#also it's not sci fi but i absolutely lost my shit when i watched a (terrible) romantic drama that was filmed in vancouver

[thevalleyisjolly]

[Image description: Screenshot of tumblr tags reading "this is blatant 'that one quarry in wales' erasure" End ID]

I hate modern science fiction shows, all filmed in flatly lit green screen. I miss when science fiction shows weren’t cowards and just told the audience that every inhabited planet in the galaxy looked like British Columbia.

[brucebocchi]

Summer 2024 anime roundup: ALL IN ONE

hey! i also post these reviews on my ko-fi. this is a labor of love so if you like the stuff i write, i'd really appreciate it if you'd throw a few bucks my way. thanks!

Well, I'm much busier now than I was in the first half of the year, so that means less time for anime and less time for writing about it. I managed to watch only (ONLY?) nine shows this season, so might as well put it all in one post.

As always, each show's OP is linked in the title.

Let's jump in.

Returning anime

NieR: Automata Ver. 1.1a, part 2

After a COVID-plagued production delayed the last few episodes of its first half last year, A-1 Pictures’ adaptation of Yoko Taro’s landmark action-RPG returns to deliver the real meat of the story. And as with the game, the first half of NieR: Automata Ver. 1.1a was something I’d classify as “pretty good!,” while the remainder is what makes the entire endeavor worthwhile.

I’m happy to report that not only did the studio not lose a step, but they improved on the presentation of Ver. 1.1a immensely. The action sequences are superb and expressive throughout, and the CGI integration is actually, y’know, integrated this time out. The score, both original and borrowed from Keiichi Okabe’s contributions to the NieR duology, remains as evocative as ever. They also ramped up the cheesecake more than a little bit, and let’s be real, that was the draw for a lot of people in the first place.

If there’s any one thing Ver. 1.1a can claim as an advantage over the game’s narrative, it’s that the former does a lot more work in building on A2 as a character. There’s just enough to chew on in the game, but having more of her backstory from the YoRHa stage play and manga adaptation integrated into the narrative makes for more of a meal. Having A2’s history and real personality pinned up as a backdrop as she struggles to suppress both really fleshes out her journey and eventual resolve as shit continues to hit the fan. She’s also just a big ol’ tsundere sometimes. And not for nothing, but they gave her an absolute DUMPY for no reason, but I can’t really pin that as a negative.

9S’ whole thing happens too. I really don’t have much to add to that.

When I reviewed this show’s first half at the end of 2023, I mentioned that the initial concern with the anime’s very existence is that it’s adapting a narrative that is functionally being told through the very fact that it’s a video game. The delivery of the game’s true ending, especially, is so innately A Video Game that it’s functionally impossible to adapt directly into a television show. I’m happy to say that although that function is lost, Ver. 1.1a’s ending is still plenty satisfying (and I’m told especially so for Drakengard fans, without giving too much away). Something is still very much lost in the transition, though. In his review of the penultimate episode, Anime News Network’s James Beckett wrote:

What the anime of NieR:Automata has not been able to capture in these critical final moments is the way that the game makes its players complicit in the tragedy in a way that they could never be if they simply sat down and passively watched these events unfold from behind the safe veil of the fourth wall. It would be like if we were each individually guided on stage to place our hands on Hamlet's shoulder and push him gently onwards to his final destination. It doesn't change anything about what happens in the story, but it changes everything about what it means to us.

These acts of “ludonarrative culpability,” as Beckett called it, are the reason why Yoko Taro is considered an auteur in the gaming sphere. Both NieR games are tragedies writ large, and Yoko’s genius lies in making you, the player, carry out the tragedy, often well before you realize what you’ve wrought. And to Beckett’s point from his review, NieR: Automata is a perfectly fine sci-fi story in its own right, but the game puts the blood squarely on the player’s hands and inserts them into the narrative in a way that simply watching cannot. The connection I felt to the story was only there because I’d already played the game myself; I can only imagine how it would feel if this was your introduction to NieR.

So to return to a question I suggested at the end of last year: Do I recommend this to people who haven’t played the game? Eh, not particularly. It’s a well-made show, to be sure, but there’s enough missing from what makes Automata such an exceptional game that I’m not sure I can recommend it wholeheartedly if you’re not already familiar. Then again, I wouldn’t really know how it reads from the other side. To those who know and love the game, Ver. 1.1a isn’t quite the “Rebuild of NieR” some were hoping it to be, but it’s an interesting companion piece that takes surprising strides to tie it even closer to the preceding franchise. If you’re a newcomer? YMMV. Either way, play the game.

Oshi no Ko, season 2

I spent far more time than was necessary in the Discourse Mines following Oshi no Ko’s thunderous debut last year and a controversial (but fortunately inconsequential) turn of events in the manga shortly after the season finale. Though I remain one of the series’ foremost glazers, I’ve had my moments where I worried that maybe I overrated it a bit in my head, that I carried too much water for writer Aka Akasaka, and that I’m still riding the high of the series’ premiere.

Oshi no Ko’s second season completely erased any lingering worry almost immediately and reminded me and the world that yes, it Really Is That Good. The “It’s So Over” switch flipped to “We Are So Back” as soon as best girl Kana Arima and co-lead Taiki Himekawa dazzled their co-stars and one another with literally colorful displays of their acting prowesses. My expectations continued to rise as an active reader of the source material, and studio Doga Kobo continued to surpass them. This adaptation is just that good.

Aqua’s quest for revenge and Akasaka’s continuing examination of Japan’s entertainment industry both lead us into the world of stage acting, specifically 2.5D adaptations of famous manga and anime. Aqua is cast alongside Kana and his sham girlfriend and former reality show co-star Akane in an adaptation of the fictional smash hit shonen manga Tokyo Blade, along with several members of a theater company to which Ai once belonged. While Aqua is more concerned with getting dirt on Ai’s background than he is with acting, Kana and Akane have much more personal stakes as they try to show one another up and still put on the best play they can. Kana can’t stand Akane’s absolutist, matter-of-fact approach to acting (nor the fact that she’s fake-dating the guy for whom Kana’s down abysmal), while Akane, who idolized Kana as a child and is disappointed to see her take a step back as an actress, is trying her damnedest to rekindle the spark that convinced her to pick up acting in the first place. On the fringes, rookie actor Melt Narushima is trying to make up for a heinous performance in the first season that earned him the scorn of his more experienced castmates as well as a mangaka’s permanent ire.

A good amount of this arc does feel like Akasaka was still sorting through his feelings about the Kaguya-sama live adaptation when he wrote it, but he also gave himself some room for reflection on his own side of the equation as a mangaka. Tokyo Blade’s creator, Abiko Samejima, holds her creation very dear and is not impressed with the script. Her friend and former boss, Yoriko Kichijouji, is entirely too familiar with how badly the process can go; her own manga, Sweet Today, was horribly botched in this show’s first season, and she wants to help Abiko-sensei keep a level head. Kichijouji-sensei is the voice of reason this time out as she points out all of the concessions creators may need to take in order to get their work adapted and the unimpeachable truth that mangaka are basically crazy people (and you can practically hear Akasaka screaming through her lines; four months after Kichijouji said this in the manga, Kaguya-sama published its final chapter, marking Akasaka’s retirement from illustrating serialized manga). At her urging, in addition to an all-nighter helping Abiko-sensei make a deadline, the play goes off without any more hitches.

I didn’t much care for the Tokyo Blade arc in the manga but I knew full well that it would translate well to anime just as well as the acting sequences in the first season had. Akasaka’s decision to have the actors treat the stage as a battleground felt a little silly on the page, but experiencing everything again in sound and motion reminded me that this was the same genre of psychological competition that made Kaguya-sama one of my all-time favorites. Doga Kobo is just stupidly good at adapting manga. God, the animation is incredible. Character animation is as deliberate and mesmerizing as always, and emotional moments are punctuated by interpretive splashes of watercolors. Melt’s breakout on stage was a standout moment in the manga, but the abstract, expressionistic depiction of his redemption was so perfectly conceived on screen that life imitated art: Kichijouji-sensei cried in the anime, and manga artist Mengo Yokoyari cried in real life.

I could go on and on and on, but if you’re already this deep into Oshi no Ko I really don’t need to tell you anything else. This season, for all its gorgeous visuals and onstage glory, does not hesitate to remind you at the worst possible moments that this is still ultimately a revenge story and pulls the rug from you just as gleefully as it dazzles. The first season was already exceptional, but the second cements Oshi no Ko as an all-time great adaptation. As a fan of the manga, this is as good of an anime as I could ask for, and then some.

Mixed Bags

My Deer Friend Nokotan

I’m just exhausted.

I’ll admit, I bit a little too hard on the marketing. The preview trailers promised madcap, nonsensical fun on the level of Nichijou or Asobi Asobase, the cast was exceptional, and the OP’s refrain was a total earworm (Shikanoko Nokonoko Koshitantan! Shikanoko Nokonoko Koshitantan! Shikanoko Nokonoko Koshitantan!). It even has the cast jumping in the air! And we all know the Ryo Yamada rule! This was going to set the bar for gag anime!

Oh, how little I knew. Y’know how sometimes you see a trailer for a middling comedy movie and you can tell they already gave away all of the movie’s best jokes? Turns out My Deer Friend Nokotan did just that. I did temper my expectations; it’s not like I thought this was going to be the second coming of Nichijou or anything, but I guess I was still expecting something, I dunno, funnier?

The premise seemed to lend itself to a good comedy either way: Torako Koshi, a former delinquent, has successfully expunged her prior reputation and worked her way up to becoming her school’s student council president. All of that is nearly thrown away when a bizarre new student, Noko Shikanoko, immediately clocks her and almost spills the beans. Also, Shikanoko (who prefers to be addressed as Nokotan) has antlers and can commune with deer. She may even be a deer herself. She hoodwinks Koshi into starting a Deer Club at school, where they recruit Koshi’s upsetting younger sister Anko and the languid, rice-obsessed Bashame. Allegedly, shenanigans ensue.

Take this with a grain of salt, as humor is very subjective, but this show just plain isn’t very funny. Nokotan’s gags hit at least as often as they miss, and a lot of them just feel unforgivably dull. One bad segment can feel like an entire episode. The only reliable gags are gross-out humor, outsized slow-motion violence, or Nausicaä references. Everything else is just Koshi barging into the lower third of the screen to shout about how wacky the joke was just then.

Look, I know that humor doesn’t always translate across cultures. The things I don’t understand about Japanese humor could fill several libraries. I do, at the very least, get the basics of the boke/tsukkomi dynamic (fool and straight-man, basically) and how the reaction to a silly thing is usually the real punchline. I’ve absorbed enough Japanese media to adapt to that momentum. That nearly goes out the window here, because Koshi’s role as the tsukkomi is a straight-up momentum killer. It’s rarely just a “wait, what?!” or a “yeah, that’s rich coming from you;” it’s usually more like “wait, that is so ridiculous! You couldn’t possibly have pulled that off! And what’s that you’re wearing all of a sudden?” The rhythm is just gone. Comic timing? Don’t know her. Even if I thought the joke was funny at first, you could probably see any semblance of a smirk fading off my face by the time she was done. And hey, maybe some of this stuff doesn’t translate. Maybe it’s not that funny in Japan either.

The other characters outside of our main two really don’t help. Anko’s whole “yandere siscon” act isn’t very funny to start with, and she brings nothing to the table otherwise. Bashame is such a nothing character that even Koshi was sick of her by the end of the season. And while I feel like a good narrator can add a good level of je ne sais quoi to a comedy anime (see: Kaguya-sama), an overly intrusive one can actively take away from the humor (see: the Kaguya-sama dub). Nokotan’s narrator comes at it with a sort of winking, nudging “HEY, WE’RE A GAG ANIME” energy that gets too grating, too quickly. What doesn’t help is that he eventually affects a fake-desperate “please watch this show and tell your friends!” bent that called to mind Ron Howard’s narration in Arrested Development’s third season as it was approaching cancellation. Meta humor, as in the latter, can absolutely elevate the level of comedy; 100 Girlfriends in particular wielded it like a machete. In Nokotan, on the other hand, it betrays a clear lack of confidence in the writing, and there’s nothing less funny than comedy that doesn’t even believe in itself.

It’s not all awful, I swear. There are genuinely some very good gags; Nokotan’s cat-and-mouse game with an anachronistic matagi was a blast from beginning to end, and the skin-suit gag got a bigger laugh out of me than almost anything else I saw this season. Any good anime, especially a comedy, lives and dies by its voice cast, and Megumi Han’s performance as the titular Nokotan is this show’s whirring, beeping life support. She makes the absolute most of her considerable range as the jokes call for it, while somehow never stepping on her own toes by dipping into her Kana Arima voice from Oshi no Ko. Koshi shares a VA with Hatsune goddamn Miku. Bashame is pretty much only tolerable thanks to the languid performance of relative newcomer Fuuka Izumi, whom I’m very glad to hear in something that isn’t Gushing Over Magical Girls.

And aside from the music (the OP, to be fair, is infectious), that’s about all there is to like about the production. Did Studio WIT really make this? It looks like it could’ve been made by anybody, and that’s not a compliment. The uncanny CGI deer were the only real visual standout, and even those lost their shine before long. Something attempting to be this audacious needs to have a look to match, and Nokotan falls flat. Again, maybe that’s on me for trying to hold it to the standard Nichijou set.

I’d honestly be surprised if this gets picked up for another season. I’d be hard-pressed to come back for more.

