#<- mini rant not really relevant to the main point

[cheerfulaxolotl]

so this picture was actually taken in 2015 by the Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC) on the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) satellite! the green around the right hand side is an artifact of the way the camera works - it takes images in three different colours and then combines them

i just thought it was really cool how the camera works!

link to the article here:

NASA took a pic of the dark side of the moon fyi

[lovecatsys]

okay I don't expect anyone to rb this but u can if u want this is just a lil mini rant abt David now that I've read Academy X

When I first started reading New X-Men I was like huh this is Not the David I know but now that I've gotten through all of his major character development I think I really Get where Gillen was coming from with him and think he actually got David right. I don't agree with David being attracted to Teddy or Colossus even though Gillen seems to think that's his Type (it's not, his type is asshole speedsters lmao. Kieron, could you by chance be, projecting? Mayhaps?) and like. If I was going to make any of the OG 12 queer I would have done Brian, the most obvious answer, but he got killed off too quickly for that to happen lol. But it's okay because David is a bi icon now and we love that for him.

I do find it a little strange that he and Tommy got along so well at first after what Nori did to him, but hey, who's to say he didn't even realize how similar they were? and given the long time period between YA 2 and when Tommy and David were confirmed to be together, I think it's safe to say that David may have forgiven her, or at least gotten over her enough to overlook the similarities between her and Tommy by that time.

But yeah... since then the only thing I've really liked for David was Gillen's Thinkfast pride story and the voices infinity one focused on Tommy. The rest... it's either crumbs where they're just reduced to "Nerd boy and asshole bf" or its... Williams' X-Factor.

The biggest problem, obviously, with X-Factor was the Hatecrime. That was not Leah's story to tell, and of course it's been so long now that if David gets to be big in anything it's unlikely it will be acknowledged. Which it SHOULD BE. Now that she did that, we HAVE to acknowledge it in his story because that isn't something that David should just be able to walk away from. Ignoring it or pretending it didn't happen, at this point, just isn't okay.

My other main criticism with Williams' David is that, well... along with many of her other characters in this book, he's pretty much reduced to a memey, one dimensional, fragment of what he has been in the past. He's "Distinguished bi nerd boy" which... that has never been David, that has never been who he is.

I think David working in investigation is very interesting and obviously his powers are very useful for that, but I wish we could bring back David working in combat, because friendly reminder, he has the fighting skills of everyone he's ever come into contact with, even when he had lost his powers, after the Cuckoos gave him everything back, he could fight like fucking Wolverine, he had all of Kitty's ninja training in him. and now he has even more than that. He's incredibly skilled in hand to hand combat, and he's also just, beyond useful and powerful in so many ways.

Anyways. to wrap this up. Idk how long Gillen is going to stay with the X books but I wish he would write David again. I wish David was in something big, or long enough to be interesting, I wish he was on a team, maybe even leading a team. He was such a great leader for the New Mutants Squad? He didn't even have powers or the knowledge he had before losing them when he helped his team take down FUCKING NIMROD??? HELLO?? He should be so much more relevant than he is right now.

[rmsstevielol]

Ok hello im back to rant again!

Todays topic is Kilts, Tartan and the importance of them to our culture 😜

So, kilts and tartan have been a part of Scottish and Irish culture for CENTURIES right? And don’t even come at me with “oh Victoria introduced clan tartans🧐🧐” they still had them before! Anyways my main issue is that it’s becoming a worldwide type thing or a thing that can be used by anyone.. it is literally somebody’s culture and it should not be used just for fun.

I am CONSTANTLY seeing stuff like “GRWM kilt addition” and it’s someone who has no Scottish or Irish relation and they aren’t even wearing it properly, mostly Americans and English people which is very annoying becuase they don’t even acknowledge where it’s from or how to wear it properly. Another thing is that tartan is being made for different religions Or sexualities and even an English one exists now.. can we not do that because it, once again, belongs to a culture and by making different tartans for all these different things, it takes the meaning and importance of it to our culture. I literally see SO MANY schools in England and people wearing it in general wearing it, referring to it ‘plaid’, like no, it’s tartan.

Also I definitely do not fw the royals wearing the Stuart tartan or any tartan in general because im not being funny but they literally have barely traceable Scottish genealogy and they even went as far as BANNING the Stuart tartan for anyone apart from the royals, even though they literally not Stuart’s and there are actual Stuart’s out there, who still wear them, but still the fact there is a law that they cannot wear there own family tartan is actually disgusting. The royals aren’t Scottish or Irish therefore should not wear them. I swear i see many wealthy English people wearing kilts like it’s a thing of nobility for everyone.. it’s not.

Tartan and kilts are not just a thing to show off your wealth and high status, they are our culture and something that is very much valued and appreciated in modern day, bringing me on to my next point, that “clan tartans aren’t relevant” or “kilts aren’t that important anymore”, which is extremely false. I know many families, including my own, who wear their own family tartan and kilts all the time and they’re something that is highly valued and respected by them, it is something that is important to us because it gives is pride in our family, culture and history. We wear them to important events too! So by random non Scottish/Irish people wearing them anywhere (in the wrong way) it takes away the whole meaning of that. Also wearing someone’s clan tartan and not knowing anything about it, does not sit right with me at all, like just wear your own cultural clothing.

I saw a very specific example of taking kilts and using them as an “accessory”on a TikTok video, a couple months ago, where a young English woman was showing how she “styles” a kilt. This kilt was a proper, authentic, Scottish kilt and the way she was handling it and talking about it was very disrespectful and just rude. She first stated how she didn’t like the length, as it made her look like a granny, where she then started to pin it up to make it a mini skirt.. how much more do I really need to say. It’s plain rude and disrespectful, if you cannot wear it respectfully and properly then don’t wear it at all, simple as. Another thing with this woman, is that she was completely arrogant to the comments trying to correct her and call her out on her behaviour, she was pretty much disregarding them as “petty” not admitting her wrongs in any way.

Now, before you all come at me, hear me out. I know cultural appropriation is a very very controversial topic but if people are truly outraged by it then why is the appropriation of tartan and kilts not taken more seriously, it is the same exact thing. If i were to compare, the issue with the appropriation of Native American culture and how there are awful costumes made of them on Amazon, is very similar, if not the same situation as i am talking about with the kilts and tartan, for example, the cheap, stereotypical costumes of Scottish people on Amazon or the “sexy” mini skirt “kilts” with the matching hats.. see how similar the situations are. I do believe that a lot of what im seeing regarding how kilts and tartan are being worn, is cultural appropriation and is not being paid attention to nearly enough.

I used to brush it off as “not that deep” or “not as bad as others”, as a lot of other people do, but as i see more and more of it, the more offensive and disrespectful it is getting and nobody is doing a single thing about it. So, yes, it is that deep and If you say you respect all cultures, yet find yourself doing these things, then you aren’t really the person you thought you were.

My culture isn’t a joke, isn’t a costume, is not something to be altered or changed to your satisfaction and it is not something to show off your wealth, so please stop and let us have it back as something to be proud of.

Share this around if you can 🤍

That was a long rant but it was needed, so, if you made it all the way to here, thank you for reading it :))

just to clarify, as always, i do not hate English people or American people and I don’t completely hate the monarchy, I am just using them as examples, as they are the ones I’ve seen most doing the things that i mentioned :)))))

[linklethehistorian]

BSD Season 4 Reveal: Initial Impressions

Speculation and initial personal thoughts under the cut due to spoilers for the manga up to Chapter 95.5, and Storm Bringer (and also the Fifteen light novel and the previous anime seasons, but I should expect that’s a given by now and no longer requires a spoiler warning to begin with, since it’s been years).

Hello, everyone! It’s good to see you again! As I’m sure you all know, last night I was made aware of the announcement for BSD anime Season 4, and now that I’ve gotten some decent sleep and had some time to reflect on the announcement with a clearer and more alert mind, I’d like to share all of my initial musings on the matter with you — both positive and negative.

I actually do have a quite a few points I’d like to cover, so rather than going on one long, messy rant, I’m going to be separating them into different sections as per my two previous articles — here and here (the latter of which is still in progress) — on the animated series.

With that out of the way, let’s begin!

Season 4 Light Novel Adaption Expectations & Thoughts

Given the series’ at-times-beloved-and-at-other-times-disastrous past tradition of including a light novel adaption into each season of the anime, I do think it should go without saying that the speculation on which one, if any, will get chosen to be “brought to life” through the TV series this time is a very valid avenue for anyone to want to go down immediately upon finding out that there is going to be yet another season.

Personally, I don’t think any speculative analysis of a new season is complete without that kind of banter, so let’s explore the possibilities and what exactly they each entail, shall we?

