at any semblance of peace and security only for it to slip through his grasp like sand, but she’s found it. She’ll nestle in and hibernate inside Shen Yuan’s veins and she’ll never let go. She will never.

“Let’s go get you those clothes. Good thing I like them oversized, they should be mildly presentable on you, even if they aren’t anything girly.”

“I can live without anything girly, anything of yours will do.”

“That’s good to hear, let’s go then.”

[utilitycaster]

As someone who hasn't watched majority of c1, reading your thoughts on how tlovm compares is really interesting! I've been in the fandom since c3 began and have seen all of c2 and c3, and I've picked up a lot context.

However, I watch tlovm with a friend who has only seen tlovm at all (and like, 1 hour of exu calamity e1 that we never continued lol, so he did recognise Zerxeus' name). From his perspective of seeing the show as it is on it's own, he's been having a great time, something I do think speaks to the strength of this adaptation - that one of the things CR set out to do was to make something that stood on it's own, and I think they've succeeded in that.

How do you feel on that aspect of tlovm?

I agree - I think a lot of the criticism does come down to disappointment that we're not seeing some of the peak moments of Campaign 1, and I want to be clear that I share some aspects of that disappointment! It is just that like, again, I don't see how you make a scripted show where A Bard's Lament hits if you haven't seen the original, or where Glintshore hits in the same way at all.

I've been thinking about this a lot because I have gotten into some things for which I am unfamiliar with the original/prior installments through mutuals. For example, I have now read some of The Wheel of Time series (gotta get back into it) but I watched the show without any sentimentality for the original, and I think many people who haven't liked it have been mad about changes from the books, not how the TV story holds up. Similarly, I'm very intrigued by Veilguard despite zero past knowledge of basically anything Dragon Age, and I know a lot of longtime fans in particular are mad about changes. The challenge of adaptation, or further installments, is to straddle that line of appealing to new fans and old fans alike. And it's possible - I think TLOVM could have done some things better, but I'm here and I'm not mad about it and while I cannot claim OG C1 fan status I was around in time to have watched C1 and backed the kickstarter, but at the same time it's clearly working for people unfamiliar with the source.

I don't think you should totally abandon everything old fans liked about a series; but the fact is, old fans are a spectrum ranging from people who will love it no matter what because it's their blorbos some more! to people who will nitpick the fact that a specific phrase they have an emotional attachment to didn't appear, and everyone in between. You can't gain more old fans; you can only lose them. And in the end, you should tell a story that works for the medium and what you are trying to do. That doesn't mean every series or adaptation is good, to be clear; I think people who hate on Game of Thrones are 100% valid and not just bitter ASOIAF fans, and we all know that the MCU's attempt to build both a coherent universe but also be accessible to new fans turned it into an absolute trainwreck. But I think that an adaptation should not only be the original but in a new medium, and it should be something a new viewer would enjoy, and yes, I think TLOVM achieves that.

[floofeeeeee]

Time to be a little hater HEHEH this my rant on the Kotlc sub reddit

I HATE and I mean HATE THIS REDDIT ONG homophobia has tow down a bit but ugh…this sub Reddit….is depressing as hell

Like LIKEEEEE uh there’s a lot of things I dislike that I’m going to explain here I’ll try not to make it long but I’m a yapper SOO no promises (also there will be so many spelling mistakes erm)

Ok First things first

They hate the books like genuinely hate it, it’s wild. And not in the way we’re there just criticizing like I’ve seen on here. I’ve seen some very good points and discussions that have been overall respectful and you can tell they still enjoy the books even with the criticism. Like I’ve eaten up every book but still had the things I like to nitpick. But on the sub Reddit…it’s such a different vibe man.. like they find it childish (crazy it’s almost like it was made for 12 year old ) and just dislike every book except like the first. They constantly talk about how much they think the newer suck. They hate the plot and most of it writing. At this point don’t read it????? You clearly do not enjoy the books why are you here???

And the worst part is there are a lot of younger kids on there then here.. like these are kids who want to find a space to talk about there favorite books and your just complaining all the time…UUGHHHGBHBHH

PART TWO

The homophobia…. Sighhhhh it’s Reddit idk man but I’ve seen a few things erm.. yeah it’s gotten better like a lot I’d say compared to Pinterest but still it’s gross.

Part three my favoriteeee part! (Lies)

The Sophie hate. (Oh that hurts my soul)

Now I’ve seen criticism of Sophie on here before! It’s normal! But this is actually hate like…Ong why

Let’s just start of with the fact the if you go on there now I guarantee if you scroll down a bit you will find a post hating on Sophie. It’s all the same stuff to “I miss the old Sophie! She’s such a brat now!” She’s so annoying she doesn’t deserve Keefe!” “I hate how rude she is in stellarlune !” That pretty basic and toning  it down a lot . But you get the idea it’s that all the time with a few more things obviously. They think she’s a Mary sue they hate how many powers she’s has they call her weak and are annoyed with the fact that she can’t ever beat the neverseen (it’s almost like she 15 with very little training on how to fight and no one ever offers except until FLASHBACK. when they finally are like hmm maybe we should teach her how to defend herself! REALLY NOW? AFTER ALL THIS TIME??) they give very very little grace.

But it keeps going now there is hate for fitz…but I feel like the hate for Sophie is worse.

That brings us to our next part

There highkey misogynistic .. NOW HEAR ME OUT OKK get it they can dislike a girl character that’s fine! (It’s not /j) but here’s why I think that

fitz defenders on there and they are interesting…like I love fitz lovers on here there very cool and are respectful

Not Reddit!

A litte while back I saw post talking about sofitz break up in legacy and well…they blamed it all on Sophie!!! How sweet 🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰 now this isn’t me saying she wasn’t at fault at all during that time BUT neither was fitz they both were they both had there struggles and it was clear to me that Sophie wasn’t ready. But they want on a long rent about how most of it was her fault and how much she ruined the relationship…oh my. And yes it’s there opinion but when a whole sub Reddit is in favor of the man more then the woman……….I just thinks it’s weird and maybe this isn’t very misogynistic

But! I’ve seen Keefe lover on There ranting about how bad sophie is for Keefe and how much they hate the idea of them together. I’ve seen multiple post loving both of those boy and ragging on Sophie they praise the boys and hate her it’s it’s so…ANNOYING holy crap I hate it. It feels so misogynistic the way they treat those two boys with so much love and affection even though Sophie shows sighs of similar behavior as both of them BUT NOOOOO she’s annoying bratty B and deserve nothing not like my Keefe who deserves the world……….

I’m sorry if I’m not explaining well and I’m getting things wrong this is fully just me needing to rant about that stupid sub Reddit.

I’m not done btw um

Also I saw this person post such an innocent and nice question on why they hate Sophie so much. They were like I’ve seen a lot of hate on Sophie. And I’m a big fan of her can anyone explain to why? No hate I respect your opinion! Something along those lines

And man…it was all the stuff I said before long messages about why they hate her … SIGHHHHHHHH

Anyways besides that there boring that’s all they ever talk about is this and that and there litte hot takes that are just straight up hate Radom person who nos nothing about it and is like ask me questions u have no idea what this book is about! And that fun until you look at the comments and there just annoying about it..And it’s just gahhh

Anyways my wrist hurts and that pretty much the end of my rant feel free to discuss! But please be respectful this was just my frustration that I needed to get out its not that deep I swear

[welcometothejianghu]

Welcome to another round of W2 Tells You What You Should See, where W2 (me) tries to sell you (you) on something you should be watching. Today's choice: 天国と地獄 ~サイコな2人～/ Tengoku to Jigoku: Psychona Futari / Heaven and Hell: Soul Exchange.

Heaven and Hell: Soul Exchange is a 2021 Japanese drama about a headstrong cop, the shady CEO she suspects of being a serial killer, and what happens when they magically switch bodies.

With a premise like that, there are basically two tonal choices: You can make it a wacky comedy, or you can get real fucked-up and dark about it. This 10-episode series somehow manages the secret third thing of splitting the difference, so it's got a lot of deliciously fucked-up stuff in the setup, but it never quite has the courage of its convictions to go all the way. What that gets you is the kind of frustrating that you can't stop thinking about afterward, both for what it did and what it didn't have the guts to do.

So! If you're interested in a story that's compelling and occasionally very funny, with just enough unrealized potential that your brain keeps batting it around like a kitten with a squeaky toy at 4AM, I have five reasons that you might want to give this one a shot.

1. Half-Trans: Full Trans Consequences

We're gonna hit this one right off the bat: This is a story where a girl and boy trade bodies, so you know it's got the genders.

Mochizuki Ayako is the only female cop in her department. She's headstrong, kind of obnoxious, a slob, and not particularly feminine -- so of course the dude cops hate her. In the process of investigating a serial murder, she comes across Hidaka Haruto, who's got that kind of smug sinister aura of a smart man who's clearly hiding some shit, though all his underlings love him. When they unexpectedly bodyswap with no idea how to switch back, they're forced to keep one another's lies going so they don't both wind up in jail, except she's still trying to catch him and he's still trying to get away with it.

They work a very good contrast with the difference in their respective attachments to their genders. Despite her hardass demeanor and her lack of super-femme presentation, Mochizuki is without question a woman. She's deeply uncomfortable in a male body, and when someone calls her a man, her instinct is to deny it. Having to deal with a borrowed penis nearly gives her a meltdown.

Hidaka, on the other hand, is a fruity little guy whose first response to finding himself inside a woman's body is to get all girly and take it for a test drive. It's less that he's transfeminine and more that he just really doesn't seem all that attached to any gender. He's got boobs now, and boobs are what he's going to make work for him. Regardless of his sexuality -- and the show does leave that one a big row of question marks -- his gender is gay.

There's also some fairly solid bodyswap acting! ...kinda. Both actors have unfortunately different interpretations of Mochizuki's character. If you're being charitable, it's true she's freaking out and having some kind of gender dysphoria the entire time she's in boy mode, which could explain why she's much softer and girlier when she's being played by the male actor, Takahashi Issei. If you're more inclined to nitpick, well, you're not wrong that the performances don't line up. That said, the actors both do a great job of switching characters, so it's pretty clear when they're being different people (even if it's not necessarily the same different person).