No Longer Allowed in Another World

(CONTENT WARNING for discussion of suicide)

Osamu Dazai was one of the most complex and fascinating figures in Japan’s modern literary canon, right up there with his ideological opposite and real-life rival, Yukio Mishima. Dazai was, frankly, a disaster. He was a serial womanizer, terrible with money, repeatedly disowned by his family, unemployable, a deadbeat dad, and hopelessly addicted to drugs and booze. His magnum opus, Ningen Shikkaku, or No Longer Human, is a stark semi-autobiography, just barely fictionalizing his repeated failures of dignity and self-preservation, including his several failed attempts at double-suicide with his many illicit lovers. The same year it was published, however, Dazai was successful in his final attempt, drowning himself alongside his mistress in 1948.

But like, what if he got hit by the isekai truck instead?

Isekai Shikkaku, or No Longer Allowed in Another World, fully Goes There. The series begins with the legally distinct, unnamed Sensei and his lover Sacchan blindsided by an anachronistic truck along the riverbed. Sensei comes to, alone, in a monastery inspired by the JRPGs from well after his time. He doesn’t know what’s going on and he doesn’t care. All that matters is that he’s still alive, and that sucks for him. Sensei is greeted by Annette, an elf priestess in a virgin killer sweater, who is shocked to discover that not only has he not gained a single stat boost by coming to this world, but he’d also rather kill himself than take her up on the standard offer of an OP cheat skill (and he’d also just rather kill himself in general). So he bounces to go find Sacchan. His refreshing outlook on the new world, as opposed to the other excitable losers who got isekai’d before him, completely melts Annette’s brain to the point of falling in love with him on the spot, so she dons her sluttiest Persona 3 battle armor to chase after him.

Sensei hates this shit. Contemporary western fantasy hadn’t made its way to Japan yet in his time, so he has zero point of reference in this world, and he sure as shit has no clue what a JRPG is. The level-up jingles give him migraines. He has no self-preservation instincts and the only solace he has in this strange new world is a jar of toxic sleeping pills that he munches like M&Ms. He has no interest in or aptitude for fighting, so when he encounters a big-tiddy catgirl being squeezed half to death by a walking tree’s branches, Sensei sees the perfect opportunity to get himself killed. Unfortunately, his blood has become so toxic from said pills that piercing his skin instantly kills the tree, saving the young lady he incorrectly names Tama. Much to Annette’s consternation, she joins the party, and they set out on Sensei’s quest to find his lover and finally die in peace.

As you can guess, that’s not what happens. For some time, we see Sensei throwing himself in harm’s way, floridly imploring various fantasy monsters to kill him in one shot with their big bats, to the point where they get creeped out. His vaguely-threatening exhortations for death make for a fine formula, but one that can wear thin quickly. Before it gets that chance, though, the seed planted in Annette’s introduction bears fruit: The visitors to this world from our own aren’t here in isolation, and they have succeeded in completing the usual isekai goal of overthrowing the demon king. There’s now a massive power vacuum, and nature abhors that shit, so a cabal of erstwhile isekai protags dub themselves the Fallen Angels and decide to take over.

This turn was, to put it bluntly, the main thing that kept me watching. There’s a fine bit of commentary inherent to this framing that the type of wet-noodle, borderline faceless self-insert isekai protags tend to appeal to antisocial losers who would rather give into their basest impulses than see an opportunity to actually better themselves. This is not at all lost on Sensei; his keen eye for the human condition leads him to interrogate the Fallen Angels his party encounters so that he can write about their own failures as humans, as well as the gaping voids in their previous lives that led to them acting like petty tyrants as soon as they gained a bit of power and treating a brand new world like their own personal playground. Sensei’s writings reveal that he did indeed gain a power when he came over to this world; if he sees fit, a finished book will surround its subject and reanimate them back in their original world and afford them a second chance to right their wrongs or, in one particularly moving case, start over on the right foot.

For as audacious as No Longer Allowed’s premise is and as impeccable its comic timing and voice cast (you will find some absolute heaters completely buried on the call list), I just didn’t find it all that compelling. Isekai as a genre is so oversaturated that it was old hat to call it oversaturated even five years ago, so while I do try to pan for gold, sometimes I just come up with a neat-looking river stone. Hell, I can’t even say this one’s all that neat-looking; there’s nothing that looks all that great about it to begin with. The character designs and backdrops are pretty standard JRPG-style stuff that you’re just as likely to find in the likes of Helck, with lackluster animation to match. Didn’t care too much for most of the characters either. Even for its commentary on the isekai genre and the type of person it caters to, No Longer Allowed just ends up shaking out like another isekai series. 

There’s clearly more at play here, and I might just go ahead and read the manga because I didn’t really find myself looking forward to watching the anime. Maybe it just didn’t translate well. No Longer Allowed in Another World does clearly have something to say under its silly premise, but its method of getting that message across is, ironically, buried underneath the usual trappings of the genre it’s trying to say something about. 

Wistoria: Wand and Sword

I’m gonna preface this by saying that Wistoria is probably the best anime I watched this year that I’ve classified as a “Mixed Bag,” save for Jellyfish Can’t Swim in the Night. I’m generally of the mind that excellent production can make up for a middling story (my enjoyment of the likes of Solo Leveling and Wind Breaker this year was pretty emblematic of that), and that is the case here for the most part. Wistoria, story-wise, is nothing special; it’s your standard power fantasy set in a magical school, but the entire presentation is just almost fascinating enough to overcome that hurdle.

Hell, it’s almost not even worth going over the plot. Unassuming boy named Will goes to a magic academy, he doesn’t have any magical aptitude, so he makes up for it by honing his hand-to-hand combat prowess in the school’s designated dungeon. It’s Mashle meets Solo Leveling. Will gets picked on (like, a LOT), but he doesn’t care, because he made a promise long ago to reach the pinnacle of magical society to reach his childhood friend, who happens to be a genius mage. There are duels, there’s a tournament, there’s monsters, you know how this goes.

Will has allies in the school, namely a female friend who’s madly in love with him as well as a professor who covers for his shortcomings in magic-related subjects, but remember that this is a self-insert fantasy: There are also increasingly menacing bullies for him to put in their place. Will is challenged by a Snape-like instructor, a classmate who just hates him so much for not having magic aptitude, and a top performer at the school who’s just flat-out evil (and racist to boot!). And of course the latter two also have goon squads of snickering hangers-on. Will always succeeds, of course, because despite his shortcomings, he’s the strongest and most specialest boy. It’s almost like an isekai without the isekai. Too bad we find out that Will is hilariously shredded, which kinda blows a hole in the self-insert aspect.

Goofy shonen-isms aside, there’s still plenty to enjoy here. Varying types of magic, artifacts, and fantasy races abound, and lore is sprinkled throughout the show in character biographies in the commercial break eyecatches. The story does get gradually less stupid as the season goes on and characters are better fleshed out. And hey, there’s nothing wrong with watching a really strong dude beat the shit out of monsters and assholes.

The only thing that really kept me coming back to Wistoria was that, plainly, it looks and sounds fucking awesome. It’s not the best-looking anime I watched this season (that would either be Oshi no Ko or one of the next two anime on this list), but Wistoria takes such a surprisingly cinematic approach to such an uninspiring story that I couldn’t help but keep watching. The lighting effects are lush, combat animation is bonkers in its best moments, and the score is pretty darn good too. It definitely takes some big swings at simulating camera movements and perspective shots that don’t always accomplish what they set out to do, but I can appreciate the ambition bleeding through. I can see the vision, and that’s what counts.

The actual content is pretty paint-by-numbers, but Wistoria is well-made enough that it’s worth a shaky recommendation. Maybe just turn your brain off until the action picks up. I've heard the manga gets pretty good from here on out, so I'll probably stick it out for another season.

The Gems

The Elusive Samurai

If you’re not already familiar with this series, do me a favor and watch the OP linked right above. Pretty good character animation, right? Expressive, weighty, plenty of personality. The colors pop like crazy too! A lot of the time, an anime series will heavily stylize its OP to attract eyeballs and YouTube metrics, oftentimes bringing in outside animators and directors for a unique feel. In the case of The Elusive Samurai, I cannot stress enough that all that animation is the standard.

Yes, this show looks exceptional. Even putting aside the fact that it’s historical fiction, this show has a truly timeless look to it that I still struggle to put into words. The Elusive Samurai is clearly a modern production but bears all of the hallmarks of what great animation has always looked like when a studio is willing to invest in it: Colors are so bold and saturated that I want to take a damn bite out of them, backgrounds are painstakingly hand-painted even for brief cuts, and there even seems to be a film grain overlay to really sell the classic feel. It’s not perfect (I’ll get into that later), but holy shit is it a feast for the eyes.

Adapted from the pages of Weekly Shonen Jump, The Elusive Samurai is a heavily fictionalized retelling of the fallout of the Siege of Kamakura in the 14th Century. Tokiyuki Hojo, left without a family in a bloody coup of the shogunate, is prevented from committing suicide by enigmatic priest Yorishige Suwa and then thrown right back into the fire of the battlefield. Yorishige, who has prophetic visions of the future, foresaw Tokiyuki’s ascent to leadership and wants to see how he fares in battle. Tokiyuki didn’t bother with his training as a young master, instead playing elaborate games of hide-and-seek with the Hojo clan’s advisors, so in the face of certain danger, he’s left with no choice but to do what he does best and run the fuck away. And as with evading his training, Tokiyuki realizes that it’s way more fun than actual combat, and the future is suddenly even more clear to Yorishige: Evasion, not bloodthirst, will guide Tokiyuki’s path to revenge.

At Yorishige’s increasingly unnerving behest, Tokiyuki goes into hiding at Suwa Shrine and begins building a squad to take down the usurper, Takauji Ashikaga. Along with Yorishige’s daughter, Shizuku, he teams up with young warriors Kojiro and Ayako, and in their travels pick up the crass, kitsune-masked thief Genba and the food-obsessed swordsboy Fubuki. It’s fine as extended casts go, though we don’t get much from a few of them past their introductory arcs. Tokiyuki is an absolute delight, though. He’s a sweet and joyful kid despite his circumstances; real shonen protag material. And most importantly, he’s completely over Yorishige’s shit.

I’m a sucker for magical realism, and The Elusive Samurai delivers. Yorishige really does appear to be a prophet, to the point where he can even predict Dragon Ball Z (yes, really), and he and Shizuku are capable of pulling off acts that any actual person would consider a literal miracle. Mythical beasts roam the land and those that were slain appear to reside on a different realm accessible to the Suwas. All of Takauji’s top soldiers have senses and abilities far beyond anything human or animal, and Takauji himself seems to have borrowed some of his prowess from the devil himself. With this show’s commitment to top-tier visuals and animation, the sky's the limit for what we can see, and it kept me glued to my TV every episode. It almost made me want to watch Demon Slayer. Almost.

The cast has some solid performances from familiar names and voices: Yuichi Nakamura is his usual blusteringly silly self as Yorishige, Aoi Yuuki is a riot as Genba, and Katsuyuki Konishi (Kamina himself!) infuses Takauji with appropriate menace. There’s some Chainsaw Man and Bocchi sprinkled into Tokiyuki’s clan of rookie warriors as well. Good stuff, but what really caught my attention was a surprisingly familiar voice giving life to the bug-eyed villain Sadamune Ogasawara: None other than Yutaka Aoyama, the narrator of Kaguya-sama: Love is War. Nobody could have more perfectly infused Sadamune with the appropriate level of self-serious goofiness than the guy who narrated Kaguya-sama’s balloon game like it was an NFL Film. Perfect casting.

As incredible as this show looks most of the time, the remainder does have a critical issue: CloverWorks didn’t seem too invested in hand-animating horses or any of the show’s characters riding them, so it opted instead for CGI. Very poorly-implemented CGI. I really try to take stuff like this as it comes, but the modeling looks way too video-gamey for the style the rest of the show is going for, to the point where I’m taken out of it. There’s really no excuse for something this uncanny with the high bar The Elusive Samurai set for itself early on (and yes, Uzumaki is airing as I write this, and I’ll talk about the similar problem that show has at the end of the year).

I know I just said this about Wind Breaker last season, but this may be CloverWorks’ other Big Shonen Hit. It certainly has the juice, between the wacky gags and shockingly brutal violence, and CGI issues aside, the studio has clearly invested in it. A second season is already on the way, and I’d say it’s paid off. If the studio can iron out the kinks, this could end up becoming an all-timer.

Makeine: Too Many Losing Heroines!

If I haven’t made it clear enough, my anime journey has turned me into a bit of a romcom guy. Couldn’t tell you why. Maybe it’s because Tenchi Muyo was a formative anime for me, or maybe it’s because I got on Kaguya-sama relatively early in my return-to-weebdom trek and I’ve been chasing that high ever since. I could go on and on about the ones I’ve watched and which particularly stood out, but we’d be here all day. At the same time, though, a burgeoning market for the genre, particularly among the shonen demographic, means that there’s gonna be some real slop out there. Plenty of anime, manga, and especially light novels are targeted at the “lonely boy who wishes cute girls would attach themselves to him just because he’s A Nice Guy” type, and while there are some genuinely excellent series that cater plenty to that kind, there’s a well-defined line between the good and the trash.

Makeine is well aware of that line and elects to skip rope with it. Genre subversion is at its best when the work in question shows a genuine care for the milieu it’s satirizing, and Too Many Losing Heroines is to trashy light novel romcoms what The Eminence in Shadow is to edgy isekai and Bang Brave Bang Bravern is to vaguely homoerotic mech warfare. It’ll slap you in the face with every dumb threadbare cliche you’ve come to expect from the genre, and it’ll do so with a smile.