Ordinarily, I would have tended to go on a longer ramble about the situation and all of its implications than I actually will this time around, but thankfully, most of what I’ve already said and the reasoning I’ve already laid out in my speculative article on the previous season still holds up, so today, I will mostly just be building off of that, instead. (If you haven’t read that already, I do highly recommend reading it before you finish this mini-article, but it isn’t strictly necessary, for I’ll probably quote or summarize most of the important parts here.)

As stated there, while there are, in fact, still many light novels to cover in the anime before we’ll have seen them all — Untold Story, 55 Minutes, BSD Gaiden, BEAST, and the at-the-time-unknown-of Kunikida and Katai's Magnificent Days short story and Storm Bringer — when we take into account informative relevance to the current arc and all previous seasons, we are really left with only a few possibilities.

BSD Gaiden, being a spinoff in its own right, is, if anything, better suited to being a movie — or better yet, becoming its own spinoff animated series, sometime in the distant future, and has nothing of major relevance to contribute to the main series at all at present.

BEAST, while informative in some ways about the Book that is so highly sought after and semi-used in Season 4′s arc(s), is honestly the farthest of all light novels from being necessary to introduce into the main animated series. To quote the aforementioned piece I wrote prior to Season 3′s release:

Yes, [...] I too agree that the things this novel brings to light about the Book and its functionality are almost as insightful and compelling as the very premise itself; however, [...] in the end, this story is an AU and therefore has the least necessity to be brought into the animated series in any way, and I’m quite sure that if any of the information from it regarding the Book is truly essential to the main series, it will be brought up at some point within those events on its own, as I can’t imagine that Asagiri would ever leave critical information only within what otherwise would appear to be an entirely optional side story/spinoff. [...]

If BEAST is to be animated at some point at all [...] I feel that it would be best served [...] as its own standalone movie, probably ideally released sometime after our hypothetical Season 4, which should be fairly Book-centric in itself.

Furthermore, now that BEAST has its very own, fully-fledged live-action movie coming out, as much as I may enjoy the idea of seeing it animated someday, I really don’t think that that will — or even should — be taken into consideration anytime in the near future, when there are many other novels already waiting to get their chance to come to life in a movie or TV series that haven’t gotten such special treatment or privileges.

In regards to the Kunikida and Katai's Magnificent Days short story, I’ll admit that is the novel (if it is to be called such) I know the least about at present, but from what I do know about it, although it does star two characters who appear in both Season 3 and Season 4, it also doesn’t seem to establish anything of critical importance to either of these seasons, or the main story as a whole. Thus, I feel that placing it as this season’s light novel adaption — although it may be able to be squeezed into a very small number of episodes with no issue, from what I understand, if not just one — would be a waste of both time and opportunity, if they’re determined to keep with this tradition; I think it would really just be better off being adapted as a bonus OVA of some sort later on, if they felt the need to animate it, as I frankly don’t feel it’s long enough or high-stakes enough to be worthy of an entire movie, however cute or touching it may be. As for 55 Minutes, while I do think it’s one of the better candidates out of the bunch to be chosen, my feelings about it ultimately still remain as they did over two years ago: that it would be best relegated to a movie, either released sometime between the previous season and Season 4, or — given the better understanding I obviously have of Season 3′s contents now — between Season 4 and a potential Season 5, depending on how far into the manga we truly go in this season (more on that question in the next section).

If you would like to know more about my reasoning for why I think 55 Minutes could be considered a good candidate to go alongside Season 4′s (or a potential Season 5′s) main arc(s) at all, you can read about that in my previous article’s section on the subject, as well why I think that although it is a good candidate, between it and Untold Story, the latter is really a much better fit to be integrated directly into the new episodes. As much as I would like to talk about that again here, I think it would just be a massive waste of time to merely (and probably poorly) re-iterate what I’ve already said and documented very well in the past, when that information is presently available for you to go back and read at any time.

Now, with all of the above eliminated from the running, that ultimately leaves us with the two possibilities I think are most feasible for them to choose: Untold Story and Storm Bringer.

Oh, and I know, I know — I can hear the metaphorical stones being cast at me already; how dare I mention Storm Bringer as an option above all those older novels for them to pick? I’m clearly just biased and want to see more of my favorite character/story getting animated, or I must be a Soukoku shipper (I’m personally not, by the way), or some such thing; go ahead, get it out of your systems, I know it’s probably in there from the moment you read that, but, if you do think any of that, you’re actually very highly mistaken...sadly.

I would love to have listed Storm Bringer of my own volition, because I’m “biased” and excited about it; that would definitely be a more fun reason for me to have done it, personally, but...that’s not remotely the case.

In actuality, if I got to choose between the two novels in regards to which would get to be this Season’s light novel representation in the anime, I would actually still choose Untold Story, just as I did for the then-hypothetical Season 4 I explored the possibility of prior to Season 3′s release. 

To quote myself during that time, I still very much do believe that:

[...] yes, [...] you could absolutely adapt Untold Story into season three, and yes, it would give everyone even more information than they already had and perhaps even more reason to feel the way they already do about [Fukuzawa and Ranpo and their bond], but if you’re looking for the story to actually have an impact on anything, you would be better off waiting until it would have some kind of effect on the overall plot, provide some form of insight towards it, and aid in altering the way things are perceived; an opportunity which is clearly presented to us in the form of the manga’s Chapter 65 and Chapter 66 — which, in the anime, would manifest themselves as episodes within Season 4.

In these chapters, it is shown how Fukuzawa fought Mori for the freedom of the young Yosano Akiko and how he and Ranpo together gave her the chance to join the Armed Detective Agency as its second ever member.

If Untold Story were to be introduced at the beginning of Season 4 or even well into it, just before these episodes, it would have a very heavy impact on the overall story, and it would lend even more importance and depth towards all of the characters that are involved, while also displaying the extreme contrast between the methods, morals, and personalities of the two heads of the series’ leading organizations to an even greater degree than ever before.

I still stand by what I said there, now and forever; Untold Story is without question the light novel that has a place in these new episodes — that is not, and never was up, for debate.

The real question is, though, does Studio BONES feel the same way about it as I do?

I’d love to say “yes, absolutely!”, but the reality is that despite technically getting what I wished for and knew could have been best last Season, it was that same ‘granting’ of my wish in the way that they did — butchering and bloodying it beyond recognition and removing nearly all of the reasons why I thought it belonged in that season in the first place in favor of rampant fanservice — that opened my eyes to the very harsh reality that quite frankly, BONES cares more about raking in that sweet, sweet cash from SKK content than preserving narrative integrity, at the end of the day.

Trust me, being the dedicated and passionate Fifteen and Arthur Rimbaud/Randou fan that I am, I would love to be able to say that if they do choose Storm Bringer over Untold Story, it would at least all be for the right reasons of wanting to deliver on giving us the rest of the tale they presented to us last season, but that motive is an utter impossibility, even if they someday try to claim it, when the way they butchered Fifteen ensured that at least 70% of the plot and lore that actually mattered in Storm Bringer was destroyed beyond redeeming, unless they go back and redo it — which they won’t, because that would be admitting to their error.

As things stand right now, because of that fact, even as a fully-fledged, several hour animated movie, Storm Bringer would be an utter disaster of a film, much less as a 400+ page beast of a novel — more than three times the size of any light novel before it, including its predecessor— crammed into the space of 3-4 measly episodes in the television series.

Quite frankly, although I fear this may sadly be a very hot take, unless that miracle happens and they somehow, someday decide to abandon their pride and redo Fifteen correctly, I would really rather they never touched its sequel at all — even if that means I never get to see an animated Storm Bringer; I would rather never see it in that medium than to see it and have it butchered.

Unfortunately, though, I know all too well that that novel is much too tempting for them to resist forever; not because of the amazing, deep, beautiful, simultaneously tragic and hopeful story it can tell, or because of the well-written cast of characters, but because of the opportunity for fanservice it brings.

I am not delusional; I know that it will be animated at some point — whether that is now or later — and when it is, it will be a pitiful, cash-grabbing disaster that has no right to share its title with the novel from which it claims to have been born. The only question we have is “when is that going to happen — in Season 4, or later?”, and sadly, I don’t have an answer to that.

Personally, I see a high probability they will try to animate it soon, but whether or not that means including it in the upcoming season is anyone’s guess; all we can do right now is hope that if they do try to fit a light novel into it, it will be Untold Story, instead.

The Hunting Dogs Dilemma: A Concerned Exploration of Season Length & Exhausted Resources

Of course, that brings us to the next issue: should there even be a light novel adaption this season? I know this is a much-debated topic in the fandom, but personally, I have always been of the highly controversial opinion that yes, they do belong there — at least, until now, and that’s all thanks to a little something — and a good many someones — present on the newest poster.

