#I have exactly 0 memories of watching this show

[eelektrossfan]

Characters with goggles? Always awesome

[omni-present-god-send]

A short crack-fic

A short crack-fic I made based on @lets-try-some-writing

and their Unicron is a Dad AU. Enjoy. Or don't. I don't give a shit.

Basically: Unicron learns about that one time Megatron almost killed Raf with a blast of Dark Energon. Let's just say, don't try and kill a favorite child of a God of Chaos.

~

Unicron has been watching over the children for some time now. Always as Chitters. A small squirrel that Raf has brought on. He loaths to admit it, but the three children have very much become his favorites. Esspessially Miko. A child of his own spark.

Unfortunitly, this is not about Miko. It's about the youngest of his favorites. Rafael.

Of course the day started as normal. Chitters would chew some wires, Ratchet would try and cut him down; Chitters would remain victorious. 27:0 to be precise. But who's counting? Certanly not Unicron, definatly.

Then something...odd happened. Bulkhead shot at something on the wall. Whatever it was, Unicron couldn't give two shits, as Raf immediately hit the deck. Raf covered his head with his hands and started shaking. Violently.

"Raf! Are you ok? Hey hey hey. Breath." Jack soothed. Miko rubbed Raf's back as Chitters slowly crawled his way to Raf's face. Rubbing his head against Raf's tear-stained cheek.

It took every ounce of self-restraint for Unicron to not smite Bulkhead right then and there. It was only what Jack said next that stopped Unicron in his, metaphorical, tracks. "It's alright Raf. Megatron can't hurt you here." He said it so quietly that Unicron almost couldn't hear it. He decided to wait on any smiting until after he got more information.

That turned out to be a very wise decision. As, that night, Unicron paid Raf a special visit. It was not uncommon for Unicron to visit his little ones. Especially his Special Three. NEver telling them who he actually was, out of respect for their fears. What? He may care for them but he is a God of Chaos and they know it. He doesn't exactly have a reputation for being super caring. This visit was different form his previous ones. He was not just here to comfort Raf after his day. He needed to know what happened.

As Unicron sang an ancient song to bring comfort and safety. He did a bit of exploring in Raf’s memory. Nothing invasive mind you. Just enough to get the information he needed. What he found sent fire through his very spark.

Megatron had nearly killed Raf. Deliberately. Firing a blast of Dark Energon at Bumblebee with Raf inside. A little more investigation was required. The next night he went to Jack. Then the next, Miko. He found memories of Raf’s near corpse. The felt the panic. The fear. The pain. The anger.

In his search, Unicron gained something other then just a new-found anger at Megatron. His opinion of the Special Three have changed as well. Not in a negative way. Each night just further proved why they were each the favorite.

Raf stayed alive for over an hour out of sheer force of will after the blast. Jack tried to be level headed and came up with practical solutions to help Raf survive. Miko, once again showing their similarities, made so many detailed plans to make Megatron suffer it was almost concerning. Each one got a special song those nights. Unicron had almost forgotten how much he enjoyed singing.

Unicron was furious. His once chosen champion, had tried to kill one of his favorite Children. This would not stand. The good thing about his brothers children is that they didn’t sleep, not like his superior children at least. So it was incredibly easy to torment Megatron.

For days Unicron tormented Megatron. Visions of Optimus ripping his face off. Of dying in the endless vacuum of space. Of rusting at the bottom of the ocean. Of getting his still beating spark ripped out. That last one was straight from Miko.

Unicron watched in amusement as Megatron became more and more paranoid. Praying to him, asking what all the visions mean.

While this was happening, Things were slow back at base. Chitters was still winning. 30:0. Things had quieted down. As since Megatron was being plagued by visions of his demise, the Decepticons have had little activity.

As much as Unicron loved tormenting Megatron. His focus would always be his children. His Special Three.

I wrote this instead of doing my math homework lmao.

[deadguywalkin]

seb+sam+alex hcs because i am STILL gay and extremely evil + some pre t seb hcs because… sigh

( sam+alex centric!! aside from the last part )

cw: dramatic switch from ‘yeah alex and sam are traumatized’ to ‘sam likes boobs’. that pretty much sums this up. (minimal nsfw and most of it is jokey)

jewelry:

alex: minimal. no rings or bracelets because they get in the way. ‘does sam’s pick count? c’mon, i’m an edgy boy too!!’

sam: medium. face piercings and some rings

sebastian: not actually that much, but he only wears silver. gothic necklaces of dragons on swords, silver rings, and the likes. maybe even a blood vial.

hands:

alex: missing his whole index finger?? big big hands with some little scars. engulfs whoever’s hand he’s holding.

sam: calloused fingers, tiny scars from hurting himself a lot on accident. he has very shaky hands. also has his little memory bands

sebastian: thin fingers and careful, steady hands. chipped black nail polish. there is more of a reddish tint on his knuckles.

—————

sebastian carries bandaids on him because sam is an idiot and alex is also an idiot (they’re not idiots they just have 0 spatial awareness)

alex wears sam’s guitar pick as a necklace. i refuse to draw him without it

alex carries their band equipment when sam whines about being too lazy to do it

seb never gets scared during horror movies or any horror experiences. however samalex are gripping onto each other like they’re about to die

alex cannot bear to watch super violent graphic stuff for obvious reasons. sambastian will always skip those parts ahead in movies for him because they already know. not that he can’t do it himself, but it’s just a small gesture.

alex is a huge ‘i’m sorry, did i do something wrong? I’m really sorry. you can tell me if i did.’ kind of guy when the vibes are off. he just has a fear of being useless or annoying and needs to be reassured.

sam needs to be reassured that he doesn’t have to always take care of everyone or constantly be the emotional support beacon. he also needs some support and to take a break!!

sam just has his best friends memorized by heart. ‘you were gonna ask abbie to hang out..? bro, don’t you know? she’s gonna have a headache tomorrow.’

sam has a habit of biting at his lips, ‘my mouth gets bored!

samalex are insanely emotionally intelligent, compassionate and understanding even if they’re not all there. they’re more tender and sweet when it comes to someone opening up and just know exactly what to say and what they need to hear.

on sebs end, he’s pretty bad at reading people and understanding everyone even if he’s smarter than the other two are. he’s quick to get it but doesn’t know how to comfort people and is more of a chill ‘oh.. that sucks, dude. me too, anyways, wanna light a blunt and talk about it?’ kind of guy

^^ he’s only good at that stuff when it comes to understanding books/movies/music. that’s where it’s over for samalex (sam aside from the music part

“what are you watching?”

“a 6 hour commentary video about sonic.exe”

“adventure time!!”

“black mirror.”

“oh..”

(sam has a short attention span but locks in when it comes to commentary videos about random niche shit)

pre-t trans seb down here

alex to pre top surgery seb: “c’mere.. stress balls”

post top surgery seb to alex: “c’mere.. stress balls.”

sam just enjoys having his face stuffed in boobs. doesn’t care wether they’re pecs ‘boobs’ or regular boobs.

seb is confident in his gender pre t or not. he’s more of a ‘i genuinely believe and know i am a man’ than a ‘i want to be a man’

..as confident as he is and as much as he loves them, he feels a slight resentment to samalex because he just feels this hint of jealousy and insecurity around them. they’re just such big representations of masculinity. it makes him feel a little sick that he feels that way because he knows he should love and appreciate them for being patient, he just can’t help it. he will find himself comparing them to him.

sebastian randomly showed up at sam’s house on a random night when he was younger and came out to him before he asked for help cutting all of his hair off. he already had his emo shag but ended up keeping it 

seb has a hard time remembering to take his binder off.. though it makes him feel better in his skin, his ribs are about to explode.

cuddling and then a hand just reaches up and.. squeeze (seb doesn’t even question it)

this ones a bit of a shorter dump;p

[hikennosabo]

#tristampparty day 12, episode 0: high noon at july

LAST DAY OF @tristampparty ALREADY LET'S GOOOOOO

bang, bang!! nai liking movies is such a cute little detail, (it's in the manga too!!) i don't think it gets talked about enough. he went from thinking gunslinging heroes were cool to guns being a coward's weapon...

i still can't really fully wrap my head around the higher dimension... it contains the "core" of the plants and... it's where plants pull matter and energy from...? yeah i CANNOT fathom it actually

also like. how did humans even discover how plants worked and what they could do. assuming the lore is the same as in the manga (for what lore there is in the manga...) and humans created plants. who what when where why how. humans made plants and use plants every day yet they're such a black box... uuaaaaa (steam comes out of my ears from thinking too hard)

zazie's priority lies with the planet itself and whether or not worms will be able to continue to live and thrive on it, but i wish we got to see more of what the worms need to like. actually live and survive. they have a hivemind so they can't truly "die" (i guess unless every single worm is wiped out), but what do they need to live? we see that the giant worms eat humans, but what did they eat before humans crashed on the planet? tomas? other worms? do they photosynthesize? do they need to breathe? humans use worms for food and resources, but what exactly would knives have do to the planet to make it unlivable for the worms?

the song that vash sings is... the song knives plays on his piano. in the original/98, the song that was important to vash was rem's song. here, that... may or may not be the case...? vash says the song "just comes to him," but in this scene he's forgotten rem... then again, the song isn't what helps him remember her.

there was a theory post from a while ago that posited this song is the voice, or... frequency of the plants(?) which could very well be the case. vash and knives taking that frequency and singing or playing it in a way humans can hear... rem was onto something when she called them a bridge.

i wonder how much of this scene is an actual memory. maybe vash did sing that song, and nai heard it, and they played it on the piano together. and that's why knives continues to play it in the present day.

maybe i'll go eat some rocks.

this is reminding me of... in the manga when vash escaped from the ark and knives was begging him not to go. it's... yeah, pretty much the same. different scenario, but the same.

this sequence is so gorgeous... once again i'm asking how people ever thought this anime looked bad. lmao.

BUT MY MAIN QUESTION IS THIS!!! IS THIS REALLY REM SPEAKING TO VASH HERE? we know that in trimax, ghosts kind of exist, right? like tesla appearing to the twins, wolfwood appearing to livio... is this a similar case? what's happening on the "outside" is meryl's voice reaching through to vash, right? so is this more like, meryl's presence reminds vash of rem, so this is what vash wishes he could hear from her? like is this coming from his subconscious? or... is it really the spirit of rem somehow...

i'm overthinking it. i'm overthinking it.

i wonder what rem's ghost would say to knives.

i'm obsessed with the fight that comes after. OBSESSED. screencaps don't do it justice, i love the weightiness, the camerawork, the choreography... IT'S JUST FUN TO WATCH!!!!

THE BITE HAS BEEN POSTED SO MANY TIMES BUT I LOVE IT SO MUCH IT'S SO FUNNY. outside of when they were kids, this is the most they've acted like siblings this whole show and i love it.

why are his boobs so big

and then there's the wings. the wings... and their context. manga readers know. they're a symbol of, hmm... not forgiveness, but... the first step to it, maybe. the love between them. flying to safety. supporting each other. being side-by-side. right?

they're using their wings to fight each other right now, so i'm sure the plan is to hit us with the wings again at the end for maximum emotional impact. the fact that they both have one wing each makes that extremely fucking obvious, i think. (remember in the manga vash sprouted 2 wings at first, which he couldn't sustain)

I JUST LOVE THIS SHOT. IT'S SO COOL.

oh. ohhhhhhh.

it's so interesting that the angel arm comes from vash combining(?) the cube with his gun... does this mean angel arms can't manifest normally? like, do you need the cube? or does the cube just make it easier? and what about knives, can he manifest his?? like this can't be the one and only appearance of the angel arm in tristamp, right, we're gonna need it again for the fifth moon and the ark escape, right??

(assuming those events will even happen in tristamp, but fifth moon AT LEAST is like. a constant in all timelines, i feel. like how time travel stories have "nodes" that can't be changed, right? but this isn't actually that kind of story. so who knows.)