These stories are usually fronted by a total wet noodle and Kazuhiko Nukumizu is the soggiest soba you’ve ever seen. His main interests are water fountains and hey, wouldn’t you know it, light novel romcoms. As far as he’s concerned, he’s a background character with the personality to match. He’s thrust to the forefront, though, when he’s caught staring at his classmate, Anna Yanami, embarrassingly picking up the pieces from being brutally rejected at a cafe. She forces herself into Nukumizu’s booth and helps herself to several courses’ worth of stress-eating on his dime, which he never agreed to. As recompense, Anna decides to cook him lunch until her debt is more or less repaid, and would you look at that, Nukumizu just made a friend!

As the title would suggest, Anna’s not the only lovelorn maiden finding her way into Nukumizu’s school life. He’s exhorted into joining the school’s literature club, where he meets the track runner, Lemon Yakishio, and the lit club’s stammering stalwart, Chika Komari. He also has to bear witness to each of their own crushes backfiring and deal with the fallout. And amidst this chaos, there’s plenty of botched confessions, getting locked in storage closets, boob faceplants, and all the other nonsense you’d expect from the genre. And it’s terrific! And in the midst of all this, even as Nukumizu seems to be a passenger in this journey, you see him ever-so-slowly realize that he has some agency and grow closer to these girls. Makeine is plenty silly and more than a little stupid, but there’s plenty of heart in here as well.

The offbeat character dynamics and clever dialogue are what really make this. Everyone is just refreshingly weird in their own ways. Anna is a complete menace and totally convinced she’s the protagonist of life, and she may not even be wrong. I almost don’t care whether she and Nukumizu get together or not; they’re such a fun “serious guy/goblin mode girl” pairing that I’m not that interested in their dynamic changing. Komari and the lit club VP Koto are a dynamic fujoshi duo, ensuring that the club’s shenanigans aren’t too shonen-centric (and funny enough, Koto has her own idea for an Osamu Dazai isekai). Everyone in the student council has something demonstrably Wrong With Them, the homeroom teacher is a disaster, and the school nurse probably belongs in prison. I love every single one of them. I could’ve done without Nukumizu’s offputtingly-clingy little sister (and learning about her analogue in this season’s other romcom LN adaptation, Alya Sometimes Hides Her Feelings in Russian, was enough to put me off of watching it), but it looks like one of her own female classmates is in love with her, so that could be gold in later seasons.

A-1 Pictures, to borrow an industry term, put its entire pussy into this production. As with last year’s Heavenly Delusion, there was so much love put into the lighting effects, background art, and character animation that I felt like I was watching a Makoto Shinkai film at times. All of those elements working in tandem massaged my brain in such a way that when every episode ended, I was left confused because hey, where the hell is the rest of the movie? Makeine is also loaded with killer visual gags, and I give A-1 a ton of credit for letting those jokes land without calling too much attention to them, unlike a certain other show I watched this season. The opening and endings were real treats, with three different EDs as the season progressed, each depicting one of the titular heroines’ personal journeys (and performed by each respective girl’s VA, no less). This is some real investment on the studio’s part and it absolutely paid off.

I promise that every time I compare a romcom to Kaguya-sama, it comes at a great inner struggle to prevent myself from doing so, but if that anime is truly over and this is where A-1 is focusing its resources, Makeine may very well be a worthy successor. I really can’t say for sure whether this or The Elusive Samurai was the best new anime of the summer season, and it doesn’t help that they aired on the same day and I’d always watch them back-to-back. Just know that they’re easily two of the better anime I’ve seen this year.

Mayonaka Punch

If “mega-cancelled YouTuber starts up a new channel with a bunch of disaster lesbian vampires” isn’t enough of a hook for you, I really don’t know what else to tell you.

Masaki got kicked off her popular NewTube channel after punching one of her co-hosts, and the internet is letting her hear it. Maybe barging in on the “we’re firing Masaki” live stream and tackling one of them didn’t help either. Rather than film the bog-standard apology video, she figures she can just wing it and start up a solo channel. Masaki decides to start by playing the hits and drunkenly recreate her first channel’s breakout video in a spooky abandoned hospital, and finds more than she bargained for in a vampire named Live (pronounced like it’d be short for Olivia) who really, really wants to drink her blood in particular. Masaki nearly falls to her death in a panic, only for Live to save her and reveal that she has the very filmable ability to fly, so Masaki cuts a deal: If Live can help her get a new channel off the ground, Masaki will let her drink her blood.

This is tremendous content, so Masaki moves in with Live at Banpai Manor along with her vampire roomies to produce a new channel, co-starring the eternal 10-year-old day trader (night trader?) Ichiko, the soft-spoken fujoshi musician Fu, and the heavy-vaping gambling addict Tokage. They name the channel Mayonaka Punch (because mayonaka means “midnight” and because Masaki punched the shit out of her former co-host) and quickly get to work trying to beat Masaki’s former channel to their goal of a million subscribers (and a delicious lunch for Live). Even though they try to pass off their vampire shenanigans as Very Good CGI, they run afoul of a vampiric authority figure for exposing their identities, so they have to get internet famous the old fashioned way: Cute Girls Doing Cute Things.

I can’t quite put into words what a blast this show is. Mayonaka Punch frequently barrels along at a madcap pace, often punctuated by an electro-swing score, as its cast of loud idiots (and Fu) carom off of one another to chaotic effect. The voice cast really sells it, too: Ikumi Hasegawa (Kita in Bocchi the Rock!, Vladilena in 86, Übel in Frieren) owns every ounce of Masaki’s mounting exasperation as she deals with all the vampire nonsense while continuing to avoid the consequences of her own actions. Fairouz Ai continues her MVP-caliber resume for 2024 in style as Live, infusing her with a kind of desperate manic energy as she scratches and claws for Masaki’s approval. This was easily my favorite of her many roles so far this year, and two years removed from Chainsaw Man’s debut, it’s been a treat to hear her once again voicing a feral, bloodsucking loser.

As silly as Mayonaka Punch gets, though, it delivers some serious emotional blows when you least expect them. The fourth episode, centering on Fu’s history, is one of the best of any anime I watched this season. There’s also some very interesting history between Live and the head vampire’s go-between, Yuki, that was told through (though partially buried by) a series of video game facsimiles, and I hope there’s more there someday. And, of course, there’s Masaki’s evolving relationship with Live, with romantic undertones so tantalizing they might as well be overtones. I really thought there wasn’t enough time left in the season to reach a satisfying conclusion, and though it might not have fully reeled in the yuri bait, I was pleasantly surprised at how well everything tied together.

Mayonaka Punch’s ending is open enough that I can only hope it gets a second season, but I’m not about to hold my breath. That’s a tall order for original anime that don’t set the world on fire, but this one has all the right pieces for a future cult classic. Liked and subscribed. 

Suicide Squad Isekai

When this was announced, the only reaction it really got out of me was “Sure dude, why not.” As far as what this show is, it does what it says on the tin. It’s an isekai featuring a motley crew of anti-heroes plucked directly from the David Ayers and James Gunn Suicide Squad films. You already know what you’re in for.

Sure enough, this is a straight up Suicide Squad story from the jump: Harley Quinn and the Joker (the latter sporting yet another heinous makeover) try to pull off a heist, it goes sideways, Harley gets arrested and forced into Amanda Waller’s scheme to mine rare resources in another world alongside Deadshot, Clayface, Peacemaker, and King Shark. It’s your standard JRPG-style isekai fantasy world, except the previous Suicide Squad of Enchantress, the Thinker, Ratcatcher, and Killer Croc seem to have run roughshod over tensions between races and kingdoms, leaving Rick Flag alone to pick up the pieces.

And what ensues is pretty much what you’d expect. Everyone looks appropriately anime; Psycho-Pass character designer Akira Amano did especially good work with Harley, to the point where I’m shocked that a billion-yen idea like “anime Harley Quinn” was slept on for so long. All of this makes it even funnier that Peacemaker is still very much just John Cena. Character designs aside, Suicide Squad Isekai only seems to look good when it wants to; most of the moment-to-moment stuff looks a bit muted but absolutely pops off when business picks up. There’s even a flashback sequence of Deadshot and Ratcatcher that has a sort of loose, crumbly Masaaki Yuasa look to it. Despite the genericism of the setting and inconsistency of the aesthetic, though, Suicide Squad Isekai still carries plenty of style with it. The intro and outro are both blasts; I didn’t realize until the season ended that the “Tank!”-style OP was by Tomoyasu Hotei, the composer of the most iconic piece of music from Kill Bill. The ED (content warning: Mori Calliope) heavily features Amanda Waller getting down in ways I can only hope to one day see Viola Davis recreate. 

The fusion of American and Japanese styles is definitely awkward at times; the occasional references to other Warner Bros properties like Lord of the Rings and Tom and Jerry feel particularly shoehorned in considering this is a Japanese production, but the voice cast makes up for a lot of faults. Anna Nagase captures Harley’s freewheeling energy perfectly, and her penchant for nicknames is extra cute in Japanese when she’s calling the Joker “Purin-chan” or King Shark “Nana-chan.” Jun Fukuyama is a real standout as Clayface, channeling the flashy spirit of Joker (not this one, the Persona 5 one) to animate Basil Karlo’s irritating showmanship. Takehito Koyasu as Peacemaker doesn’t quite have the self-serious goofy energy we’ve come to expect from the live action version, but it’s such funny casting on its face that I don’t really mind. Can this tradeoff go both ways? I want John Cena as DIO yesterday.

For a Studio WIT production and a story by Re:Zero’s writers, Suicide Squad Isekai may occasionally feel like less than the sum of its parts (par for the course for the property’s recent adaptations, unfortunately, save for the Gunn film), but if you don’t come at it expecting too much you’ll have a good time. Far from my favorite this year, but it’s a crowd pleaser, and those, I like.

[x0401x]

Hello, this ask is just for fun......

Top 5 (or top 3) Favorite female characters :

Top 5 (or top 3) Favorite male characters :

Top 5 Favorite animanga :

Animanga you are currently enjoying :

Animanga that exceeded all your expectations :

Top 3 Unpopular animanga you really love :

Favorite romance :

Favorite action animanga :

Favorite fantasy :

Favorite sci -fi :

Favorite drama :

Favorite comedy :

Top 3 Favorite anime movies :

Next in your watch list :

Next in your read list :

Top 3 Favorite antagonists:

Top 5 (or top 3) favorite ships (can be canon or non canon) :

Thanks if you want to answer....

This sure took me a while because, damn, I had to think a lot about each answer.

So, top 3 favorite females:

Sheryl Nome

Oikawa Tsurara

Kuchiki Rukia

Top 3 favorite males:

Gilbert Bougainvillea

Takigawa Masaki

Alphonse Elric

Top 5 Favorite animanga:

I can't really put them in the same category, so I'm gonna write down one of each.

Favorite anime movie: Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi

Favorite anime show: Heike Monogatari

Favorite manga: Tongari Boushi no Atelier

Favorite light novel: Violet Evergarden

Favorite regular novel: Mouryou no Hako

Animanga I'm currently enjoying (so far):

Yatagarasu

Hibike! Euphonium S3

Kaijuu 8-gou

Kuroshitsuji S4

Dungeon Meshi

Urusei Yatsura S2

Ookami to Koushinryou

Boku no Hero Academia S7

Tonari no Youkai-san

Bartender

Tadaima, Okaeri

Touken Ranbu Kai

Boukyaku Battery

Jii-san Baa-san Wakagaeru

The Fable

Seiyuu Radio no Uraomote

Now, I'm still waiting for some stuff to air, so this isn't a complete list. Also, the last title isn't exactly one that I'm super enjoying because it's butchering the original, but I'm sticking with it because I like the franchise. I recommend the manga instead of the anime.

Animanga that exceeded all my expectations

The only one I can think of is Suzumiya Haruhi. It didn't exceed all my expectations because they were high from the start, but goddamn. I despise the fact that I came into the show knowing only the memes and opening clip, thinking it was gonna be absolute weeb garbage (because back in the old days it was much easier to not run into spoilers and I'm not even sure if the novel was already being fantranslated at the time), only to find out that it actually fucking slaps. Can you imagine how pissed I was. That I couldn't hate this bullshit of a show. Also endless eight. That shit was traumatizing even though I caught on quick and skipped most of it.

Top 3 Unpopular animanga I really love

I won't say unpopular but these are definitely underrated.

Tsurune (I mean the novel; the anime doesn't deserve much recognition beyond the good animation and sound design, imo)

Nurarihyon no Mago (I know it's been over for more than a decade and the fandom is long dead, but it was temporarily revived by the recent new chapters, and it was criminally underrated in the west back when it was still being published)

Gangsta (used to be really popular when it was on-going, but the fandom lost its hype completely both in the west and in Japan after it entered hiatus because of the author's health)

Favorite romance: Shigatsu wa Kimi no Uso

Favorite action animanga: can't possibly choose

Favorite fantasy: Tongari Boushi no Atelier

Favorite sci-fi: can't possibly choose

Favorite drama: Nana

Favorite comedy: Gintama (I know that comedy isn't the only genre this thing belongs to but comedy is the main one. And yes, I know the story is actually deep but it still takes a backseat to the comedy, narratologically speaking, and this shouldn't be looked down on. Fight me.)

Top 3 Favorite anime movies

I don't really have favorites in any particular order other than Sen to Chihiro, so here are a random few of my faves:

Kimi no Na wa

Senkou no Hathaway

Mononoke-hime

Next in your watch list: All the stuff from this season that hasn't yet come out.

Next in your read list: Nothing, actually. Just keeping up with the stuff I was already reading. Accepting recs!