While I may be just as excited for the new season as the next person — yes, despite my reservations and how my initial public reaction may have come off, I actually am looking forward to the new episodes in general — the very fact that we’re apparently getting so far into the arc as to see the Hunting Dogs and the Aerial Casino period, much less on the main illustration...concerns me.

I had honestly hoped and expected, for several reasons that I will elaborate on within this post in just a short while from now, that the Season would end on the Chapter in which the Hunting Dogs first arrive on the scene in their pods, after the Armed Detective Agency is ‘revealed’ to supposedly be the Decay of Angels via the use of the Book.

With the revelation now shown to me that it will apparently be going farther than that — and potentially still include a light novel adaption — we are once again forced to return to the age-old query we explored last season: just how many episodes does this season intend to have?

Up until now, every season in the Bungou Stray Dogs anime has had a total of 12 episodes on average, and it would be very logical to assume that Season 4 is going to be no different. Yet, if that’s true, how exactly do they intend to fit all of these chapters into one season? It’s utterly ludicrous to even dream of doing such a thing — and that’s without taking any potential chosen LNs into account; without that, it’s already impossible, but with it, it’s even more so!

Perhaps if they decided to do a 24 episode season and forego the LN adaptation — which I find highly unlikely, but let’s go ahead and give them the benefit of the doubt for a moment — it could somehow work, but even then, the question remains of just how far they intend to go with the arc. Ending it at the point just before the Hunting Dogs are all introduced would have made sense; it was logical, it left a cliffhanger for a potential fifth season that would leave viewers definitely wanting more, and it would leave a fair amount of content already in existence for that next season.

Try as I might, I just cannot begin to fathom what good can come of trying to cover much more than that in Season 4; where will they end it? Do they intend to finish the entire current arc in this season somehow, when at the time of writing this, the ending isn’t even out yet? How do they intend to cram all of that into just 24 episodes, let alone a potential 12? Hell, what do they even intend to do for a Season 5 if they push that far and leave themselves few to no current manga chapters left once they’re done with and release the season? To exhaust all of your current resources like that, when you could easily get away with shoving in a light novel adaption and ending Season 4 at the aforementioned logical spot, with plenty of content left to spare, just seems entirely reckless on their part.

I have all of these questions, and absolutely no answers to give; it isn’t sustainable, it isn’t wise, it isn’t even profitable, and it confuses me beyond belief.

Season 5: To Be or Not to Be — A Look into the Potential Future of an Animated Series that Has Spread Itself Too Thin

So, if all of this is true, and they intend to push through to the eventual defeat of Fukuchi and the Decay of Angels, what awaits us at the end of it all? Is there even hope for the animated series to easily continue and thrive beyond that point?

I want to be positive, to end this on some spectacular final section that gives all of my readers — my fellow BSD fans — hope, to have my words be like a warm, friendly pat on the back that says “don’t worry; everything is going to be just fine! ^-^”, but if I intend to continue to be honest, all I can really do is try to look at the statistics of the situation and offer up the most likely probability as a potential answer, and from where I’m standing right now, it...sadly isn’t looking very good.

True, it did take them a little more than two years to announce the anime this time — definitely a bit longer than the length of time between Season 2′s and Season 3′s announcement, comparatively — but even so, if they want to continue this pattern of averaging a new season every 2-3 years (supposing Season 4 doesn’t jump the shark with this new, bold tactic and actually does well enough to warrant another season at all), will they even have enough new content to make by the time a Season 5 would roll around?  Honestly? I don’t know the answer to that; every arc has been a different length — some longer than others, and this current Decay of Angels one definitely being the longest of them all yet, spanning over a whopping 50 chapters long and counting. We don’t know how long the next arc will be; it could be 16 like the smallest arc to date, it could be around 20 like the average arc seemed to be up until this point, or it could even be as many as this arc or more. 

Even if we are optimistic and say that the next arc could be as low as 16-20 chapters long, when we factor in that the current arc hasn’t even ended as of writing this, and seems to at least have another 10 chapters to go before the end — if not way more — that’s still a good 26-30 chapters of content that needs to be produced before Season 4 can be finished, and Season 5 can be remotely feasible.

To quote my previous article: 

A new chapter of the BSD manga comes out once a month in the Young Ace magazine; this means that in one year, barring any potential breaks, a total of 12 chapters are released.

If we presume that Season 4 comes out sometime next year, that could be enough for this arc to have ended in the manga just before its premier, but definitely not enough time for much of anything else to have been produced.  Assuming Season 4 could span anywhere from 3-6 months depending on how many episodes it contains, by the time it ends, around 3-6 new chapters of the new arc could potentially exist, should Asagiri-sensei and Harukawa35-sensei take no breaks; that would mean they would still have to wait at least another year to a year and a half to have enough content to even begin talks about a potential Season 5, then probably spend another year or so working out the specifics before making the announcement, and then it could take potentially another half-year to a year before it’s out. That’s three to three and a half years for the next season; it’s not undoable by any means, but definitely not the most ideal situation ever.

If the next arc is longer, however, and reaches, say, 30 chapters, you’re looking at a good four and a half years before we get a Season 5, after Season 4 ends, and even longer than that if it becomes as impressively long as the current arc and they intend to do the entire thing in one go again.

Could the animated series stay relevant enough to survive another four and a half or more years without another season after this? Potentially, it could, supposing they make Season 4 really good somehow, despite these concerns, and keep the series in anime-only people’s hearts and minds by possibly renewing BSD Wan! for another season, and/or releasing new movies in the meantime (whether original content or LN-based), but once again, it’s certainly not ideal and could prove to be a major struggle for them in the future.

All I can really say is for now is to hope for the best, even if, like me, you manage your expectations so much that you are actually expecting the worst-case scenario. As I’ve said before, I actually do love the anime very much, save for the handling of the Fifteen adaption, and I do hope that it can live on and continue to be as great as it has, in my opinion, almost always been besides that.

I am, above all, thankful for this new season, and hope it is everything we dream of, even though I may not have the most positive outlook at the moment for all of the aforementioned reasons.  Anyway, I hope you enjoyed reading my initial thoughts on Season 4; I feel like they’re certainly not as well-articulated as usual, but it is the best I can do on short notice, and without allowing myself to obsess over re-writing it a million times before finally getting around to posting it weeks or months later.

Thank you for your time, and I hope you have a wonderful day. 💖

Oh and BONES? Hands off Storm Bringer. 👀 🔪 

[frostiifae]

hey wait a sec it's my blog and i get to do and say whatever the fuck i want

i know this show has been spoiled to hell and back for everyone already but it's a good excuse for a readmore anyway

i want to reiterate that i really like the show becuase i'm going to say a LOT of negative stuff about it. it's really good. however,

laios fucking sucks. i want to be forgiving and subjective here but i just cannot emphasize enough how much i despise laios as a character. it has been twelve fucking episodes and i have given a shit about him or his feelings i think exactly once that entire time. i cannot believe this show is daring to pretend that it is even remotely about laios. it is OBVIOUSLY ABOUT MARCILLE.

i'm using two whole bullet points to talk about how much i don't like laios! there are LOTS of fictional men out there who are like, autistic meatheads with no thoughts head empty disease. i don't care for any of them but a lot of people really like them and i'm willing to be sympathetic because most of them have at least likeable traits. laios does not. laios is not merely a moron (which i don't like but is arguably not his fault), he is also wildly self-centered, having done i think one thing at most to directly help another character without there being some direct benefit to him or his interests.

i know i'm sorry a third whole bullet point about laios but please listen to me. i understand that he is framed favorably by the narrative. this is because it is trying to lie to you and convince you he is the main character. do not be fooled. he is at most a clueless autistic brute with a quirky kind of disgusting special interest and a series of traits that make him exactly the brand of Barely Competent Adventurer the others need to actually make progress in the dungeon. if you find this to be an interesting character, fine, i guess, but know that i am judging your sense of taste

pun intended

ok i'm done shit talking laios let's talk about some other stuff. every other character is great!

marcille is obviously the best. i will forgive you if you don't feel that way because she is also autistic and neurotic in a way i'm sure some people find annoying. however, i constantly find myself identifying with her. she is just like me for real for real.

i really like the way senshi and chilchuck have both had mini-arcs contained within episodes, those have been some of my favorite moments with them. this is another reason why i am so adamant in my negativity towards laios btw. he hasn't had to go through shit. he is too blockheaded to undergo meaningful change

i'm really interested in namari and also the weird racial tension that's getting built on the surface, especially since i've heard that's supposed to become Extremely Relevant in the Near Future,

i went on a little rant about this with ellie after we finished the episode but the framing of episode 12 kinda bothers me, like. there's no way we haven't Been Knew that falin was probably going to be in a pretty gruesome state when we found her, in need of resurrection. it feels a little bit rushed, in a way? a little reliant on cheap shock value that feels really unearned and even dissonant with all of the foreshadowing about resurrection and its mechanics.

i wouldn't be surprised to hear that this is mostly an anime problem. there are a few broader-stroke type complaints i have surrounding the show's themes and tone not really seeming to line up with its presentation - it almost seems like some sort of deconstruction of the Cozy Hobby Anime but the anime itself doesn't really seem to... understand that? i don't know it's weird.

anyway a lot of my feelings boil down to the fact that i'm mostly here to see falin and marcille being really gay. and marcille REALLY delivers. she is absolutely head over heels for falin and it is not fucking subtle. but that does mean that i'm gnawing on my own arm anytime marcille is not directly on screen and that may or may not be anyone else's problem

thanks to my wonderful gf's persistence and patience and a mild nonsensical breakdown on my part i'm finally caught up on dunmesh (anime) woo

it's p good. i do not think anyone else will like my feelings on it

[transtryingtheirbest]

So here I am. On Tumblr again. I guess I should introduce myself. I've never been good at introducing myself but I can start with the relevant basics.