...huuuuhhhh and i just noticed vash's prosthetic arm disappears when he manifests the angel arm. umm... i'm not entire sure what that means. is it because his gate was in his left arm...?

hey where'd she get those binoculars

crunch crunch crunch crunch crunch crunch crunch (i'm chewing on rocks)

CRUNCH CRUNCH CRUNCH CRUNCH CRUNCH CRUNCH CRUNCH

CRUNCH CRUNCH CRUNCH CRUNCH CRUNCH CRUNCH CRUNCH

"since when have we been so different"... kills me in so many ways, but... in episode 3 vash says that knives hasn't changed. ("since that time," he says, which i assume is referring to the flashback scene in episode 9.) and knives says right back at you. but here, vash is basically saying, who are you. you're unrecognizable to me now. that's literally what he says in the dub. and again knives says right back at you. "you haven't changed." "i could say the same of you." "who are you?" "who are you?" they're brothers. they haven't changed. they've changed so much. they know each other better than anyone else. they don't recognize each other anymore. they love each other. did they ever really know each other?

crunch crunch crunch crunch crunch crunch crunch.

when i first watched tristamp the significance of this all was lost on me. i didn't know any context.

i didn't know that the original trigun started with july already destroyed. i didn't know vash's original bounty. i didn't catch the insurance department mention, or who eriks was, or chronica, or what it meant that the earth fleet was going to arrive, or this being numbered "episode 0"... nothing. all of it went completely over my head. oh i knew milly though. milly is forever.

but now i'm people who know. and i think orange's decision to adapt the story like this, to make it a prequel... is fucking ballsy and cool and i respect it.

that being said, i still don't understand what zazie is talking about... and how they know this. i don't understand all the scifi technobabble with chronica at the end either... what i'm assuming is that the earth forces are keeping tabs on the higher plane(??) and/or on gate readings(?) and... were alerted to what was going on that way? does "crossing over the wall of light" just mean they're using warp drive? why can't zazie talk normally.

uagh. what a fucking journey, man, and it hasn't even begun yet. glad i got to rewatch and go a little crazy. i think the fixation is beginning to fade a little bit (it's been long enough, this is how my brain cycles through things) but the brainrot never truly goes away. girl with plant twins icon gets emotional about the plant twins once again, more at 11.

ty to @revenantghost for organizing i had fun!! :'D

[brucewaynehater101]

In a response to an earlier ask, you said that you believe some non-human entities try to disguise themselves as human in order to blend in. Yes, very much so. HC that if H.A.R.D.A.C. is a thing in this universe (Silken Emperor AU) there's still a couple of Duplicants just sort of...minding their own business and praying Batman doesn't catch wind of their existence.

Cause, hoo boy, their creator was insane, and it's actually kind of logical that a sudden uptick in Duplicants from "0" means H.A.R.D.A.C. is back, but they don't want to revive him, he was a douchebag. Heck, maybe some of the Duplicants don't figure it out until they get mugged in an alleyway and stabbed and instead of blood and flesh, they see sparks and wires.

What are Duplicants, you might ask? (SKIP THIS SECTION IF YOU WISH TO AVOID SPOILERS FOR A TV SHOW THAT RAN IN THE EARLY TO MID 90S, OR IF YOU KNOW EXACTLY WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT) They were these pliant robotic clones from BTAS, sort of like Synths from "Fallout 4", that H.A.R.D.A.C. tried to replace key Gothamites with in the 2-part episode "Heart Of Steel", as a prelude to replacing all of mankind with them, thus "curing" mankind of all its ills. In the follow-up episode "His Silicon Soul", (SPOILER ALERT FOR THE FULL PLOT OF THE EPISODE) a Duplicant of Batman wakes up in a crate in some warehouse in Gotham (there's a lot of those) and stops a robbery, and eventually finds out he's mechanical.

Poor guy goes through all this angst, thinking he's the real Bruce Wayne and is stuck in a robot body somehow, and in his detective investigations he finds A. He's not the real Bruce Wayne (according to the man who built H.A.R.D.A.C. in the first place) and B. A chip containing the last backup of H.A.R.D.A.C.'s consciousness that his programming forces him to put it into his data drive. (Literally, his hand moves of its own accord and he's trying to stop it with the other.) He then gets brainwashed by the H.A.R.D.A.C. remnant, fights Batman in a greenhouse (I think?) and almost uploads H.A.R.D.A.C. to the Bat Computer before the real Batman returns, Batman manages to convince him they aren't that different after all and both care about human life (Robo-Bats saved a dude while the greenhouse was collapsing), then there's this brief bit where the fight resumes and Robo-Bats thinks he killed Real Bats, he has a full on sobbing breakdown, and smashes the Bat-Computer so H.A.R.D.A.C. wouldn't be able to upload to the Internet and eradicate mankind, presumably killing H.A.R.D.A.C. or at least corrupting the fuck out of his files. By so doing, his circuitry was fried by electrocution. Robo-Bats sacrificed himself so mankind could live, and the episode ends with Real-Batman saying to Robin that he (Robo Bats), had a soul. "A soul of silicon, but a soul nonetheless." Roll credits.

I appreciate the explanation and the coverage of what happens in the show (as well as the warnings for spoilers for those who are trying to watch it).

It is an interesting dimension to add to where some Duplicants are unaware of their non-human status. To add onto their issues with identity (because suddenly learning you're not human would fuck with your mind), they also have consider the legal aspect of whether they have rights. They have to consider the social aspect of whether humans consider them capable of emotions and thoughts. It's so incredibly fucked, but in a compelling way.

I saw someone mention how cool it would be for an AU where Bruce basically pulled an Astro Boy (created a robot replicate after Jason dies) and thus creates Tim. You can add that idea, but instead H.A.R.D.A.C. tried made a Duplicate of Robin before Dick became Nightwing or before Jason dies.

I don't know much about this canon material, but there's a few ways to play around with what memories Tim does have:

He could have memories closer to the Tim of JJ so his backstory is closer to Jason's

He could only have the memories of "Robin" and this is how Tim finds out he's not actually Robin. He runs away, gets adopted by the Drakes, and "grows up" that way

Tons to play around with.

Anyways, Tim, who was supposed to be Robin's duplicate, knocks on Bruce's door post Jason's death. This causes Angst, obviously, especially because Tim looks eerily similar to a younger Jason or Dick.

[pleasedontcareaboutme]

Ah so hm. I might get a bit emotional right now, but I just felt the need to express how I felt during these 3 days. This is going to be long.

So I know that all the tours broadcasted are not new. Technically there shouldn't be anything suprising watching them, right.

But I feel like the combination of the 3 is new. And I strongly feel their combination was not an accident. The members I'm sure chose these 3 specific tours with careful consideration. I can't tell you why exactly, because I don't know them personally. But I do have some theories. I feel like at first sight these 3 shows have nothing in common, but there was a similar feeling I felt during all 3 days.

On the first day, during No. 0, there was so much energy. It truly felt like they chose this tour to bring up the spirits a bit. Of course it does deal with heavier themes; but which Buck- Tick album doesn't. I still believe it's one of their most fun tours out there.

But what's so special about No. 0- Is it has a theme.

"The idea of life as an endless cycle, represented by a circle which returns to its starting point upon completion." No. 0.

Beginnings and endings;

"beginning with the feeling of life coming into existence to the dynamic sound of “Reishiki Juusan-Gata ‘Ai’ ”, and ending with the calls of love filled with open emotion during a person’s final days in “Tainai Kaiki”. Yet, without leaning towards the serious, it appears that the sublimation of the “joy of life” is the heart of this tour. Although his words may differ, here and there, at different points in time during this tour, Sakurai appears to be implying “I wish everyone happiness”, and those feelings of his are, once again, unforgettable."

The opening song, Reishiki, implies "the inherent dual nature of experience - how joy cannot exist without pain."

Despite the overflowing tears, we must push on. Because this song was deliberately made as a loop with the last song, there is a feeling of continuity, rather, a sense of rebirth. That "Death is not that which separates but rather, an extension of life."

sky in the shade of cobalt blue

running with tears that overflow

into my life now gushing and rushing on

rioting soul 

You know forget-me-not?

Do you see them bloom?

And I'll be going now

Right to the place under Love's name, standing...

While Tainai Kaiki might seem like a sad closer- there is that sense of new beginnings mentioned in here too.

In Reishiki there is a line, to be exact the last line, that goes: your name is "love"

Notice the line in Tainai Kaiki? Going to the place under love's name

The dead do not disappear. They live on through people who love them.

There is a feeling here, that one must remember the deceased, carrying the love and memory of their lost loved ones. But in order for life to reach it's full circle, one must remember to live as well. We have to keep on going, one way or another. With a rioting soul, a flaming heart. There will be tears, but with love, our souls uniting as one, with an "explosion" , we can take one step forward at a time.

Melody listen to your heartbeat

Harmony exploding sound in the womb

Melody listen to my heartbeat

The second day, Show after dark was shown. Much more romantic, heavier atmosphere, but despite all of that, a mix of a good variety of fun music. I honestly think the most notable thing in this tour choice is the title of it.

Show after dark? Indeed. The whole tour had a very versatile setlist, but not only that, there were lots of contrasting feelings, again, the theme of joy and pain coexisting.

It really is how things will be from now on. But have they not always been like that? It's just the pain now is more tangible, it's different. But the joy will be all that much better after.

This show was one of their first ones after the Covid restrictions, which were also dark times, so what the members have said resonates with the current situation pretty well.

Go-Go B-T TRAIN, Sakurai said, “At last, we’ve boarded the B-T TRAIN. Here and now, I’d like for us to forget about what’s happened this year and look forward to doing lots of concerts next year.”

The common message put forth by them was, “Let’s go, Let’s head into the future"

The theme of life's never ending circle also was apparent here.

The first song was Diabolo, with the lines: Come, come over, come and have a peep in

Tonight, ladies and gentlemen, I present to you, Baby!

Every inch dripping with love—enjoy!

These same lines show up in the last song (excluding encore) Alice in wonder underground, creating the feeling of a never ending parade yet again.

"The B-T TRAIN has just started running again to cut through this infinite darkness and head into the future. I hope that you won’t miss out and will have fun on this train ride through a year to remember."

And lastly, Izora. A sadistic choice I would say, but the perfect one. Their last live together as 5..or is it?

Hm. Starting with Scarecrow- an energetic song about wanting to run away from an unavoidable situation, but to no avail.

I think chosing to play Izora today was exactly what they were going for- to make us face reality in a way, to stop running away. In scarecrow there is also an implication of the "protagonist coming to an understanding and acceptance of their situation"

I don't think we have to accept the situation yet. I don't think we have to stop running away. Sometimes it's okay to escape. Honestly I spend hours writing these, but I still cry about what happened. And that's okay. But I can't live happily if I just straight up avoid the situation. That would eat me up alive. So I think that's what's most important- that we all take our own time with the grief, we don't have to hurry. If you are not ready to accept it yet, that's okay, I'm not ready yet either. But one day we will have to come to terms with it. One day. And I think that's what the rest of the members want too, I'm sure they haven't accepted it entirely yet either.

Despite the gut wrenching sadness of watching Izora, there was a warmth I was feeling. I can't explain what kind, but during the last song- Namonaki Watashi- I felt it the most evident.

Fellow flowers blooming out of season, bloom profusely now!

Fellow flowers blooming out of season, together live wild, wild, wild!

This song could definitely be seen as a departing song. A bittersweet ending. But that's not what I feel from it, not at all.

It's a beautiful sign of the mutual love between Atsushi and his fans( and family/friends) . To him, who is nameless, we gave life. To us, who are nameless, he gave life. And now that he is gone, he wants us to continue living wildly, blooming profusely.

"Thinking of himself as that flower blooming on its own, critters coming to it, being blown by the wind and equally rained upon despite having no name. He describes the song as a story of life with encounters and the eventual farewells."

"It’s a life after all. A life that doesn’t speak. Just like the sun, the wind, the rain, insects. Of course, the grass and the trees are also part of all these lives that are connected. And I think it’s all simply amazing. These lives that exist without saying a word."

I would like to think, that as long as there are some many people loving Atsushi, he is having a great time, wherever he is. If he wishes to continue singing, I'm sure he is still here, lingering around the concert halls, becoming the wind, the clouds, insects, sunshine.