Now, you should by no means assume this show is some conscious exploration of genderqueer existence in contemporary Japan. It is, however, way more thoughtful than I expected it to be. It leaves some very interesting silences, especially around what exactly Hidaka's taste in partners is and why Mochizuki's own body kinda gives her a lesbian awakening when someone else is in there. If you're the type who likes a trans-flavored imagination adventure, this is a spectacular starting point. You're going to have a blast.

2. The Mochizuki Support Squad

Nobody from Hidaka's side realizes what's going on with the swap; sure, the boss is acting weird, but they buy his explanations for it. Mochizuki, however, has exactly two people in the world who care so much about her that they figure out what's happened: her junior cop partner, Yamaki Hideo, and her roommate, Watanabe Riku.

You have to love a character where their closest friends are like, either you've started suddenly acting polite and nice, or you've mystically swapped bodies with another person, and honestly, the bodyswap is the more likely explanation.

This is one of those places where the show takes the goofier and more lighthearted tack. Leaving it so the only people who knew about the swap were Mochizuki and Hidaka themselves would be incredibly isolating and paranoia-inducing, especially for Mochizuki. Giving her (eventually) two buddies who know what's going on both gives her a cushion of support for her ordeal and creates a number of comic moments where these guys are looking at a stranger and seeing their friend -- and vice versa.

They're both kind of daffy sweethearts, too, which adds even more comic relief to the show. Yamaki is an easily flustered, mildly hysterical nerd who just wants his mean bestie back so she can go back to telling him what to do. Riku is a blue-collar himbo who would technically be a hobosexual except for how he both really does pull his weight around the house and (probably) isn't getting laid. They're willing to put themselves on the line and do what they can to make sure their friend is okay, no matter what body she's in.

I actually like how the show has more than couple male-female dynamics where the people involved are just friends -- or, if things change so they're not, it's strongly implied that they could have gone on being just friends and that would have been fine or even better for both parties involved. Romance is not the endgame of every mixed-genital relationship! Sometimes people who love one another dearly are friends without further obligation! You can care for people a lot without wanting to fuck them! And that's great.

Besides, I know it won't shock you to learn that the real horny part of the show plays out as...

3. An interesting game of cat and mouse

Mochizuki's got an interesting problem: She's a cop inside the body of a murderer, and as long as she's stuck here, there's a murderer inside the body of a cop out on the loose. She could, as Hidaka, confess to the murders and in a way that puts him physically in jail, but she doesn't know how to swap their bodies back. She's got to keep Hidaka appeased, or he, in her official capacity, might arrest her and just keep her body forever while she goes down for the crime. She could find a way to take them both down, but that would ruin her life too and is an absolute last resort. She could just let him go and cover up the crimes, but her sense of justice won't allow it.

While Hidaka ... well, Hidaka's got a lot going on. I'm not even going to get into Hidaka's whole deal, because it's related to some late-series spoilers. The simple version is that he's got to be pretending to catch himself while actually trying to destroy evidence about the murders, all while having to dig into gendered expectations to play a version of Mochizuki capable of ingratiating herself with her asshole coworkers instead of alienating them.

And yeah, it's pretty darn horny.

It's one of those delicious enemies-to-allies-to-grudging-friends setups where you've got two people at cross purposes who have to play nice with one another (while still being very mean to one another), and in that process they find things about the other person that are actually worth liking. Because this is a literal life-and-death situation, emotions are running high! Wanting to kill someone and wanting to save them are not mutually exclusive states.

The show makes a great decision not to have Mochizuki and Hidaka hook up, or even to acknowledge that their bond has any erotic component beyond whatever's inherent in borrowing someone else's genitals. This means that their dynamic is very intimate and physical without being textually sexual, which actually winds up making it way more sexual than it would have been otherwise. It's like horror, where what you don't see is almost always scarier than what you do -- with sexual tension, especially across ostensibly heterosexual pairs, subversion and longing are almost always much sexier than having things brought to completion onscreen. I mean, seriously, think of the number of things you've seen where there's pining, and pining, and more pining, and you ship it hard, and then they finally get together and it's a giant disappointment. Better to be left hungry for more of this almost-t4t goodness.

There's also an incredible amount of lapel-grabbing and kabedon-delivering here, so if you're in to that, itadakimasu!

4. A Cop Are Bastard

There are a number of antagonists in this story -- I mean, not shocking, considering both the premise and the way the serial murder case at the heart of the story gets weirdly complicated. The most prominent and persistent of those antagonists, though, is not a serial murderer, but one of the cops.

The character's name is Kawahara Mitsuo, but Mochizuki and Yamaki call him "Seku-Hara," as those are the first two syllables of each word in "sexual harassment." It's fitting. He's sleazy, arrogant, and an entire bag of dicks who talks like a gangster and is willing to do a lot of backhanded dirty-cop shit to get his way.

All this lands him firmly in the Love To Hate category. If you enjoy throwing popcorn at onscreen villains, pop some extra for Kawahara, because that fucker deserves it.

Maybe the most interesting thing about him is how often he's actually right. When he's not being an asshole who's doing bad cop work, he actually does good cop work, and he comes to some pretty astute conclusions about what exactly is going on with the case. Despite Mochizuki and Hidaka's joint interference, he figures out a lot of what's the two of them are up to, even without ever picking up on the bodyswap angle. So he's not just a slimy buffoon -- he's actually a formidable opponent.

Also, did I mention he's hot in a gross way? I dunno, maybe it helps that I've seen Kitamura Kazuki be hot in a not-gross way in other things, like Nekozamurai, where he plays a handsome and noble samurai sworn to protect a very cute kitty. Here, though, he's not noble at all -- he's a thug of a cop with a cocky swagger and a deep voice, and I am not above admitting that I see the appeal.

Like, fuck, I'm not usually into eyebrows, and I'm into his eyebrows. Those are some good eyebrows.

5. argh it's almost so good (but still pretty good!)

I'm about to be slightly spoilery from this point forward, not about specific plot points, but about general narrative moves. If you'd prefer to remain unspoiled for such things, stop reading right now and go to either Viki or Netflix to watch the whole show. You're welcome.

Still here? Great. See, where this show really lacks the courage of its convictions is with Hidaka's character. He starts off the series really evil! He does some very bad things! He's clearly quite sinister. Then about halfway through, the show starts to backpedal real hard and introduces another factor into the murder cases that makes him a much less outright bad guy than he seems at first blush.

...And that sucks! Because as the show first portrays him, he's deliciously kind of a fucker. He's not only confident and threatening, he's happy to take Mochizuki's body and do whatever he wants with it, regardless of her feelings. He reads as a straight-up two-faced psychopath who just wants to keep on ridding the world of bad people by straight-up grotesquely murdering them. But the show doesn't have the guts to either take him down in a blaze of glory or create a redemption arc for a guy who's got a taste for some pretty gnarly body horror, so it's got to find a way to convince you not to believe your lying eyes.

However! I do not consider this a dealbreaker, because I find what the show does wind up doing actually pretty interesting. Just because it's not the ending to the story I, personally, would have told doesn't mean it's not a story worth telling. It's maybe a little artificially convoluted, but you've already suspended your disbelief for the bodyswap thing, right? So just roll with the rest of it.

At the risk of belaboring the duality metaphor, I really do feel like this is a show constantly being pulled in two different directions at once. It seems like half the show loves to roll around in the blood and perversion of vigilante serial murder, while the other half wishes it'd picked a more innocuous crime, like art theft or securities fraud. Half of it wants Hidaka to be a right cold bastard who deals Mochizuki a lot of serious damage, and the other half wants to keep him always on the side of the line where he never does anything unredeemable. Half of it wants this to be a sexy queer exploration of gendered expectations through suddenly different bodies, and the other half wants to play a straight PG-13 bodyswap comedy. Half of it wants to be Hannibal, and the other half wants to be Freaky Friday.

And where it all lands is ... well, in the middle.

Obviously my general disappointment with the show's eventual final form has not left me heartbroken. To the contrary, I've had a lot of fun thinking about it afterward, both pondering what was actually on the screen and having imagination adventures about how I would have done it differently. That, to me, is fun. I enjoy this. Like the Maxx said, the shows in my mind are almost always better.

I might have been a little more put off by the lack of my ideal resolution if the show had required more of a commitment from me, but no, it gets things done in ten one-hour episodes, which makes it a great small-medium bite. You can knock this one out pretty quickly, and then have all the time in the world left for thinking about how things could have been different if the show had not taken the Goldilocks approach to its queer serial murder bodyswap setup. The Hump of Compelling Mediocrity strikes again!

Up for a watch?

As I mentioned earlier, both Viki and Netflix have this one!

No joke, I hope people read this, get enticed by the horny potential of it, watch the show, go a little feral for what fits into those silences I mentioned, and write some dang sexy fanfic for me to enjoy. There's only one piece of anything on AO3 about it! One! One is not a sufficient number of things! Especially not with this promising of a setup. Come on, fellow perverts. We can do better.

Aw, look, they're so cute when they get to be themselves.

[basingstokemercury]

Finally revisited Let That Be Your Last Battlefield, another of the ones that spooked baby me.

It's... much less impressive as an adult, to say the least.

As in The Alternative Factor, I got the sense of very little plot progression. People say and do the same things over and over, every so often someone takes over the ship, there isn't much to keep you engaged in the story.

And since I seem to be in the business of nitpicking Trek's morality, I'll say what many people have probably said before: the situation presented isn't symmetrical, which is a bit of a flaw in a story about "just let go of hate everyone".

It's clear that Bele is the more powerful one here (or at least would be if the planet hadn't been destroyed). Notably, Lokai doesn't seem to exhibit this incredibly strong telekinetic ability; does he choose not to use it? Or did Bele's race achieve their historical subjugation of Lokai's because they had a power the other lacked, a la Plato's Stepchildren? This feels like something that could have been expanded on.

Bele is chasing Lokai, who seems to be on the run and making no attempt at retaliation. He's extremely bigoted against Lokai's people, not even trying to hide this - in contrast, Lokai's venom seems mostly directed against what Bele's race has done, rather than any innate evil quality.

As for the charges against Lokai, I'm the first to say that "there are rules, even in war" (thanks, Bones), and even in a war that most would agree is just. Intentionally killing civilians, torture, wanton pain and destruction beyond the needs of the cause... Resisting oppression isn't a blanket justification, and good causes can be co-opted by those who just want to gratify a dark impulse.