Top 3 Favorite antagonists:

Johan Liebert

Griffith

Meruem

Top 5 (or top 3) favorite ships (can be canon or non canon):

Let's go with top 10 because I'm a professional shipper. By the way, number 1 is the one that set the bar for all the other ships and anything else is actually just sharing second place. These are really just a few from the top of my head, since I have at least one favorite ship for every fandom I'm in.

RikuTsura (Nura Rikuo/Tsurara)

HakuSen (Haku/Ogino Chihiro)

SakuShao (Kinomoto Sakura/Li Shaoran)

IchiRuki (Kurosaki Ichigo/Kuchiki Rukia)

HaruRin (Nanase Haruka/Matsuoka Rin)

GilVi (Gilbert Bougainvillea/Violet Evergarden)

SoMa (Soul Evans/Maka Albarn)

AruSheri (Saotome Alto/Sheryl Nome)

YuuVic (Katsuki Yuuri/Victor Nikiforov)

SeiRicha (Nakata Seigi/Richard Ranashingha de Vulpian)

[corroded-hellfire]

This is an angsty AYW request so please feel free to ignore if you don't feel comfortable writing it but I still thank you for taking the time to read this and creating stories!

Because Eddie is older than Reader, can you show moments when the kids are realizing that their dad is aging and can't do as much stuff as he could when they were younger. They do the best they can to help him out but also showing their fear of losing Eddie when they're older.

OR

Seeing Wayne age more and more. Wayne always seems like the type that's says "Bah! I'm fine" while crouching over because of his back ache. And Eddie realizes that Wayne isn't as convincing whenever he says he's fine because he's no longer good at hiding his pain. Wayne and Eddie have a moment to talk together.

Sorry I just got back from talking with my dad, and I realized how much he's starting to look like grandfather. In a way, I just wanted to know if the fear of parents/guardians aging and the feeling that you still need them like a little kid while an adult is common.

It also stems from this episode of Bluey: https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZPRoJajv4/

I have thought about this for a couple of days now. Unfortunately, I don’t think I’m able to write this. I lost my father a few years ago and it’s still very hard for me to watch or read anything that has to do with a character’s dad being sick or dying. It always will be, I think. It was actually hard for me before I lost him, but losing him cranked it up to 11. He was my best friend and, I shit you not, hated sci-fi and fantasy type things his whole life, but loved Stranger Things. Eleven, Dustin, and Steve were his favorites but he also really liked Robin. He never got to meet Eddie but I know with absolute certainty that he would have made fun of me for loving him so much lol.

But I would like to answer your question, if I may. The feeling of needing your parents will never go away. I watched both of my parents lose their own fathers (much later in life than I lost mine) and they felt they still needed them and it was agonizing for them. I certainly still feel like a little kid who needs my dad. My dad knew how to do everything, it seemed. Suddenly I had to learn to do things around the house and with my car that I would normally just ask him how to do. Or he would’ve helped me with them. It feels like a missing limb, I guess. Or a hollow part of your chest. Something you always relied on is no longer there. It fucking sucks, no two ways about it. But you get used to missing that limb or having that hollowness. As much as it feels like it shouldn’t, the world goes on and you don’t have a choice but to go on with it. You get stronger and the weight of the grief becomes more bearable. It’s always there, though. It’s like a wave meeting the shore: sometimes the waves are small and don’t move you at all, but sometimes the waves are huge and crash into you and knock you down. But I can tell you that the love doesn’t go away. For me, I feel like I have this tether with my dad, the love we have for one another. And just because he’s not here doesn’t mean that tether is gone. It’s still there, strong as ever, and we are still connected. Not even death can take that from you.

My apologies if this rambled on. I just know exactly what you meant by that fear because I had it. Losing my dad was my worst fear. But now, something has happened that people told me, but I didn’t know how to believe them. Now I’m okay. It still hurts like hell, I still miss him every single day, but I’m okay.

[emcscared-whumps]

WiJ 2023 - 04: Share Whumperflies Media

WiJ 2023 Navigation Post

A Show/Movie/Book/Series that Gives Me Whumperflies

Honestly? I'm far too picky about whumpees and I don't consume all that much media (especially not these days since i have my own purpose-built character who is capable of hitting just about EVERYTHING I like) to have many items to rave about ^-^'

HOWEVER.

That does not mean that there is nothing :)

I'll go right back to the start, in fact (in rough order)... just keep in mind that I don't watch for whump, and these aren't whump recommendations except for one lmao, they're just what have managed to give me whumperflies in the past.

Cybergirl (2001-02)

An Australian sci-fi superhero T.V. series that was airing in the morning when I was a young kid, maybe 6 or 7, back before I understood how T.V. scheduling worked lol. I don't often get whumperflies from media, but I think this time, I did, and it's actually my earliest memory of whumperflies.

Cy ended up trapped in a Big Fancy House by the Big Bad, Rhyss. It's been many years since I last re-watched the show so I don't remember a whole lot except there was a lot of urgency and a zappy barrier that Cy couldn't pass through, and I definitely got some kind of feeling about that :)

The writing was very average, not very substantial for an older viewer, but it was excellent for a kids' show. There was so much lore that just never got expanded on, and it didn't go particularly hard with the whump :')

H2O Just Add Water (2006-10)

To no one's surprise, I ADORED this series as a kid. My obsession with mer had just started, and honestly, this shit FED ME. This was another Australian show that I watched when I was fairly young (again, 6-7 and onward), but I don't recall watching it when it aired. I instead had a collection of DVDs.

The girls and co got into some pretty interesting hijinks while trying to guard their fishy little secrets, but shit got REAL in season 6 when a marine biologist coworker of the friend of the girls' Lewis managed to leave a sample of their skin/scale in the lab... OOPS.

You can guess where that lead-- the scientist trying to track down the owner of the magic scale that could turn back into skin (somehow lmao, ~magic~), and she eventually trapped the girls in their little grotto with a gate that she had installed at the underwater entrance of their grotto spot on Mako Island.

Here's where I mention that I did not actually get whumperflies from this lmao, but it was a close one (the scientist didn't go far enough lmao). That's okay though :) One self indulgent decision just under 10 years later sure fixed that :))

Vampire Knight Anime (2008, English Dub aired in Aus in 2011)

The whole show. Every episode. I'm not even kidding. (Well, just about every episode lol, there was maybe only one where I didn't). As many problems as I have with the series, (mainly that every time I see Yuuki or hear her voice I want to strangle her), Zero was just so. fucking. scrunchy-- almost the perfect whumpee ^-^ And the English voice actor does such a glorious job of voicing Zero's pain, the whole series is ABSOLUTELY worth enduring Yuuki's stupidity.

Iirc, my favourite episode was Crimson Chains-- full of spoilers, a lot of plot bits come together at that point, so I can't say much other than that Zero's lost his shit and has a whole big scene where he writhes and pants on the floor with the agony of his hunger. I am convinced the author ALSO liked that XD

I would sit at night and watch that episode over and over and over because man, those whumperflies were something else, super intense, 11/10 lmao

Doctor Who (1963-present)

Nine had that one episode where he got caught by some collector dude and tortured to figure out what made him tick, or rather that he had TWO hearts that made him tick... Fun times, that DEFINITELY gave me whumperflies and had me furtively returning to the episode to keep watching that scene.

A lot of Ten's run had me by the throat, most memorably his regeneration at the start of his run, and his regeneration at the end directly after an hour (approximately) of whump was. AMAZING. I kept coming back to the start and end 😅

There were a couple more times I got whumperflies throughout his run. The main episodes that come to mind are Midnight, set on the planet of sapphires and lethal radiation, and 42, involving a spaceship hurtling toward a sun.

There was only one more whumpy instance, and that was that one movie they made. I forget who, when... EVERYTHING except the dude that played looked like Gene Wilder and it took place on NYE of the new millenium. It was another shitfight with The Master. ANYWAY. The whumperflies were at the START of the movie when The Doctor wasn't doing so well, I think he got shot?? And then rushed to the hospital, all while trying to avoid that and trying to communicate that they'll kill him

Supernatural (2005-20)

Ok. This one is weird in two ways. I forget which episode it was, but it was season 2 where Sam and Dean were trying to kick a group of vampires out of a town, but they were actually cool/chill vampires...?

Or at least some of them were...

ANYWAY.

This other hunter had this vampire chic tied to a chair baaaasically torturing her...? Memory's a bit foggy on what exactly what they were doing (the brainworms wouldn't stop wriggling about AUs), but I got these itty bitty whumperflies from that vampire lady getting hurt. That was weird because 1) I've only had whumperflies off the ladies once before watching Cybergirl which was SO long ago, and 2) I never have had them from watching a side-character, I usually have to be emotionally invested.

Weird right?? Absolutely wild though!

Anyway, that's pretty much everything, even though I've seen and read a fair few things lol, hope you enjoyed my rambling!

[kavrillia]

The Origins of Kavrillia - Part One

I've been drawing green critters with antennae since I was thirteen years old. They've changed their look through the years, and have inhabited three different fictional universes (including my own, original one), and it's fun to look back and see how they evolved along with my art.

1993

Above left: I drew a crowded pool scene and included two Secret Service aliens guarding a Chelsea Clinton-esque alien. They were the earliest prototypes of Bronzar! Above right: What thirteen-year-old me thought glamorous models wore, or something.

The first iteration of the creatures that eventually became Kavrillians (hereafter "CTEBK") had tentacles instead of hands, green skin, and three legs. Males also had a third eye and unique brown skin markings, and were usually bald. The females always had brown hair to match the males' markings. I remember drawing a blonde one once and thinking it looked very wrong.

During this time period the CTEBK existed in a settling loosely based on John Christopher's Tripods trilogy. The aliens in the books were described as not humanoid but having green skin, three legs, and tentacles. I started with that general concept, made them humanoid, and then ran with my own ideas from there. I had no idea I'd still be drawing these creatures in my 40s!

1994

Ah yes, the Big Snout Period. Why did their snouts get so huge and square? Why are the balls on their antennae so huge? I dunno.

During this time period the CTEBK were in the universe of the 1953 film version of War of the Worlds and the War of the Worlds TV series that originally ran from 1988 to 1990, but which I only discovered a few years later in reruns. It was not a very good show, looking back, but at the time I was new to sci-fi and it got my imagination running wild.

I was also inspired by the tie-in novel War of the Worlds: The Resurrection that was written by J.M. Dillard in 1988. You have that book to blame for the glut of X names on Kavrillia, as 14-year-old me really liked Xana and Xashron. Other names from the series that inspired me were Oshar, Horek, Tallick, Ardix, Tila, Xeera, and Konar. (Bayda and Ceeto, not as much. The fact that I can still remember all those names and how to spell them three decades later is...well, either impressive or cringe-worthy. Or both.)

Above: My version of Xana wearing a dress I copied from clipart of Mae West on the plastic bag from a local video rental place. It was definitely the 90s.

Visually, the CTEBK had even less in common with the aliens from the 1953/1988 version of War of the Worlds than they did with the ones in the Tripods trilogy.

While the physical forms had absolutely nothing in common, I did take story inspiration from the final episode of the series, which showed flashbacks to the aliens' homeworld. It is revealed that their leader assassinated the previous one and lied to their people, destroying their planet in his mad rush to avenge the death of his beloved wife in the 1953 invasion. Young teen me ate that melodramatic, angsty, romantic shit up.

I ended up writing a ton of fanfics to explain how no, of course the despotic leader didn't die in the last episode when his secrets were exposed. Don't be silly! Yes, we watched him dissolve into goo, but--hey, look, a squirrel! Anyway, it was all a misunderstanding, and with so few of their people left they grudgingly decided to let bygones be bygones. And what do you know? His wife hadn't died after all! She'd actually been in suspended animation since 1953, just like the aliens that awoke at the start of the TV series. Once reunited, he reforms, they come to terms with the evil he had done in her absence, and they fall in love all over again. They all leave Earth and go to colonize an uninhabited planet somewhere. The former bad guy and his long-lost wife have five adorable children and live happily ever after! ^_^ (Typical teenage girl fanfic stuff, in other words.)

So where does my universe come in?

Well, in fleshing out the characters I decided the despot-turned-devoted-family-man idolized a former ruler of their people, the way some Americans idolize Abraham Lincoln. I looked in a baby name dictionary under X and found Xerxes. Teenage me wasn't sure how to pronounce that so I just took out the extra X and made it Xeres (said like ZEER-ees). When I wrote the fic about my WotW OTP having their fifth child, they named him after that old ruler.

At that point the story had devolved into a sitcom, with all the hijinks and heartwarming moments in a palace filled with cute kids and their over-the-top lovey-dovey parents. I thought about trying to move the story forward into the next generation, but those story ideas never really took off. Instead I started wondering about a prequel...

(Continued in Part Two)

[oddygaul]

The End of Evangelion

I caught this when they did theater screenings back in March. It was a novel viewing experience - partly because I was watching it on the big screen with an audience for the first time, but mostly  because I just watched End of Evangelion, the singular movie, on its own for once. I’m pretty sure every other time I’ve watched it, it’s been the capstone to a watch of the rest of Evangelion, so it was cool to see it as a standalone work.

In a way, it made it much easier for me to focus on the movie’s themes and message, rather than getting lost in the weeds trying to puzzle out lore questions. By this point, if you’re watching End of Evangelion as part of the series, it’s likely your brain is absolutely buzzing with plot and worldbuilding questions, and you’re probably going to be spending a lot of the film’s runtime trying to figure out what the fuck is going on and attempting to make sense of all the wild shit you’re seeing.