It hurts so badly. But. I don't want to forget you. So I will keep on writing these long posts. And spread your memory everywhere. Honestly I think it was really great I watched these streams, because now I have a clear cut idea of what I have to do. - I have to continue to grieve as long as I need to, but I need to live a life, where I am fine with his absence too. I'm right now far away from that - I don't know if that time will ever come. This is not the first time I've experienced grief and honestly - I still have not accepted that either. But I keep on waking up, allow myself to cry, then try to do better each day. Live on with the love these people gave me. Turn it into art, kindness, love. When I'm suffering, the hole seems so much bigger, so I'll try not to suffer, and I hope whoever reads this doesn't suffer either. Love 🤍🤍

I'm sorry this became super long. I'm debating wheter I should post it, but I think being open with my emotions also allows me to heal a bit more. And maybe doing it on the internet is not the best idea, but honestly, if even at least one person reads this and maybe feels better, then I'm happy.

I don't think I'm very smart, I probably take everything the wrong way and understand things not the intended way. So consider this just an emotional outburst of someone insignificant, not factual.

Also anything written in italics is not my own words. I mostly got them out of different Jrock archives translated interviews, from Cayce's site, and some I just found scattered on the internet.

[malcolm-reeds-pineapple]

Blorbo From My Shows Wrapped 2023

And rating them on a scale from 1 to 10

Nathan MacKinnon: listen okay he comes around every year around hockey season. This year I’ve gone especially deranged for him and made a fucking top loader for one of my hockey cards of him. He mostly gets points for being Nova Scotian and also looking like he has sustained multiple blows to the head. He is also incredibly fucking shaped. Anyway solid 7/10 - loses points because he’s been stripped of all personality by the NHL in order to be more advertiser-friendly

Vinsmoke Sanji: alright okay I’m a fake fan because I’ve only seen the live action but sweet Christ I want this white man. From the moment this absolute womanizing jackass graced my screen I have been in love with him. He makes me giggle and kick my feet like a middle schooler at a sleepover. He truly is Blorbo From My Shows in the best possible way. 10/10 I think this man is so hot.

John Sheppard: I started watching Atlantis recently and I kind of thought I was gonna hate it because no Daniel and Daniel had been my primary brain rot since I was 9 but John won me over. I love his sense of humour and his relationship with McKay (aaaaaaa Canada Mentioned!!!!) but I also find his insubordination extremely hot like yes babe!!! Disregard your orders to commit intergalactic war crimes!!!! Also I love that we get Sheppard Scruff a lot because believe me that instantly casts a hex on me to lose all thoughts!!!! Foaming at the mouth for him!!! Anyway 8/10 - loses points for being a pilot bc my dad was on the ground crew and my genetic memory is telling me that all pilots are bastards

Tony Markovich (that fucking cop from shameless): listen okay hear me out hear me out……………….. alright I got nothing, I can’t even defend this one. First of all, I’ve only seen the show through tiktok highlights. Second bbg this man is a cop what’s wrong with you??? He mostly gets points for looking like a handsome young man who my mom would love if I brought him home. Like Tony just looks sooooo boyfriend shaped to me?? Like if I brought him home and he told my mom that he volunteers coaching basketball and that he likes to spend his off time cooking with his mom, my mom would literally bawl her eyes out because I’ve brought home the man she’s always envisioned for me. 6/10 - loses points for being a cop and also being too fucking vanilla to even think that his handcuffs could possibly be used for sex.

Ray Stantz: alright so he’s also the type that I would 100% bring home to my mom but unlike Tony, I respect his career. This guy is soooooooooooo husband shaped like he looks like the kind of guy who mows his lawn on a Sunday before the kids wake up so he can teach them how to ride a bike as soon as they finish breakfast. He’s also just so sweet and cuddly in canon and I want him to infodump about all his interests at me. I also like that his so squishy and I just wanna be the one who helps him get the ectoplasm out of his hair while he tells me about poltergeists and stuff. 10/10 - he’s so husband shaped he loses points for NOTHING because he’s EXACTLY the kind of man I want

Daniel Jackson: listen okay we all knew this was coming I don’t even need to say anything. I know this man has not only been living in my head rent free but he also lives in yours because you follow me and you have 0 choice in the matter. I’m not elaborating just go thru #yeet me into the void on my blog and you’ll get it. 15/10 he’s the fucking blueprint.

Jack Ransom: i apparently cannot exist without a white man from Star Trek bouncing around my skull so Ransom makes this list. I love blonde himbos and like the thing is that I know he’d call me a fucking slur but like his superiority complex does something to me idfk I should send this post to my therapist because evidently I need fucking help. 8/10 - loses points for being a cartoon, gains points for his obvious brat taming kink.

Anyway thanks for coming to the annual Blorbo From My Shows Wrapped: a post that if it got forwarded to anyone in my family I’d simply fake my death and disappear. However, my tumblr followers are my priest and this blog is my confessional.

[botanicallyinclinednerd]

Like the tortoise and the hare you beat Faye in finishing the show :0 MK’s name is Qi Xiaotian in Mandarin, which is taken from Wukong’s title, great sage equal to heaven. MK is “little heaven” but I imagine in English it’s just monkie kid lol. Of course Macky has to notice things, he’s always worrying. Even during a beach episode. Or it’s bc the 6EM was near omniscient. Kinda funny Wukong says there’s nobody who knows the future with him in the room (a guy whose lore is having 6 ears to hear the past present and future) anyways.

Lucky for you there’s a lot of Lmk x Epic crossovers. Unluckily for you, Fluffy has had ample time to be devious and suggested an Underworld crossover. Wukong as Ody 👀 the past stays close behind, he basically said it with the memory scroll lol. Ao Lie or past Sandy as Polites, this life is amazing when you greet it with open arms ;) but you became the monster 😔 I keep thinking of the infant monkeycide from that night-

If only bc he doesn’t seem to have known about MK’s stone and not much angst there BUT Ody singing “please don’t make me do this.” Is SO Wukong just now to Macky ;D stop! don’t make me do this~ and I think Macky could have also said Wukong’s name bc seeing MK sacrifice himself would also hurt. They had a whole talk like that in ep 2 right? Speaking of talk, haha :) isn’t that soooo similar to what Wukong said here to MK? No bud, don’t make him do this~ wow almost makes you wonder if this is how Macky died, after Wukong chained him up too 🤔 and then things went wrong somehow.

Lmao, I would say slow and steady is the way to go, but I went through the show far too fast to ever categorize it as "slow" and nothing about my watch through was "steady" lmao

Macky is omniscient? 👀👀👀 Fascinating

"I keep thinking of the monkeycide from that night" is sending me oh my god

I keep oscillating between comparing Macintosh with Polites and with Eurylochus and its all painful

No, genuinely, even though we don't fully know the details of what history was, it felt like history was repeateding itself. I have so many ideas now about what exactly happened between them

[cultivating-wildflowers]

2024 Reading - August

There I was at the beginning of the month all worried about my potential page count for August, and then I went and read well beyond that. It's fine. I'm just a baby. The good news is that I seem to have caught my reading stride again--I actually wanted to spend my evenings reading a physical book, and didn't feel like reading was a slog. And even though I'm only halfway toward my original reading goal for the year, I've made good progress through my digital TBR.

Total books: 9  |  New reads: 8  |   2024 TBR completed: 1 (0 DNF) / 27/36 total   |   2024 Reading Goal: 53/100

July | September

potential reading list from August 1st

First of all, please admire this graph:

I haven't read this many pages in a month in like two years. (This does count pages and hours I read for books I ultimately DNF.)

Moving on.

#1 - The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion, Vol 1 by Beth Brower - 5/5 stars

A quick, charming read with surprising depth. I actually cried at one point. And I definitely want to read more. It’s a pity each volume is so small and that none are available through any library in the state.

Note from end-of-the-month Phoebe: I bought Volume 2. And another book by the same author.

#2 - Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke - 5/5 stars ('24 TBR)

Expertly crafted historical setting effortlessly blended with the dangerously fantastical. Rich, complex characters who are people of their time. A totally engrossing writing style with asides and footnotes and sharp dialogue that left me laughing with delight. So many tiny elements that combined to make up exactly the sort of story I crave. I wasn't expecting to be enthralled, but I was from the first page. Maybe it rewired my brain a little bit.

I will grant it's not for everyone, but it was PERFECT for me. Just don't ask me what the plot is.

Reasons you may not like it: 1) It's huge and a bit of a time investment. 2) It is largely character-driven and, while well-paced, doesn't have a lot of external pressure to keep the story exciting. 3) It's somewhat verbose, in a Tolkien sort of way. 4) Something of an open ending (which, weirdly, didn't bother me?). 5) As the magic tips from human to fairy, it develops a dark and occult flavor. This is nice for people who like their fairies to remain distinctly wicked within the narrative (rather than roguishly morally gray), but there are decidedly dark elements. I tried to watch the show a few years ago and didn't make it through the first episode, and as I recall it was because the fairies came off a tad too dark for me. Somehow it was better on the page.

#3 - Escape from Camp 14: One Man’s Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West by Blaine Harden - 4/5 stars

This is both the biography of a man who escaped the North Korean prison camp where he was born, and also a biography of North Korea itself over the past 50-odd years. Sparse and somewhat stilted, full of facts and figures, it reads more like an article than a story. I'll say it's an important story, despite the surrounding controversy, but the writing style didn't do it any favors.

Note regarding the peculiar controversy surrounding this book: A few years after the book was published, Shin Dong-hyuk contacted Harden and revised his story as told here. The base details remained the same, but timelines and locations had changed. Yeonmi Park faced the same controversy following the publication of her memoir of her childhood in North Korea (In Order to Live; which, weirdly, I read in August of last year), which to me says less about the veracity at the heart of both individuals' histories and more about how trauma, in particular that brought about by political violence, can impact emotions and memory. If you're interested in reading this book, definitely check out Harden's updated forward examining Shin's altered account. Harden himself repeatedly acknowledges Shin as "an unreliable narrator of his own life".

More like this: "In Order to Live" by Yeonmi Park with Maryanne Vollers; "A Long Way Gone" by Ishmael Beah; "Infidel" by Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

#4 - Time Travelling with a Hamster by Ross Welford - 4/5 stars (audio)

If you couldn't tell, I'm desperately trying to fill in some of the missing letters for my second year of a self-imposed alphabet titles challenge. This is my fifth attempt at a "T". Attempts three and four are below in the DNFs. I decided to bank on an extreme change of pace with this one.

A solid middle grade adventure, and one I'll definitely recommend in future. Fun and unpredictable and my head hurts, because time travel always does that to me. Ridiculously short chapters, for some reason.

More like this: A bit like "A Wrinkle in Time", a bit like "Meet the Robinsons" (the movie; haven't read the books).

#5 - The Empty Grave by Jonathan Stroud - 4/5 stars

I DNF'd this last year after trying and failing for a month to get into it. I had definitely been in the perfect mood when I started the series last year, but for some reason The Empty Grave gave me no end of trouble, and I gave it up about a quarter of the way through.

Not so this time. This time it took me all of four days to finish.

Thankfully this follows the tradition of refreshing the reader's memory of previous events in the series, because I'd forgotten some of the pertinent details. Either because of my foggy memory or because of something else in the story, the ending fell kind of flat for me, like it was missing an element to deliver a good emotional conclusion, or like it didn’t fully satisfy the stakes set up at the start of the book. I consider this series more young adult than middle grade, but the way it wrapped up definitely felt middle grade in style.

Still a solid ending for sure, just a little confusing.

#6 - A Swiftly Tilting Planet by Madeleine L'Engle - 5/5 stars (reread) - 50th read of the year!

Comfort book my belovéd.

#7 - The Swamp Fox: How Francis Marion Saved the American Revolution by John Oller - 4/5 stars (audio)

Francis Marion is one of my dad's favorite figures of the Revolutionary War, and man, I can see why.

The writing itself is somewhat dry, crammed full of names and dates technical details of battles; but Oller manages to weave a solid narrative as he combs through the legends surrounding Marion and picks out the facts.

More like this: "Lion of Liberty" by Harlow Giles Unger.