But we aren't given any specifics as to whether Lokai did indeed cross these lines, only ranting from someone clearly prejudiced. His repeated demands for Bele's death could read as hatred or bloodlust, absolutely - or they could be the words of a desperate man, knowing his pursuer has no mercy and seeing no other way of ending the chase.

And if your premise is that both sides have been destroyed by mutual, irrational hate, maybe you ought to make an effort at showing that both have equally good (or bad) reasons for their enmity?

Next, The Mark Of Gideon. Judging by discussion I've seen of this one as a teen and adult, 10/11ish me was nowhere near equipped to understand it, which is probably part of why she classed it as "disturbing" and moved on.

Maybe I'll eventually work up the courage for Spock's Brain or The Way To Eden...

[thankskenpenders]

Sonic Prime!

The first eight episodes of Sonic Prime are out! I've been busy for obvious reasons this past week (I kinda released a video game), but I've now seen all eight episodes, and as such can give more structured thoughts on them.

Overall: pretty good! I like it! ...But it's not 100% there yet for me. In the spirit of Festivus, I'm here to air my grievances.

Let's start with one of the highest points. First and foremost, this show looks great. We FINALLY have a Sonic cartoon that actually looks like the games with no asterisks attached, even across multiple wildly different AUs. And everything from small acting choices to big, bombastic fight scenes is a joy to watch in motion thanks to the fluid, expressive, fast-paced movement, with characters pleasantly squashing and stretching in fun ways. It's so fun literally to just watch Sonic's face move in dialogue scenes. God, I wish the cutscenes in Frontiers had animation this good. I get why they don't, but still.

And those action sequences! Man, some of these are the most fun fight scenes in any Sonic cartoon ever, period. Lots of great shot choices, a good mix of recognizable moves from the games combined with new ones and improvisations, I could go on and on. The shot of Sonic leaping backwards down that long stairwell, only for the camera to pan around beneath him and show his friends following suit? There's a reason why they put that in the trailer. It rules. This isn't the greatest action series ever - it still has your typical kids' action cartoon problem where the stakes rarely feel adequately high and you can turn your brain off during fight scenes - but it's fun to look at in a way that previous Sonic cartoons haven't always been.

Really, with how strong the presentation is, it's the writing that tends to let the show down in this first batch of episodes. The writing isn't even bad - there's some really cool stuff to latch onto, and I'm optimistic about them leaning more into what's interesting as the plot continues to develop. It's just... well, it's a Man of Action cartoon.

I'm going to nitpick a lot here, so I want it to be perfectly clear that I like Sonic Prime. I think it's a solid cartoon, and firmly on the high end of the Sonic cartoon spectrum. There's a lot that I'm into, and if someone told me it was their new favorite Sonic cartoon, I could absolutely see why. It mainly just has three things working against it:

It can't decide whether or not it actually wants to be wholeheartedly faithful to the games.

It was very clearly written to be a weekly TV show and not a Netflix show dumped in large batches.

The bar has been VERY high for Sonic content this year across every other medium.

Faithfulness to the games

As has been touted in interviews, Sonic Prime is actually canon to the games, and in many ways it's slavishly faithful to them. Which only makes it weirder when it isn't.

The thing that'll immediately stand out is the new voice cast they had to get because Canadian production laws blah blah blah. Now, they're all good here, particularly Deven Mack as Sonic. His take definitely sounds similar to previous takes on Sonic, but I think he manages to find a nice middle point between the youthful enthusiasm of movie Sonic and the more experienced heroics of game/IDW Sonic. He's great. And not to knock Cindy's performances, but I think Shannon Chan-Kent's voice might actually fit Amy just a liiiiittle better here. But the problem is it gets harder to view this as the regular game cast and alternate timeline versions of them when everyone always sounds a little off. Knuckles in particular is really weird because his AU counterparts have a completely different voice actor, and neither particularly sounds like his current voice in the games. I have no idea why.

For another example, Green Hill is used as a setting in a cartoon for the first time ever, and it looks exactly how you remember it. Cool! But it's also framed as the place where Sonic and all of his friends live 24/7, which has never, ever been true in the games. Even Knuckles is here with no explanation for why he isn't guarding the Master Emerald. (One might think that not drawing attention to Knuckles' job allows the writers to just pretend it doesn't exist, similar to what Sega does in many games, but then we get a literal 16-bit flashback to him guarding the Master Emerald in Hidden Palace.)

This would be a totally fine concession if this show was just doing its own thing like every other Sonic cartoon. The different universes are all different bad timelines for Green Hill, with Sonic spotting the unique iconography of the level buried beneath whatever's taken over South Island this time - a smog-filled Eggman city, an overgrown jungle, an abnormally high sea level - to drive home how wrong the AUs are. It also explains why Sonic can always find the AU versions of his friends in Green Hill, and it probably cut down on the number of sets they had to model. But because it is canon to the games, things like this distract me as a hopeless Sonic nerd. It also leads to some repetitive dialogue in the first few episodes as characters constantly comment on the presence or lack thereof of palm trees, because their only reference for what the world is supposed to look like is Green Hill.

Rings are also treated as a minor plot point early on to incorporate another thing from the games, as Sonic is late for the big battle against Eggman because he was off collecting extra rings. But despite how often it's brought up in that context, they aren't actually a factor in the fight at all, and then rings are never seen again in the AUs.

Also Orbot and Cubot are in this in the regular universe and then we never see them again? Are they going to come back??

This extends beyond these pedantic nitpicks, though. To me, the worst offender of the show selectively choosing when to care about the source material is the dichotomy of the character writing in the alternate universes.

Every AU will have one or two takes on one of Sonic's friends (Tails, Amy, Knuckles, Rouge, and Big) who are The Interesting Ones, the spotlighted characters for each subplot. These are the ones that get actual character arcs, and they feel like they're written in conversation with their original game counterparts in interesting ways.

In the dystopian world, Tails is known as Nine, a cynical loner inventor who was never saved from his bullies and inspired to be a hero by Sonic - but who, when pushed, is still a good kid deep down. In the jungle world, Amy is the extremist Thorn Rose who rides around on a giant Flicky like it's a chocobo and prevents foragers from "stealing" from the forest, possibly riffing on her bond with the Flickies in SA1. She's still looking out for the little guy, she's just doing so at the expense of everyone else. And in the pirate world, Knuckles is the captain Dread Knuckles, who instead of diligently guarding a magic rock was a pirate obsessed with obtaining a magic rock, and who swore off of that quest (and fighting in general) after it cost him the trust of his original crew.

These characters and their interactions with Sonic are all fun - Nine in particular provided a lot of my favorite emotional moments so far - and it feels like it gets at why you would do a multiverse story like this in the first place. You get to examine the characters from other angles! It's just that then there's... the rest. Characters who aren't the focus will just kind of get inserted into roles as Man of Action rests on broad cartoon tropes instead of actually doing anything with the Sonic source material. The dystopia of New Yolk City feels like a good fit given the history of the franchise, but then the other two worlds we've seen so far rely largely on stock "tribal" tropes and pirates going yaarrrrr.

I'm biased, but the worst off here seems to be Rouge, who has yet to get her spotlight universe (assuming she gets one next). This really stings because she's spot on in the regular universe. She hasn't been retconned to be part of Team Sonic, she's invited herself over because she's got her eye on the Paradox Prism (even dropping in unannounced at Tails' workshop). She's got a bit of that playfulness that makes her so fun, and the animation is able to lean into it. But then you go to the other universes and it's all gone.

Pirate Rouge is pretty fun, I'll admit, but I'm shocked they don't play up her love of gems there. Rebel Rouge (yes that is her literal name, the other rebels call her Rebel) gets to be a spy with a fun dynamic with Knuckles at first, but it quickly devolves into her just being the serious, responsible girlboss leading the rebellion who acts as a straight man to Sonic's snark. In other words, she's a lot like... Sally? I hate making that comparison because SatAM/Archie fans have been derisively comparing literally every new female character in the franchise to Sally since the '90s, but it's really hard to shake. (Similarly, it's hard to shake comparisons to Bunnie and Mecha Sally with Rusty Rose, the evil cyborg version of Amy with extendable limbs.) And Rouge's jungle universe counterpart ("Prim Rouge") is also just kind of there as the no-nonsense leader of the tribe, similar to Rebel.

And it's in scenes revolving around the blander of the AU characters when I'm like... man, I kinda wish they'd just made a show about the regular game universe without having to watch Man of Action bust out the pirate joke book and write the dollar store version of Princess Mononoke. I want to spend more time with the actual characters. Because they nailed the tiny glimpses of the game world that we got. This isn't a constant thought I have - again, I like the show, and the major AU characters are cool, and I like seeing new things be done with Sonic. But I'd be lying if I said I never wished the show had gone a different way. My perfect Sonic cartoon continues to elude me...

Story construction

Let's back up a bit and describe the basic premise. On the regular version of Sonic's Earth, things are business as usual, although Sonic seems to be getting a little too cocky and taking his friends for granted. During a fight with Eggman, Sonic accidentally shatters our new macguffin, the Paradox Prism, creating a series of new bad timelines in which he never existed. In that way, I might almost compare it to a multiverse-hopping adventure version of It's A Wonderful Life. A pretty solid emotional throughline to give the show a little more heft. In each of these worlds, Sonic helps set things right with the alternate versions of his friends and finds another shard of the Paradox Prism in an attempt to restore his world. He also usually faces off with the Chaos Council, a team of five alternate Eggmen who are all different ages.

Beyond the fact that there are like five versions of most characters, it's not THAT complicated, especially in a time when damn near everything in pop culture is doing multiverse shenanigans. Which is why it's frustrating that the script seems to think it's fucking House of Leaves.

For the first few episodes, Sonic has a VERY hard time grasping the fact that he's in an alternate universe. This is to be expected to some extent - Sonic is our point of view character through all of this, and it's a kids' show, so he's got to go through a process of figuring things out so that it can be explained to the kids at home. The problem is that it takes him damn near the entire first mini-arc in New Yolk City to figure it out, which starts to come off as insulting and leads to EXTREMELY repetitive dialogue where Sonic wonders why his friends don't remember him and where all the palm trees went. You'd think that by the time Nine explains that his personal history is completely different from how Sonic remembers his time with Tails he'd get a clue, but no, not really. He continues to meet alternate versions of his friends, stubbornly refer to them with their original names, and wonder why no one remembers their previous adventures together. This then somehow even continues into the second universe, the jungle one, where he somehow thinks he's still in New Yolk City and wonders why the cyberpunk rebel versions of his friends are all covered in leaves and wielding spears now. Thankfully, by the time he reaches the pirate world Sonic finally gets a clue, so this isn't a pattern that's going to continue. But it does make the first few episodes a drag.