Hello, I'm A. I'm 28, I was assigned male at birth, and I grew up a boy and at some point became a man. Anyone who knows me knows this But something less people know is that I have spent a lot of those 28 years wishing I'd been born a girl.

For a while, in uni, I thought about starting a blog, much like this one, which would let me rant about secretly being a woman or trans or something like that. I don't know what I would have said, I don't know what I would want to say even. I still don't. I didn't ever make the blog because I felt like it was stupid and I wasn't really trans. I put it aside. Even if I was trans (and how could I be) I was a fat man. If I were to transition, I'd be a fat ugly woman, and that would be worse. I could live my life of privilege as a cis male (who is basically white even if that isnt strictly true) and I could be happy, or happy enough. I tried to put it out of my mind and kept this up through uni and into full time work after graduating.

As everyone knows, the novel coronavirus arrived in 2020 and messed everyone's life up. Fortunately, as an office working yuppie, the main effect of this was that I started working from home. I made a few non-committal statements to my girlfriend that I might try doing make up or wearing more femme clothing, and lockdowns made me grow out my hair but I didn't really do anything until about three months ago when bored and procrastinating from work, I pilfered a lipstick from her make up bag and put it on.

I looked good, I thought. Better than good. Such a small thing, a tiny insignificant change and I was examining myself in the mirror like a preening bird. I wasn't noticing my double chin or the bags under my eyes. I flopped my hair around until it sat more girlish and admired myself again. An ocean had been crossed. The step of colouring my lips a deep violet showed that I could be more than the limits I'd always assumed were there. Within a week I'd bought a set of supermarket make up brushes and a fun "mini power palette" of eyeshadows and a lipstick shade called "thirsty bae". Bright red. Subtlety is for suckers.

The great thing about being stuck in your home is that you can order things off the internet and sit around waiting for them to arrive. I scrolled through Shein, a fast fashion site which mass produces clothes in China and ships them worldwide with great haste. This probably means that Shein fills landfills in the developing world and fills the sky with aircraft exhaust fumes, but on the other hand it means that a nervous maybe-not-a-boy in Australia can get their girlfriend to measure them and then fill a cart with dresses and skirts and shirts of all kinds of shapes and styles, so who is to say if they're good or bad.

If putting on the lipstick opened the door, wearing the cutesy overall dress and white blouse pushed me through it. While I'd always wanted to be born a girl, I never felt like I had dysphoria about my body. I hated it, sure, but I hated the way fat clung to my face and my belly (and in an example of my vanity, despised the fat that built up there far more than the fat that chose to choke my liver), but I never despised my broad shoulders or my big feet or even my penis. But looking at myself in this cute outfit, I felt euphoric. Immediately I lost all interest in my entire male wardrobe. I shaved my entire body in the shower. Another Shein order was made within the week.

I found myself putting on makeup and skirts/dresses on every day. I turned off my webcam for work calls, patiently waited through morning scrums to apply mascara and eyeshadows and lipsticks safe from prying eyes. I started to get bold, I would take out the bins girlmode. Walk to the post box. Take the dog on walks. Eventually I was comfortable enough, or rather brave enough, to do the shopping in my dress. I scanned every face for disapproval or disgust but aside from a child who seemed more intrigued than anything, nobody paid me any notice. This was revolutionary. I definitely did not pass, and it didn't matter. People didn't tell at me or throw rocks or any of the many unrealistic scenarios I had dreamed up. So I did it again. And again.

This week, I told my brother and cousins that I was trans/non-binary. I'd asked internet friends to use they/them pronouns for me previously, and even gone over to a close friends house in femme mode, and the more people I told the more that I felt like my little attempts to transition actually amounted to something real. I tried to be nonchalant with my coming out but was showered with slightly bewildering support and joy from my brother and cousins. I had to sort of stop and think to myself why they were making such a big deal of it, before letting myself accept that this is a big deal. So here we are. I don't know where this gender journey will take me. I'm not certain if I'm an enby or genderfluid or a trans woman. But I know this.

I'm 28, I was assigned male at birth, and I've spent 28 years hiding that I'm not male. I'm not a boy and I'm not a man. I am trans. I am a transfemme person.

I am 28 years old and three months ago I put on lipstick and finally saw what I could be. What I should be and what I will be.

And I'm so fucking excited.

[xandnobody]

2077 Romance

Little mini rant on my thoughts on Cyberpunk 2077′s romances now that I’ve beaten just about every single quest in the game, including the main quest. Spoilers will no doubt be in this particular rant, and rather than try and stop myself from spoiling, it’ll just all be below the keep reading line.

So, I like 2077. I like 2077 a lot honestly. The world itself is very appealing to me and the writing is nicely done, most of the time. I mean, it did what so many games manage to fail doing for me these days, it made me care about the characters I was talking to, actually care about how the story was going, and think about how it affected them. I’d put the game in the same list as Mass Effect and Knights of the Old Republic in that regard. It might be third place on that particular list, but it’s such a short list that hardly matters.

All of that being true, it’s clearly got some issues with it’s storytelling, and to me there is no place where that is more apparent than the romance options. One of the big issues with the romances is, it’s clear that they put way more effort into some romance options than they did the others. Lets be honest here, Panam is basically the most fleshed out and relevant romance option by a mile when compared to the other three. In distant second place would be Kerry. Then in third we have a tie between Judy and River.

They make this disparity so obvious that it’s easy to notice on a female V, who cant even romance Panam. Lets be clear, I love the characters of Judy and River, really I do. I ended up romancing Judy and running away with her into the badlands. But when you look at Judy and River’s questlines they both kinda don't have a point beyond romancing them. That's the entire end game of both of their questlines. At least Kerry gets enough of a character arc and obvious tie in with Johnny that his feels a little more natural, if only just. Panam may as well have been written as the “official” romance option considering she even gets an entire ending devoted to her, even if you don't romance her.

Really, that’s my issue, Judy’s storyline is so inconsequential outside the option to romance her that what happens to Clouds doesn't even have a point. Clouds can end up burned to the ground and everyone related to the place dead for all the game cares, despite the fact it was the main bloody focus of Judy’s entire questline, and all they really care to mention about it is one line about how fucked Clouds is and how we aren’t going to talk about it. River’s got a similar problem in that he has an entire backstory of being in the freakin NCPD for gods sake, and outside of helping him capture a monster in one very personal case, there is no point to that either.

I suppose looking back on it I just wish as much attention had been given to the other romance options as had obviously been given to Panam. Where is my River using his NCPD connections to help get me into Arakasa tower and smuggle me across the border after? Where is my Judy storyline where it’s actually important to try and help Clouds thrive so a joined force of combat trained Dolls and the whole big ass gang of Mox help you assault Arasaka? Fuck, as for Kerry have him pull a page right out of Johnny’s playbook and organize a concert with Us Cracks as a big ass diversion to help you sneak in Arasaka or something.

I suppose what it comes down to is I loved being able to interact with Panam throughout the finale of the game, and honestly would have liked to be able to get that much extra time with the other three as well at the end there. Just about anything is better than that lame 15 second phone call you have just before you go on a suicide mission. Really seems like so much missed potential. But that's just me.

