#I'd actually seen all of season 7 before starting this mission

[vegaseatsass]

Reality tv is so fucking dangerous for me because my brain still whirs as if I'm watching fictional characters but I'm NOT and I should NOT be blorbofying or armchair diagnosing these irl human beings, it's simply safer for me to never ever engage. Tl;dr my god the exes on His Man 3 have eaten my mind, I can't stop thinking about them. I won't share REAL PERSON HEADCANONS (basically: who pings as neuroatypical) but I went from thinking Myeongkyun was the most hilarious entertaining television figure I'd seen in years to being really truly gutted for him and his like, slow struggling emotional processing which makes him sooooo frustratingly opaque even though he is trying, and his fuckboy affect which is so deceptive for how confusingly deeply (but just. sloooooowly) he actually feels. Youngjoon has been my favorite contestant this entire time (well, Youngjoon and Seungjin but let's not get me started on how it feels to watch Seungjin go untreasured episode after episode) and Hanmin jumped way up there in episodes 7 and 8 too because who knew he was the absolute kindest and most supportive and emotionally intelligent person in that entire house, I'm rooting SO HARD for him and Youngjoon I think they're such a crazy good match for each other augh. So the thing I find so compelling about Myeongkyun and Youngjoon's conflict is that it's really easy for me to understand where both of them were coming from; as absolutely maddening as it is to imagine being in Youngjoon's shoes and trying with so much hyperverbal self-awareness to reach some kind of clarity and just being hit in the face again and again with Myeongkyun's blase opaqueness, I really DO think they were both trying super hard and in good faith in that exhausting conversation! It understandably didn't FEEL that way to Youngjoon, as Myeongkyun led him in circle after circle, but I'm seriously like unhinged with how much I feel for Myeongkyun rn and his visible overwhelm. When Youngjoon was about to leave and tell Myeongkyun to figure things out on his own and Myeongkyun told him it's actually easier for him !!! to sort through his feelings with him there !!!! that's such an admittance, he absolutely was trying that whole time but what comes out of his mouth is sooooooooo not intelligible and thus as infuriating as humanly possible for Youngjoon, this incredibly verbal, emotionally analytic overthinker. They're such a bad match lmao and it's so so sad that Myeongkyun just assumed their relationship was moving as slowly as his feelings do and not that he was fully ghosted dklfjslkdfja I can just see BOTH THEIR SIDES I'm almost always on the side of the person who is like "how was I supposed to know what you ghosting me meant? I kept contacting you because I just thought you were busy!" vs. the ghoster who is all ugh dude why couldn't you read the room? but if Myeongkyun has always been like this - answering a direct question with "Maybe I'm ENTJ!" or "I don't want to tell you" or munch munch munching and "mmm"-ing and blinking and never ever answering what he was actually asked - it's pretty easy to understand why Youngjoon would assume this is a guy who neither cares about nor requires direct communication of any kind.

Lol sorry I've never posted into this tag before and this is a super incoherent blur of feelings before I go offline for the next two days but I just have to get it out of my system because I don't think I've ever had a reality show change my perception of somebody as much as Myeongkyun just like. Visibly hanging on by a thread while saying all the absolute wrong things in his stupid cool guy voice. and then breaking down as soon as he was alone. did. "Dating Minseon is... a possibility" went from sounding like a half-assed non-commitment to me, to Myeongkyun very seriously working through his feelings at his regular slow slow speed, and I'm fully rooting for them as well atp.

I wish this season had more friendship and less shady secret missions because everyone is so miserable... including me, who is sitting here typing nonsense instead of posting about my safely fictional characters.

[sailormoonandme]

If there was a new Sailor Moon reboot anime someday I'd want it to respect the core values and spirit of the original manga and anime, but do something different. I don't think it is necesarry to re-tell the Dark Kingdom arc all over again, at least not in the same way, let alone methodically follow that up with the Black Moon, Infinity, Dream or Stars arcs.