This time, though, watching it a la carte as a degenerate who remembers all the gobbledygook, I was able to move past most of that and focus exclusively on the story in front of me. As the Black Moon was laid bare by Instrumentality, I nodded and thought to myself, “Yes, yes, the Black Moon, Lilith’s egg, the original vessel containing humanity’s Fruit of Wisdom and the origin of the Angel’s enmity with mankind - but let’s get back to Shinji’s burgeoning selfhood”. With all that table setting as a given, my brain was free to ponder other things, y’know?*

*I think the Rebuilds intentionally force this mindset on the viewer from 3.0 onward–not by plainly explaining things and making the lore crystal clear, mind you, but instead by constantly and unrelentingly dropping so many sci-fi-ass Proper Nouns and lore bullshit on the viewer that they’re forced to give up and acknowledge Those Aren’t the Important Bits Here, Focus on the Character Relationships, Bud

For example, the sandcastle scene has always been something I gloss over and forget about the moment it’s offscreen. There’s big-lipped EVA units forming themselves into the literal Tree of Life next door, how can I be expected to pay attention to a twelfth helping of metaphorical introspection?? 

This time, though, I realized it’s basically the thesis of the movie: it’s Shinji’s character arc and relationship to others in microcosm. It’s easy to understand that Shinij suffers from depression throughout Evangelion, but this scene spotlights his avoidant personality and the resentment he accumulates towards others particularly well. When his playmates leave him, his initial sadness transforms into rage at his abandonment, causing him to lash out and destroy everything they’ve built. In the end, though, knowing that his own image of himself is tied to how others perceive him, Shinji works to rebuild the sandcastle in an attempt to reconnect with those that left him.

This ties in pretty clearly to Third Impact - Shinji is given full control of the situation and has the power to tear the world down. While he initially wants to, fueled by the thoughts of those who’ve abandoned him, he finally decides to reach out and rebuild humanity. In doing so, he rejects his prior choices and takes a new, untested path*.

*In sharp contrast to Gendo. Some petty part of me still truly loves that amidst the montage of every character getting what they desire as they’re subsumed by LCL, Gendo gets this. To me, his treatment drives home the point that he represents a Shinji who’s never attempted growth, change, or connection.

This was also the first time in ages I’d watched End of Evangelion with the Japanese dub, and I dug it, despite this screening using the new, lifeless translations for the subs*. Some of Shinji’s screams are fucking iconic, and there’s a few parts where the direction is totally different from the dub - for example, I quite liked the heavy, labored breathing suffusing GNR’s scenes, compared to the creepy laughter they chose for the English track. And some distinctly Japanese language quirks work a lot better in Japanese (obvious) - Rei’s ‘tadaima’ to Lilith followed by the silent, eldritch ‘OKAERINASAI’ hits different.

*@ me all you want, the new translation’s unerring focus on precision vs. localization is stiff as hell and robs a lot of the characterization from the series. “I’m so fucked up” changed to “I’m the lowest of the low”... enough said

Still the wildest plot reveal we get in this movie is that Yui’s entire motivation for voluntarily abandoning everyone she knows and becoming Unit 01 is “fuck y’all I wanna be a big robot in space FOREVER”. Truly, genuinely batshit.

Man, what an inspired choice it is to have the NERV bridge crew narrate Third Impact. We see them call the play-by-play for every single emergency, so of course it would happen here as well, but hearing them get real in the weeds with all their instrument readings while we watch an incomprehensible biblical apocalypse unfold is fucking peak. Where were they during Second Impact, huh? Things would’ve been a lot clearer. Then again, what can their lil computer readout possibly be telling them, scientifically speaking, about the giant vagina-palmed angel god assembling the Clitoris of Souls?

—

shoutout to fully horizontal mid-hacking 90s anime girls. gotta be one of my favorite genders

Anyway, this time everything really felt like it made so much sense. End of Evangelion, nightmare scenario it’s ensconced in notwithstanding, feels throughout like a hopeful story about Shinji finally overcoming his own self-sabotage, deciding not to shut others out, and committing to seeking out human connection, even in a world where that may not be possible anymore.

Which just continues to make that ending scene absolutely vexing.

Despite this whole movie walking us step-by-step through the process of Shinji’s growth, despite all these scenes highlighting the change in his priorities and hopes, despite doing all it can to show us he’s changing, End of Evangelion ends with him strangling Asuka the moment he sees her.

I can spitball justifications for it, but none of them feel satisfying. Has Shinji been alone on this beach for weeks already (supported by the grave markers and Misato’s nailed-up necklace), fallen into solipsism, and attacks Asuka just to see if she’s real or if he’s still stuck in his own head? Was his takeaway from Instrumentality not a desire for connection, but in fact a realization that he can use power to get what he wants, and he’s strangling her as revenge for tormenting him? Does Shinji just suck, and immediately backslides at the first speed bump? Like even though he was prepared to try and allow others in despite the potential pain, he thinks no, not like that, not Asuka! and instantly gives up? That with everything that’s happened, Asuka couldn’t possibly forgive him, so this is his only path forward? Is the message ultimately “nah forget the rest of that shit, people can’t change, don’t open up to others” after all?

The moment honestly feels at odds with the rest of the movie - and really even the finale of the TV series as well, which, for all of its turbulent presentation, concludes with an optimistic resolution to Shinji’s inner turmoil. End of Evangelion is thematically building towards one conclusion the whole time, only to smash it away at the last moment. Because that single scene is so hard for me to nail down, I’m left with a sense of ambivalence towards the whole film. It’s hard for me not to imagine Anno as Shinji, knocking down his own sandcastle out of spite.

Maybe this is why he described the Rebuilds as ‘healing works’. Not because they’re radically different from NGE in tone and content, or taking some brand-new thematic approach - but because this time, he allowed the story to naturally reach the emotional conclusion it was building towards the whole time rather than rejecting it. Maybe the Rebuilds were Anno finally learning how to let others help him finish building his sandcastle.

[cherrysnax]

I realized after typing like 200 words that the anon was probably just trying to be a dick and didn’t actually need help finding new stuff. But I did make a little incomprehensible “”tips n tricks”” to finding new stuff to get into when it’s hard

so one thing that I didn’t say clear enough last time is that it’s not abt watching some things less it’s abt adding more if that makes sense. like for me I like uhhh code lyoko more than a normal amount.

I don’t like it for one single reason but if I absolutely had to choose a thing to try and pinpoint it’s probably shit like the ensemble cast, the hero/double life aspect, the surprisingly dark tone, the sci-fi/drama genres, nd the monster of the week style. if I wanted to find a new show or comic or whatever I’d likely just. search up “shows about x “ “comic with x” “sci fi drama shows” etc

I also recommend tv tropes! sometimes it’s hard to pinpoint what u like abt something, and tv tropes can def help identify tropes, writing devices, plot points etc. it can also just help u find new media lol

for example I really like mlp:fim, unfortunately the other gens do nothing for me. after thinking abt it what I love abt fim (specifically the first three seasons) is the ensemble cast, the art direction, the mixture of both mundane and fantasy, the magic system, the fun world building, and the character focused writing style vs focusing on a big plot (for the most part)

the first thing that comes to mind is witch hat atelier, a manga about a young girl obsessed with magic accidentally on purpose becoming a witch herself and slowly uncovering the conspiracies of witch society while also getting to know other young witches and her mysterious new teacher. her relationships with her fellow witches in the atelier are some of my fav parts abt the manga, however the thing that really sealed the deal are it’s art direction, magic system, world building

From there I can go even further; and this is going to be really funny. when I think something like wha, the first thing that comes to mind is part one naruto! but this doesn’t seem helpful unless u already know what u like right? wrong! that’s where Google and tv tropes come in!

Nother thing I recommend, if ur not getting the shit u want outta the media u like, sometimes it’s okay to step away from it for a little bit. naruto shippuden will never have the ending that satisfies you specifically but maybe just maybe ur hurt no comfort narusasu fanfic can lead u to giovannis room or shit it might lead u to challengers.

maybe challengers will lead u to castlevania and maybe castlevania will lead u to interview with a vampire which can lead u to Disney channel original my baby sitters a vampire or hell it could even lead u to bram stokers dracula

The thing that got lost in my last post I think was that it wasn’t abt never never never watching shit for babies because “uhhh it’s for kids” it’s more abt the fact that u can miss out on soooo many stories and so many expirences thru so many different ppls eyes n shit

idk if u like little Einsteins your prob gonna like doctor who

if u like idk zooftopia u might like beaststars or sly cooper (play sly cooper… but watch out! the racism…)

If u like inspectors gadget u might like fucking columbo or macgyver

a lot of people argue that kid shows are the only shows with lessons and morals and I disagree. U can learn something from everything I think it’s good to intake a lot of different things 😳😳

Now on god if another motherfuck twist my words I’m gonna shit myself

thinking about the nigga on anon who got really mad I couldn’t rec them shit that wasn’t cartoons because I had no idea who they were and what they liked to watch.. good times

[nancydrewwouldnever]

Advocate January 2009 Interview

Chris Evans: Not Another Gay Interview

Chris Evans is a serious actor, but that doesn’t mean he wants you to stop objectifying him.

By Brandon Voss

January 05 2009 12:00 AM EST

After working a whipped-cream bikini in the 2001 spoof Not Another Teen Movie, Chris Evans fried phone lines in Cellular and melted hearts as The Human Torch in the Fantastic Four films. Next seen as a telekinetic troublemaker in February’s sci-fi thriller Push, the 27-year-old revisits his steamiest photo shoot and outs his even hotter gay brother.

This may come as quite a shock, but gay men enjoy you. I was well aware of that. I remember my mother saying, “Chris, do you know you’re #2 on some gay list [AfterElton.com’s Hot 100]. Brad Pitt is #12!” I was like, “What?!” I couldn’t believe it.

That was 2007. I hate to break bad news, but you dropped to #8 in ’08. Aww, that’s outrageous! Who took my spot?

I forget, but Jake Gyllenhaal was #1 for both years. What? Jake? Unacceptable. [Laughs]

It couldn’t hurt to play a gay role next. I really wanted to be a part of Milk, but I lost out to James Franco. I guess if you’ve got to lose, he’s the guy to lose to. I did a movie called Fierce People where I played a sociopath who wasn’t gay, but he does rape a teenage boy. You come to find out he didn’t do it for sexual reasons; he just did it because he could. He really was a sick character.

I’ve actually got an idea for a gay musical sequel to Cellular called Blackberry Storm. You in? Absolutely. Sounds like a nailbiter.

I hear there might also be a queer subtext in Push. Yes, those with powers try to keep it under wraps. They’re being hunted by the government, so everyone’s trying to lay low. Now I understand the gay man’s struggle. [Laughs]

What’s the status of your Tennessee Williams film, The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond, about a 1920’s Memphis debutante? We took it to the Toronto Film Festival looking for distribution, and it does not look like that’s going to happen. I don’t know if there’s really a market for a Tennessee Williams film. It would’ve been a tough film to distribute and make money back, so it’s probably going to remain in limbo and possibly come out one day on DVD.

Do you blame Lindsay Lohan, who was originally set to star before Bryce Dallas Howard took over? [Laughs] No, not at all. To be honest, Bryce was phenomenal in the movie. It’s a shame that people won’t get to see her performance.

Let’s discuss your sexy, now-infamous 2004 Flaunt magazine photo shoot — and why you seem more hesitant to flaunt your physique. I really didn’t think twice about taking my shirt off at the time, but my current publicist would pull her hair out if I did that photo shoot today. If I got to a photo shoot and they said, “OK, we’re going to do some shirtless shots,” I’d say, “Fine. No big deal.” It never really occurred to me that that could be misinterpreted as a bad thing or as selling out.

Do you think those photos hurt you? I couldn’t care less, and I don’t think it makes one lick of difference. But I hired my publicist for her professional opinion, and she seems to think it’s a mistake. I have no problem taking my shirt off for a role if the part calls for it, but my publicist says, “When you’re promoting yourself, being you, there’s a way to keep it as classy as possible. Greasing yourself up and stripping down may not be the best way to do it.” To some degree, she may have a point. But at the end of the day, it didn’t bother me then and it doesn’t bother me now. Maybe I dropped to #8 because I haven’t had enough shirtless photo shoots lately. I’m blaming my publicist. [Laughs]

When you need an ego boost, do you ever watch the Chris Evans tribute videos on YouTube? No, I just call my mother. When you’re feeling depressed, you talk to her for 20 minutes and you think your shit doesn’t stink. And you can quote me on that.

I read on PerezHilton.com that your younger brother Scott is gay. Yes, I do have a gay brother. I’m down with the gays. Mostly I’m hanging out with him and his gay buddies, who are fucking hilarious. They’re the funniest people I know.

Do they take you to gay bars? They’ve invited me out to gay bars before, and I said, “Look, guys, I’ve got to draw the line there.” That’s where a photo will get taken, it will run in magazines, and before you know it, I’ll be living down the gay rumor for the rest of my life.

Does your brother look anything like you? He does, but he’s about an inch taller and about four shades tanner than I am. He’s a very fit young man. Believe me, he does quite well for himself.

How did he come out to you? He was really nervous. He came out to all of us very slowly. His first year at NYU, he came out to our mother and our sister, and then he came out to me a little later. I was driving him back to New York City for school. We spent the whole day together, got to the city, had some beers in my hotel room, got into a really great talk, and he came out. I was so glad that he did. That’s got to be a difficult transition, but I come from the most liberal household you have ever heard of. And for some reason, gay men are just drawn to my mother. She’s a cool chick. I think, like, six men have come out to her. I guess they just feel so comfortable with her, and before you know it, they’re coming out of the closet. I think my mother was praying for us to be gay, so at least she got one of us.

