#5 different dogs

[dyinggoosenoises]

today has actually been so fucking overstimulating

[lonepower]

yes i Am paying real money to make you all look at our new dog. we've had her for 3 hours and if anything happened to her I'd kill everyone in this room and then myself. her name is Tater Tot

[heartorbit]

searching for a star that's still unknown to anyone!

[stayatsam]

Beware the dog that bites (OC)

[salamispots]

hmmm probs won't go with this style but we'll see

[originalartblog]

1 year and 4 months later: ANIME EDITION (x)

[chippedcupwrites]

Sandor Clegane & Arya Stark + emoji kitchen

[nashvillethotchicken]

The fact I haven't seen that many people talk about how lestat did the exact same thing his father did to him to Claudia by forcibly removing her from the train in ep 6 is a real disservice to both Claudia and Lestat

[sskk-manifesto]

Bones do not end the season with sskk being gay challenge failed magnificently

[livein-yellow-submarine]

unhinged person

[prettyboy-remi]

Explorer

[sergle]

i'm very into Dog Breed Stats and i think everyone should look up the stats on the breeds they like on the AKC website whenever possible.... for fun. also: it's this specific stat that really was the final thing to tip the scale, when I decided to search for a golden retriever instead of a pomeranian.

pom:

golden:

[danhoemei]

I'm only halfway through fangs of fortune and i am an emotional wreck, this show is messing with my emotions in all possible ways, from heart-wrenching PAIN to immeasurable LOVE, i am a MESS, what is happening 😭

[miraculouslbcnreactions]

I wouldn't really agree that boys are just arm candy in magical girl shows and only there to look cute. Yeah, sure the girls' friendships are the focus, but the boys are usually very much involved in the plot and most shows do explore their feelings about the odd things that happen due to magical shenanigans even if they aren't in the know (It's why ML baffles me even more with how they screwed up Adren's arc when he's the deuteragonist, when all these boys are supporting cast and get well rounded arcs)

I'm not much of a winx fan, but the specialists were very much not arm candy. Did the girls talk about them being cute? Yes, it's what teenage girls do. Did the narrative suggest they were good looking? Yes, but that's standard for most love interests in any genre. But we still got scenes with them talking amongst themselves about how they themselves feel and they got a fair share of badass fight scenes even if they wield no magic. A large amount of episodes actually included the boys and girls working as a team solving a mystery or fighting a villain. The girls might deal the finishing blow but the boys were still integral to the plot.

I hope this doesn't come across as hate, it definitely wasn't my intention. I'm just a bit too passionate about the magical girl genre.

I do think you have a good point with ML having a problem choosing a genre or blending two genres successfully.

For the CCS fans, I will add though that Cardcaptor Sakura had both Tomoyo and Syaoran serve as sources of motivation for Sakura. And both Sakura and Syaoran collecting cards even if Sakura is the only one who could seal them and yet never made you question whether Syaoran was even necessary for the job the way ml does with Chat.

I wasn't trying to say that boys have no part to play in magical girl team shows or that they're always treated as having no lives beyond the girls, that's why I mentioned that the Winx Club boys - aka, the Specialists - have their own (mostly off screen) lives and occasionally show up help the girls:

the boys are usually off doing their own thing and only occasionally show up for a date or to give the girls a ride on their cool bikes or magical spaceship

Even then, this is certainly a simplification of the roles that they play in the story, but I kind of had to simplify their roles down to their base components for the original post's discussion as I was talking in broad strokes of how these stories are written.

In terms of those broad strokes, the Specialists are absolutely only there for shipping fodder. That's why each one is assigned to a girl from the start and why their main role in the narrative is supporting their assigned love interest or causing relationship-based drama for their assigned love interest. If it weren't for shipping, then the Specialists would not exist.

While the Specialists do have fleshed out characters and may even effect the plot, the execution of those elements is designed around the girls. A really obvious example of this is the character Timmy, who has character development as the boy's tech guy. Why is he into technology? Because he's the designated love interest for the fairy of Technology and we have to show why they're a good match. Along similar lines, the boys don't really get plots that are removed from the girls because this is the girl's show. Every episode features one or more of the Winx, but the boys are optional and often don't appear.

This is because, narratively speaking, the boys are just love interests and that brings us back to Miraculous' big problem. You can't have a show where Adrien is written like a Specialist while also being part of the Winx Club and where Alya is written like she's part of the Winx Club while technically being more of a Specialist in terms of power set and actual narrative role.

I'm was thinking back to my memories of various Winx Club plots to find one that really highlighted what I mean here and I remembered that one of the big dramas in season one was the reveal that Bloom's love interest - Sky - was in an arranged marriage and had just never told her. As it turns out, that's a great example of what I'm talking about re Adrien!

Is that plot line technically based around Sky and letting his life effect the plot? Sure, but the fallout of that reveal revolves around Bloom, not Sky. The story doesn't really care how Sky's feeling as the conflict progresses. Instead, it focuses on how it affects Bloom and her friends because of course it does! She's the main character. It would be really weird if that plot suddenly focused on her side character love interest and his friends during one of her darkest hours/biggest moments.

Think of that and then consider how the ending of season five is written. Notice any similarities? Sure, this is Adrien's family drama, but because he's just a Specialist, the focus isn't on him. It's on Winx Club member Marinette and Adrien only shows up at the end for a kiss. That is the problem. That is what I'm talking about when I say that Miraculous will randomly write him as if we're watching a magical girl team show where Adrien is just the love interest.