#8 - Heidi by Johanna Spyri - 4/5 stars (audio)

"Heidi" was one of the movies I watched on repeat as a kid. Not the Shirley Temple version, but the 1968 made-for-TV version that apparently took some liberties with the plot. (But according to Wikipedia, it's most memorable for interrupting a football game for its premier.)

The book is a cozy classic children's book, plain and simple. It feels a bit like The Secret Garden with an orphan coming to an unfamiliar place and thriving there (plus helping an invalid thrive as well); and a bit like L.M. Montgomery pushing all of us to get outside and breathe some fresh air.

#9 - The King of Elfland's Daughter by Lord Dunsany - 4/5 stars (audio)

Absolutely gorgeous.

You might like this is you like: The Ballad of the White Horse by G.K. Chesterton; or the narrative style of the legends told by characters in the Queen's Thief series.

Useless fun fact: Lord Dunsany's name was Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett.

DNF

Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell - Hilarious two-star reviews proved it's not something worth finishing and it doesn't deliver on the premise. (It's not even about Hamnet. It's a "re-imagining" of Anne/Agnes Hathaway-Shakespeare and guess what. She's a strong, wild woman who practices witchcraft in late 16th century England. Groundbreaking. I need to stop skimming summaries.)

The Hazel Wood by Melissa Albert - Got about a third of the way through this one before I realized...I just didn't care. The premise was good, and the delivery was kind of meh but not bad--which, considering how rarely I read newer YA these days, was actually a point in its favor. But then we got to the reveal and I went "Wait. That's it?" and lost interest. I don't think magical realism is for me. Also, it didn't affect my decision to stop reading, but I didn't like the audiobook narrator.

Tales from the Hinterland by Melissa Albert - A companion book to the Hazel Wood duology, presented as the book-within-a-book that the Hazel Wood revolves around. I read a couple of the stories out of curiosity, but the allure of that book-within-a-book is gone when it's told in the same voice as the actual story.

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith - I...have no idea. What is this? I got a little over halfway through it before it got to be too much and I gave up. I liked the writing voice well enough but the story meandered along a plodding, darkly sentimental route and I got lost. And a little disgusted.

Bridge of Birds by Barry Hughart - I wanted to like it, but it was too bawdy for me.

The Outlaws of Sherwood by Robin McKinley - Robin is such a hit-or-miss author for me, and this one was a solid miss. The premise was too absurd for me to stick it out. I might have given it another chapter, but none of the characters were really grabbing me, and I wasn't fond of how McKinley chose to portray Marian.

Currently Reading:

The Disorderly Knights by Dorothy Dunnett - I swear I'll have finished this by the end of the year.

The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown - I'll finish this one pretty quickly.

[sunlightfeeling]

so..... how did you get into smap, anyway? (i would like to hear the origin story)

hiii anon! i would love to tell this story!!

first the elevator pitch version:

like a lot of more recent fans (i.e. post-JE launch), i was a victim (affectionate) of the RGG to SMAP pipeline

…bit of a boring story, and honestly isn’t a real indication of how I got to have this brain (affectionate, i love having five old men stewing in my brain all hours of the day 👍😬)

sooo im going to tell the story of how the pipeline hit me so hard 😄

the real origin goes back to 2021…

(im gonna make a cut for this story because this is gonna be long long - i promise this isn’t an exaggeration)

so back in 2021, i had an xbox one and game pass (side note: game pass is so worth it, actually fantastic)

and I found a series that I had never heard of…Yakuza

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hX9EomZwntU

sorry

anyway

downloaded Yakuza 0 and started it up

really dug the vibes, story, music, legitimately everything

then I reached Majima’s first chapter and ooooh the opening got me good

not too long after getting to this chapter, I was graciously gifted a ps5

and one of the first things i did was…

…impulsively buy every Yakuza release on ps4

…and the Judgments as soon as I realized they were under RGG’s umbrella

…after only playing like probably less than 10 hours of a prequel

(disclaimer: i do not mean to romanticize/minimize impulse purchasing; I’m more trying to give an accurate image of how deeply invested I got in a series that essentially sent me on my path; i was/am very fortunate and cognizant of how lucky i am to be able to cover/shield myself from consequences of my actions - so to speak lol)

probably six-ish months and 2 hiatuses later, I reached Y6

and i dont know if it was because the game was the last Kiryu game (at the time) and I was getting all emotional, or if it was because the likeness to Kuroda was pretty…

<stares at pictures of Y6 Kiryu way too long>

…preeeetty 🫠

i started developing (what knowing what i know now call) a hyperfixation on not just Y6 but also Kuroda Takaya lol

basically listened to his music whenever I could/on repeat; Y6 was the only thing I wanted to spend my free time playing; etc etc etc

(for reasons, this fixation actually led me to consider my possible neurodivergence; I wonder why 🤔..🥲)

finish Y6 and become baseline-which-isnt-really-baseline normal about Yakuza when I play LAD7

but then….

“Alex, stop hyperlinking sound effects”

(affectionate)

yeahhh it’s Judgey Time

okay so ive mentioned in tags somewhere but i actually didnt have high hopes for Judgment

at all

the cover just didn’t do anything for me at all…

…and i thought the protagonist was ugly 💀

(im actually genuinely serious, this isn’t me “not like the other girls”ing; i vividly recall looking at the cover when it was about time for me to start playing it and whining to my then-bf that I wasn’t sure I was gonna like it cuz the guy looks really weird 🤣)

but i booted it up and right when Yagami shows off his badge in the prologue

girl

giiiiiirl

I didn’t realize at the time but the seed had been planted and baby that beanstalk grew

Halloween 2022 (and I only know this date for a fact because I memorialized it texting then-bf about it) is the day I decided to look up who this guy really was

I can’t recall what made me finally look him up, whether lurking on the Yakuza subreddit or just something in the game, I dunno

i shared it once but I’ll share it anytime i can…

^^ this was my first Kimura photo

the first one I actually paid more than just a passing glance at anyway……

…i finished judgment in like two/three weeks [and not in a rushed playthrough by any means - getting all the cats, doing all the side cases/romance, etc.] (have a text trail of me going into the finale and date stamp is p exactly two weeks from Halloween 🥲)

started lost judgment immediately because i have texts days after this bitching about dropping money on the dlc before even starting it lol (again: not recommending/romanticizing; just giving perspective on how active my brain was about RGG/Kimura already)

now this…..this is where my timeline gets fuzzy

because i cant really remember how fast i beat lj before starting his dramas

or if maybe i started them before even finishing the game

skipping ahead to January 2023 and I’ve definitely wrapped lj by this point

and have watched a fair amount of kimura dramas (i genuinely cant give a number tho 😭)

around this point, ive determined that im fairly confident in being audhd

and i personally would have described kimura as a combined special interest-hyperfixation at this point (because the intensity would ebb and flow in a way)

started collecting things, starting with his albums and his live recordings (and eventually a lot lot more [I’ll get back to scanning consistently eventually I promise lol])

the defining moment to when I finally crossed from Kimura to SMAP…

…was actually watching Go with the Flow

I had heard bits of SMAP, but, as many unfortunately discover, accessibility to their music is…..well it’s just not there lol

I even got YouTube Music because I found playlists of SMAP performances and could just listen to them while I was working or driving

not that I could really hear them all that well since they were all live performances w screaming or muffled audio/crunchy audio/remixes/etc etc etc

(except for pams seigi shoutout to pams seigi [sorry goro 😔; also i linked that specific one for the tags but please look in the reblogs for a diff version of seigi that they did because it’s ridiculously good])

On Go with the Flow, Kimura performs “Style” which made me go on basically a witch-hunt to find the song since it wasn’t an album track and I didn’t know SMAP’s discography

Eventually found out it was SMAP (Kimura solo on s.m.a.p specifically) and decided that I actually really needed to listen to SMAP

aaaaaand I did ☺️

and then I found Jes yeah no I definitely didn’t

and…that is my SMAP origin story

[crmsndragonwngss]

1,4,7 and 9 :)

Nah fuck it, I’m doing both!

1. three songs that come up when you put your phone on shuffle

Seeking Somewhere, by Monument Of A Memory Proxy, by Valis Ablaze Legion, by TesseracT

4. three songs that you know thanks to your parents

Many, but here are some faves:

(No seriously)

7. three songs you didn’t expect to like but eventually loved

Believe it or not, as much as I love Lorna now, I really did not care for this song in the beginning. I’m not real huge into deathcore (I have bands I like but it’s far from my favorite subgenre), and I did not vibe with this song at first. Obviously that changed. I tried it again when I was in a different mindset and fell completely head over heels in love with the whole ep!

Again, believe it or not, I didn’t particularly care for Ghost Atlas the first time I heard them. I was already an Erra fan, so I already adored Jesse Cash, but GA was so totally different from Erra and it simply wasn’t what I needed at the time. Then All Is In Sync came out in 2017 and their sound finally clicked with me, and I went back and ended up really loving this song in particular. This is also a great band if you like alt rock/indie rock.

Listen, way back in 2014, when I was discovering Erra and Amity for the first time, Psy’s Gangnam Style went viral for the second time in the States and a couple of BTS mv reactions had landed on lame ass “comedy” shows that my ex-bestie watched like tosh.0, and I tried to listen to BTS just to see what all the hype was about. I listened to this album and fucking hated it. I always give songs to the chorus to catch my interest before I skip, and I ended up skipping every track, but I really disliked this one. I could not pinpoint why exactly, I just did not fuck with it at all. Fast forward to like six fucking months ago and this is one of my favorite songs period, let alone one of my fave BTS tracks. I LOVE this song. I listen to it almost every day (followed immediately by cypher 3, not big on the other two cyphers, but I love these two). This is not the song that made me actually fall in love with BTS’s music, that distinction goes to a track from the same album (Tomorrow), but this one has earned a spot in my regular rotation for sure

9. three songs that get you in the Christmas Mood

(That is hands down my favorite Christmas song ever)

Of course

And Hark! The Herald Angels Sing, but no specific version of it

10. three favourite Halloween/spooky songs

Imma basic ass goth bitch, so naturally:

And because I hit the audio limit (lame)

Cry Little Sister, the theme song from The Lost Boys (and yes, I do actually prefer the original over the covers I've heard. BUT if anyone has a cover they like of it, feel free to send it!)

[theburningsunset]

my adhd can't chill tf down enough to sleep so may i present this (uhhh spoilers for new-who):

Everything in Doctor Who that ought to be fixed and why:

Any time the doctor shows racism, queerphobia, sexism, ableism, classism, etc. Unless a specific prejudice of Gallifreyan society exists, it would never make sense for the Doctor to be bigoted, even the one from the '60s

Related: when Thirteen breaks the Master's perception filter so the nazis would see he's a man of color and thus endanger him—the Doctor would never.

Completely abandon former companions. Maybe some, maybe originally, but even 2000 years of lessons learned later? The Doctor is a good man, abandonment is too inconsistent with his characterization to be a reoccurring, unchallenged trait.

Wiping Donna's memory. Cruel, erased her character arc and was not a fulfilling or meaningful end. Either kill her or have her decide to retire.

The convoluted reason the Ponds were stuck in 1939 New York. C'mon, if I tried for five seconds I could come up with a sensical reason why the Doctor never saw them and they were stuck. Or just don't make them stuck 🤷🏼‍♀️ maybe they decide to adopt and retire to avoid danger to the kid but the Doctor and River still regularly visit.

The "War Doctor". Showrunners confirmed this only existed because Christopher Eccleston refused to come back for the 50th Special (no shade to his choice). It might've backfired or seemed disrespectful of Chris's performance, but they should've simply recast Nine for it.

Just throw out Kill the Moon, it was bad writing, the heavy-handed abortion allegory was exhausting and weird (regardless of intentionality) and I don't usually cry "but the science!" but...the moon being gone, even if soon after it replaced itself, would cause apocalyptic destruction on Earth and possibly wipe out humanity. The primary salvageable bit that I think is integral is the Twelve/Clara fight at the end.

Danny Pink either doesn't die or doesn't stay dead. The paradox it would cause for him to die before him and Clara have kids when her and Twelve have MET those descendants and been on two separate adventures down that family line is irreconcilable. Full stop.