This, the many recaps, and the out-of-order presentation of scenes back in Green Hill so that they can have a flashback to the regular universe in every episode for context really make it clear that this series was written for TV, not for Netflix. It's assuming that every single episode is going to be some 7-year-old's first episode and that they need to have everything explained again. I'd probably be a bit more sympathetic towards this repetitive, patronizing writing if it actually was airing on Cartoon Network, rather than being a Netflix show where they're dropping eight episodes at a time.

Stiff competition

This is the least fair of my complaints, but I gotta say it. As solid as Sonic Prime is for the most part, it looks worse at the tail end of a year when we've been FEASTING as Sonic fans.

We got a movie sequel that pivoted HARD into game elements, giving us both really great takes on the characters and interesting remixes of old ideas. The IDW comics are still going as strong as ever, with the continually compelling arc of new villains Surge and Kit and now the wildly inventive and downright beautiful to look at Scrapnik Island. And, of course, we got Frontiers, a return to form for the series that adapts it to a semi-open world with the best and most interesting story we've had in god knows how many years.

And then we've got Sonic Prime, a pretty good cartoon that between fun action scenes and interesting story ideas frequently relies on genre pastiches that were tired 30 years ago and jokes that aren't particularly funny.

I think reading Scrapnik Island #3 really put this into perspective for me. Which, again, isn't fair. The comics target older kids and are ALWAYS heavily tied to established continuity, and a comic miniseries can afford to go way more niche than a Netflix show. But Scrapnik is just doing such amazing and original things, bringing back long-forgotten elements of the games and recontextualizing them in fascinating ways. That mix of both the heartwarming sight of the Scrapniks finding happiness in their new lives and the EXTREMELY atmospheric horror aboard the ruins of the Death Egg. It rules! It takes elements hardcore fans wanted to see again and tells a totally new story with them that's unlike anything we've seen before in the franchise. It's really, really hard for "what if Knuckles was a pirate" to compete with that.

But we're still early in Prime. Things are getting more interesting over time, with Sonic acclimating to the dimension hopping and more crossover between the different universes. Nine discovering a completely dead, empty world and wanting to start from scratch there was also really interesting, and I'm curious if that goes anywhere. Again, I've been nitpicking a lot, but the show is pretty good and I've enjoyed my time with it overall. I just don't quite think it's 100% there yet. But I definitely think it could get there within the next 16 episodes.

Misc thoughts

Rouge sleeping like an actual bat is cute.

I like that the environmental themes of the series are such a big focus here! They fall to the wayside too often

I like that the AU characters have different names for the sake of telling them apart, but some of them are pretty bad (the aforementioned Rebel Rouge) while others I just don't get. Why is the old man Eggman named Dr. Done It? Why is the teenage one Dr. Don't?

I thought the scene where Sonic was trying to talk to the New Yolk City crew after a battle and they had to keep ducking under a laser that was still slowly circling the room was funny

The new shoes and gloves are ugly and I think it's really contrived that they magically transform into the perfect tools for every new universe

Between this and Frontiers it's becoming a pattern that Tails and Knuckles can get explicit flashbacks to previous games to highlight their histories with Sonic, while Amy can't. I don't know what to make of this

Thorn is pretty good overall but I do think the flashback depicting her as just randomly snapping one day when her friends pick one too many berries is so hokey that it wraps around to being kinda funny

I've neglected to mention Shadow, but I like him okay in this. It's definitely modern Shadow, but I think "hardass, no-nonsense rival who thinks Sonic is an idiot who acts without thinking and thus wants to kick his ass" is a decent place for Shadow to be in, compared to just The Vegeta, even if it's not my favorite version of the character. I'm curious to see what his role is in the rest of the show, especially given the cliffhanger, and hope he's able to work together with Sonic instead of just being a pissed off antagonist the whole time.

I hate baby Eggman

[ofmermaidstories]

Hey Mermaid 🩷💜

It's me Lady, it's been a while. ;) I hope you're doing amazing! Having beautiful days and peaceful evenings, sleeping well, and staying hydrated💌💟

I hope you don't mind if this message feels too personal, and if it bothers you, please do ignore it.

I don't know if you've seen anything about the final chapter yet. And I, of course, do not want to spoil.

And I do sincerely hope you see the official chapter before this, so that my words makes sense. I guess I just want to say I'm feeling very overwhelmed about MHA ending, it's the most precious show to me . And especially Izuku's conclusion and how Horikoshi went about it. Again, I won't spoil of course but I guess I'm a bit disappointed.

I don't know, but something in me wanted your opinion and thoughts on the ending and Izuku's story's conclusion. Since, through reading your In another Life series fanfictions, I felt more connected to my favs (Izuku and Katsuki). Your writing gave me a new way of looking at their dynamic, story, and what a future for them entails with everything that they are and aren't.

I was actually avoiding the leaks because I wanted to at least read the official chapter when it's out since it is the last. So that I can honor it on a way. But one thing led to another by a simple scroll through tiktok.

Anyways, when I saw the panels I guess I thought "I would like to write him a hundred other happy endings". I say "other" because he's clearly happy in the conclusion, even with everything that happened (OFA and Tenko's conclusion mostly). But still, the thought came up.

And then I actually remembered your drabble of Izuku and his child, the "he will be your husband's biggest heartache" one, and I don't know, I guess I really wanted to ask you.

Thank you for staying with me. I hope you have a day filled with happy wishes. 🎀💌

Hi Mermaid 💌

It's me Lady, I half-hope you see this ask before my other previous one that I sent. This one might be long too, so sorry in advance. And thank you for taking the time♥️.

It has been plaguing my mind. I was really emotional about the ending and had alot to get off my chest, I ended up writing all that to you. I feel so embarrassed, and I could have worded it better.

I really just want to clear out a few things 😅. If you don't mind. I am not the kind of fan to put dirt on the author her/himself no matter how unsatisfied I am with a part of their story. I hope I didn't imply that in my previous ask about the ending and Izuku's conclusion (I barely remember much of what I said 😭)

Secondly, while 8 years is a huge gap, getting to see pro-hero class A was so surreal, in a "proud parent" way 🥹. I think I implied I wanted ur thoughts on the could-be-considered unsatisfactory parts of the ending. But I actually meant as a whole. Eri grown up also had me so proud and happy! She deserves to live a normal teenager girl life 🩷.

Bonus points pro hero Bakugou looking gorgeous as always 🤭. Kind of fills the picture for me now whenever | read pro-hero au fanfiction.

And the way he paid the most out of the class A alumni for Izuku to have a hero suit so that he could he a hero, and they could compete with one another again is so sweet.

But again, to make my point clear. I would love to hear your thoughts personally on everything that the ending, please.

I hope you have a wonderful day 🎀💟

Lady! Lilium. Lady Lilium. 🥹 Hi!!! Please don’t feel embarrassed!!! 🥺 Your asks actually let me feel relieved, lmao, because it meant I wasn’t alone in the… idk! topsy turvy feelies that the leaks had caused. 🥹 If there’s one thing I won’t miss it’s the entitlement that causes leaks to breach containment and ruin everyone else’s day. 💀 But!! Lili, how are you feeling on the other side of the official release??? For me personally it was like… a sense of relief, lmfao, like no matter my nitpicks about things (I do think the epilogue in general was rushed, and i’m kinda like 💀💀💀 over class a’s decision not to tell their friend about their goal to fund his iron man suit, lmao. there’s surprises and then there’s making life-altering decisions for someone LOL) i think the ending is sweet. 🥹 The last page does a lot of heavy lifting, emotionally, for me, and i’m wondering if it’s the same for you and others?

An account I follow on twitter said something about how as a reader they weren’t really happy with the ending, but they could see why fic writers would be, because everything’s so open-ended and it kinda startled me, because of how immediately i agreed? LOL. like, i like the ending for the same reason i’ve liked the series: it is open-ended, there’s enough world building that you can build on top of it, as a fic writer, and work with the lore Hori like, hints throughout it. But as a reader I could see how someone could be unsatisfied. We rush through the group’s remaining years at UA. The Billboard rankings are still a thing, despite Hawk’s grand speech in making an effort to include non-traditional heroes. Hero commercialism is still running rampant and if anything, the pro hero world sounds like it’s gotten more enclosed and harder to be apart of? Whichhhh I guess you could argue it should’ve always been that way—they are extreme first defenders in a lot of respects so sure, you need the best of the best—but idk. I keep thinking about the league, lmao, and all that change they carried on about wanting—and what they got was most of them killed in action and also no change LMAOO. No, wait, Shoji ends mutant racism and Ochako compels more Quirk counselling 🥹 (I’m not mad at that, I think it’s touching they both end up spearheading movement/efforts for ending discrimination/encourage understanding, it’s just… those are a big fights, you know? Big undertakings 🥺).

Idk idk idk. I’m trying to think of something that I, as a reader and not a fanfic writer, am unsatisfied with and I guess… I’m not unsatisfied with the ending moreso than I am with my biggest and most constant complaint: that Hori’s a coward who’s cowardice undermines his emotional beats LMAOOO. I think he’s a coward for letting Edgeshot live. I think he’s a coward for not confirming a ship—like, any of them. He’s a coward for not daring to imagine significant change in the pro hero system. But even with those criticisms, I still enjoy the series, and love it for what it is. 🥺

My original reaction to the final chapter leaks, tbh, was like���to get the ick LMFAOOOOOO. i was like, what is this. what have u DONE TO MY BOYYY. idk it gave me the ick for both deku and bakugou and i can’t really explain why??? now that we have the official chapter out, i think it was definitely a deadly combo of like—fandom making up their own minds about things and running it into the ground within the space of hours. 💀 that’s on me, i should’ve gone underground, i knew this fandom would skirt close to ruining the entire series for me like the clowns in the clown car they are. but this is why i was so relieved to get your asks, Lili!!! 🥺 Because it was like, omg, it’s not just me, like, we’re processing what we know about it together. 🥺 eight years!!!! i feel the same—like a proud parent. 🥹 The montage panels showing us the bits and pieces of everyone—Eri deserves to live her best high school musician life!!! 😭 But all of them, all of them made me emotional in some way. Aizawa and Mic visiting Oboro’s grave. 🥺 mirko with her insane prosthetics. 💀 love her. Endeavour losing his family, but being surrounded by the heroes from his agency. 🥺 Izuku seeing Shigaraki, at the end. So much of it was bittersweet, or satisfying to see in action. The kids competing in the sports festival!! Bakugou being cheerled as he rehabs his arm!!! Izuku, smiling, as he holds the last embers of OFA. That part actually devastates me lmfao. I love that MHA like—shows that anyone can be a hero, that the thing that makes one is the compulsion to help others first, and that now there’s like, accessibility, but… idk. I wanted him and OFA to stay together forever. 🥹 But maybe this is for the best… now the past users really are at rest, and Izuku can be a hero on his own strength.