Growing up, when was the first time you realized that you weren’t gay? When I had a crush on my babysitter, who lived with us for a few years. I must’ve been 10 or 11. I was just head-over-heels in love with her. I thought she was the greatest thing in the world. Then I had a really big crush on Kim Cattrall in Mannequin. I was in love with her too.

In May 2008, you were photographed wearing a T-shirt with an image of two girls making out. Was that your way of showing support for gay marriage? My buddy owns a clothing line in L.A, and that’s one of the T-shirts that he makes. To be completely honest, I threw it on without really taking a close enough look at it. On that day I ended up getting photographed at a clothing store — which rarely happens to me — and then on the way home, I get in a car accident. So I’m dealing with police, the ambulance, taking down names and numbers, all while wearing a shirt with two women tonguing each other. It was a rough day. As for gay marriage, it’s mindboggling and appalling that human beings are being denied civil rights in this country. But time will heal all. I have to believe that in 10 years we won’t be having this conversation. We’ll be having another one, because we’ll always find someone to persecute.

2008 was arguably the Year of the Man-crush. Who was yours? My buddies always tell me that I have a man-crush on Brad Pitt. What can I say? The guy’s great. I think he’s a great fuckin’ actor, and he’s versatile as all hell. I’ve never seen a movie I didn’t like him in. So I guess he’s my man-crush.

When I interviewed Milo Ventimiglia for The Advocate, he told me about performing “I Will Survive” in drag for the short-lived 2000 TV series Opposite Sex. He failed to mention that you were one of his two backup dancers. [Laughs] I’ll tell you the worst part. Milo and Kyle [Howard] look like the ugliest transvestites in the world; meanwhile, I think I pass! I look like an alright-looking woman! It was horrible walking from the makeup trailer to the set. I was ogled, getting catcalls, and being sized-up. It was very demeaning. I could definitely relate to what women must go through.

Have you done drag since? No. Unless you want to count the blue tights in Fantastic Four.

By the way, “flame on!” was typically reserved for flamboyant homosexuals before you stole it as your Fantastic Four catchphrase. Sorry, guys. Well, you knocked me down to #8. I had to steal something.

[charcubed]

hey char, mind to share your fave stevebucky headcanons? 👀

Oh I LOVE that you asked me this :’)  Thank you!

I honestly have so many if I really think about it because I love them so much and I think about their dynamic so much that I have so many favorite things... but here is what I think of off the top of my head:

• Steve was color blind before the serum, according to canon. I have a headcanon that Bucky used to try to describe colors to him. I wrote a mini fic about that here.

• Bucky was drafted for the war, but didn’t tell Steve. Steve sort of assumed that Bucky enlisted, and Bucky never wanted to correct him. How could he? Steve wanted to enlist so badly, and Bucky didn’t ever feel like he could admit that he didn’t have the same drive to want to ~fight for the country~ like Steve did. He didn’t want to disappoint him and he was afraid Steve would think he was a coward. So Bucky just... never told him that he was forced into war. It was never his choice to fight for the country. If it was up to him, they would’ve stayed home together and stayed safe and never fought at all.

• They were always physically rough with each other, in the sense that they'd wrestle as boys all the time, and Steve loved that Bucky never treated him as fragile. Buck knew he could take it. Even after the serum, they'd still scuffle a bit like kids, finding a bright spot in a war-torn world. They’d be awake in the trenches on lookout, having soft conversations in the night, and shoving each other after one says something stupid or makes a bad joke.

• Steve is bi, and Bucky is gay. Bucky was consciously aware of his feelings for Steve way, way before Steve was aware of his for Bucky. In the 30s, Bucky has a bit of a reputation for ~dating around,~ but not in a rude ladies’ man kind of way but rather his reputation is “Bucky Barnes is a real charmer. He’ll show you a good time and he’s really sweet, but he never pushes your boundaries.” Some women wishes he’d push their boundaries, but he doesn’t. He’s taken so many women out on dates because he never lets it get super serious, since they’re not who he wants and it’s mostly for appearances’ sake, especially since he and Steve live together. He definitely enjoys hanging out with women, and treating them nice, but most of the time his motivation is to try to set up double dates–half because Steve deserves to find a great girl to date, and half because a double date means Bucky can selfishly do a date activity “with” Steve and not have it mean anything. Meanwhile though, Steve gets jealous as hell and testy about Bucky dating all the time, but he’s oblivious to the fact that it’s because Steve wishes Bucky would be with him instead.

• Their first kiss was when Steve was 16 and Bucky was 17. I’m not necessarily saying that’s when they actually got together, but something significant happened between them at those ages... maybe they kissed because they were drunk, or it was so Steve’s “first kiss” would be someone he knew and it was for “practice.” And then they both never talked about it again, because they’re idiots and were afraid to ~ruin things~ between each other. That’s why Steve says “Rumlow said ‘Bucky’ and all of a sudden I was a 16-year-old kid again, in Brooklyn.” That’s why “seventeen” is one of Bucky’s trigger words as the Winter Soldier. It checks out, because Bucky is a little bit older than Steve.

• Steve doesn’t fully admit the depth of his own feelings for Bucky to himself until he finds out Bucky’s been captured by HYDRA. And then he tears Europe apart to get him back. He’d have done that anyway, obviously, but... the prospect of losing Bucky forever is really what makes him realize how much he can’t handle that concept. Because he’s in love with him.

• After Bucky “dies,” Steve gets more reckless, and that’s part of the reason he put the plane in the ice and didn’t try to survive: he didn’t want to live in a world without Bucky in it. This is supported by canon. And so I headcanon that, after Steve finds out about the Winter Soldier, one day he abruptly realizes that he could’ve died in that plane crash and never known Bucky was alive and brainwashed and suffering. He thought Bucky was dead and he wanted to follow him, and he could’ve left Bucky even more alone in the world without knowing it. When Steve realizes how close he came to leaving Bucky behind like that, he throws up. It horrifies him to think about it.

• They each have a pair of dog tags where one says “Steve Rogers” and one says “Bucky Barnes.” They swapped one tag each, so that they’d have a matching set, because while they couldn’t list each other as “next of kin,” they wanted tangible evidence that would show other people how important they are to each other. So people would know: tell him if something happens to me.

• Their Brooklyn accents come out / get heavier around each other, especially if they’re bitching about things or arguing.

• Bucky is a complete sci-fi and fantasy nerd–which is now confirmed canon, and I love it. In particular, I like to headcanon that he loves to read paperback sci-fi novels, and discount romance novels. He unironically enjoys them, and he leaves them allllll over the place. One of the things they love to do is Bucky will sit around and read while Steve will sit around and draw/paint, and half the time Steve gets distracted sketching Bucky’s facial expression he makes while he’s reading.

• Bucky is also a pop culture gremlin. He will try and often get interested in pretty much anything and everything, without rhyme or reason. In modern day, he and Nat will watch trashy reality TV together–sometimes to make fun of it, sometimes to get invested. Steve thinks they’re insane for that. And sometimes Bucky will like one niche thing but then for very specific reasons he dislikes another similar thing. It makes sense to him, even if Steve doesn’t get it.

• Steve tends to be pickier with the kind of stuff he enjoys. He’s always had Strong Opinions™️ on everything, including and especially art. Put him in a museum and he’ll have a lot of thoughts on all of it. He doesn’t judge things or hate on other people for liking things he doesn’t like at all, but he won’t get hooked on a movie/show quite as easily. The one exception is animation, which he absolutely adores, and he goes on a wild binge of all kinds of animated content for awhile–shows and movies–because the various art styles and uses of the medium to tell crazy stories just fascinates him.

• Easy access to so much music is one of their mutual favorite things about the 21st century. Bucky often gets into individual artists’ entire discographies and becomes a fan, whereas Steve often gets into a handful of specific songs from a wide range of various people. Like... Bucky will often love an entire album, and Steve will often love 2 songs specifically more than others. But even with that, Steve loves collecting vinyl records–both old and new ones.

• Bucky has a fantastic singing voice even though he’s shy about it, and he tends to hum along to music when distracted or working on something else–especially while making something in the kitchen. 

• Bucky likes technology more than Steve; Steve likes physical stuff more than Bucky. Bucky loves to take photos and videos of things all the time, hoarding digital memories in a way that’s precious to him, knowing that they’re “safe” and accessible anywhere. They lost so much of the objects that they loved a century ago, and photos were scarce, but now... there are endless ways to have pictures. When Bucky was recovering in Wakanda and Steve was on the run, Bucky would often text Steve photos–sometimes without captions–to wordlessly share bits of his days with him. He’s got a good eye for photography, except for when he takes the photo equivalent of shitposts to make Steve laugh. Regardless, Steve gets his favorites printed–some of Bucky’s photos, some of his, some of their selfies–so they also always have something tangible to hold onto.

• Bucky calls Steve “sweetheart” sometimes, just to be a little shit–and he means it. It makes Steve turn red every time, without fail, but he secretly doesn’t mind it.

Okay I’ll stop hahaha. Those are the main ones that come to mind for me all the time when I think of them! 

Thank you again for asking :D  This was so fun to write all in one place!

[wistfulrat]

a 4-part rec list of my fave drarry fics - the thrillers, dramas, soft bois, and wankbanks getting me through 2020′s shitstorm

[the soft boi list is here and truly i’m not surprised this rec is going to be the longest bc if there’s one thing a bitch is going to do, it’s yearn.

as always! if you love a fic, follow the authors, leave kudos & comments, send them nice msgs bc free art is still labor xoxo]

part 3: soft bois

mood: for when I need respite, a balm to the all-consuming shittiness of life

includes: fluff, comfort, low-stakes, slow-burn fics. a wistful look, a rainy morning, an unexpected grace, a stupidly disarming joke. i could live inside these fics. the smallness of human lives removed from the site of that which hurts & irreparably changes. the story-equivalent of a deep breath after a long day. pregnant silences & pensive mundanity & shy smiles. banter with bite but without the cruelty. the color lavender. weirdly whimsical. soft fics are not necessarily conflict-averse (no drarry fic rly can be, considering the context) but, they offer the reader a generous distance from the initial harm. they’re the quiet cleaning up after a storm. sometimes healing is an exacting surgical knife and other times it’s a slow scabbing. you read these fics to be reassured that the way forward is not always ruthless. and honestly?? they deserve a semblance of peace godDAMmit.

The Way Down by @letteredlettered - 65k - T “and I thought that if someone talked to you as though you were a human being you might—maybe you could act like one” --the way i think about this line daily. the characterization of draco in this fic is one my favorites bc he’s earnest and neurotic and tired of harry’s shit. which is to say, he cares so so much. and harry doesn’t know what to do with that bc he’s got a monster in his chest and lives as a recluse. but they both humanize each other in ways no one else can. “you’re just a person” has to be some kind of drarry ethics of belonging and it makes me CRY. -

Little Deaths and How to Avoid Them by @greaseonmymouth and dustmouth - 96k - T “Maybe it’s not about deserving it? Maybe you just get to have it anyway. . .I’m allowing myself to want something and to let myself have it and to fight for it.” --harry runs a daycare and also works at a library. draco spends a lot of time in said library. they bond over sci-fi books and therapy anecdotes and quiet philosophical conversations held over cafeteria soup. and harry’s struggling to understand his asexuality. draco’s learning how to live with anxiety and depression. they both want to be deserving of love. incredible fic with beautiful art by dustmouth. - 

Open for Repairs by @drarrytrash - 35k - T “A few leaves rustle in the gutter and the muggle world pays no mind to them, to two lost boys holding on for dear life.” --all of their fics feel exactly like this. like you’ve been allowed to look at something private, tender, unexpected. draco, known abba fan, is a repairman in the muggle world & harry can’t stop breaking thrifted things in order to see him? say less, i'm thERE. also “I think I have a crush on you” goddddd  - other faves by them: Counting Down By Ten - 2k - T: draco’s stepped outside of the party for a smoke. harry follows him bc of course he does. i could read this 100 times and not get tired of it. - Clouds That Veil the Midnight Moon - 36k - E: FUCKING HILARIOUS I CACKLED THROUGH THE WHOLE THING. draco’s wolfy problem and harry helping him and harry being flustered by how much he likes draco and draco’s hot heroic moment. shutup it’s perfect. “He almost asks if Draco ever gets tired of being a miserable complaining shit all the time, but he knows that he, personally, never ever gets tired of being a miserable complaining shit.” and “It’s the traumas,” Harry says gravely” --lines that live rent free in my head -

Harry Potter and the Future He Doesn't Really Want, Thanks by seefin - 70k - E “That was the only logical thing to do here, wasn’t it? It was the next step, it was the end of hurting each other and the beginning of the exact opposite.” --harry lives with luna and neville and also he dreams about the future sometimes? and he keeps running into draco. draco thinks this is sus as hell, until he doesn’t. feat. taxi rides, museums, cinemas, rooftop conversations beneath a lunar eclipse, mid-sex innocuous banter, draco and harry discussing nicki minaj. this fic charmed my ass off. seefin writes the most effortlessly hilarious dialogues. i smiled at my phone like an idiot at least 7 times. -  other faves by them: Wild - 93k - E: “he liked feeling needed, for the things that he was needed for back at the house in Ireland. For cooking and gardening and driving. Easy things.” --this shit makes me cry it’s so good. harry lives in Ireland with these three brilliant, hilarious, wandless witches and draco’s a potions student who's come to study under one of the housemates and the boys have so much shit to work through but their love becomes so tender and honest. draco yells at harry a lot and harry lets him and they both keep each other grounded in something real and fuCK.  - Divination for Dickheads - 7k - G: “I’m terrible at having crushes. I’ve never played anything cool a day in my life.” -- oh harry, we knOW. a bus ride, a fortune teller, an aquarium birthday party. god i love this fic. -