Bill doesn't die. The end. (Do NOT bury your fucking gays)

Don't have Graham be the last white seat on the Rosa episode, for fucking christ's sake. Plus where the fuck is at least the mention of Claudette Colvin?

Fourteen regenerates into Thirteen's clothes, following well-established rules of regeneration (BBC were cowards for breaking that just to sidestep having David Tennant "crossdress")

Headcanon bits that aren't necessarily tied to quality/consistent writing but I think would've been great:

The Doctor does find Melody. Maybe only by age six or so, if wanting to keep the Silence story intact, but rework Let's Kill Hitler to avoid the Mel situation. It makes me sad that they never got their baby back. She can still turn out to be River, maybe the regen into River only happened post season-six, keeping the reveal. Maybe Melody was eventually re-kidnapped by the Silence and then turned into River Song, or maybe Melody was always a kind of troubled trouble-maker and took on the River Song alias on her own.

Thirteen and Yaz absolutely get together.

keep in mind I haven't finished Thirteen's run (the stink of neolib BS from the Rosa Parks episode tanked my interest in keeping up until Chibnall fucked off), haven't seen the 60th Special yet, still have 20-something seasons of Classic Who to go, and don't remember everything I have seen, nor am I always right. I think on re-watch I'd find more issues but for now it's the list I've got that exactly zero (0) people asked for.

[ckret2]

I have 0 memories of care bears but I KNOW I watched it religiously. Memories of watching it but not of any details. Also had 5 care bears, and i think 1 of them is still in my childhood home

tbh that's what the experience of watching Care Bears has been like for me. I remembered the movies and ONE episode—at some point the Care Bears and the villains are on a game show, I haven't reached that episode yet—but I don't remember any other episode, despite knowing I watched a lot.

HOWEVER, as I'm watching them, every once in a while a scene will come on and make me go "oh wait holy shit, I've watched this, I remember this shot EXACTLY, I know exactly what's happening in this sequence." Fascinating how memory works.

[alolanroy]

2023 media thread

Blood(originally from twitter)

2023 media thread! Copied over from twitter since it’s getting worse by the day. Scores 0-10 aren’t on the American grading curve, but more like ‘irredeemable bad’ to ‘changed my life’. Most things will be a 6-7 if I liked it. Negative = ironic.

Knives out (6/10) and Glass Onion (8.5/10). I prefer glass onion not only because it was a nice tight watch but also how oddly topical it was. Tate was arrested the day I watched this and Musk is on fire. Hopefully a prelude to more real mystery movies.

Wakfu: I’m grasping at straws for nice things to say. Not really pleasing to watch in French and some of the worst dubbing since gundam Age in the first seasons. The story feels like a pantomime and I question the standards of who recommended it. 1/10

The Rapsittie Street Kids Believe in Santa: this shirt is a cognitohazard to anyone who has used any kind of software. Each frame has so much wrong with it the human mind buckles into maniacal laughter. The grandma is the same VA as savathun. -9/10

Elf bowling: honestly kinda disappointing. Might be funny with some good company. I feel like the character Tom Kenny voices says something offensive but my memory just dumped everything about it. -2/10

Sound and Fury (2019): One of the greatest audio-visual experiences I’ve seen in a while. Not all sections were created equal though. Fucking watch it. I will say no more. 9/10

Lego Star Wars holiday special/summer vacation: Not good in the traditional sense but interesting because they give some of the characterization missing from the sequel trilogy with a dose of kid friendly robot chicken energy. Interesting to me at least. 6/10

Bleach Arancar Arc: Do I regret watching the anime? Yes. I could examine how stretched out this this was even with the filler removed all day. It is DIRE. Any sense of tension was destroyed and if I wasn’t sick I would’ve dipped. 4/10

Kamen Rider Black Sun: on a technical level I appreciate the movie. Good music, sound design, suits and it looked impressive for the budget it must have had. However, this might be the first toku I find actually offensive. No joke, it tries to recall George Floyds murder. Wtf.

Gundam witch from mercury S1: this is exactly what I needed and I’m waiting with baited breath. Nice to see the writing shine where ibo was dull. I’d buy the kits if I could 9/10

Knife or death: a perfect watch over some home cooked hotpot. The combination of gruff and warm hosts gives the show a ‘guys being dudes’ energy in a wholesome way. My only gripe is that as it goes on, it gets less diverse and loses some personality. More weirdos please. 7/10

Star Trek Prodigy: not particularly interesting on an episode by episode basis, but most treks have rough first seasons. Despite being a children’s show it’s more watchable than Picard or Disco, which is a low bar for me. It has trek spirit but it’s not made for me. 5/10

Astro Boy 2009:threw it on while I was cooking. Just as bad as I remember. I have some story boards for this for some reason. I don't know why. Speaking of not knowing why it feels like a 30-minute shows worth of content when it's over. It's strange. 3/10

Six String Samurai: I'd be more into this if the vibes were new to me. Unfortunately, I'm seeing this in 2023, so it reads like a Fallout New Vegas mod. In stark contrast to Astro Boy, this feels like it stretched on for hours and the kid ruined a lot of the cool moments. 3/10

Avatar 2: Not bad. Nothing groundbreaking, but great looking and drew me in for a sequel that was like 15 years late. I can't believe I was actually compelled by some of the characters. Avatar 2 was supposed to be a joke... 7/10

Shin Ultraman: this movie unashamedly embraces the fun Showa era energy like nothing I’ve seen. It’s funny, cool and is clearly a labor of love. It’s episode format makes me yearn for a tv continuation if it can maintain the constricted, but slick production and writing. 9/10

The men who made Ultraman: I get the sense a lot of the stuff in here should be taken with a grain of salt since it’s a dramatization, but man the peak behind the curtains on how creative and dangerous the special effects were then. Even the little things we take for granted 6/10

Vampire Survivors: I think by hitting 40 minutes I can kinda say I’ve ‘beat’ it in a sense even though there’s tons more content, but I need to add it to the list at some point. Good game with deceptively smart design to be a mobile game w/o the predatory garbage. 8/10

Rush Hour 3: Fun enough but I can feel the 2000s reliance on cringe humor and the stink of post 9-11 bigotry begin to set in. I had a few good laughs. 6/10

Loaded weapon 1: An absolute blast with the kind of cast you don’t see anymore. Again, Shatner is underutilized as a comedy actor. My final take: Sight gags are a lost art. 7/10

Spelunker my 2: I don’t really get the appeal of this game. Even with sprint switched off of default, movement felt oversensitive and deaths came only when my character did something I didn’t intend. Maybe I should’ve been on controller but this left a bad taste 3/10

Kill it With Fire: I appreciate smaller concept games like this, but as a recovering arachnophobe, this didn’t invoke as much of a response for me. My SO had a blast though. 5/10

A Few Good Men: Man. 8/10

Magic Lizard: ‘this feels like one of those adhd TikTok’s with an infinite runner game and family guy in the corners’ - @SuperheckDX this thing oscillates between middling slapstick to animal abuse. Genuinely disgusting for a moment (if you know you know) -3/10

SpongeBob in Tehran: enough of the jokes translate but the visual absurdity wears off pretty quick. -6/10

Webtoons I won’t dignify by naming: Trying out random Manhwa that caught my interest was a fun policy for a bit but I’ve been seriously burned. I could tear apart why even the best in the field have issues with long term storytelling due to issues with distribution. Im done 0/10

Puss in Boots the Last Wish: Being overhyped did this movie a disservice. The animation was fantastic, but there’s not much else here. I didn’t find it particularly exciting or funny and the musical number didn’t hit. I really it lacked that ohmf. Definitional 5/10 on my scale

Tangential, but Puss’s arc mirrors Kirk in Wrath of Khan. Do what you will with that.

Dwarf Fortress: disclaimer I didn’t play too much of this game but I appreciate its system rich nonsense. I’ll probably revisit it later since the unintuitive UI isn’t helped by most forum discussions not being for the steam version. IE idk how to make a horizontal door. 7/10

Entropy: Zero: Short sweet and to the point. It uses all of its creative ideas and remixes existing assets like nobody's business. A few stumbles like a turret stealth section that soft-locked me, but I appreciate a game that doesn't waste my time 7/10

Entropy Zero 2: I cant remember the last time I was this consistently exhilarated playing a shooter, maybe Titanfall 2. It delivers good writing, action, varied gameplay, gags and emotional beats. It caches the checks valve wrote a decade+ ago at their standard. A must play 9/10

Donbrothers The Movie: New First Love Hero. An absolute farce with almost no toku action. Needless to say it’s fantastic. 8/10. Will likely give any MMPR fan an aneurysm. The foreshadowing is clever…

Bionicle Mask of Light: I wouldn’t say it’s good since I’m an adult and have more tempered nostalgia, but I derived a lot of enjoyment watching it through the lens of knowing the lore and it added a level of dramatic irony. 5/10

Farscape S1: In its best episodes it delivers on a wacky premise and great puppets, at its worst it has pretty template episodes. The crews dynamic seems to be still finding the right balance of adversarial and friendly, and sometimes it just makes everyone seem like an ass. 6/10

Shadow of the Vampire: I might need to marinade my opinion on this somewhat. First impressions are good but part of me wishes it shied away from the come comical elements since the darker tone is interesting. Just made we want to see Nosferatu 8/10

Movie night speedrun Backstroke of the West: Surprisingly good joke dub -5/10 Marmaduke 2022: bizarre -1/10 Agent Revelation: what did they have on Dorn. 2/10

Movie Night Roundup: Alone in the Dark: false advertising, It was bright and I don't think anyone was alone. Made to be riffed on. -6/10 Fist of the North Star 1995: A total snoozefest that failed to hold our attention. The only fun was realizing Dante Basco was in it. 2/10

Pinocchio a True Stroy: We nearly watched a second dub with more generic voice action. Sadly this is basically unwatchable. 0/10 Waynes World 2: A weaker comedy than the original, mostly because it uses a recycled B plot. Nevertheless, a good palette cleanser. 6/10

Farscape Season: I appreciate the more serialized storytelling and multipart episodes. I appreciate that they are kinda figuring out the characters, specifically John going into his Joker arc. However, there were a few stinkers. 7/10

Record of Ragnarok S1/2: This isn't a particularly good adaptation, but the first fight should get an award for the most baffling adapted shounen fight. It truly put its worst foot forward. Otherwise pretty mid and doesn't make me feel particularly excited about the manga.