I love that Class A worked together to fund the suit. I know the “Bakugou paid more” thing was popular, in the wake of the leaks, and I could see him funnelling more into it but one of the things I hated the most with the leaks/that gave me the biggest ick (lmao) was how everyone was turning it into a shipping thing, and not an incredible statement on just how much Class A love each other, and love Deku. 🥺 All Might mentions in his fight with AFO, with his own hero suit, that it took his life’s savings—so for them to be able to fund Izuku’s with only, what, six years of pro hero salary? That’s an incredible group effort. And they did it because they love him!!!! 😭 Because he worked hard and deserved it and they all knew it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Because the golden generation doesn’t leave anyone behind!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! i love them, i’m obsessed with their pro hero designs, concerned about the potential rat tails bakugou has tho and i don’t want to talk about the facial hair that sero and mineta have, lmfao. Shinsou, however, can absolutely get it. 😎

idkkkkkkk lili—what do you think, now? Overall i’m still emotional about it, lmao. i think the endgame had weak spots and that hori has strengths and weaknesses (like we all do) as a storyteller—but that he delivered. 🥹 i think ultimately he did what he promised us he’d do: told us the story of how they became the greatest heroes.

[chevelleneech]

"i was more curious to know how do you go from "we didn't meet/call eachother" on July 14th to applying for Buddy program"

Anon I mean this in the nicest way. This is not what the real conversation is. Please follow real non shipper Karmies who have corrected this translation MULTIPLE TIMES. You have real legitimate non shipper Karmys, telling you this is not true. Jk never said anything about not calling. So we can let this mistranslation go. This has been explained by Jk solos too and others. Cause the translation got JK dragged and they wanted to clear it up. What Jk did was tease Jimin and say when Jimin was free he didn't find JK and when JK was free Jimin didn't find JK. He playfully put all the blame on Jimin and Jimin said that is not true, he did. Jk was starting up Jimin lives. Do you not think he can pick up that same phone and call Jimin? They were meeting clearly, but apparently not enough to Jk's liking. Hence the you're here FINALLY. And regardless if they see each other every day, they can still agree to enlist together, because they are the closest at the end of the day with each other and each other's families, regardless. And you wanna go through something with someone you know you are extremely comfortable with and never gonna get tired of, since you see each other every day in the buddy program. As for the Special Forces thing, what JK wanted to do, is not what Tae is doing. It would have required longer serving & he would not be back on time. It would have been a lot more fun, yes, but he also wouldn't have Jimin. And if it was really important for Jk to be with Tae, then Tae could have joined JK at 5th division to enlist as his buddy. That did not happen. Its time to let this go.

And well if you think they're closeted, sometimes you have to read between the lines of their dialogue & not over think it, cause they certainly ain't gonna give you the full story.

The anon didn’t say anything wrong for you to respond with, “I mean this in the nicest way.”

Saying they didn’t call each other or meet up is still valid, because even with JK saying what he did, the only people who know for a fact he was being playful is himself and Jimin.

You guys are so hard pressed to make it a fact that Jimin wasn’t in the “wrong”, that you’re refusing to let anyone else have an opinion on the conversation. The translations from the show weren’t wrong, they just weren’t 100% verbatim. But saying someone didn’t reach out is the same thing as saying someone didn’t call. Calling is reaching out.

I mean, I get it, people don’t want anyone being dragged over mistranslations, but the show didn’t mistranslate. They used different wording, which is fine. Especially since it isn’t something that drastically changed the conversation. Your whole upset over what the anon said is because you guys keep putting it in your heads that people taking JK’s words at face value for the most part, somehow paints Jimin in a bad light, when it doesn’t.

You guys want it to be playful teasing because that’s the only way y’all are able to accept their bonds. As having no conflict whatsoever, and that’s not realistic. They said they hadn’t seen each other. JK “joked” Jimin didn’t reach out. So what? You can’t say just because we saw JK starting up lives filled with JM content that he could have picked up the phone but didn’t, because you don’t know that he didn’t. They didn’t talk about whether or not JK reached out, but also… we all saw how often he asked Jimin to hang out. He made it all of our business by doing it online, for whatever reasons.

At the end of the day though, Jimin and Jungkook know what went on between them, and they chose to give us a little glimpse of it at the start of the trip. But there is no way to claim anon is happily okay with mistranslations, just because you and many others would rather nitpick exact wording.

Jungkook said what he said, and Jimin presumably didn’t what he did. Neither of them, as far as any of us know, did anything wrong though. Because we don’t know what happened, so we can’t say JK was only teasing or that Jimin wasn't denying something he did indeed do. At the same time, how JK felt about their bond and proximity in 2023 is his right to feel. So even if Jimin did reach out once or twice, if Jungkook feels like he didn’t do it enough, then that’s how he feels. That doesn’t mean Jimin was wrong for choosing not to reach out as often.

Jimin has his own life the same way Jungkook has his, and once again, we do not know what caused them to lose out on being attached at the hip the way Jungkook was used to. We also don’t know why that would have frustrated JK in the first place, because as far as we know, they’re just friends. So why would he feel any type of way and why would he so consistently do it on a public form, then say, “Finally!” when Jimin shows up, if he was only joking? There is no answer for that, because they didn’t give it.

Anyway, disagreeing with people is fine. It makes sense to come to your own conclusions as best you can, but acting like you know better just because you’re choosing to believe people who speak the language makes no sense. Take in their translations and understand that wording may not always match up, but they don’t know the details either. Yes, they can say, “They were speaking in playful tones.” and that should be factored in, but JM and JK are also professionals on camera. They weren’t about to hash out their shit for us to see, with serious tones and argumentative wording.

They were poking fun and being sarcastic, because they were on camera. Truly, how often have we seen the two of them argue? We only even know about a singular time, from seven or so years ago, and you can’t tell me it’s because they just don’t. The members argue. They’re human, but they don’t show us, because they likely don’t get into too many conflicts about music and business. It’s likely only personal drama, same as any other close circle of family and friends.

So, whether you like it or not, it is okay for people to interpret their car conversation as, “Hmm, seems like they may have had some tension between them last year.” And if they think Jimin was at fault, so be-it. It doesn’t change anything, and JK saying as much should not have gotten him dragged. The same way assuming Jimin is the reason he and JK didn’t see each other much, is not a reason to drag Jimin.

This is their business, and while we can observe and make our own assumptions, we aren’t getting any answers to the nitty gritty. And neither are Korean fans. They just happen to speak the same language.

Lastly, anon was clearly just wondering if they went directly from not hanging out much to enlisting together, did that decision come earlier on or at the last minute. It’s okay to not pretend like you know it all, which anon did. They don’t know the members and thus are curious about their motivations. But as I said, it’s possible they made this decision a long time ago. So you’re not offering anything productive to our conversation by acting like anon asked something stupid or is against Jimin or JK. It was a question.

[floatingcatacombs]

Bandai Taketh Away

12 Days of Aniblogging 2023, Day 1

Last year I wrote a post extolling the virtues of Birdie Wing, 2022’s breakthrough “how the fuck did this get made” mafia golf campfest. It’s the little show that could, animated on a shoestring budget to an audience of maybe two dozen extremely online yuri fans who tried their hardest to get literally anyone else to watch it.

It was almost certainly a financial failure for Bandai Namco, whose hopes for kicking off a VR-focused franchise fizzled in real time during season 1. But the resulting anime was a blast, a shoujo sports melodrama where literally anything could happen.

Birdie Wing took a few seasons off between its cours, during which Bandai Namco’s second lesbian anime of the year began airing: Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury. My jaw dropped as I watched the first episode recreate Utena’s setup beat for beat, including the female main character taking another girl as her fiancé. It’s a gutsy move which set my expectations high. G-Witch was my introduction to Gundam, and the highs of the first season were amazing. Even if I had some occasional complaints with the pacing, the cliffhanger ending and narrative ambition left me very excited for more.  

Season 2 of Birdie Wing was set to fill the gap between cours of G-Witch, but ~something~ happened behind the scenes. It ended up being delayed to Spring 2023, where the two shows would air together. Great! That means double the lesbians. Or…zero?

Fair warning: From here on out I will be both a hater, and a spoiler.

Both seasons start without a hitch. G-Witch finally pops the safety bubble of its setting, with a terrorist attack on the academy followed up by an episode from the viewpoint of Dawn of Fold soldiers trying to survive a retaliatory crackdown from the Spacians. It pulled no punches with its violence and war orphans and trauma, a good sign for the struggles that awaited the main cast. Meanwhile, Birdie Wing continued to pay tribute to old-school Class S after its boarding school arc by involving its cast in a nightmare incest soap opera concerning Eve and Aoi’s parentage and the sins of the previous generation. Both are great developments for their respective shows, suggesting plenty of good stuff ahead.

Unfortunately, this is when both of these shows begin to fall apart. Eve and Aoi manage to beat the incest allegations, but afterwards their relationship just…stops. Their chemistry all but dissipates, the homoerotic rivalry giving way to their personal relationships with golf instead of with each other. The plot keeps the two of them apart as much as possible, devoid of the angsty longing from season 1, as the girls each succumb to a different form of golf cancer (even without the gay-baiting, at least Birdie Wing is still insane).