In fact, let's really dig into this example because it's a good one.

You can have a look at the transcript for the finale episode of Miraculous season five here and see for yourself that Adrien doesn't even show up on screen until the final scenes when the big drama is over. The Winx Club wiki also has episode transcripts, so I took a look to see what happened in Winx land during the arranged marriage reveal plot (I love that this is a thing. It's so useful for fact checking myself!) This is the script for the episode after Bloom learns the truth. Sky does not appear even though his lies and family drama are the fuel for this episode's events, which are a major part of the season's arc. Note how perfectly that matches Adrien's writing?

Similarly, Sky's dialogue in the reveal episode is all about Bloom. He's worried about her learning the truth and thinking less of him. To match that, here's Adrien's only real dialogue in the penultimate episode of season five (full transcript):

Adrien:(Covers his ears.) I cannot transform... (Looks at his ring and tries taking it off.) Plagg: What are you doing?! Adrien: I'm not in my right mind. I'm too angry — at myself for falling short of Marinette's love, at my father for sending me here in London, at this stupid app and these rings that use my image... it makes me sick! This nightmare is giving me the horrible feeling that, if I transform, I'll get akumatized and destroy everything with my Cataclysm — Marinette, Ladybug... (Takes off the ring and hands it to Plagg.)

Switching back to Winx. After Bloom learns the truth about Sky, bad things happen because she's depressed. This results in her and the Winx going off on a journey to learn the truth of who Bloom is. After the girls share this big plot moment and Bloom gets her mojo back, the boys show up to be their ride home and to give Bloom her romance moment where Sky wins her back by declaring that he broke off the arranged married because he loves her.

Sky notably doesn't get an arc about choosing between his arranged marriage and his true love. We don't even know that the marriage is broken off until he tells Bloom because that was never really a conflict as far as the narrative was concerned. Of course he's going to pick Bloom! He's her designated side character love interest! He only exists to be with her. We don't need to treat this as a serious thing for him. The arranged marriage plot was never about him anyway. It was about giving Bloom a reason to have a darkest hour moment that moves the plot forward. Similarly, Sky calling off the marriage is nowhere near as important as him telling Bloom that he's called off the marriage to be with her in a grand romantic gesture.

This perfectly mirrors Miraculous' season five ending where Adrien doesn't appear until after Marinette is done fighting her big girl power fight against his father. As far as the writing is concerned, that fight isn't about him. His connection to the villain only really matters in terms of how it affects Marinette's actions during the final battle. Then, when the battle is over, Adrien shows up to give Marinette her big romance moment because, while the plot may be driven by Adrien's family, he is not a Winx club member. He's just a Specialist. Or, in the words of the head writer:

[image text: She's Barbie, he's Ken. You don't like it. I get it. It won't change. Anything else?] (The full, even more damning context of this tweet can be found here.)

What else can I say other than, "I rest my case."

Oh, and also that I didn't take this as an attack. I just thought it was a good opportunity to really dig into the nuances of this and what I was talking about in that original post as I never know how obvious this stuff is if you don't closely study story telling. As this case study hopefully shows, if a show is about a group of girl friends using the power of friendship, then their love interests may have important roles, but the boys are never going to be more important than the girls and most of the boy's screen time will be focused on romance and how their existence effects the girls because it's ultimately the girls' world. Without them, the show wouldn't exist. Without the boys? Well, then we just wouldn't have a romance plot.

[kyouka-supremacy]

Again the sickness speaking but here's something that has been going through my mind since forever:

I feel like a good way to mitigate a lot of discontent with the doa arc ending and in general the whole Dazai-being-flawless issue bsd has going on is by comparing bsd to Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle. Please bear with me for two minutes.

When Sherlock Holmes was being published, people were intrigued and enamoured by Holmes' brilliant and charming, crimes-solving figure. People read the stories for the pure joy of being left gaping at his superhuman wits again and again; they didn't want to see him fail, they wanted to be shocked and amazed by his genius. When Holmes died and then came back, nobody lamented it being unrealistic, because realism was not what people were reading the books for! They were reading to be impressed, to cheer for the hero and then take satisfaction in seeing him turn out victorious. That's the author-reader deal that was made there: to impress and to enjoy being impressed.

As of recently I feel like we've been asking from bsd something it never promised us in the first place. Maybe it's just not that kind of series! Maybe it's more about surprising the reader with how the hero is going to make it and less about highlighting his flaws and insecurities. And like, that's okay! That's why Dazai getting away with it isn't it him getting away with it “again”, it's just how bsd is; in a way, it's what makes bsd bsd.

I think it really clicked with me like it never did before when I watched the last episode of season 5; because the arc ending felt so shocking and unpredictable, very deus-ex-machina trope, a little underwhelming in its lowering the stakes that were there the whole time, and yet so extremely on brand with bsd, I didn't even have it in me to be disappointed. It was so similar to the Guild's arc ending and even more to the Cannibalism arc ending, and maybe it really is just a pattern, maybe it really is what bsd aspires to be, and that's okay too.

Also, I can't stretch this enough: if it's not your cup of tea, that's fine. I can't say it's mine either. But I feel like criticizing bsd now for how it's always been falls quite short, because it really feels like demanding from it what it never promised to deliver in the first place. That's just as far as my current perception of the series goes, though, so feel free to disagree with me on this.

[dazaistabletop]