[atopearth]

Steins;Gate 0 Part 5 - Mayuri Ending and True Ending + Overall Opinion

Mayuri Ending Hmmmm, so if you ignore Amadeus Kurisu’s call, Okabe and them waste too much time trying to explain everything to Maho, so they end up getting captured by the Rounders? I’m not really sure why the Rounders are still relevant right now to be after them, but I guess everyone just wants the time machine paper. The supposedly Stratfor guys coming to shoot off the Rounders and the laptop was very questionable though? Like, why? Hmm, I guess Okabe is right, better to destroy it than let others get their hands on it, but I feel like with how important it was, they still could have gotten it back considering their surprise attack and the manpower they had, but I guess they didn’t want to risk it? It was really sweet when Okabe stayed beside Maho when she was too scared to sleep by herself after experiencing all that, it’s cliche, but I thought it was really cute and heartfelt. I was pretty shocked when he was planning to tell Maho that he was the one who killed Kurisu, but I’m glad Maho stopped him since he was forcing himself so much. I don’t know why but I can’t skip those same events that happened in Leskinen’s ending part sighhhh, but anyway, aside from Maho cooperating with Daru and Suzuha on recreating/experimenting the time machine with their knowledge, and Maho coming to Japan (without getting brainwashed), nothing really different from the scenario before. Although, I really liked Faris’ suggestion of having Maho work at May Queen for rent instead of living at a business hotel hahaha.

I was pretty glad when Okabe found out the Daru was making the time machine, because it felt like they were finally confronting their problems. But I guess the highlight was Maho understanding that whether Okabe liked it or not, it was evident that despite what he said, he was less averted to stuff regarding time machines and Steins Gate etc now, he used to not be able to stomach it at all, but now he can talk about it. And honestly, you have to agree with Maho, that they’re similar, that despite wanting to give up many times and having given up before, they both are people that will persevere and keep trying. It’s hard, but that’s what people do to face themselves and the lives they want to live. My heart hurt for Mayuri when she heard them and realised that Kurisu was sacrificed for her, but I’m happy that she talked it out with Suzuha, who was able to tell her how much hope Mayuri gave her and Kagari in the future, and how much she believed in Okabe to change that future. It was nice to see Mayuri be able to pick herself up and want to fight for the one she loves too, knowing that she wants to try her best to bring her favourite Hououin Kyoma back was really heartwarming. Just as Okabe saved her in the past, she also wants to save him. Even if she knows that she can never be the one he loves (romantically), she will still do everything she can for him, and I think that’s wonderful.

Tbh, Yuki being Kagari (after plastic surgery) helped me confirm why whenever I heard Kagari talk, it sounded just like Yuki/Suzuha hahaha, so it wasn’t as shocking as it was supposed to be I guess. But it was pretty saddening to see Kagari brutally kill all those people and for Mayuri to not be able to comfort her in her last moments. The only solace I can think of is that, all this time that Yuki got to spend with Mayuri was probably enough for her though… In this sense, I guess it was nice to see in the other endings Kagari as Kagari herself. I guess I’m most shocked about this Yuki not actually being the mum they were hoping for all this time haha. Regardless though, she did seem to like Daru and I think that was pretty cute. I’m glad that Mayuri’s message to Okabe finally motivated him to time leap and change things since the war had started. Leskinen being the crazy doctor/professor that brainwashed Kagari ever since she was a kid in 2036 was hinted at already, so that wasn’t surprising even though it was saddening and uncomfortable to think about. But yeah Mayuri’s message really touched me, so I’m glad Okabe has finally understood her and everyone’s feelings and will try to fix things up again no matter what. It’s saddening that Kagari keeps dying, but it was nice to see Hououin Kyoma laugh at them all for being too late in trying to get the time machine. Just thinking about Mayuri going back to slap Okabe in the face makes me happy haha.

True Ending I have to admit that it was great to see the older Okabe do that message he sent to himself in the original game in order to save Kurisu without changing the events that “happened”. It was also pretty cute to see Maho sigh at how ridiculous she thought he was hahaahha. I also really liked it when Okabe said he was going to find his escaped hostage haha😊 It’s inevitable that Okabe should “die” in 2025, but that can also mean he “disappeared” from 2025 onwards, so seeing him climb into the time machine to go save the Suzuha and Mayuri who went to wake him up, give them the spare battery their machine needs and then come back to this timeline together, it was sweet. They’ll probably never see him again, but seeing him with such strength in his eyes is worth it imo. And it ends! Okay, time for the rant/mini review?

Overall Opinion

Honestly, I have mixed feelings towards Steins;Gate 0. Before I started it, I already read some reviews so I lowered my expectations because it’s pretty different from the original etc, but I think I was still disappointed LOL. The game depicts the journey of the Okabe who sent the message from the future telling Okabe in the true ending of the original game to deceive the world in order to be able to save Kurisu. At first, it was difficult to realise how all these endings tied into that concept because the game isn’t very linear. The game more or so follows the different world lines and potential endings for Okabe to kinda get through to I guess show how many times Okabe had to do all this in order to reach the world line where he would be able to help his past self. Quite frankly, I don’t think I enjoyed most of the endings haha… Some were good and nice, but others were just…tedious and haphazardly drawn out imo. If I could, I would suggest just doing the “main route” to the true ending, but the game doesn’t work that way, you’ll miss crucial information that ties things together, and you’ll miss all the background info to understand it, so I guess going through all those endings made me appreciate the end, however, it didn’t change the fact that going through all those endings were a chore. In that sense, it reminds me of OZMAFIA!! If you don’t know the otome game, you basically have to do all the routes before you get an explanation of the plot, story and everything basically. It ties together and makes things make much more sense so it’s good, but to this day, I’m still not sure if it was worth the 40 hours of different routes and endings to get to. That’s how mixed I feel towards 0. It’s relatively interesting, it has amusing plot points, and the slice of life was kinda fun, but it was way too draggy for my liking. 

When I played the original game, I enjoyed every bit of it, it never made me want to put it down and I was always engaged, and I really liked the characters. In this sequel, my favourite characters come back, but they’re pretty much a hollow shell of who they used to be, and there honestly wasn’t a moment in the game where I thought, I’d like to know where this will go now besides the ending. The new characters aren’t as interesting, well, Maho is all right, but she can’t carry the story with a depressed Okabe. I also found the flow of everything to be really…awkward? As you can see from my comments on the endings, I just found how everything occurred in each ending really sloppy, things aren’t built properly imo and it lacks the impact it could have created. Oh, and since Maho and Okabe are obsessed with Kurisu in their respective ways, the game kinda relies on you to understand and love Kurisu in the same way to really connect with them imo. Which isn’t bad I guess since most people do like Kurisu, and I do too, but yeah, I just felt like this game relied too much on the original game for you to like it. However, despite everything, I guess it is worth playing if you’re a fan of Steins;Gate, I mean, you might as well try it and see if it’s to your tastes hahaha. For me, it wasn’t and I definitely wouldn’t be interested in playing it again or watching the anime (especially when I thought the original Steins;Gate anime was tedious enough tbh lol). I was actually pretty glad when I was done LOL.

[murasaki-murasame]

Thoughts on Dreamin’ Sun v4

This took way longer to get to than I expected, haha. I’m still not sure if I’ll bother writing about each and every volume as they come out, but I’ll stick to it for now. I’m still enjoying it at least, more or less.

Thoughts under the cut.

This might be a kinda short post since I don’t think I have much to say about this volume, but here goes.

I’m fine with the whole mini-arc about Ken doing a boxing match against Sakamoto, cheesy as it is, but man, the whole ‘if you lose, he’s gonna force me to be his girlfriend’ thing was a pretty awful element that didn’t get touched upon nearly as much as it should have.

I’m glad that we got a bonus chapter to at least somewhat flesh these characters out, and to give us a different view of Taiga, though I’m really glad that it looks like the detail of him having dated a teacher during high school is actually gonna be relevant to the main story, because that would have been a bizarre thing to just randomly bring up in a side chapter and never substantially touch upon.

The main reason I don’t have much to say about this volume, at least in a positive way, is basically just that it focuses heavily on Shimana’s feelings for Taiga, which I still pretty strongly dislike as a sub-plot, especially since it’s feeling more and more like it’s probably gonna be the actual end-game ship. Hopefully it won’t, but we’ll see. I just highly doubt that the author will be able to write it in a way that I’m ok with. This volume alone already reiterated the point that Taiga is an adult and Shimana is still a teenager, just to remind us all about why these things are a bad idea. Probably the best way to handle it, relatively speaking, would just be to have them only hook up after some kind of a time-skip to when Shimana’s an independent adult, but we’ll see how it goes.

I still think that the general depiction of Shimana’s feelings is cute and relatable, I just dislike the implications of this becoming the actual romantic subplot of the story.

Ignoring his hypothetical love interest role, Taiga’s still a good character. I still like how he’s a good person while also being realistically flawed and not great at interacting with people. The scene where he kept telling Shimana not to bother keeping him company during Christmas, until he ended up admitting that he just wanted to get drunk alone at his house, was pretty hilarious.