For G-Witch, a much more ambitious anime, this decline manifests as a creeping realization that they’re simply going to drop most of the open plot threads. The show takes its sweet time, even as it becomes clear that it’s barreling towards a finale at 24 episodes. The long-awaited plot twists are handled fine, I guess. But any sense that the show is aiming for greatness fades away, as it simply tries to drag itself to the finish line, buckling under its own weight. What we see on screen is what we get, and you’ll have to fill in the blanks yourself to really be happy. The Earthian-Spacian conflict ends up as mere set-dressing, and characters who clearly had intertwined backstories never even get the chance to interact. The obvious examples are the man who killed Suletta’s dad in the prologue resurfacing and that never really coming up, and everything to do with Chuchu and Nika’s backstories. I’m not here to nitpick, but it’s a shame that everyone’s characterization is left so thin. G-Witch really feels like it was meant to be a full 50-episode series, and I’m led to believe that this trimming down happened during production, as there’s just no other reason to set so much up without resolving it.

At last we reach each show's conclusion. Birdie Wing is saddled with a final arc full of professional tournaments, which is always going to be weaker than the dirty mafia golf on a conceptual level. The timeline begins to rapidly accelerate and suddenly we’re skipping ahead months, and then entire years. We don’t get to see most of Eve and Aoi’s final game, or even the period of time where they reconcile. An enduring friendship and rivalry is implied at the end, but it’s nowhere near the mutual obsession that the prior season depicted. Not an ounce of queerbait remains, even for the terminally yurigoggled such as myself.

Meanwhile, G-Witch dedicates some of its precious final minutes to a fight with Lauda (Jesus Christ is the Schwartzette is wasted on him), and just like Birdie Wing the two girls at the heart of the show barely get any time together as the end draws near. They ultimately opt for a Macross-Symphogear ending in which Suletta pilots a Gundam that shoots gay rainbow lasers and defeats her mom with the power of love and friendship. That’s fine! But that’s the ending for a show that didn’t happen! In its last act G-Witch retreats into its shell, unable to commit to the moral weight of the world it had built up. Laughably, the epilogue time-skips to a neoliberal utopia where Miorine solves the earth-space conflict through her sheer girlboss acumen. Suletta and Miorine’s gay wedding is implied at best, and an after-credits message states that this is the conclusion of The Witch from Mercury as a story, prematurely killing any potential follow-up.

The rest is history. Kadokawa redacts an interview to remove references to Suletta and Miorine being married, Bandai releases a statement that their status at the end of the show should be left up to interpretation, and everyone is mad forever.

What happened? Both of these shows fell apart at the same time, and both in a manner that defused their implicit queerness. Birdie Wing was always a bit of a trainwreck even at its best, so in a vacuum I would have just concluded that the production ran out of steam, unable to live up to its earlier writing. But the timing of Season 2’s delay, combined with the corporate meddling that affected G-Witch, makes me downright conspiratorial. Something went down at Bandai Namco, and it led to them ordering their productions be revised halfway through to scrub out all the gay shit and play things safe. I wouldn’t be surprised if this occurred at the same time as G-Witch was trimmed down from its initial 50 to 24 episodes with no chance of a continuation. It’s also not too much of a stretch to imagine Birdie Wing receiving a “stick to sports" mandate and Yosuke Kuroda subsequently phoning it in. I don't know how else to say it: there's no reason to do an incest fakeout if you're not even going to follow up on it afterwards once you've gone through the difficult work of exonerating them.

Witch from Mercury was a commercial success (it sold a shitton of gunpla, at least!) so it seems like a surprise that Bandai Namco would clamp down creatively in such a destructive way. Or maybe not. This may be the first female-led Gundam, but in a lot of other ways it’s fairly restrained as far as Gundams go. Perhaps BN decided that G-Witch had to be a balancing act to please everyone, preventing the creative staff from truly swinging for the fences in the end. Of course, that backfired horribly and they ended up pissing off himejoshis and regular mecha fans alike. I know it’s something of a fool’s errand to expect undeniable LGBT representation from anime, but when you begin with an explicit Utena homage, I expect better.

This has all been a bit of a downer, so I wanted to end things by sharing the anime I watched this year that actually gave me what I wanted out of those two shows.

Watching through the original Mobile Suit Gundam made me realize just how conservative G-Witch is in a lot of its storytelling. 0079 is a deeply radical show for its time, and still would be if you made it today. The unhesitating depiction of war and death through the aesthetics of a 70’s children’s show is particularly bold, and even the parts of the anime notorious for being overlong successfully reinforce the overall mood of the work. Amuro’s transformation from innocent child to unrelenting psychic soldier is as inevitable and upsetting as it should be, and even with all the “filler” the script feels much tighter than the G-Witch, which ambles around with side stories that don’t resolve and characters that don’t go anywhere. Imminently watchable. I love that the mommy issues in Gundam go all the way back, and I'm also starting to understand why you fuckers have been arguing about Char Aznable for 40 years.

you.

I also watched Kakegurui this year, which served as a great alternative to Birdie Wing. It doubles down on the best parts of that show – mostly-female cast, high stakes gambling, dubious lesbian rep – with an all-consuming sleaze to it. Grab some friends who aren't easily scandalized and try not to worry too hard about gaze or the intended audience, and it will be a hoot. The production values are great, even if most of it inevitably goes to girls making upsetting faces. The first opening in particular is an animation highlight. Of course, this is a MAPPA production, so they’re far too busy flaying their workers alive in the pits of hell to ever get around to another season. May their company unionize or perish.

[adobe-outdesign]

Not sure if you’ve gotten to them yet, (or at least, I can’t seem to find it in the tag) but how do we feel about oinkologne?

Lechonk was a tricky Pokemon to try to guess the evolution of, as it really didn't have much of a theme to it at all; the most it had were a few yellow splotches under the eyes and a penchant for sniffing out good food. While the food thing has nothing to do with anything, the eye splotches at least make more sense with the evolution—it's basically a giant "pig with lipstick on" joke. But for being a joke, I gotta say, I don't mind these guys.

First, I like the body shapes. They're pleasant and remind me a lot of show pigs, which was probably intentional given the theming. Most other Pokemon pigs are either bipedal or chonky, so this is a nice change of pace.

And secondly, the sexual dimorphism here is pretty solid. Just the fact that the male is the one with hot pink accents, a clear cologne-bottle tail, and no brown on the body is super refreshing; it's less annoyingly gendered than a lot of Pokemon, and more accurate to how sexual dimorphism actually works (in the sense that the females are usually duller than the males).

Visually, they're fine. There's more of a theme to them than Lechonk, but it's not so overt as to feel forced. Between the two, I prefer the male's higher-contrast look, but I think it's nice that the female ties more clearly into Lechonk's palette.

My only nitpicks are minor things; like, the male's tail is clearly a perfume squeeze bottle, but what is the female's tail supposed to be? I also think the way the male's head is ever-so-slightly darker than the body is odd (in fact, I just now noticed it while writing this review), and the yellow under the eyes is a bit strange in that it appears only in that spot and nowhere else, though it does at least draw more attention to the face.

Overall, these are some decent early-route mammals; nothing overly fancy, but nicely designed and with enough flair to make them at least slightly memorable.

[duckielover151]

The One Piece Diaries

Episode Count: 450

Holy shit, guys... I'm back. I took another several months-long hiatus from One Piece... Mostly unintentionally... (I've been bouncing between a lot of other fandoms these past few months but have been brought back by the live action.) Where to start...

We've been in Impel Down for most of the last 40 or so episodes since my last update post. And not to go off on a tangent, but you know... I've noticed One Piece lumped in as one of the shows that's swamped with filler. And that really hasn't been my experience so far.

What I have noticed is that, around this point, the pacing gets pretty atrocious. There's a lot that happens in the journey to try and break Ace out of Impel Down... But is there 40 episodes worth of stuff? I have to argue no. It gets to the point where the first third of the episode is all recap, and barely anything is actually getting accomplished each episode. So that is a little off-putting.

But! There is a lot of good to be found in this arc too!

Okay, admittedly... Buggy was never my favorite... (outside of some brilliantly written fanfiction by stereden on AO3) And I would have been content to never see Mr. 3 again... But it is really cool to meet back up with so many of the old villains who only met their downfall and ended up here because of Luffy and to have them be on our side now. Really puts into perspective the morality of it all. Luffy's always fighting for the right things... but in the eyes of the government and greater world, he's a villain as well.

I've finally met Jimbei... (Jinbe? Jinbei? I've seen all 3, but Crunchyroll's subtitles use the 'm' spelling, so that's what I'm going with.) I haven't seen a lot of him yet, but I like him so far. He's tough, clearly, but also almost goofily polite, in a way that really complements Luffy's general blunt insensitiveness. I think it's still a while before he joins up as the last member of the crew, but I'm looking forward to getting to know him better.

This arc makes it really clear how Bon Clay came to be as beloved in the fandom as he is. And there's a lot that could be said about Ivankov... A lot that would very quickly derail this update and which I'm not totally, personally qualified to weigh in on...

Listen, One Piece's portrayal of queerness isn't perfect. But it's a hell of a lot better than the way so many other shows handle it, especially given the time this aired. (The Impel Down arc was originally adapted throughout late 2009-early 2010. Frankly, the 90s often included more and better handled LGBT+ characters than the 2000s era anime did, up until pretty recently.) Just the fact alone that this group is so out and proud about it and undeniably allied with and wholeheartedly accepted by the main protagonist is a fucking statement all on its own. It's beautiful. I can't underplay that by nitpicking the places the representation fell short by today's standards in a storyline that's 15 years old now. (I know there's a lot of shit in the future that goes down with Sanji in particular... So I may have less generous things to say later, but that's where we stand right now.)

And as for the arc's villains... Magellan's okay. This last episode particularly, the venom demon attack was pretty badass. (That image of the mushrooming skulls as it formed it was so good.)

And Hannyabal... Okay, there were some early moments that made me laugh. The gag about how he's clearly lusting for the warden's job and not great about hiding it could be pretty funny. But by the time he's defeated... and the anime starts in on a dramatic backstory for this asshole, trying to make him sympathetic... All I could say was, 'You've gotta be fucking kidding me...' I know it's kind of One Piece's thing to try and redeem everyone, but I was so bogged down by the pacing at that point... I did not have the patience for it. Good riddance to that dude in particular.