I think that'd be refreshing for older fans (who currently are the primary target demographic for the brand) and for newer fans (who I actually think should be at least equally the target demographic at some point in the future) they won't know that we are deviating from what we've seen before anyway.

There are no end of ways you can change things up of course, but for the sake of argument lets say Sailor Moon is a seasonal anime, meaning it realistically has 12-13 episodes to tell its arc in.

There are no end of anime or western cartoons that can tell compelling arcs in that amount of time, but the limited episode count almost locks you into replicating Crystal and the manga if you are married to the DK arc or married to how the DK arc unfolded. Namely, introducing the Senshi one by one, building towards the drama with their pat lives etc. So just immediately off the bat you've eaten up minimum 6-7 episodes of your season on set up as each episode is going to be setting up one of the Senshi, Tuxedo Mask, etc. I'm a Crystal defender/apologist, but I see no point doing that again if we are doing a new reboot.

Instead, here is a radical idea. Why not start the series off with the Inner Senshi already established as a team and Usagi is the audience avatar who is being introduced to them, their HQ and their mission when she is recruited to the Sailor Team. Not only will that work for people unfamiliar with Sailor Moon, but for us old geezers who've seen every version out there (and read many more through fanfiction ;) it sort of speeds things up. We can get to the character dynamics and interpersonal relationships with our girls off the bat. In addition, it provides a more organic reason as to why Usagi is less combat savvy compared to the other girls, the latter have just been doing this for longer whilst Usagi is a newbie.

Arranging things this way is also how a lot of Super Sentai (one of Takeuchi's primary sources of inspiration for Sailor Moon) seasons kick off too, they build the team within the first episode or two as the team is the heart of the story.

Here is another radical idea. What if the Dark Kingdom and the reincarnation angle isn't even the plot of the first arc? What if we're dealing with some new villains or the Death Busters even? The Death Buster's base of operations was a school. In a sense, they are even more natural villains for a team of superhero school girls to go up against out of the gate. You could draw out the huge reveals of everyone's past lives and so on across the whole series rather than make it the first arc. Like imagine if Queen Beryl and Metalia were not simply the final villains of the first/only arc, but the Final Big Bad of the entire series?

That's not even getting into all the villains beyond the mainline manga that you could make use of, modernising them or adapting them into an anime for the first time. Ail, An, Fiore, Snow Kaguya, Queen Badine, Shaman Apsu and the Opposito Senshi, Past Wiseman, Death Vulcan, Dark Nibiru, Coatl, Dracul, Vampir, Lilith, etc.

I'm just saying this franchise is replete with rich concepts, characters and ideas. Creatively there is A LOT that can be done with it for old fans and new. It'd be a shame if we never got more and an even bigger shame if what we got was what we have seen before.

[all-seeing-ifer]

Wait I really like ats s5 it has some banger episodes, why don’t you like it?

oh man. season 5.

so, in theory, there's a lot about season 5 that I should like. I think it reinvents the show in an interesting way and I love the themes of never stopping fighting even in the face of the knowledge that the good guys are never going to truly win and that the deck is always going to be stacked against them. the fucking dialogue between gunn and anne in the finale? "I'd get this truck packed before the new stuff gets here"? holy SHIT it is so good!!!

I totally get why people like season 5 I do think it genuinely has a lot going for it BUT you DID ask so I will now be presenting Isabel's List of Varyingly Serious/Petty Beefs With Angel Season Five. In No Particular Order:

Spike's a good addition to the show and god knows angel season 5 does more interesting stuff with him than buffy season 7 ever did but it is fucking insane to me how much focus and development he gets while gunn fred and lorne, who have been mainstays of the show since like season 2, continue to get absolute jack shit to do

just generally let's be honest. anyone who isn't a white guy this season is fucked. harmony gets no development despite being granted main cast status illyria gets nothing to do despite being set up as a super duper important addition to the cast I don't even know what they were fucking thinking with eve. etc.