As I expected, it looks like this whole weird plot point about him ‘not liking women’ is gonna end up being one of those ‘he had a bad experience with an ex-girlfriend that made him bitter and cold toward women in general’ story-lines, considering that the side story chapter literally ends with him talking about how he’s gonna stay away from girls after his teacher broke up with him. I already disliked the idea of it going in this direction because it’s just boring and predictable, but it’s also pretty hard to like when it also involves a student-teacher relationship. That just makes it even more awkward. Still, I can’t help but wish that we could get some characters like this who aren’t interested in women because they, y’know, *aren’t into women*, not because they had a bad experience with a girl one time and now they need the heroine to enter their lives and break down their barriers or ‘cure them’ or whatever.

Anyway, moving on from that little rant, I was not at all expecting that little reveal of Asahi and Taiga apparently being related, somehow. That sure came out of nowhere. Wonder where that’ll go. 

For better or worse, I appreciate that we’re starting to dig more into Taiga’s backstory and his motivations. It’s pretty fitting that he’s in a position where he has a dream that he feels unable to pursue.

They didn’t really do much in this volume, but I still love Asahi and Zen. They’re adorable.

I really wish Miku would have more screen-time. I really like her role as a big sister figure for Shimana, but she isn’t really in the story much.

Looking back at the bonus part in v1, it looks like the next major character will show up in the next volume, so that’s cool. From what little I saw of him, I think I’ll like him.

It also looks like the next volume will get into this whole plot thread of Taiga having dated a teacher during high school, so I hope that’s not handled too badly.

[snuggly-furret]

Godzilla: Planet of the Monsters

I’ve been sitting on my thoughts on this for too long, so I decided I might as well post a rant here to get it out of my system. Disclaimer I’m Godzilla fan not a movie aficionado or anything. Also spoilers will be present. I’m a long term Godzilla fan and I’ve seen all of the movies. Now I was exceedingly happy after Shin Godzilla, that movie was everything I’d wanted from a Godzilla movie for a while now and it felt like it was the first one to really try to return somewhat to the strong thematic roots of the first movie. This was as a result a disappointment. It fell flat in so many ways that it really did not have to.

1. The look of the movie. The one thing about the look of this movie that turned out well was Godzilla. Godzilla did look pretty good, but on the other hand for me at least they kind of ruined that in other ways which I’ll get to in part 2. Everything else was dull. Apparently when fleeing into space everyone was told that clothing was not an important piece of culture to preserve and everyone was given uniform boring jumpsuits. Except the priest aliens who still all wore the same priest outfit. I guess the idea behind this was to enforce the idea of them being worn down and claustrophobic? It still mostly just made the movie look boring. I think they tried to liven it up by making all the tech used bright vivid colors, but it really wasn’t enough. Even the Earth over 20000 years in the future has apparently changed drastically but they make it look sooooo boring. The little rock pterodactyls could have been more fantastical or the environment could have been or something. Anything to break up the monotonous appearance some. Also I could barely tell the non-human characters apart especially the priest ones to the point that I was confused if we even met more than one of them or not.

2. The pacing/way it was “shot.” One of the strongest aspects of Godzilla has been the cinematography, the way they reveal Godzilla and the shots that set up just how terrifying he is. In this movie he’s just sort of there? in the screen on a plane? I think we were supposed to be getting our sense of the terror of Godzilla from the characters? or maybe the lack there was just supposed to highlight the level of terror when the second original Godzilla was revealed at the end? If the second option that feels like we just wasted a movie if it was just a throw away to give us an oh shit moment. I’ll get to the characters and the failure there later. Additionally the movie just makes so many scenes more boring than they need to be by the way the camera shifts. I don’t have the technical knowledge to really say what was wrong here, but even the action scenes just felt like they were choppy and the angles always left feeling like I was missing the action. The movie was also paced poorly as a whole. The first 30 minutes or so were spent mostly dealing with this counsel that then don’t seem that important anymore. It’s fine to have stuff like that, but it should have been made to feel more relevant to the rest of the film rather than just feel like filler we had to wade through to get to the point.

3. The characters. I think this movie is supposed to be character driven more so than Godzilla movies usually are? but if so they really failed to make the characters real. It feels sort of like they were originally planning to make a mini series or something and then half way through realized they had to make a movie trilogy and were like “okay just condense the character stuff as much as possible.” They kept on having these moments with the characters where I was like... am I supposed to know who this? What even is our protag’s (hence forth known as Eren2) relationship with them? Like the sole female character... what was going on there? what was her relationship to Eren2? was it just that she was a woman and he was a sexist piece of shit? did she know his grandfather? was that who she meant when she talked about her grandpa being on the shuttle? WHY AM I SUPPOSED TO CARE ABOUT HER? This happened with pretty much every character except Eren2, main priest alien (who instead I’m just really not certain if he’s supposed to be evil or good or just has his own agenda or what), and I guess the leland guy? who instead just seemed very wishy-washy in character though I guess I at least followed his “arc” if you can call it that. Honestly I looked at the cast right after watching the movie and I was only certain who about half of them were that’s how forgettable they were. I feel like every character other than priest guy and Eren2 had like 7 lines max but they were treated like we were supposed to care about them. It’s also not like there haven’t been godzilla movies with good or at least enjoyable characters in them. The Heisei era had several reoccurring characters especially the psychic Miki who really made the Heisei era for me personally. Others had fun characters like Son of Godzilla which is a personal favorite cause it’s cute and the human characters while ridiculous and not particularly deep are also cute and fun. Other Godzilla movies have been ruined by boring humans though such as the second Mechagodzilla movie from the original franchise which had perhaps the most boring romance I’ve ever seen in a movie. Anyway even though it’s a Godzilla movie the human characters are important too and it is possible to make them enjoyable, but this movie completely failed to make care about them or even know who they are.

4. The worldbuilding/Themes. The stuff they did with other monsters and the other aliens was way more interesting than what we got with the actual movie. I wanted to actually see more of the other monsters that had infested the earth before godzilla or the the priest aliens and the eyebrow ridge aliens. We saw these little glimpses of there cultures/maybe there own agendas a little? and we saw little ways they had started influencing the culture of the humans... THAT WAS ACTUALLY INTERESTING. If the first  half had focused more on building that stuff I would have liked it way more. Additionally... what was with the priest alien religion thing? It felt like something they could do some interesting themes with. Like they kind of presented Godzilla as like a divine judgement thing in this movie. with the way godzilla was just always in the right place to screw over Humanity. Like humanoids going to build mechagodzilla? Godzilla’s there. People fleeing the planet? Godzilla’s there. People destroyed Gojira light? Mega level Godzilla’s here to ruin morale. Which okay that’s a valid theme and presentation. Why then does it mostly feel like that’s just the priests’ opinions? I didn’t feel like they really sold the religion and that idea as an actual theme and more like a plot device, like it’ll be what the priests are trying to tell people. It always felt like the religion aspect was something others were a part of not our main characters other than priest guy who again possibly has own agenda (i’m really not certain what was poor writing and what was purposeful and what was maybe just something I missed as far as the characterization goes). Maybe that it was there going for though? In which case why does Godzilla’s actions fit that theme? Maybe there’ll be reason for it? Maybe we’ll find out godzilla was being controlled by the priests all along?... Honestly that makes the most sense to me, though I don’t think that’s necessarily a good plot line...

I’m pretty sure there’s more I could go on about, but those were my biggest stand out concerns that I remember off the top of my head several days after viewing it. Ultimately the film was pretty boring for a godzilla movie both in visuals and plot, though it was not the worst by any means (that honor itself is a tossup [ (personally choices anyway) Godzilla raids again, All Monsters attack, Godzilla vs Megaguirus, Destroy all Monsters, maybe Space Godzilla]). I’m still a Godzilla fan so I’ll inevitably watch the remaining ones in the hopes that either it’ll get better or that it’ll crash and burn in an interesting way. Well having gotten that off of my chest, I’m going to go back to actual work now

[finitetime-blog1]

( OKAY SO I was gonna type up a big volume 4 round up in suite of my usual style of episode round up but... I’m very tired and busy so instead of that I’m going to do a mini one -

Scratch that I just finished writing it and it’s long as fuck, not as in-depth as usual but still way too long. I have no concept of paraphrasing. enjoy this mess of unanswered questions, subtle salt, and rambling.

Once again Seb’s magical prediction powers strike again as I predicted that fight and how it would go. I would have loved to see more out of the horseman grimm but honestly, I knew they were just going to use it as a final cop out thing to make the last episode of the volume exciting.

It seems that the characters are sort of heading to a point where they’ll meet up. Yang is following Ruby, JNR and Qrow to Mistral and Weiss is heading to Haven. Blake’s plotting her revolution in Menagerie and Watts is in Mistral with Lionheart. And now as seen in the end credits scene, Oscar is also in Mistral with Qrow. And, as we also discovered in that end credits scene, Qrow now knows that Ozpin is alive and inside of Oscar’s head. He also seemed weirdly calm about learning that information, like this isn’t the first time he’s heard of something like this happening...