Episode 450 ends with our ragtag group officially making it out... And man, it's cool to see some of these older characters again, but I already miss our crew so much... Especially knowing what's coming...

I'm sure I've already mentioned that I know the bigger Marineford spoilers... But I'm still not sure I'm ready to see it firsthand.

Wish me luck.

[aotopmha]

My stay on Bluesky has been great.

The block button functions, there are block lists that can be applied automatically.

My tab for stuff I follow is properly curated.

I've seen literally no bots; substantial engagement exists. People are talking to people.

The search function works.

As a result of these tools and elements, I've barely seen any clear ragebaiting and shallow tribalism.

Also very little bad faith idiocy and nitpicking technicalities that miss the bigger point for just the sake for creating an argument.

Very little you like pancakes therefore hate waffles.

It's not going to change your mind if you fundamentally dislike the format or social media.

There are incomplete/missing elements:

Firstly, curating your feed is fairly limited. The site only fulfills the very basic function of showing you stuff from people you follow in a very specific limited way; it has nothing for specific hasgtags or topics beyond just some general options you pick when you create your account.

The Feeds feature is also imperfect because Feeds have a very specific limited reach, as well.

Still exploring it, though, so don't know the true full functionality.

Secondly, you can't private your account or any elements surrounding it. And it's not even just limited, but just straight-up doesn't exist.

So those who just want to quietly chill on private can't. The positive side to this is that assholes are immediately identifable. The negative is that if the block functionality ever breaks, people will be easy targets for harassment.

Privating is good for extra safety and also curating your own little corner.

But it's pretty much perfect for me because I'm not one for being active on Twitter. Tried posting for a time on another account I made, but the format ultimately didn't speak to me.

I use it for news, art and reading opinions on stuff I like and Bluesky is doing all of that pretty well without most of the issues of Twitter.

I think the (relative) lack of tribalism and existence of actual discussion is in particular great. It's kind of a great example of how internet culture has changed despite "staying the same" by showing you a slice of how it used to be.

There always has been shitty behaviour, recent changes just have made it increasingly worse.

Obviously the bad stuff clearly still exists, but again, the block features just reign above all.

Very much feeling a lot of old internet vibes from Bluesky, something I miss greatly.

[heymusings]

Season 3 of Bridgerton has left me feeling conflicted. I've loved every season, but I'm not blind to the flaws. But this season has left me more conflicted than usual. Part 1 was strong and part 2 was just...mid at best. Even so, I'm torn because there were still things I really enjoyed, but the nitpicks I have are stronger than any of the nitpicks I've had regarding the previous seasons.

Issues:

Benedict. The actor is too good to give him so little. What the hell is up with that threesome scene going on forever?! They tried so hard to convince viewers that it was relevant to his character arc. Benedict is a little whorey and gives big Bi energy-- this scene gives nothing that we didn't already know. This is made even worse by the knowledge that he will be the focus of the next season so I expected some deeper character development-- not a brief mention of a masquerade at the end. There was no real discussion of his deeper feelings about himself and place other than two very brief off-handed sentences that were thrown in. They literally did more work for characters whose seasons are far off than they did for him whose season is next... Plus, this worthless and ridiculously long scene took SOOOOOOOOO much time away from Colin and Pen's interaction which was shockingly rare in part 2.

The Threesome was in fact so long and was interrupted with flashes of other scenes that are clearly over a space of time that I got confused-- was it the same threesome or a different night?

The whole amount of time they spent on Benedict's threesome was made even worse by my finding out that pretty much all the scenes they filmed and cut were Colin and Pen scenes...like wtf, whose season do they think this was meant to have been?

If they were going to put in the work of making Cressida more of a character and attempt to create sympathy for her and her reasoning for her actions they needed more of a payout than just a lackluster discussion with Colin and for her to just disappear. She literally wasn't even in the midst of the conflict she created... There was a small spark with Debling. If they had gone through the trouble of writing her as more sympathetic there needed to be more and having her end up with Debling would've made so much more sense and made the way they had written her needed more of a payoff. At the very least make her more present if you aren't going to go in that direction.

Colin and Pen have a very physically passionate romance in the books which was also made abundantly clear in the show and yet after the one time nothing... there would be angry passion.

Colin, even angry, would never wallow so long and he certainly wouldn't try to fix things with a wishy-washy conversation with Cressida (he'd be long past that). He was more firm with Pen's mom than the woman who was literally black mailing his wife. His first move would be to take her down...

While I loved that Pen had a scene where it was she who defended and explained herself to the ton after she was unmasked, Colin should've been the one to start that off, not the queen. In the book, that is essentially what he does, and it was his way of standing by her side against the angry ton (and with the other Bridgertons joining with him). They could've still done that and still given Pen her moment too-- it would've been way more impactful for the...you know the ROMANCE!!!! I guess I just assumed they would keep this bit of Colin's way of proving to Pen he'd stand by her, but nope, just that lack-luster scene of him conversing with Cressida and a private confession to Pen. I wanted the big gesture!

Ok, so I will be the first to admit that I don't get the hype with Francesca's book. it was god awful boring no matter how beautiful the love story might have been. However, despite how much I disliked her book they completely obliterated any chance of being able to manage the CORE of her story. I love the gender bend of Michael to Michaela, however, it was made so painfully obvious that Fran, despite her claims is not as interested in John as she seems to think (that kiss was a death blow), and then to have her react how she does to meeting Michaela for the first time...they buried the heart of her story before it even started. And I'm saying that as someone who hated her book (doesn't mean I don't understand the appeal or impact of her romance). Her deep love for John is key for her story to have any meaning-- the woman is literally devastated and she literally mourns for years after he dies.

What I did like, I really liked, but I'm disappointed in my favorite couple not getting what they truly deserved.

[slickbackdani]

Okay, I’ve been keeping this in long enough: fuck CinemaSins and fuck what they've done to film criticism.

Now, this is a trend I've seen far too often: whenever CinemaSins gets criticized for the warped, intellectually dishonest method of criticism they've popularized, some of their well-meaning and non-toxic fans will defend them with "but CinemaSins are clearly satire and only a complete idiot would take them at their word!" And good for them for understanding that!

The problem, however, is that a not-insignificant number of CS fans are complete idiots and do take them at their word! Take, for example, this comment on a video criticizing what CS does:

Dude… like… how the fuck did you miss the numerous time the CS guys admitted that their videos aren't meant to be taken seriously? All the times they admitted to actually liking some of the stuff they bash? All the times they admitted that most of the time they're just nitpicking or getting stuff wrong on purpose to be funny? Fucking hell, they started their "Everything Wrong With CinemaSins" video by admitting to not being real reviewers and that most of their "sins" are things no one else would care enough about to notice!

Then again, I can't say I'm all that surprised that many CS fans don't see their videos as satirical when the CS crew themselves no longer seem to. As many have pointed out, the guys behind CinemaSins only ever pull out the "it's satire" defense when others criticize them for getting things wrong or generally acting like opinionated douchebags. The rest of the time, they do absolutely nothing to deter their more rabid fans from treating them as a serious authority on how to think about movies.

I'm sure at the beginning that the CinemaSins guys were telling the truth when they claimed to be satirical; again, they admitted to genuinely liking The Amazing Spider-Man, the first movie they ripped to shreds on their channel! Unfortunately, as time went on, the same thing happened to them as all online personalities who play characters in review shows: the writers started putting so much of themselves into the script and using the once-satirical main character as a mouthpiece for their honest opinions that it's now impossible to tell where the character ends and the creators begin.

I'm not entirely unconvinced that CS' more toxic fans aren't at least partly to blame for the channel's shift from "genuine satire" to "satire-except-when-it's-not." To explain what I mean, I'll break down the timeline into three clear points.

CinemaSins debuts and makes videos that satirize overly nitpicky movie review shows.

They gain a huge following of young, impressionable people who are unfamiliar with both the movies being riffed and proper film theory as a whole. Because of that, they fail to recognize the satire and take CS' reviews at face value

After a few years of CS fans parroting the show's criticisms, copying their review techniques in earnest, and loudly praising CS in online echo chambers as the unsung heroes exposing the dark truth about Big Bad Hollywood, the guys behind CS start to believe their own hype and restructure the show to incorporate honest attempts at critical analysis without getting rid of the hyperbolic "accentuate the negative" format that made them famous.

That may sound like a stretch, but it's the only explanation I can think of for how these people went from honestly enjoying the movies they nitpicked to posting out-of-character videos in which they rant at length about how we as a society are all stupid and evil and destroying ourselves as evidenced by… [checks notes] a Winnie the Pooh movie being made.

Yes. That really happened.

Unfortunately, the crew behind CS don't seem to realize this problem and, instead, keep doubling down by trying to have it both ways. They want to be seen as satire so they can dodge criticism for their behavior (ignoring, of course, that satire can still be criticized for not being funny), but they still want to be treated like serious reviewers because of what I assume to be ego. Yeah, as much as CS Stans like the one I showed earlier like to play the "you're just jealous" card in response to all criticism, the CS writers carry themselves with a sense of both self-assuredness of their own creative accomplishments and a genuine hatred for those of others; that in mind, I can't help but feel the show's continuing existence is less motivated by a desire to entertain and more as a way for the creators to prove themselves smarter than both the original filmmakers and other people in general.

The problem here is that… no. You can't have it both ways. You can't claim that your videos are meant to satirize bad movie critics and then complain that Hollywood isn't taking your criticisms seriously. I said before that CS' videos are a double-edged sword for them, and I stand by that.

On the one hand, these videos fail as serious movie criticism because the writers make no distinction between genuine flaws, minor nitpicks, things that they dislike because of personal biases, things that only look like flaws because they've been taken out of context, and things they just made up so they'll have something to complain about.

On the other hand, the videos also fail as satire because, much like the Babylon Bee, they only have one joke ("General observation made in a judgmental tone of voice!" DING.)

When you try for both, you'll succeed at neither.

And, as much as the CS guys nihilistically rant in their cars about art and culture being doomed because nobody is listening to their criticisms, the opposite is true: while cinema is general is still as good as it's always been (there really aren't more bad films now than there were in the "good old days"; it's just that the bad old movies were forgotten because only the good ones were worth remembering,) the major problem with mainstream entertainment these days is one that only exists because people are listening to CS and people like them.