Vengeful Guardian MoonRider: On the plus side, it looks great and has a clear love of 90s anime and tokusatsu (Hakaider particularly). However, it just felt frustrating because of issues like an awkward walljump and a lot of cheap damage caused by the small screen. 3/10

Super Mario Bros(1993): people lied, this movie kicks ass. The bizarre mushroom kingdom is wildly entertaining, funny, internally consistent and inventive with how it remixes elements from the games. It’s not what the 2023 one will be: safe. 7.5/10

Return of Ultraman: I see what they were cooking. Not a lot to judge here but the way they stretched what they had was impressive. 7.5/10 Eragon: Laughed out asses off when playing Star Wars music. It synced perfectly at some point. But there’s nothing else to work with. -3/10

Aura Battler Dunbine (I): I'm splitting this up into three parts since I have distinct thoughts. The first third is relatively weak and fails to set up the factions (no idea what's up with house Given). However, it makes up for it with appealing classic fantasy aesthetics. 6/10

Dunbine (II): The middle chapter has a sharp improvement across the board. The politics and tactics begin to fall into place as the mech designs improve. The reverse Isekai arc with Garalia (my beloved) is a real standout. Bummer the Billbine sucks. 8/10

Dunbine (III): The final third speaks to me. The undercurrent of resignment and desperation pairs well with a massive shift in the mechanics of combat. While the repetition can get straining, the interjection of real-world interaction makes it work 8.5/10

Dunbine: I enjoyed the heck out of this series and appreciate the interesting ideas and aesthetics of this world. My only complaint is the way it approaches writing women. Its otherwise rad cast of mostly women gets tanked by Elmelie. Took me out of it. 8/10 #dunbinesweep

Farscape season 3: once again this season is an improvement over the last. Less crazy creatures, but more interestingly shot, especially towards the end. It makes the budget-friendly episodes go down more easily. I continue to enjoy John’s arc of just getting weird. 8/10

The thought that someday, someone will feed My Dinner with Andre with thousands of other contextless content into a machine learning algorithm fills me with a deep sadness. 9/10

Knife or Death Season 2: Overall pretty fun, but I felt that with the increased size of the episode order, they ran out of interesting contestants. You can only see so many redknecks in a row, and the finale was a bit of an upset in a b ad way. Season 3 needs some changes. 6.5/10

Donbrothers: This may be the funniest, most satisfying, and unapologetic show I have ever seen. I don't think any sentai can compare to it after, mostly because there hasn't, and can never be anything quite like this again. 10/10

Dunbine Neo Boston Well: phenomenal art and visuals but it kinda falls apart in execution. Eventually, you notice how little is animated and the Ovas have little time to explore its owns story let alone the amazing glimpses of this world. Good character design. 6/10

Destiny 2 lightfall: this expansion was so bad I think it broke the spell destiny had over me. It’s a bizarre swerve in story and aesthetics that is utterly betrayed by the most grating dialogue that was mixed in a way that hurt my ears. 2/10

Season of the seraph: a pretty middling season with some interesting mechanical tidbits, but not a lot to latch on to. It lacked the week to week narrative drive that kept me engaged. Now it feels like the content kinda ends in like 4 weeks. 5/10

Kentucky Fried Movie: slow start but pretty funny. The Enter the Dragon parody was a gas. We need more formless comedy chimeras. 6.5/10

JJBA:DIU 2017: what do you get when you remove the style, humor and pacing from jojo and try to take it completely seriously? Something that should never get it’s trilogy finished -3/10

Garzey’s wing: this thing lives and dies by it’s comically bad dub. Otherwise it’s a pretty write ova with a neat few ideas bot no real ending and would be an unsatisfying watch. However. The dub is hilarious. -6/10

Pledge this!: National Lampoon’s fell OFF! Idk if I can forgive @roflcopterbtw for putting this on the wheel…-3/10

Street Fighter: the legend of Chun Li: Firstly: why are you white. Secondly: if you want to see a better version of this movie, watch snake eyes. 3/10

Kingohger: first impressions: the first episode alternates between obscenely good looking and abysmal in was that is bizarre and completely preventable. They really didn’t have to do primarily cg environments. Writing is halfway to doing something cool but wiffs.

Onegamart: it’s like if a really well themed line ride kept going and going and going and going and going and going and going and going and going and going and going and going and going and going… 8/10 that was cool

Movie night roundup: Barbie the Princess and the Pauper: Concerningly well produced as a musical. Its a campy kids movie with comical CG. What more can I say. -6 Shrek the Musical: We were ENTRANCED by Farquad's costume! I can't say I agree with some of the decisions tho. 6/10

X-files S1 & S2: I find myself more compelled by the episodic mysteries rather than the serialized storyline. Maybe since the alien conspiracy feels a little one-note so far. The real treat is spotting famous actors and the occasional rising star at a higher rate than usual.7/10

X-Files S3 Vibe check: After a few real bangers, Ep12 and 13 were a 1-2 punch I didn't need after a stressful day. The hard dip in writing quality, bad drama, and cheap CW drama feel couldn't cover up what was clearly an anti-drug episode that no one seems to talk about. 2/10

The Man Who Laughs (1928): Essayists have already dissected this film on my behalf, but there’s something interesting here. Oddly enough it’s really obvious The Joker directly homages this more than I think it owes Taxi Driver. 7/10

G-Saviour: under the thick layer of low budget Canadian production and generic execution there’s some surprisingly cool cockpits sets and fight scenes that would’ve made for a good movie. However it isn’t and we never got the iterative sequels it wanted. 5/10

Welcome to Sudden Death: as Die Hard clones go this is a surprisingly fun watch. The reversal of the black comedy relief archetype and some genuinely cool but blue ballingly short martial arts sequences make this an entertaining 6/10 in the best way possible

John Wick: in all honesty this didn’t set my world on fire. I think it’s relevancy has more to do with it signaling that action movies could be cool again rather than the ‘secret world of assassins’ shtick I can’t see myself getting into. 6/10

John Wick 2 Electric Boogaloo: A marked improvement over the first for me, and a lot of that comes down to more creativity, bombast and actually being able to see the fights in this one. The secret society element was less rote than I assumed it would be. 7/10

John Wick 3: I think the missing ingredient might’ve been building up strong opponents. While an improvement, the movies deadly combat means each enemy gets one fight, so they don’t get the opportunity to develop. More bombast was welcome. 7/10

John wick 4: holy fuck in the goddamn. You know the movie is fire when 20 minutes later I say ‘John wick had a nunchuck, how tf did I forget that’. The last three are almost invalidated by how hard this executes on everything they both had and lacked. 9.5/10

AVGN movie: this one’s an oddity, it feels like a throwback to the golden age of early internet reviews despite coming out in like 2014. This is a realization of the channel Awesome movies but with competency and production. The gags and effects made me smile. 6/10

Trigun Stampede S1: Anime of the decade. Never before have seen such expressive 3d cg anime, let alone for tv. while it undercuts some of the charm of the original with its rush to the knives plotline, it makes up for it in its own identity. 9.5/10

The Future is a Dead Mall and Line Goes Up: I knew it was dire but wow. Line Goes Up aged particularly well. 8/10

X-Files S3: A real mixed bag, as mentioned earlier, this contains some of the best and worst episodes of television I can remember. While some parts of the serialized story are improved by getting interesting resolutions, my faith was shaken. 7/10

Pitch Black: Enjoyable as a thriller with a neat grimy version of space travel. it Tickles my fancy 7/10

Chronicles of Riddick: I guess this universe has a Warhammer 40K faction. I think the end result is cool, but I see why people think it was a weird pivot 7/10

Riddick: Just another cool thriller, liked the more survival elements at the beginning. 7/10

The Adventures of Kosuke Kindaichi (1979): One of the most impenetrable films I've ever tried to watch. I can't help but feel I lack the cultural context for this as a parody, but the visual absurdity and direction sell it. 7/10

Robot Ninja: Perhaps I'm just a sucker for the 'artist spiraling into madness' trope but this movie has an interesting take on it. If anything the Ohio shoe-string budget energy kind of enhances the delusion and unreality of it. Very critical of the comics industry. positive 5/10

The War in Space: I'll admit I talked with my friends through this one, but the model shots and excellent space suits caught our attention. Effective final sacrifice but overall it was uneventful in a 70s toku way. 4/10 (the captain had Leonard Maccoy energy)

What's up tiger Lily: The specter of Woody Allen haunts this film. While historically important as the first notable parody dub, the space jokes (which mostly land) and lousy 60's dancing interludes kill the energy and just make me want to see the original. 4/10

Skyrim SE: Since Skyrim is kind of a Super Game(TM) I'm breaking it up since some parts of it feel totally disjointed.

Skyrim (main quest): I assumed the Blades quest chain would be on the level of the Mages College in terms of importance. I appreciate its attempts to intersect with the civil war plotline but it felt over in a hurry. The final dungeon is a joke. 4/10

Overall, having the focus on melee combat against a pretty bad enemy variety makes the game feel like a slog. It does manage moments of brilliance, but the half-baked questing feels more like frustrating writing. Base game is a mess with potential. 6/10

Skyrim: Saints and Seducers: It kinda sucks how this DLC was plopped in without any consideration. I mean yay free content (I wouldn't have paid for it), but my animosity comes from stumbling into the strongest weapon in the game on my blind playthrough, trivializing combat. 4/10

Tron: Half the fun of this movie is trying to contort the metaphor of the grid onto my understanding of how these systems actually work, like naval admirals watching Battleship. The Wendy Carlos score is really unusual and has wormed its way into my head. A charming 4/10

Passenger 57. Die Hard on a plane. No Notes. 7/10

Batman and Robin: As a 60s Batman enjoyer, I cannot overstate how much of a joy this was to watch. The costumes, the set design, the pitch-perfect acting, the architecture, the cheeseball writing..never have I seen more camp with such ambition and budget. 8/10

Skyrim: Dragonborn: this smaller, denser island shows what Skyrim can do. Stealing from morrowind gave this place a lot more character and it was refreshing. However some bad bugs and dragon controlling being a complete mess…It was an 8/10, but man 6.5/10

Skyrim: Dawngaurd (vampire): not great. Besides careening down the main quests chain without noticing the 8 radiant quests(the vamps aren’t fun to deal with). Mechanically, vampirism sucks. I never found switching forms to be anything but cumbersome and it wasn’t any better…

Vampire and dragon attacks killing NPCs is a cool idea but having that happen when you’re doing the main quest is just confusing. Adding the Vale and the soul gem dimension is neat, but kinda shallow. Each felt like other dlc they condensed.

The saving grace really is Serana, which was further advanced by an incredible mod that has me wanting to restart and take the dawnguard path. Until then…5/10

X Files S4/5: Once again there were a few bangers, but I'm starting to get the creeping feeling that the atmosphere that made the series unique is beginning to get lost. I wouldn't say many of these are terribly tense or mysterious anymore6. 5/10

STEALTH(2005): Look, I'm of two minds about this thing. Yes, it wastes a lot of time. Yes, the DOD clearly inserted a 15-second scene that minimizes the interesting sci-fi of the movie in a ridiculous way that had my friends both booing and laughing at the movie...

BUT HOLY SHIT ACE COMBAT MOVIE REAL!!! The last half really leans into being a bombastic action and sci-fi thriller. I can't think of a movie that had a more left-for-dead character and 'the loyalty switching is nearly at gundam levels' -@SuperheckDX 7/10

Bright Memory Infinite: I'll give it credit for a surprisingly fresh twist on character action, but it's over just as it gets good and I feel like it learned the wrong lessons from the early 8th gen CoD era of shooters. Worst double jump in an fps to date 5/10

X-Files S6: I'm not sure how, but a shark was jumped at some point between seasons. Immediately the average quality went down and the episodes felt much less engaging. It still managed to surprise me (Aliens in the Klan???) 5/10

Lobsteroids: it serves video game fmv vibes. -4/10 No.1 of the secret service: fun action and a Dracula assassin make up for having a plot I couldn't follow, but I'll give them points for a bravely anti-climactic ending. Just a good B movie bond. 6/10

ZOE: 2nd Runner MARS: I'm not gonna sugar coat it, this fucks. The remaster really shows how strong the art direction is by sharpening it up and it looks and plays divine. However, the translation and dub are incomprehensible. It's like what people say about Tomino's writing.8/10

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3: I don't think this movie was great, the jokes didn't quite make me laugh and there were some wasted opportunities, but the emotional core worked. I feel a good sense of closure from this over the MCU in general. 7/10

X-Files S7: Nah: 5/10

Azure Striker Gunvolt 3: I never got around to putting this on the list since I was hoping to finish the 2nd character playthrough, but that never materialized. 

This game has sparks of good. Good voice acting and a few creative level concepts that sell the team’s energy. The gameplay loop of tagging and teleporting is married well with the well tuned directional aim. Its also up to Inti’s bar for visual flare.