Anyway- it didn’t feel like a lot happened his volume. And that’s most because this season was a setup for season 5 in which I imagine a lot of things will happen. Team RWBY will find their way back to each other, at least for sure, Weiss, Yang and Ruby. Not so sure about Blake yet. We’ll see a lot of Oscar traveling and learning through Qrow and Ozpin providing commentary and helpful hints from his comfy cranium chair. Salem’s gang will intercept in a lot of plans and it will either trick everyone or Oz will catch on immediately and team RNJR+Yang+Qrow+Oscar will have to operate pretty much by the seat of their own pants.

We’ll see. They set up a lot for season 5 and also left a lot up in the air. We know the main four’s intentions and we know that Salem’s lackies have their hands in all of Ozpin’s business now that he’s not immediately there to keep an eye on things. 

Some shit we don’t have any idea about and can’t be certain we’ll even find out in season 5 include: What the fuck Raven’s intentions are and who’s side her tribe are playing for. Whether Emerald and Mercury are going to stay by Cinder’s side out of loyalty or if they’re having second thoughts. Where the maidens are and who’s looking after them. What the relics are and where they are. If Taiyang will ever join the big boys table and fight as a Guardian. Where the fuck Neo is at or if we’ll ever see her again/if she’ll ever be plot relevant (I have my doubts), etc, etc.

Most of which are detail points that likely don’t need to or won’t need to be ironed out until later.

My biggest question, as it usually is, is whether or not Ozpin is getting his body back. And how. Because Oz can’t do much or help anyone from the inside of some farm kid’s head and his part in this whole thing is way not small enough for him to just become irrelevant suddenly. Especially as it becomes more apparent that not all of Ozpin’s previous contacts, aka Lionheart, are trustworthy. And since we know that the headmasters of each of the academies are in charge of the relic’s and their whereabouts, that’s a very dangerous prospect. We’ve also seen that Ironwood resents Ozpin pretty strongly and I can’t imagine that if Ozpin made a return he’d ever follow Oz’s plans again. In fact he’s become a little power mad I’ve noticed. 

Which means that two of four relic holders are playing for opposing sides, neither of which line up with Ozpin’s own. It’s actually starting to mimic the old war. I wonder where Vacuo’s headmaster plays into this... hm.. anyway-

Obviously shit is being played on the big boy level and Oz is at the center of it all which means keeping him trapped in Oscar’s head for the rest of eternity seems like a huge detriment to the story.

So... are they going to let him out of there or is the Crwby going to continue to disappoint me and find some convoluted way to keep him trapped eternally and replace his character position with Oscar’s. Because if it’s option number two I’m going to throw a fit.

Long story short, season 4, an okay season. Some good character development, a massive heavy handed load of exposition, and some really unnecessary drama for the sake of trying to make an otherwise rather dull set up season interesting. Not bad but certainly not going to steal anyone’s favorite season spot. 

Ultimately left me with more questions then answers and gave me more answers to questions i never bothered to ask because they weren’t pressing or interesting. 

Could be better but I’m not exactly ranting and raving about it either. I give season 4 a shrug emoji out of ten.

[murasaki-murasame]

Danganronpa V3 Liveblog Part 14 [Chapter 4 - Trial]

Huh.

Thoughts under the cut.

Well I can’t say this game doesn’t know how to surprise me!

I, uh . . . was not expecting it to be Gonta, at all. I really don’t know how to feel about it. This seems like the sort of case I’ll need to sit on for a while.

Anyway, just to get it out the way from the start, I’m honestly glad that my whole guess about Kokichi’s motives in all this were wrong, since, as I also said, I figured that if I was right, it’d probably be handled badly and just be a really uncomfortable experience. Although on the other hand, my main issue with this case is that I just . . . feel a little empty about what ACTUALLY happened, motive-wise.

I may as well just dive right into my issues with it all. The bottom line is that Gonta being the murderer just . . . came out of nowhere. I’m not saying that you couldn’t suspect him from the start, it’s just . . . he didn’t feel relevant to the case at all until the very last minute, and we had no real way of guessing his motive. I don’t really dislike the idea that he tried to kill everyone as an act of mercy, but it kinda came completely out of nowhere and there was no real way to predict it. And the whole detail of Gonta having lost his memories of even committing the crime made the whole thing just feel . . . weird. I don’t even know if I’d say it was depressing, it just . . . felt weird.

Like, I’ve talked before about how much I love and adore Gonta, and how much I wanted him to beat the odds and survive, but instead of feeling sad about him dying, I’m just left like ‘wait what’.

I also feel like, even though I technically didn’t guess the culprit right at all, the logic of the entire trial felt really . . . simple? I was actually almost disappointed at how simple it was. I expected something much more complicated.

Like, for example, near the start of the case I thought that maybe the avatar user error was about how Kokichi might have hacked into the program in advance to disable the paralyzing effect on his avatar, so that he could have killed Miu and then hid behind that rule as a cover to say that it was impossible for him to do it. But I guess we were meant to take that whole plot point at face value because there wasn’t any real twist to it beyond it being an explanation for why Kokichi wasn’t the culprit.

And on the note of the avatar user error, the whole thing with Gonta screwing up felt . . . lame? Like, you definitely could have guessed it in advance if you thought about his dialogue instead of just brushing it off, so I’m not calling it unpredictable or completely out of nowhere, it’s just that it felt like a disappointing answer to that little mystery. It pretty much didn’t even serve a real story purpose beyond making Gonta more sympathetic in the end, since him just lying to hide his guilt would have caused more or less the same end result. It also lead to the Alter Ego thing I guess, which in itself felt like a slightly weird repeat of, well, Alter Ego, and to a lesser extent Mini-Mechamaru, but I guess that got immediately taken out as a plot point in the execution. It was just weird all around.

I also spent the entire case suspecting Kaito because, well, even though I thought he didn’t intentionally do anything, I thought that maybe Kokichi had messed with something in the program that caused Kaito to unwittingly be responsible for Miu’s death. Maybe there was some weird body swapping/fake identity thing going on that confused the system and made the log-in/out data inaccurate. Who knows. Then I thought later on that the motive put into the game might have been something to motivate him to kill Miu, like info on a cure for his disease. I’m obviously glad that none of this happened, since it means that he gets to stick around for a bit longer, but still.

It’s also just a bit weird that the entire point of this trial was basically ‘Kokichi is pure human evil on every level, he’s a genuinely awful person who manipulated someone into murder, and then spent the entire trial being annoying and insulting people’. I wasn’t expecting much in the way of a redemption arc or whatever, but yikes. Doing all that pretty much just to make everyone else feel bad and make some sort of a moral point to prove his superiority is . . . eh.

I also don’t know how to feel about the idea that he might not have even been telling the truth about the outside world to Gonta, and that everything he did really was just deceitful manipulation to engineer a killing game for no real purpose other than messing with people. Which added a whole other layer of weirdness and, to a degree, pointlessness to everything that happened.

It does still raise the question of what he actually saw in the outside world, especially if the implication is that it’s not equally as bad as the academy or even worse. But it was delivered in a way where it didn’t do much to make me any more curious about the truth.

They also revealed the deal with the tile stone at the end of the chapter, and so I guess that was also just Kokichi being manipulative and wanting to make himself seem powerful and important. Huh. It doesn’t really . . . tell us anything new. So that’s a bit disappointing.

I mean, I’m still curious about what the hell is even going on in this story behind the scenes, but this chapter didn’t necessarily change things too much in that regard.

A big part of this is probably just that I’m still not a fan of Kokichi as a character, especially after this chapter. He’s just kinda awful. He isn’t even that interesting or nuanced in terms of him being an antagonist out to perpetuate the killing game. He mostly just comes across as a self-absorbed compulsive liar. I really hope he gets more interesting during the rest of the game.

It’s kinda hard for the whole message he tried to send of ‘the truth is depressing and you all suck for wanting to discover it!’ to really land with me when it’s, again, not exactly a new point, and he went about it in a really contrived and forced kind of way. I know it was obviously intentional, but I related pretty hard to how everybody’s reaction in the end wasn’t ‘wow you’re right Kokichi, the truth IS depressing!’, but instead ‘what the fuck is wrong with you, Kokichi?’. I don’t exactly think that Shuichi of all people needs to be told that the truth is depressing and maybe isn’t worth pursuing. That’s literally his entire emotional hang-up.

I wonder how much of my perpetual annoyance at Kokichi is caused by how I really adored Komaeda as a character, and that Kokichi doesn’t really compare favourably to him. It feels wrong to compare them, but it’s impossible not to. I just feel like Kokichi feels way more shallow and one-note and unsympathetic than Komaeda ever did.