Allow me to share my hypothesis: CinemaSins and others like them are responsible for the overuse of snarky, ironic meta-jokes in modern media.

This is a serious charge, and here is my explanation for it: review shows like CS, Honest Trailers, Your Movie Sucks, I Hate Everything, etc. popularized a style of reviewing that hinged on making the reviewed material look as bad as possible: labeling everything that's been done before a "cliche," overemphasizing minor nitpicks the average filmgoer (and, let's face it, most real critics) would be unlikely to notice, being unable to suspend disbelief and acting like fiction has to be "realistic" to he good, and criticizing the characters as "stupid" because, instead of being perfectly logical and rational at all times, they instead act like real, flawed, imperfect people who either don't know the same things the audience does or otherwise have no reason to act like they're characters in a movie because they don't know they are.

This is a very warped, dishonest, and unprofessional way of thinking about fiction — especially if you, for instance, tell deliberate lies about what you're reviewing — but it proved entertaining for huge amounts of people who watched these videos and came away thinking this is the proper way to review movies. Like most entitled fanboy controversies, this fever-pitch of pseudo-intellectual, pseudo-populist pessimism became vocal enough to be noticed by the people actually working in film and TV, who then felt the need to "course-correct" out of fear of losing their audiences.

This, I believe, is why so many movies and shows these days have characters grind the story to a halt to point out the story archetypes and narrative tropes as they happen while discussing how real people would behave in the fictional scenarios they're caught up in. It's all a panicked effort to make these stories — as one MCU writer put it — "as Honest Trailer-proof as possible."

The problems with this are twofold: first, since these writers are trying to fix what wasn't broken, stories and dialogue that rely so heavily on meta-commentary come across as cynical and lifeless; the characters start feeling like lifeless mouthpieces instead of actual people who happen to be fictional, and the creators come across as lacking confidence and, in the words of Crow T. Robot, "afraid to feel anything real." The other problem is that, if this is an attempt to preempt snarky critics by beating them to the punch, then any attempt to shut them up was an effort in futility because, as Max Gillardi once said, "You should never underestimate a bully's ability to find material to work with." When snarky CinemaSins-type reviewers come across self-deprecating meta humor in whatever they're reviewing, they just make a quick joke about "hey, stop doing my job for me" before going back to nitpicking as usual.

But hey, that's just a theory. Maybe I'm wrong and something else is responsible for modern media's over-reliance on snarky meta-humor. Even if I am wrong about that, however, it's still impossible to deny that CinemaSins has had a negative impact on how people think about fiction, and I'm not just talking about how they misrepresent specific movies so people who haven't seen them before will think they're worse than they actually are.

I'm referring to how many people think that mindless negativity and looking for things to complain about is the best, smartest way to talk about fiction. Even if this mindset didn't become a common justification for harassment and hate campaigns against the creators and fans of whatever is being bashed because "they deserve it for making/liking something bad" — and it has led to that; CinemaSins sucked at crawling so Lily Orchard could suck at walking — it's just a shallow, insincere way to review things; it's mindless anti-conformity as a substitute for good critical thinking skills, anti-intellectualism disguised as no-nonsense telling-it-like-it-is. It misses the point of fiction and art as a whole. Vinnie Mancuso of Collider referred to this as "the I-must-be-smarter-than-the-movie criticism that's ruining the way we talk about movies." As he put it in this article:

It's almost designed to miss the point. It's the film-as-riddle mindset that first formed alongside the birth of the internet, but really crystalized into something insidious somewhere between the mid-point of Lost and the exact moment Inception cut to black. [It's] the idea [that] films and television shows are something to be solved instead of felt; that stories are static objects made of ones-and-zeroes and to remove the flawed piece of data sends the whole thing crumbling. (Thus making you The Internet's Smartest Boi that day.) But movies are, in Roger Ebert's words, "machines that generate empathy"; whether it's a quiet character study or a globe-trotting adventure, the joy comes from living another life for a few hours.

In summation, if you use CinemaSins as a role model for how to think about fiction, then in the words of Patton Oswalt, YOU'RE GONNA MISS EVERYTHING COOL AND DIE ANGRY.

[niniane17]

So I finally watched Saltburn. Spoilers, I guess? Whatever.

Why didn't anyone tell me what it was about? I thought it was some smutty teen movie about a crush! And there I was, thinking that my decade-long hyperfixation with the zombification process would never come in handy!!!

The rest is under the cut because it's a long read.

(As if anyone will care LOL)

I'll be honest and say I watched it mostly because I read somewhere it was a movie set in 2007 about a bunch of teens, and guess who also was a teen back then? I even visited Oxford in summer 2006. Though people had long forgotten Murder on the dancefloor. I think the hit was I don't feel like Dancing. Rosamund Pike was still known as Jane Bennet to most people, and she was in London starring in a Tennessee William play -I know because I had a leaflet, and I think I have it somewhere still. Oh those were the days!

But in the end, I'm glad I didn't know a lot about it, so I could enjoy with fresh eyes and no preconcieved notions, which I did, up to a point. Then I stopped.

Please note that I will only describe the themes here, because if I were to nitpick the plot (especially its insane timeline) I may never finish. Though I do wish we'd seen the dialogue between Lady Catton and her lawyers at the end: I may buy her being stupid enough to give away her inheritance to some kid she knew years ago, but I absolutely don't buy her legal firm accepting it.

Ehm. Anyway.

It has been described as an "eat-the-rich" film, and in a way it is, in the same way The Witch is about female empowerment.

As I said before, much of the audience's confusion towards that movie comes from the fact that we see women's liberation and empowerment as a good thing, whereas the folktales clearly depicted it as a bad thing. The same thing happens here.

The protagonist does, in a way, eat the rich people around him, or rather he drinks them, since it mostly uses the vampire metaphor, but it's not supposed to be a good thing. I've read somewhere it's supposed to be "ambiguous" but no, sorry, there's nothing ambiguous about it. The upper class is depicted as stupid and kind of rude, but ultimately harmless. Most notably, we don't even know how they made so much money, though it's hard to believe they made it by being silly and harmless.

In contrast, Oliver lies all the time, and the big twists* about him are that he faked his poverty, revealing a wallet full of money (because if you have money in your wallet or even bank account that means you can spend it. Budget? What's that?) and that he faked his interest for Felix, at least initially. Perhaps he did come to love him eventually, but his desire is always tied to creepy or downright necrophilic acts, showing that for him, they're one and the same. The representation is crude, but the message is clear: the only way two members of different classes can be equal and in a loving relationship is if one of them is dead, and if you allow any mingling between the classes, lower one will absorb the upper one until there's nothing left of it.

Yeah, well, I don't care for that, to say the least.

I do understand the movie is symbolic, it's not like they're trying to hide it: there are vampires, doppelgangers, ghosts, fairies, minotaurs, pagan gods, and so on. I was sad for a moment there were no zombies, but then again, it's better this way: zombies represent undenturent servitude and slavery, and this is a movie where being faithful to your master is shown as a good thing. I really don't want to see a story where a Zombie Master is the good guy.

(You know you hit rock bottom when fucking Game of Thrones is better at themes than you)

So yeah, I do get it Oliver is a symbol. It's just that I think he's the symbol of something awful, right from the Victorian Era, with all its anxiety and fears about social mobility. It may be wrapped in a shiny package to appeal to young people but the content is reactionary and very dangerous.

Besides, even at a symbolic level, it's a failure: even the evilest vampire is made, not born. Who turned Oliver first? And where is it? Is it still out there, haunting Britain, Europe, and possibly the world, like a ghost? Nobody seems to care.

(Yeah, that's another thing: the upper class screaming for help because they're hunted by ghosts. Yeah, well, I sure hope you are. The question is by which)

(No, I'm afraid Dickens won't be of any help this time. Trust me, he really won't)

It isn't even that I don't understand the fear of being preyed upon and sucked dry by people close to you. I do, and it's even happened to me. But in my experience, the relationship with those people tend to complicated and very difficult to parse. In a way, it's almost a comforting fantasy thinking of them as machiavellian geniuses out to get you, rather than people who have their own shit going on and who just don't care about your feelings as you care for theirs. Or who just don't like you as you like them.

Speaking of which, I've seen people argue this is not a story about class but rather about shitty individuals, but it doesn't work. Just like Eggers' Witches are inextricably tied to their gender, and the horror comes from the difference between how women ought to behave and how the witches behave, Oliver's deeds are tied to his middle class extraction, and the horror comes from the difference between what he does and how he ought to behave instead.

And the members of the "lower class" do know how they should behave: indeed, towards the end we see Oliver being looked at with disgust by the manor's servants, and the butler is very antagonistic towards him. Tellingly, the movie's original ending showed Oliver being served the same breakfast he had refused at the beginning, symbolizing the fact that for the working class he will always be an usurper who may have inserted himself into the upper class but doesn't have the "right blood". I guess this was a little too much even for them.

Finally, it costs me to admit it, but even those filthy rich people have to work, or at least some of them do. The illusion of living a carefree life full of leasures is just that, an illusion. Once Oliver's dance is over, he's got a shitload of work ahead of him, possibly for the rest of his life. If he were a true-born (lol) parasite, that would scare him shitless.

I did like the deer costume though, it was neat. I also liked the dance, but I would have chosen Can't touch this instead.

TL; DR: Watch The Talented Mr Ripley instead. And then watch US by Jordan Peele. Ok it's set in a different country with different politics and blah blah blah, but at least it knows what story it's telling and also zombie metaphors are so much better for these things. Also I'd recommend The Shadow by Andersen too. It's a nice story that predates a lot of the modern doppelganger ones.

*Get it??? Oliver's Twists???? No but really, of all the literary references this is the one that makes the least sense. It just so happens that Dickens did, in fact, write about a villain focused on slowly evicting his master from his house in a parasitic way, and he was also compared to a vampire (and a zombie too, though Dickens doesn't use that word of course. And I think there's some ambiguous shit going on with him too, if you know what I mean). The difference is that Dickens, as a member of the middle class, wants to protect the middle class' interests so he depicts the working class member as the evil parasite. I guess what goes around comes around.

Couldn't anyone just...I don't know, google all this shit? It's not like Dickens is some unknown writer. I also don't think the Midsummer Night's Dream references were relevant, but I guess Othello would have been too obvious? IDK. Slutty fairies are cool, though.