However this is all in spite of everything else. The translation makes some bizarre choices that make Joule is immediately grating, mostly due to the choice to never shut up about fetters (you could just call them seals...). The timeskip is truly bizarre since it abandons all the plot threads for a more or less identical setting, just with apologism for the evil conglomeration which Gunvolt is okay with working for now (despite being turned into a dog for some reason.) Worse, Joule is immediately the most mechanically bloated character in a 2d game, having too many features at once in addition to the (also expanded with her abilities) Gunvolt style switching. Less is more, if they had settled for GV with the flashstep or simplified Joule individually it would have been more fun to control. If they were going to give players so much more combat capability, it would’ve been nice to have enemies that could actually fight back...6/10

Kamen Rider Geats × Revice: Movie Battle Royale: Who put battle royale in my previously battle royale-free battle royale Toku show...AND it crosses over with the first battle royale Kamen Rider? I’m gonna be real, Revice nostalgia was coming on stronger than I was prepared for with this movie. I hope we see more Seeker in future material and the Ryuki cameos were heartwarming (except Ouja’s suit had a prominent pot-belly for some reason.) 7/10

Revice Forward: Kamen Rider Live & Evil & Demons: I miss revice... Making Demon Hiromi a Vergil was an interesting choice 6/10

The Super Mario Bros. Movie: I’m of two minds about this. On one hand, This is really the best version of a Illumination Mario movie we could get. It has fantastic sequences with 80′s pop music replacing the perfectly timed and funny soundtrack for what feels like a quota. It didn’t really make me, as an adult laugh or really engage much with its emotional stakes one they entered the mushroom kingdom. (I kinda liked their whole failing plumbing business) They tried to do something with the core cast, but without doing anything really memorable, save for good performances in spite of the material. Chris Pratt isn’t awful. It should be deeply meh, but it has enough colors and the occasional humor to make it work. If anything I would like to see the midpoint between this and the 80′s one 6/10

However, the pattern recognition part of my brain would have lit up like a Christmas tree if you put it in an MRI. I’ll admit that even a cynic like me soyjacked a few times when I saw something from Mario 3.

Telefrag: Listen, I don’t like beating a dead horse...but I see why it’s a dead game. bad feedback and tutorialization make matches with only one bot by default and fast ttk even less interesting than they should be. 2/10

Eagle Flight: It’s amazing how Ubisoft finds ways to ruin their own games with corporate nonsense. On startup within steam VR, I had resolve the bugged out multiplayer launcher installation while having to repeatedly switch from my VR headset and my keyboard. It left a sour taste in my mouth for an admittedly neat and good controlling game. There were a few instances of inconsistent button prompts in menus as well. The promise of flying through the air like an eagle is realized but did it really nead assassin’s creed collectible and map mechanics? 4/10

Sierra Ops: I occasionally see moments where what this was supposed to be shine through, but overall the writing could use an aggressive editing pass to allow it to capture the excitement of a space opera by tightening up the interpersonal stuff. I usually love this stuff when its concise, but the relationship drama comes across as bloated and ends up sinking the whole experience. An hour and a half of half vague meandering disengaged me for the cool declaration of war moments. Even longer until the game properly starts. It did grab me once or twice but mostly I found myself skipping and it still felt long. The gameplay is neat enough to begin with, enough to get me to the halfway mark but only having two possible other small ships in your controllable battle group kinda kills the exciting strategy and large scale warfare the premise promised. The more mechanics it ads the worse it plays unfortunately. Mostly because the mecha can't be ordered and must be actively controlled, destroying the gameplay flow. I also encountered a broken feature for the long range bombardment at the start of the third chapter where it only worked once. The only youtube playthrough that got that far had the same issue but never noticed.

I don’t think this thing is going to complete its 10 chapter plan, but with the >2 chapters I played. 2/10

Fast X: I feel hard judging this harshly since it is supposed to be part one of a duology(trilogy?) but I feel like the rubber is going to hit the road once we see the payoff to the setup. As it is, I can’t say it was mind blowing in comparison to 6-9 since some of the action sequences were deliberate retreads. 6/10

Rocky: A lot of times I find the movies pop culture upholds as classics are divorced from the actual quality of the material. This is one of those cases where I was blown away. I can’t think of another case where a character was so soulfully portrayed in every small minutia of the performance, direction and even set design. While I usually dislike the dirty look to a lot of 70′s film (I’ve watched a lot of movies that should’ve stayed in the 70s) the filth of Rocky’s world sings in every character. In the first 10 minutes I knew I would ride or die with this lovable loser. 10/10