Modern Love by @tackytigerfic​ - 61k - E “But we’ve worked so hard at this, haven’t we? Yeah, I know it’s a horror to have to talk about it, but fuck it. We’re friends now, but it took so long to get here. Have you ever had to work so hard at something before?" --the steady blossoming of their friendship in this fic is so goddamn beautiful i want to yell. it’s draco and harry learning to trust each other and the whole thing unfolds so slowly, in this whimsical mix of london streets, wizarding politics, church halls feat. a Hot vicar, and a magical antique shop owner who’s married to literal poseidon?? goD the environment of this fic. immaculate. [also there’s a tender shower scene that makes me cry every single fucking time so if you read this fic pls dm me so we can be embarrassing about it together tbh] -

Nice Things by aideomai - 22k - M “He kept waiting for the weird shock of touch to not knock him clean out of his head, leave him quiet and warm and happy.” --8th year. harry forms an unlikely friendship with draco that begins with smoking weed on a windowsill. harry is touch-starved and draco touches him like he touches all his close friends - like it’s easy. the quiet affection in this fic, the way harry burrows himself into touch bc he’s been without it for his entire life. reading this is like being held. -

Running On Air by @tinyhistory​ - 74k - T “do you remember when we were eleven?” --alexa play coldplay’s the scientist it’s sad girl hours and we’re about to fucking yearn. you’ve seen this fic rec on every drarry list under the sun and i'm here to be redundant. the hype is so goddamn real. this story is a lyrical masterpiece held together by lines that act as refrains that will rattle around your brain until you die, probably. draco’s been missing for 3yrs. harry goes to find him. it’s their odyssey of homecoming. -

Title of Their Sex Tape by @cibeewastaken - 12k - T “But Draco, Draco was everything but boring. Draco made sitting in the rain watching an empty house fun.” --auror partners pining and draco being eccentric and harry being very earnestly gay about draco’s eccentricities!! god this fic is so genuinely fun skskd feat. undercover missions, murderous faeries, a book heist, a stunning navy dress, harry’s eyelashes. -

How We Throw Our Shadows Down by @thistle-verse - 14k - T “Draco is about to say something else— to thank Potter for what he’d done, however poorly— but Harry is smiling at him again, and it’s so soft and perfect that Draco holds in any inadequate words, lest he spoil it.” --draco collects tea cozies and of course harry has the one he wants. the sad and tender gays are at it again feat. conversations in the rain at a train station, melancholy Blaise, muggle photos, wizarding e-bay, the Dursleys.  -

Helix by Saras_Girl - 92k - E “Draco sighs in his sleep and Harry clings on to consciousness, needing to hold on, to give this tiny, insignificant moment the attention it deserves” --I think maybe you can describe every soft Saras_Girl story as giving tiny, insignificant moments the attention they deserve. like, this is an 8th year fic about snails and it’s full of whimsy, grief, compassion, and easy humor. an absolute must-read author in this genre if you want languorous, episodic fics full of distinct OCs and affectionate creatures. - other faves by them: Light up the Night Sky - 98k - M “Draco, sometimes you make my head feel like soup” --the one where harry is a fireworks artist and has a pet chameleon named ken. draco is on the wizarding arts council. they both pine like hell. - Headlights in the Snow - 71k - M “they stare at each other in silence, Harry’s heart beating so loud in his chest that he thinks the biddies must be able to hear it over the sound of their card game.” --the one where draco drives the knight bus and carts around the biddy club, a group of rambunctious old ladies who knit and drink tea and gossip. harry can’t help but fall in love with the everything about this. -

Follow the Water by @xanthippe74 - 38k - T “Harry’s heavy thoughts lift at the sight, like dark clouds blown away from the sun by the wind. The tent doesn’t feel so cramped and stifling now. It feels cozy. And safe. It’s the same feeling that Harry gets when he’s at the Burrow for Sunday roasts, when a group of people who care for each other deeply are crammed into too-small a space.” --harry wanders to the lovegood house on a sunday afternoon. he’s baffled to see that luna’s taken pansy, greg, and draco under her wing. what follows is a summer of forest walks, scavenger hunts, gardening, water fights, odd cakes, faerie rings, and picnics. so many picnics. i love the pace of this fic, the innocent return to childhood things, the way luna brings out the best in all her friends. reluctantly soft slytherins are just *chefs kiss*!! -

Going Postal (A 125pg comic) by dustmouth - T what. a. beautiful. ass. comic. the wizarding fashion, the textures, the character design!! harry travels a lot for his job as a resourcer. draco works in the regulations dept. they pine like a bunch of lovesick idiots via field report notes. god i love dustmouth’s art. -

All the Earnest Young Men by @tepre​ - 29k - E “Draco is twenty-seven layers of personality wrapped up in drama and humour, and a wit so sharp it still stings when he doesn’t see it coming. But there is something below that, too. Something that makes Harry ache just looking at him.” --the way i would lay down my little life for tepre’s characterization of draco, whom invented the word earnest. he’s a magical art theory expert and portraits are disappearing all over London and harry’s the auror assigned to this case. and well. they’re both so very avoidant about how gay they are for each other and it’s like!! shutup and kiss!! which they do in fact, shutup and kiss.  -

Trenches by sara_holmes - 3k - M “Somewhere in the distant part of his mind that hasn't frozen solid, he thinks that maybe he and Draco are about to become more than auror partners, smoking buddies, wine-mates and co-inhabitants of a snow filled trench somewhere in western Scotland.” --the plot line here is literally “it’s cold and i need a fucking cigarette” but let me tell you how I never tire of the shared loaded-silences of two emotionally repressed gays. -

The Years Before Love by lomonaaeren - 13k - M “That’s one of the meanings of peace, he thinks, as Hermione hugs him...That he can do things slowly, softly, without worrying that they won’t be there tomorrow.” --andromeda taking harry under her wing and harry finding solace in teddy. narcissa and draco showing up and the tentative relationships that slowly develop in the quiet calm of andromeda’s house. found families and kisses in the snow and special xmas gifts ugh what’s not to love -

The Moon Looks Lovely Tonight by Omi_Ohmy - 35k - M “I want this to be a house where people are welcome, where they don’t have to be any one way or another” --in which harry collects lost things--owls, best friends, inept bakers, potions experimenters--and turns the mausoleum that is grimmauld place into a home. feat. your fave drarry tropes like shared-beds and reluctant waltzing partners. -

[part 1: thrillers | part 2: dramas | part 3: soft bois | part 4: wankbanks]

[eponymous-rose]

Talks Machina Highlights - Critical Role C2E121 (Jan. 19, 2021)

Aaaand we're back! The epic pet montage at the start is still the greatest thing ever.

Tonight's guests? Matthew Mercer and Marisha Ray!

We begin with an extensive discussion of waffle farts. As you do.

Matt is asked what it's been like to get to build out the characters in the Tombtakers. Lucien is Matt's favorite, but they've all got some fun traits to them. "It's one of those rare experiences as a dungeon master where you get to watch your players combat with the necessity of playing along. The instinct is: fuck these guys, I want to fight them, we'll take their shit... or I guess we have to play nice. And they begrudgingly grit their teeth and I smile internally."

On the Lucien accent: "You guys are all so mean to Taliesin!" Matt knew his own take would be a "weird mutation" of Mollymauk's accent anyway.

How's Marisha feeling about a lot of her predictions panning out? "Aw, I mean, gee, me? What? Noooo. It's definitely vindicating, I'm not gonna lie, and rewarding, but I also know that I write a lot of shit down in that notebook that's never relevant ever again. It's definitely a good feeling to know that I didn't go on that fifteen-minute deep dive and was utterly wrong about everything I said." Matt: "I was super proud. I was just silently cheering you on as you went on these long tangents."

What does Lucien think of the Mighty Nein? "Lucien is definitely curious about why they're getting involved in his shit and what they're planning alongside them. One, he hates Beau because he doesn't like people who challenge his authority. He gravitates towards Jester to an extent because she's the most open, which from his standpoint makes her easiest to manipulate. He loves toying with curiosity, and so between Jester and Caleb, those are the two people that he's the most comfortable interacting with. Caduceus makes him feel a little weird. He's amused by them. Fjord to Lucien is one of the more guarded and less accessible at the moment."

Is Beau enjoying getting under Lucien's skin? "Beau's picking and poking still kind of stems from her defensiveness and guardedness and her feelings, in a lot of ways, and the way that she's coping with things. It's a few steps removed from her default and what she often resorts to when she starts throwing up those barriers. She still has in the back of her head that she's looking at her dead friend. It's her way of protecting herself if she can go, fuck you, I don't care about you. This isn't too dissimilar to the way she reacted when Yasha was brainwashed." Matt: "It's a unique social sparring match the whole time they're traveling side-by-side. It's unique to have an antagonistic force that you're--" Marisha: "That we're going camping with."

Navigating the Tombtaker/M9 relationship as a DM is "challenging. At any given moment, a wrong statement could escalate matters one way or the other. It's having to pay attention to a lot of things at all points in time to be ready for how those chain reactions can happen and where it might go." He likens it to trying to follow and participate in two different conversations simultaneously at a party.

On the note from Yasha: "Oh man, you guys. Oh, it was so sweet. I don't think Beau was expecting Yasha to be so forthcoming with everything, and so complimentary and eloquent. Beau is awkward with healthy relationships, so she doesn't know how to handle them. She's still processing that and wants to not ruin it. No, it was magical." Ashley told Marisha after the episode that she was trying to think of what to say and wound up basing it on what she would say about Marisha.

Cosplay of the Week: an amazing Vax (by stormfeather_cosplay, photograph by travi_b, both on Instagram)!

On using variations on the Wild Magic table: "I wanted to give it some variation to consequences. They took some of the tooth out of it from earlier editions. I knew it would be fun once I gave them the specifications of when these things would happen - players are just waiting for someone to roll a 20 or a 1 at all times."

Why is it so important to Beau that she and Yasha have a proper date? Part of it is a fresh start. "So much of Beau's past relationships have been rooted in some toxic behavior. Beau feels like, well, maybe we should just start from the beginning in the most us way possible: fighting through the tundra with our dead-ish friend."

The sci-fi-ish theme came toward the end of developing Aeor, but it mostly comes from rationalization. Matt is intrigued by how all these different societies want to usurp the gods... which has parallels with modern society. He notes that focusing more on the science of the magic means the aesthetics pull away to "instead facilitate the utility or the most direct route to the answers you want. You streamline as opposed to focusing on the aesthetics."

Beau’s reaction to all the weird magic stuff? “I think Beau’s just so focused on the pragmatic aspects of it all right now. There are greedy people with motives and the will and want to corrupt across all spans of cultures and times. She’s trying not to get lost in the magic, both proverbially and literally, of it all, and just trying to focus on the motives of these people at hand.”

In some ways, Matt was surprised by Caduceus’ strong reaction to the creepy woods. “It was the first major reveal that there are some other sides to the coin that he hadn’t learned about. I had no idea how he would react. It pushed him away more in ways than I expected.”

Fan art of the week: an amazing Lucien! (by oratorkayla on Twitter)

What’s Dagen’s motivation? “He’s definitely a man of his word when it comes to fulfilling a contract and getting the other half of his pay, but it’s not hard to see they’ve grown on him a little bit. He’s really good at getting around the tundra unseen and unnoticed.”

Brian: “In true Sam fashion-” Marisha, instantly: “OH MY GOD.”

Marisha: “Here’s the thing. Here’s the tea, okay? If I ever hear one more fucking person trying to claim that I’m ruining things by metagaming, I’m going to point to Sam. I’m expected to respond accordingly to Veth being a Sam troll. Gods damn him! Raven Queen curse upon him! Let chaos reign! He made me pull out my earphones, I can’t hear anything you’re saying. It’s frustrating because I’d be mad at it if it wasn’t so god damn funny.” Matt notes that at a different table this wouldn’t be great behavior, but they all know each other well enough (and check in with each other enough) that it’s comfortable teasing.

With a bit of a deeper pull, Matt is asked whether he knew Avantika would return someday? “I knew she was a fun, interesting option out there. The M9 still have in their grasp the single most important artifact, in Uk’otoa’s opinion, at the moment. As long as they carry that artifact, his eye of Sauron is upon them.” Matt notes that he has more encounter tables going, so a lot of the time even he’s not sure what’s going to happen.

Caduceus suggested contacting Essek, but Beau and Caleb nixed that idea. Does Beau trust him? “Gods no. Absolutely not. She can like Essek personally. As a person, he’s fine, I guess. But I think a lot of people might be forgetting that he’s kind of a war criminal and kind of set off a lot of bad things in motion with this war with the Empire and the Dynasty, because he wanted power and to know things. So now here he is, also in Aeor. Yeah. Just kinda putting two and two together there. It is another one of those things of, you’re walking that line on trying to keep him on your good side and having a mutually beneficial relationship before it could easily go completely south.”

On the Star Razor being a Vestige: “I don’t want this to be--- the Vestiges aren’t always a thing where it’s like, you get a Vestige and you get a Vestige! I want them to be still considered special and rare. This is one that had to be earned, it had to be reforged. I didn’t know the circumstances that would involve it coming about.” He based it on the circumstances of Fjord’s evolution into a paladin. “In essence, not only did he finish the creation of the sword, but he Awakened it at the same time as he made this transition. It is Exalted at this point, it’s in its final form.”

What does Beau think might lie ahead? “I have no idea. I am trying to abandon expectation when it comes to that. I know what we don’t know, and that’s it. Beau is trying to compensate for the known unknowns and the unknown unknowns. I hope we can keep this tenuous relationship through to Aeor, because we need more answers before it explodes in our face. Beau, and Marisha, is hoping for a little more information before shit hits the fan.”