THEY FRIDGED CORDY AND FRED WITHIN THREE EPISODES OF EACH OTHER. AND AT NO POINT DID ANYONE IN THE WRITERS' ROOM THINK THAT MAYBE THE FACT THAT THEY WERE WERE STARTING TO RUN OUT OF WOMEN WAS PERHAPS A PROBLEM

speaking of cordy my best girl of all time, I know people love you're welcome but i'm sorry i remain deeply ambivalent about that fucking thing. like yes it's nice that the cordy we know and love gets to come back for one last hurrah but also the episode basically never treats her like a person with feelings of her own and instead she's just there to motivate angel and then die so he can be sad about it. i can't believe it only took 40 minutes to set feminism back 4000 years

also sorry but did they really think you're welcome was going to be enough to make up for what they did to her in season 4? have you seen season 4? one episode where cordy looks hot and has her tits out and swordfights will NOT undo the damage that has been done

and then they proceed to set feminism back even further by just refusing to acknowledge the existence of their show's secondary protagonist for the basically the rest of the season and also fridging fred in an arguably even more horrific way three episodes later so wesley can be sad and so they can introduce a new character who does nothing

like seriously nothing makes me more rabid in season 5 than the scene in power play where the characters all vote on if they're gonna go through with their suicide mission against the circle of the black thorn and it's just all the men voting on it bc illyria's been incapictated bc I guess in angel season 5 women don't get to have agency even when they're literal godlike demon lords

on the subject of the illyria plotline i fucking hate how gunn gets treated. like sorry all the men on this show (sans lorne. unproblematic king) have done awful shit why does gunn get singled out as having done something uniquely horrible just for a shady business deal he couldn't possibly have known the consequences of. like we know why but still

and on the subject of gunn.... the fact that they wrote a storyline implying that the only way for the only black main character in the show to become smart and capable is for him to have his brain magically altered and NO ONE in the writers room was like HM MAYBE THIS IS A BAD LOOK ACTUALLY. christ i would feel way better about the whole "gunn feels like he's just the muscle" conflict if the show more consistently came down on the side that players does where gunn does actually have way more to offer than being the muscle but has just come to see himself as just The Guy Who Fights. but unfortunately they spend at least as much time writing gunn as Actually Just The Muscle. usually to make wesley look better (i promise i'm not bitter about it)

and perhaps i'd be less annoyed about all this if gunn also got literally anything else to do this season but this is truly all he gets until not fade away

which i guess is still better than fred? like fred just dies. that's it

guys i don't think we shit on the girl in question enough. like it's bad. it's really bad. i'm so glad we're currently in the shit talking lies my parents told me renaissance but can we also start bringing that same energy for this piece of shit

nina's an art student so i hate her by default (<- guy who went to art school <- i am allowed to say this)

despite spike being intended to serve as a replacement for cordy they just straight up don't give him relationships with any of the characters other than angel (and fred for like. one episode) and it results in him just feeling incredibly out of place

just in general actually it feels like the writers kind of stopped caring about any of the character relationships aside from angel and spike and fred/wesley (which they only care about bc it's a reason for wesley to be sad anyway)

the pacing is a nightmare and i do not give a shit about the circle of the black thorn. sorry

and just as a disclaimer i would like to acknowledge that like. ats was always fairly shitty about race and gender this isn't unique to s5 but MAN does it feel like season 5 in particular is just. saying the quiet part out loud constantly every episode

anyway thank you for giving me free rein to just bitch about angel season 5 for an extended period of time this was fun. still i'm honestly glad that you enjoy it like really truly I wish that were me

[scriptscribbles]

grufainia replied to your post:Why is The Ambassadors of Death seven parts?...

That could be said of all the Season 7 7-parters, really (Tho Inferno is a bit better paced)

Inferno is far better paced, as are The War Games and The Invasion (and, looking further back, Marco Polo). I suppose I've been spoiled by the quality of the last couple excessively long serials that it's a let down to get something like Ambassadors.