Also, just to continue this whole rant a bit more, now I’m left confused about the little stinger moment in the virtual world, and his apparent grudge against Kaito. I feel like none of that came up at all. This isn’t even entirely about the fact that my speculation about how that all connected and what Kokichi’s motives were was wrong. As I said, me being wrong about that part is almost a relief more than anything. I’m just confused that NOTHING seemed to happen with those details. Kokichi definitely pinned a lot of the blame on Kaito throughout the trial, but near the end it’s like he just shrugged his shoulders, went ‘actually Gonta’s the culprit’, and then the entire trial just veered off in a completely new direction. It was odd. I really thought that Kokichi had a grudge against Kaito specifically due to some sort of jealousy and bitterness, but . . . maybe not? Or maybe it just hasn’t come to the forefront yet? Both of them are still alive, so maybe it’s just being pushed off until later. The fact that the moment of Kokichi talking to himself about how he acts when he finds someone he likes didn’t really come up again was more confusing and weird, though. That seemed like such a big, ominous, mysterious little moment, but it kinda got forgotten about. I hope it’ll come up again later.

I feel like I’m more or less alone in being so annoyed at Kokichi since everyone seems to love him. Well, I see where people are coming from. I mean, I loved Komaeda as a character, so it’s not like I don’t get the appeal of manipulative and antagonistic characters. But something about Kokichi is just insufferable to me.

Then again, I’ve also seen lots of people hate Shuichi for being boring, and even though I get where people like that are coming from, I can’t help but side-eye everyone’s tastes. Shuichi is my wonderful boy and I will protect him.

Anyway, before I forget, I should comment on the Monokubs for a minute. For one thing, I was surprised to see them BOTH die during the execution. But most of all, I’m almost 100% certain now about them somehow being related to the survivors of whatever killing game Rantarou took place in. Or something like that. The way Monotaro kept talking about how he was on the verge of remembering stuff kinda spells out that he was involved in some stuff in the past. I’m not sure where that’s going to go, though.

Back to the case, as I said before, it just felt . . . simple. And the surprising parts didn’t really feel ‘difficult’, they just felt . . . surprising. I dunno how to put it. I feel like there were only a tiny handful of moments in the entire trial where I felt unsure about exactly what to do. The vast majority of the time I instantly knew what the answer was. Sometimes the exact wording of the answer threw me off a bit, but I basically always knew what the game expected from me. I think I mostly got a bit thrown off at a few of the ‘pick a truth bullet out of the entire list to answer a question’ moments. The Hangman’s Gambit sections were also a little iffy but I think all of them were ones where it just took a while for me to understand which exact phrasing of the answer the game expected from me.

Even in chapter three where I basically guessed the culprit immediately, the actual logic of most of the debates still threw me off big-time. I really doubt that it’s JUST because I decided to play this trial during the afternoon rather than at midnight like the earlier ones.

Thinking back at my last post, I think I guessed most of the main points of the trial in advance. There were definitely things I didn’t fully grasp, but most of them were things that I don’t really feel too bad about not being able to guess, in hindsight. I do feel kinda dumb about not considering that the toilet paper could have been used as a rope, though. I think it just threw me off that the roll seemed entirely ‘intact’, and not as if it had been unraveled out.

I wonder if the game genuinely expected me to be surprised by the details of how the virtual world worked, because I figured that out immediately.

I’m really happy that Kaito wasn’t the culprit, one way or another, even though it makes me feel even more bad about suspecting him yet again. I don’t think I can be blamed for that, though. And really, I didn’t think he intentionally did anything. I was just paranoid that Kokichi might have done something to somehow make Kaito unwittingly kill Miu.

It was definitely interesting seeing him be the Argument Armament person this time around. It’s not unprecedented to get cases like this, but still. It’s mostly intriguing because I still feel like the game is setting him up to be a culprit later, in the sense that his illness might eventually push him to murder someone in a desperate attempt to escape and get treatment. So in that case, I just wonder if they’d use him a second time for that section, or if they’d have a separate person step in to defend him like what happened in this chapter. The latter option seems more likely, but getting two cases like that in one game would seem a bit odd.

And on the whole note of Kaito maybe being a killer later, I hope that it’s not intended to be a huge surprise if that’s where it goes, since we’ve spent the entire last chapter and a half setting up this whole plot point in the brightest neon coloured text possible. I guess we’ll see.

It’s also worth considering that we probably only have one case left in the game, MAYBE two if we do cut the cast down to just two people in the end, so if Kaito IS meant to be a killer soon, it’d be a bit lame to have what would potentially be the final killer be so predictable. Ignoring the obvious emotional weight it’d have, there’s just the simple fact that if there’s just one case left, then if there’s one specific character who’s being set up as a future culprit, there’s no real alternative option. Even if there’s two cases left it’d basically be a 50/50 possibility. But with how this chapter went, and how it ended, I feel like whatever’s going on with Kaito will come to a head in the next chapter. So we’ll see.

It’d definitely be depressing as hell to see Shuichi need to expose Kaito as a murderer and lead him to his death. Hypothetically. And it’d hurt to potentially see Kaito spend an entire trial lying to Shuichi. But we’ll see. Maybe I’m completely wrong about where this is going.

Come to think of it, I feel a little silly about devoting this entire chapter’s set of free time events to Kaito since he ended up not dying, but hey, it’s not a bad thing. Even if I definitely think that playing his events got me into an inaccurate head-space in terms of trying to guess at the direction of this chapter, it was still nice to see his events through to the end. It would have been worse if he’d died before I got to see them all. Especially since I really did love his free time events as a whole. I’m glad I did them.

And on the note of free time events, part of me wants to try and max out Kokichi next just to see if maybe there’s some redemptive core to his character to potentially shift my feelings toward him, but for one thing I have a feeling that for story reasons Shuichi will refuse to spend time with him now, and for another thing, I don’t even know if I care enough to keep talking to him. This late into the game I’d rather do what I can to max out Maki’s free time events. I hope I can get that done in time.

Oh, and before I forget, I feel a bit stupid for not realizing that the key card Kokichi had gave him access to the secret room in the library. I had to see someone else point that out for me to put two and two together. I genuinely forgot all about that plot point, since it never really came up again after chapter one. I suppose that if anyone wanted to call it bad writing, that Shuichi never seemed to figure out what it was for, I couldn’t really blame them, but I don’t feel too annoyed about it.

Anyway, that’s basically all of my main thoughts on this trial. It was . . . a weird one. From what little I’ve seen of people’s thoughts on the game, I think I’m probably in a minority for feeling so deflated and disappointed in response to it. That’s fine. Not every case is going to work for everyone. I just think it took some bizarre turns in it’s final act, and wasn’t anywhere near as complex and interesting as I expected.

After how intensely negative this entire post was, I should clarify that I didn’t outright hate this chapter, and I’m not gonna stop playing the game or anything. It just didn’t really work for me in the end.

On a positive note, I guess I should specify that I really appreciate Miu’s attempts to set up a scenario to kill Kokichi in. Her whole plan was great, even though it was pretty easy to guess in advance. But I mean, I can’t help but cheer for anyone who wanted to murder this dude. I ended up liking her character in general a lot more than I thought I would. Apparently she was designed to be as intentionally off-putting as possible, which I can see, but she was so over the top that I couldn’t help but like her. I think most people would agree with me on that.

Also, as a side note, I took a look at the extras menu for the first time. I figured it’d have spoilers in it so I kept putting it off, but in the end I just felt that if they gave me the option to look into it now, there probably won’t be any spoilers. And I don’t think there are, thankfully. I'll probably just flick through it all once the game’s over, so I just sorta skimmed through the list, but the ‘intimacy scenes’ option kinda caught me by surprise. I know that there’s gonna be a bonus post-game Dating Sim Mode, but I didn’t expect to see this sort of option in the extras. I imagine that, unless it’s a joke option of some kind, it’s probably equivalent to the rank ten social link events in Persona, or something. I’m not exactly expecting anything, y’know, explicit, even from an option called ‘intimacy scenes’. I think that was what it was called anyway. I’m kinda surprised that the option seems to already be available, and that it’s not part of Dating Sim Mode. But I didn’t check it so maybe I’m wrong about it. I’m basically just expecting romance-y date/confession scenes, and/or some fanservice-y CGs. Since the title image thing for it seemed to have both Kaede and Shuichi on it, I hope that the events in it aren’t confined to just one or another of their POVs. That’d be nice. I have the same sort of hope for Dating Sim Mode, as I think I said before.

Basically what I’m saying is that I want my Shuichi/Kaito romance route, even as a non-canon extra thing. That’s basically all I want, lol.

But yeah I think that’s it for today. Not sure if I’ll play any of this tomorrow or if I’ll take a break.