My Friend Pedro: Interesting gunplay ideas that feel made for twitter clips. However I never quite felt the flow. The real enemy is a tedious and artificially extended playtime fattened with too many puzzle platforming segments that add nothing. Ultimately the ‘lol so random XD’ humor got old real quick. It had the energy of a Deadpool cosplay in the 2010s who didn’t know when to quit when he was ahead. 4/10

~~~Random Half-Life/Portal mod roundup~~~

Thinking with Time Machine: Its primary mechanic is interesting but cumbersomely executed. The puzzles are more a pain to pull off than solve and the writing is bad fanfiction tier. I encountered multiple repeatable crashes between levels. 3/10

Requiem of Science: It starts out as an uninspired series of levels and escalates into a baffling gasps of creativity that make no sense and have no real context. Random mashup of Black Mesa and Aperture assets? Kinda weird. Egyptian pyramid with a trap involving 15 consecutive headcrabs? What? It’s really just a series of random source assets combined with maybe your 3rd attempt at a doom wad in high school. The story is...bad. The protagonist is named Genry Freedom and it has spongebob beyond writing. 2/10

Snowdrop Escape. Too many straightforward puzzles and gunplay felt nonthreatening. I never felt challenged and this thing has essentially no story, not that I could hear it half the time. I’ll put this in my ‘bad multiverse media’ pile.  2/10

Rexaura: Good puzzles and fresh mechanics but the writing and story didn’t wow me. Competent. 5/10

Entropy Zero: Uprising: Encountered a gamestopping bug, but the pretty normal content didn’t give me the energy to continue.

Logistique: The puzzles weren’t as hard as they were dull. but I appreciate the effort 3.5/10

Portal Stories VR: can’t really say much other than I was trapped halfway through the floor and it had unity’s kinda bad movement. 2/10

The Lab: Neat gimmicks but only two were worth more than 4 minutes of my time. 4/10

Aperture Hand Lab: My controller didn’t have the haptics to progress, but it was pretty funny while it lasted. 5/10

Entropy Center Demo: Look we all know this is a portal fangame. Puzzles were neat enough with the rewind mechanic. I can’t say it has the wit that makes portal work yet just from the demo, but I hope it adds that X factor it needs. 6.10

Justice League: Putting aside my bias for the cast, which is peppered with some of my personal favorites from TV, This is a solid show. By most measuring sticks this measures up, but people like me who know too much about comics can get waaaay more out of this. It’s confident enough to show a haranguing news anchor wave around a copy of ‘Seduction of the Innocent’ assured both kids and general audiences understand its criticism of moral panics while respecting comic book fans to use their brains to catch the specific callouts to real world history. It has ham and it has heart. from the goofy golden age callbacks to the Christmas special with sharp character writing. I miss the dedication to creating quality entertainment with its material. 7.5/10

Shin Kamen Rider: Full disclosure, my experience with this movie was colored by a pretty rotten day. The first fifteen minutes were gold. There was energy. A snappy camera, brisk exposition and flare to the action. It replicated the tricks that made the original show work but dialing up the visually absurd elements to contrast with a more serious tone. I’ve heard some folks had bad screenings, but I had the pleasure of a few sporadic academic chuckles to add ambiance. Shoutout to the sight gag where the cyclone motorcycle is following Ichigo during a dialogue scene at a polite distance. The whole thing reminded me of Anno’s earlier live action take on Cutie Honey. However after the first act, I got the sense the film was petering out. Perhaps the format of adapting a handful of episodes risks getting tired, but by the start of the third act I was checked out. I don’t check my phone in theaters. I checked my phone, looked up how long the film was and questioned if I wanted to stick it out another hour. Worse this is the first movie to physically hurt my eyes. The penultimate battle is in a pitch dark tunnel with abrupt flashes of bright light that caused me to recoil, even cover my eyes after a few minutes. 3/10. That time he did a flip was cool, but I regret staying.

Rocky II: This should’ve been a cash-in sequel. It repeats the beats of a first film that needs no follow up. Rocky’s arc was done, do we really need another with the same beats? Second verse same as the first but a little bit more production value and pretty dang good. I’m giving it a 9/10 so it must’ve done something right. The melodrama of pregnancies and unemployment and comas didn’t have me, until it did. This movie waited to switch back to southpaw and didn’t let up after that. 9/10 

DragonHeart: It’s a kids movie but it does have that childlike wonder and innocence you don’t see in fantasy movies these days. If I think the dragon looks good or bad depends on my mood at the time 6/10

The Master Demon: I’ve seen low budget but this is something else. We skipped most of it. -3/10

Battleship: It really didn’t have me, and then it did. This movie needed another few weeks in the editing booth because opening you ship action movie with some boner comedy shenanigans doesn’t bode well. Gimme a tight 90 cut and we are in buisness. There is no doubt in my mind why this is a favorite in a lot of navy households, because this is somehow more hype than Top Gun. 6.5/10

Justice League Unlimited S1-2: Fantastic. Perfectly constructed. It operates metatextually as a commentary, even a refutation, of many of Alan Moore’s works and opinions on superheroes. As someone who enjoys the odd comic book, the intertextual game of ping-pong that is The Question (voiced by Jeffery Combs, who better?) is an absolute joy to see. Adaptations like ‘For the Man Who Has Everything’ show a clear love for the character driven aspect of capes and cowls that you don’t see anymore. It more thoughtful and nuanced than it has any right to be, and talks up to any audience with more respect than I’ve seen out of superhero media (outside of maybe Gunn’s movies). Even the most die hard modern comic book fan should loop back to this for a shot in the arm of hope. 9/10

Justice League Unlimied S3: there was a third one I guess 7/10

[it looks like a few of the things I added got lost so quick lightning round]

Dungeons and Dragons, Honor Among Thieves: Hey! Thats pretty good! It’s a charming and fin fantasy movie, don’t see those as much as we should these days. Best of all it really captured the energy of someones unwieldy campaign. Hope a sequel has a completely different party. 7.5/10

Bumblebee in 4K: Each subsequent viewing I can deconstruct this into its component movies more and more, but ‘steal from the best!’ 7/10

Mikadroid: It was fascinating and had a unique atmosphere. The obvious symbolism of a 80′s Japanese bubble disco built on top of a ruin of fascist superweapon is a treat. Great costume and model work where it counts, but it undercuts itself with poor momentum and a monster that is shown in a few unflattering angles. Spotted a classic Ultraman actor so I’m happy 7/10

LoZ Cartoon E1: annoyingly competent 4/10

Kappa Mikey E1: I see why this wasn’t good enough for 2000′s MTV. In spite of it all it was actually a little funny -5/10

Mars Needs Moms: The implications will tie your brain in knots while the actual story is so bog standard it numbs your mind at the same time. The aliens were clearly somebody’s fetish in production. -4/10

Dune 1984: I’mma be real with you chief. this isn’t great. Sorry Mr.Lynch, they can’t all be winners. Nice Cameo though. I will come to the defense of character inner monologues though, but having them whispered doesn’t work. I wasn’t wowed by the special effects but the weird set dressing had a charm. 5/10

Across the Spiderverse: I might need more time to digest it, but within the first 10 minutes I had to stop and think if there might be other animated movies that look this good. Not even close. I think the beats hit me differently than some others, but yeah, no doubt. It’s great. Anything else would be nitpicks I will withhold till the second part. 9.5/10

Oh wait, Unlimited SpiderMan didn’t have a prominent role: 0/10

Heavy Metal L-Gaim: It pains me to say this, but I couldn’t finish it. Individually, each episode delivers top notch cartooning with expressive and goofy animation that really sell the wacky cast. That is, when we, as an audience, can get it. The plot lacked forward momentum and enough of it felt dull that I dropped it a few times. I skipped to the end and found a backloaded finale with a soggy final note. The vibes are top notch, but it can only take you so far. 6/10

Rocky 3: I though a shark was jumped when Hulk Hogan showed up, but they had me. They fucking had me. 8/10

Wolf Tracer’s Dinosaur Island: this had to have been a tax scheme or something. -4/10

Skull Island: I got nothing. No real emotional response. Nothing. It was there. It was inoffensive. But I gotta point out that at this point, Kong’s survival rate for plucky kid companions is pretty low. 5/10

The Italian Job (2003): A fun enough heist movie, but now I want to watch the original to compare 6.5/10

Transformers Rise of the Beasts: Just because it’s CGI action slop doesn’t mean it can’t have heart. Putting aside my predisposition to like this, it was a decently constructed version of what these movies are. It was coherent, funny and well made. My only gripe is that at the end they do something just kinda weird, but you know what? Who cares! Besides that one moment, the movie had my suspension of disbelieve right where it needed to be to have a grand old time.

As a Transformers fan? There was fanservice. I was a fan, and I was served. ‘Subversion of expectations is kind of a tainted expression, but by reversing a few familiar bleats was a nice variation on a theme. They could’ve easily messed it up, or gone too far, but so much as a few notes of a leitmotif made me a hair shy of spontaneous combustion. The credits stinger? Dumb as hell, but you know what this movie earned it, and My entire friend group was popping off. 7.5/10

Rock 4: This doesn’t quiiiite live up to the premise of ‘Rocky destroys the soviet union’, but it tries. however I felt more like I was watching an ad for the album. Kinda like Netflix shows that are desperate to make the next big TikTok dance after Wednesday performed well. 7/10

Farscape: I gave the last season a fair shake and found it kind of unwatchable. 2/10

Half Life Alyx: Oppressive. Immersive. Possibly the last VR game I’ll ever need to play until they make a sequel. This could only be by the virtue of being the only vr game that actually feels like a real game, but it is far more than that.

MyHouse.pk3: I kinda ruined this for myself a little since I blasted through the non-spooky wad version a few times confused about what the fuss was over. However the creativity and magic to make this work is astounding. The final beat was pretty cool. Short and sweet. 7/10

(Lost a few of my entries due to an edit error, these’ll be shorter than my original thoughts)

Black Mesa: A triumph of game remakes. While Xen is a more total reimagining, the rest of it really makes me appreciate how ahead of its time a lot of the original Half Life was. I often found myself suprised when reviewing the original, sections I thought were added in were in fact there since 1998. Genuinely gorgeous at times. 9/10

Devilman 2004: How do you make Devilman Boring? If you have seen any 2000′s Japanese b-movie, you have seen this one. Its got all the halmarks, minimal action, camcorder grade early digial picture quality and a lot of high school non-drama for some reason. -2/10

Bloodshot: This movie goes hard than it’s redbox-grade appearance would have you believe. It weaves this deception into its intentionally genre generic setup in a way that makes tired sci-fi tropes feel exciting. Its costumes and CG fights feel like they outmatch what marvel pours millions into. 7.5/10

Barbie Princess Charm School: The things I watch for our movie night’s wheel. It’s competent, but not as funny as the last one I watched. -5/10

Rocky V: It’s very 1990, though I feel like the energy is brought down by the cheap contrivance to reset rocky back to the streets TM. I will say that the emotional beats with Micky hit hard, and I appreciate having the fight at the end be out of the ring. Refreshing, but I think this was a good place to end it. 7.5/10

Andromeda S1: An efficiently produced show that takes star trek (in all but name) into an interesting new status quo. I did worry at first that it would fall into the bad habits of white savior storytelling and some cheesy sci-fi concepts (nietzschean? really?). However I can’t contest that I had a good time and there were enough fresh episodes to keep me happy. 7/10

Movie Night Speedround

Alone in the Dark 2: this is clearly a movie they just retitled. 4/10

Jupiter Ascending: Can’t rate since I might get back to this later but it at least looked neat. -4/10

Nick Fury Agent of SHEILD: Good casting but this sure is a TV movie. -4/10

Nutcracker and the Four Realms: This was more fun when it was an actual ballet production for 5 minutes. Generic late 2010s Disney twist and fluctuating production value. Morgan Freeman is a clockpunk father cristmas. 6/10 

[josephthesnailshow]

Too Many Misadventures - The Last Misadventure.

Note: this creepypasta is a fanfic for my friend @bex-saysike, please enjoy :)

Ever since I watched that episode of Prototype Fredbear’s Ask Series, one of my series, I stopped thinking about it, as the creator of that episode committed suicide, so I forgot about it entirely. Well, the memories came back.

The bad part about this is that he made an episode for a different series, and one of my friends was a victim of it.

The series the man went after is ‘Too Many Misadventures,’ and it was made by a friend of mine named Saysike123. The series featured three characters, Bex, Stacy, and Silly, and I met Saysike123 on DeviantArt. Don't worry; I will get to the episode now. I'm going to just skip the other information, as I don't want to waste your time reading this post.

Now, for the episode, it was called "The Last Misadventure," another episode that I found on the dark web, and it's the same website where the episode of my series came from. Also, no, I didn't access the dark web; I asked a friend of mine to screenshot a random episode of some series on there, and this is what I got.

There are a lot of things to talk about.

The episode started with the cover for ‘Too Many Misadventures,’ except the letters in the logo were bright and sloppy, and the quality was low, which seemed weird as the series is new; it was more recent, so it shouldn't have this quality.

Judging by the fact that this episode was made by the same guy who made the episode of my series, I assumed there would be a live-action sequence of Bex, Stacy, and Silly going nuts. Surprisingly, I saw none of that.

For a second, there was a flash of Prototype Fredbear and Shadow Fredbear standing in a dark room with their unsettling faces—the same exact photo from the previous episode I watched. The disturbing part about this is that Saysike123 and I didn't even plan to connect our universes together yet, and we didn't know each other at this time.

The main part of the episode had static covering the screen, almost like you would see on a recorded VHS tape, but thanks to a tool I used, I could see everything easily.

Anyways, after this scene, there was a quick scene with Queen Creampuff, the major villain of the series, and Silly, one of the protagonists; they were just staring at each other for a long time due to boredom. I looked closely at Creampuff’s hand, and I noticed that there was a pistol. After a minute, she pulled the trigger, killing Silly while still retaining the quality of the intro.

The camera zoomed in on Silly’s body, like it was being recorded in real life. This wasn't very creepy, as the only creepy part about this is that they managed to accurately get saysike123’s art style right. Bex and Stacy heard the bullet, and they went to Silly’s body. They started sobbing, and Creampuff looked at the thing she caused, looking horrified and guilty.

During this scene, I found out one thing this episode and Prototype Fredbear’s Ask Series #0 had in common: these episodes have a video format, both are deleted and can't be seen again, and they both have one concept, relying on death. Unlike that episode, this one is fully animated, but not fully; everything can look like a still image, and it looks messily rushed.

I heard static in the episode, and it scared me badly. I didn't know what it showed afterwards until the screen pandered to what that was.

The image was of Bex’s decapitated head; it was inside a box, and her face was in complete fear. The fur on her body was messy, and her clothes were next to the box, completely torn and covered in dirt mixed with mud, exactly like Silly’s clothes. I won't even show the picture, as it’s a bit brutal, and there's no point in showing it as I explained it.

The image faded to black, and the next image was shown; it was Stacy, but she was run over by a vehicle, and her clothes were completely soaked in mud. I knew this was coming, as during the image fading to black, I heard a vehicle hitting something.

The episode ended, and the last image was shown; it was of my art style—not my current art style, but the one from 2020 or early 2021. The guy who made this clearly went back to memory lane and recreated my old art style.

The quality was low, and it was the same photo that flashed at the beginning of the episode, still with Prototype Fredbear and Shadow Fredbear staring at the camera.

Saysike123, if you’re reading this post of mine, this is just a thing I discovered, and I assumed that you would be interested in knowing about this episode.

Also, I looked closely at the photo that flashed but with the old art style, and it said:

“This episode might’ve not been for you, but I knew you would watch this because this is one of your friends, but I’ve been stalking you on social media since you had your old art style; I’ve been a fan of you and your work, but you never noticed me. That's why I made this episode to get your attention. Now that I've got your attention, here are my last words before I commit suicide."

“I hope you’re traumatized by my episodes; goodbye, and I hope you end up like me.”

The episode then shut off, and I'm back on my home screen on my phone as if nothing happened.

[black-rose-writings]

Watching Shadow and Bone Season 2: Episode 4 - I don't like how far we are in the timeline already

Last one, then I'm going to bed. Not worth messing up my finally normalising sleep pattern for this shit of a show.

Love the intro. Yes, please, tear Ravka down, if you wish to do so.

I hate Vasily, but that is a fair reaction.

I notice an interesting change in the dynamic here. This is Nikolai's turf and they're discussing it over dinner, insetad of being marched into the throne-room and looked down upon by the King.

Less than year... If I have the timeline right, it's been barely half a year.

Also, Zoya of all people is one to talk. I mean, she's tellingthe truth, for once, but like...

So... if the ugly uniform the Queen's idea? Like, sure, I guess, but why the fuck would Alina choose to wear it later?

And I see Baghra is back to being preachy.

Ah, yes, the Fold is the reason people hate Grisha. Definitely no pogroms happening before that happened. And Kirigan will definitelly stop trying to change the world if its gone.

And I see the "West Ravka" plot has been forgotten.

Alina "My responsibilities start and end with tearing down the Fold" strikes again. And Vasily is watching her... making out with her boyfriend. Dear Saints, if he's going to accuse her of being a traitor because she's kissed another guy, I think he'll have to execute his own mother, too.

I like this Alchemi kid. And Baghra's being preachy again.

"Endured years of abuse at your orders". Genya had her agency. Had being the operative word, because she unfortunately became popular and that necessitated that be removed.

"Everything I learned, I learned at your knee" Finally, someone said it.

"Redemtion" my ass. Still don't know what exactly she imagines under those words.

Well, that's a change from taking four whole episodes to kill a person.

I guess everyone believes in the Saints, now.

I mean, I guess we have to have a fake plague somehow without Nina being maimed by drugs.

Ah, yes, the two options: Evil villain and sunshine idiot.

Dear god, I wish he was a spy. Unfortunately, autistic people make for terrible liars.

"There's always a cost" he says as if he knows anything about it.

Dear lord... I... I think I know where the crows are headed.

The Crows are going to be heisting the fucking sword from Amrat Jen. Fucking calling it now. I have seen no spoilers.

Called it. It would have been more impressive if it hadn't been like 2 minutes later, but this show presumes the viewers have no concept of memory, so they can't really bring it up once and then bring it back an episode later.

I'm like 90% sure Nina is faking betraying him, but okay.

Now, that sounds like a trap if I've ever heard of one.

Or not.

This was a good scene in the book and they've made it good in the show. No complaints here.

Except maybe that I still have trouble deciphering the fucking Irish accent, but that's on me.

Wow, would you look at that, a previously unadressed plot point we're bringing back.

I mean, that's one way to distance Alina from the monarchy so her stance is not as dumb, but like... the show needs to pick its villains and stick to them. I hated getting constantly hit with "Well actually" in Fate and I will hate it here. I have absolutely 0 faith that the show will actually make this work out in a remotely satisfying way.

Oh, look, corsets suck joke.

Also, like... Alina, I don't think insulting the crown prince is a good idea. But given that we're deaing with Alina "I like to give big men with guns lip" Starkov, I shouldn't be expecting a sense of self-preservation.

Pekka's getting what he deserves.

Very awkward crush confession.

Oh, they did actually bang previously.

Wow, look at that, Kaz is being snarky about *checks notes* a slave he just freed being concerned about slaves.

Okay, nevermind, Alina really went for the first army chic on her own. She's really commited to Grisha assimilation.

I am not a make-up expert (in fact, I don't know jack shit about it), but I'm not a big fan of Alina's make-up in this scene. IDK what it is, it just kinda rubs me the wrong way. I think it's the lipstick.

"Coming from you that means a lot"... what? Why? What does she know about ruling? Like, yes, I just don't think her input in private is all that valuable.

Vasily deserves to get his arm ripped of by the Nichevoya. In fact, it can't come soon enough.

Just on time.

Yes, please, have the confrontation.

Baghra? Protecting anyone but herself? I mean, everyone else is being remade into a better person, why not her?

That's some weak-ass table, if she's able to break it.

"You obsession with the Fold is naive" my man is spitting facts.

"We're going to change the world" "That is never going to happen" So you do admit change is evil and only morally correct choice is perpetuating the status quo. I mean, I knew that already, but sure.

The Fold? The Fold is the only thing he has left? Okay. I personally think you're full of shit, but sure.

I personally prefer the book version of this confrontation... that one was intimate and she had a goal and an agency.

I didn't agree with that goal (sacrificing herself to destroy Aleksander), but it was a goal, it was intention.

I'm honestly angry I kinda want to watch another episode to see what more they fuck up, however... I should really go to sleep. I'm cooking tomorrow and I'd rather not hurt myself because I'm sleep deprived.