[doiefy]

Okay but someone needs to do a hunger games themed fic & more apocalypse, camp half blood, hogwarts & detective au's because it's interesting to see each writers take on it & it's rare to find them these days💀.

The only hunger games fic I've seen till now is by @daybreakx Another Place and not a lot of blogs write apocalypse au's anymore & if they do I haven't seen them ☹. Please we're running dry of these au's 😭.

Also do you have any fic/blog recommendations?

detective and apocalypse yes absolutely that's my shit, and i'm working on some more crime things 😎😎

personally not a big fan of crossover fics when it comes to writing them, because i feel like there isn't as much room to expand and world build. i'm sure there's still a lot you can do (e.g. come up with new game concepts for hunger games, write new godly wars for pjo or write another triwizard tourney for hogwarts), but i do usually end up feeling constrained to an existing world. having already read those texts and conclusions written by the original author, it feels a little weird to come up with new conflicts/scenarios within that world even if they could feasibly exist.

i'm sure good ones exist (and will def take a look at the one you linked!), there's a lot of people who enjoy the au and i've seen plenty here. but i don't read too many, so sorry i don't have any recs for those :( i'll put some apocalyptic/sci fi-y things under the cut!

shameless promo, i've got dark clouds and 10:28 am, osaka for post apocalyptic, and ofc my baby at dawn for murder mystery 😎

some of my favs:

literally anything by @neonun-au/@gyusense. particularly from what i once was and the expansion she's working on for that!! ritual is a classic, return our lives, hardtops & sodapop. ily mads <3

@heartshyuck mina my beloved. lavender fields, the monster fic that is ascension to the throne and the entire king's crown series (pending lol), lost memories, and watch out for her next series on cults, murder and magic 👀👀

@kjmsupremacist into the woods (still haven't recovered from heartbreak, thanks the bucket list, the defeat of creation, and i really need to get on warm like a gun but it looks so fucking good. also shoutout to xiami for doing us a huge service with all the mxm content <333

@ncityrave playing god !! i've read only two chapters so far and really need to get on the rest of it, but absolutely insane writing and storytelling in this one.

@97-liners/@naptaemed knock on your door and the epilogue drabbles, i've had chrysanthemum terrace on my list for a while now and the historical setting looks *chef's kiss*

@itsapapisongo specter of the goblin, animam agere, and of course the dreaming. if you're interested in anything marvel, superheroes or star wars, javi's your guy :)

[partiallyobscure]

otp questions from this post <3 I just went ahead and did them with David and Michael lmao. it’s mostly my usual headcanons with my fic as the backstory but you don’t necessarily need to read it to understand. cw for light nsfw but it’s mostly tame.

Who is the most affectionate?

David is disgustingly affectionate. he lives to make people uncomfortable so he would be the absolute worst perpetrator of PDA. he and Michael have gotten kicked out of too many establishments all because David is constantly letting his hands wander. I don’t even think he’s aware of it at this point lmao

Big spoon/Little spoon?

they bicker about it a lot, but usually in bed, David ends up being the little spoon. he tries to start off being the big spoon but he always wakes up with Michael’s arms around his chest, specifically covering where the holes from the antlers were, even though the scars are long gone by now.

Most common argument?

usually comes down to who/what/where to eat.

Favorite non-sexual activity?

they love doing tons of stuff together, but they really like racing, watching bad sci-fi movies, and going on haunted tours around the country. they’ll really go the extra mile for the ghost tours and get huge cameras to hang around their neck and everything and act all tourist-y. it’s a great time.

Who is most likely to carry the other?

David fusses but Michael carries him around when he can or requests it. he doesn’t like to do it too often though because it always reminds him of that first time he did so, thinking he was carrying David’s dead body in his arms.

What is their favorite feature of their partner's?

Michael’s favorite feature is David’s mouth, especially when it quirks up into his signature smirk, but he can also tell a lot about what David’s feeling from what he’s doing with his mouth. David hates that Michael can read him so easily (even with their shared mental connection) and asks how the fuck he’s able to do that, and Michael always gives an enigmatic smile and swipes his thumb across David’s lips.

David’s favorite is Michael’s eyes. he could lose a whole night just staring into them. he can’t quite place the color, but they remind him of how the sky would look at noon and he gets a rush of nostalgia every time Michael looks at him. whenever they light up like when they’re with Michael’s family or when he’s talking about the coolest bike that he saw in town that day is David’s absolute favorite. and when only his eyes turn amber, before the rest of his face follows to match David’s, David falls a little bit more in love every time.

What's the first thing that changes when they realize they have feelings for the other?

not much changed on David’s end since he was attracted to Michael at first sight. he couldn’t let it show though so he just found excuses to touch Michael whenever he could, passing him the joint and their fingers brushing when Michael took the bottle and catching him when they fell off the bridge.

when Michael realized he started to share those feelings, he was confused at first considering everything that happened between them. he wasn’t sure if he wanted to hit David or hit on David when they first met, so those feelings simmered a bit until he could get to know David beyond their history. he doesn’t fully admit it until he realizes he’s the one David is pursuing and he has the ego boost from this combined with knowing there’s more to David than what he allows people to see.

Nicknames? & if so, how did they originate?

David likes how Michael’s name sounds too much to give him a nickname, but will sometimes hit him with a ‘babe’ just to see him flustered. Michael calls him Davey just to make him mad but especially in public.

Who worries the most?

Michael since he still can’t seem to shake the fact that he doesn’t need to worry anymore about human dangers. he still flinches and looks twice before pulling onto the highway and all. but mostly he still worries about his family and their perception of him and whether or not they see him as a bad person, despite their love and support. and of course, he worries about how he’ll be when the day comes that he gets older than them.

Who remembers what the other one always orders at a restaurant?

David knows Michael’s order all too well and specifically chooses restaurants that have at least fifteen kinds of burgers to choose from.

Michael swears David is making stuff up at this point whenever they go to a sushi place or a Thai place and he chooses something new to try every time. he knows David’s bubble tea order by heart, though.

Who tops?

Michael, but they’ll switch whenever David has had enough of Michael being too gentle with him.

Who initiates kisses?

David, but he’ll usually give Michael a look when he wants a kiss and Michael is happy to oblige. otherwise, since David likes gross PDA, he usually steals a kiss whenever he can.

Who reaches for the other's hand first?

David and it’s usually because he has to pull Michael along after he gets lost in his thoughts, more often than not after they feed.

Who kisses the hardest?

Michael. David nipped at his bottom lip once and that’s all it took for his fangs to come out and sometimes, it gets a little bloody.

Who wakes up first?

Michael. he has to practically drag David out of bed most nights because he’s too comfortable.

Who wants to stay in bed just a little longer?

David as stated above lmao. who knows how long dude was batting it up before he could sleep in a bed again.

Who says I love you first?

Michael and it was out of frustration.

Who tells their family/friends about their relationship first?

there’s no one to tell at first since they were keeping it secret, but Star finds out first and is initially upset, mostly about being lied to. grandpa eventually finds out next and then Sam stumbled across them by accident, so...both of them technically spill the beans together each time lmao

What do their family/friends think of their relationship?

Lucy is supportive and likes David a lot. she knows she should probably resent him for turning Michael, but he really seems like a boy who was in a bad scenario and is making due with what happened to him. she also knows Michael has been a good influence on him and trusts the two of them are doing what they need to to survive. her and David bond over shit talking Max and the best kind of wines.

Sam was understandably skeptical at first, but he and David came to an understanding and they’re cool now. they bond over music and David eventually comes around to really enjoying board games because of Sam, mostly because he wins every single game. Sam even refers to him as his brother-in-law.

Star took longer to come around but she mostly listens whenever Sam tells her what they’re up to. she’s also mostly relieved that she dodged both of those bullets and can live her own life how she wants to now, grateful that the boys gave her an escape and that Michael helped get her human life back.

Who is more likely to start dancing with the other?

both of them suck at dancing, but Michael will spin David every now and then when a cheesy slow song comes on, or Careless Whispers and they both crack up.

Who cooks more/who is better at cooking?

when they’re back spending time with Michael’s family, David is usually the one helping Lucy in the kitchen. he’s chided Michael before about joining in, especially with the big holiday dinners but Michael is always there to lick whatever spoons and bowls clean when they make dessert.

they vow to take a cooking class or two while they’re out on the road but never do.

Who comes up with cheesy pick up lines?

Michael. he usually gets them from Sam.

Who whispers inappropriate things in the other's ear during inappropriate times?

David, 100%. inappropriate times being at all times because of the whole telepathy thing.

Who needs more assurance?

David, that Michael still wants to be with him and doesn’t resent him for turning him. but also Michael that he isn’t a monster and that he’s only doing what he needs to to survive.

What would be their theme song?

SOOOO MANY but just from my drive to work today: Possum Kingdom by the Toadies fits TOO well. Michael by Franz Ferdinand too obviously. I’m curating a playlist for them here at the moment if anyone’s interested lmao

Who would sing to their child back to sleep?

please don’t give these two a child

What do they do when they're away from each other?

they’re not usually too far from each other but David gets a little mopey until he can see Michael again. he’s protective so he doesn’t let Michael too far out of his sight. Michael feels a little part of himself missing when David’s not with him, so he’ll do whatever he needs to do quickly or just take David along with him.

one headcanon about this OTP that breaks your heart:

despite all the time David has had to mourn and grieve, he still misses the other boys every day and sometimes it gets really painful. his only regret in life is not easing Michael into the vampire thing more before turning him, but he was under a time constraint from Max so he didn’t have much of a choice. they still get into shouting matches very rarely about whether or not Michael was the catalyst for the other three’s deaths and David’s very deep, hidden fear is that he’ll never learn how to accept it and one day, his emotions will take him too far and Michael will get sick of his guilt trips.

one headcanon about this OTP that mends it:

Michael does blame himself for David’s grief, because how could he not. he feels like the constant source of David’s sorrow when it comes to the boys but also his ecstatic love and it pulls him in two directions. he listens intently whenever David tells him about his past and his time with the boys and asks what they’d say or do if they were there with them right now, and it continues into the modern era. Michael asks what kind of blog Paul would have (music reviews and fashion), what Marko would name his Instagram account for bird photography (vampigeons), and how many followers Dwayne would get on tiktok for posting thirst traps. David knows Michael cares and is trying to keep the spirit of the lost boys alive.

[beatriceeagle]

I'm more of a fantasy than sci-fi person, but consider my interest piqued. Why should I watch farscape?

Okay, the thing is, every Farscape fan’s pitch on Why You, Yes You, Should Watch Farscape ends up sounding very similar, and that’s because Farscape is a black hole that sucks you in and does things to your brain, and after you’ve watched it you are never, ever the same, which incidentally is basically the plot of Farscape.

I would summarize the basic plot for you, but that’s work, and luckily, the show’s credits sequence includes a handy summary that I will provide instead of doing that work: “My name is John Crichton, an astronaut. A radiation wave hit, and I got shot through a wormhole. Now I’m lost in some distant part of the universe on a ship, a living ship, full of strange alien life forms. Help me. Listen, please. Is there anybody out there who can hear me? I’m being hunted by an insane military commander. Doing everything I can. I’m just looking for a way home.“

So let me break down that monologue into its component reasons you should watch Farscape.

1) Some of the strange alien life forms are Muppets.

Farscape a co-production with the Jim Henson Company, and while there are many aliens played by humans in make-up, there are also a considerable number (including two of the regular crew) who are Muppets. By which I do not mean Kermit. I mean really gorgeous, elaborate works of art.

Also, even a lot of the humans-in-makeup aliens just look cool, and incredibly weird. Here’s an alien who appears in a single episode of season 1:

Not that there aren’t, you know, occasional Star Trek-style “these guys are just humans with weird hair,” or whatever, but in general, the aliens on Farscape look really alien. And that’s more than an aesthetic choice; it’s Farscape’s driving narrative principle. The aliens look alien, they act alien, they have alien values.

You know how a lot of sci-fi shows will have a stand-in for “fuck,” like Battlestar Galactica has “frak”? Well, Farscape has “frell.” And also “dren.” And yotz, hezmana, mivonks, loomas, tralk, snurch, eema, drannit, dench, biznak, arn, drad, fahrbot, narl. Some of those are swear words, but some of them are just words, never explicitly translated, that the alien characters will pepper into their speech, because, well, why should translator microbes be able to completely translate all the nuances of an alien culture? You’ll pick it up from context. One time, in passing, a character mentions that he’s familiar with the concept of suicide, but there’s no word for it in his language. I cannot emphasize to you enough how fleeting this moment is; the episode is not about suicide, we’re not having a great exchange of cultural ideas—at the time, the characters are running down a corridor in a crisis, as they are about 70 percent of the time—it’s just that the subject got brought up, and this character needed to talk around the fact that he literally didn’t have a word, in that moment. Things like that happen all the time, on Farscape.

Because more than anything else, Farscape is a show about culture shock. John Crichton is this straight, white Southern guy, at the top of his game—he’s an astronaut! he’s incredibly high status!—and then he ends up on the other side of the galaxy, where none of his cultural markers of privilege hold any meaning, where he doesn’t know the rules, where he literally can’t even open the doors. And he has to unlearn the idea that humanity is central, that he is the norm.

2) John Crichton, an astronaut, is pretty great.

A show that’s about a straight white guy with high status having to learn that he’s not the center of the universe could easily be centered around a really insufferable person, but one of the subtle things that makes Farscape so wonderful is that Crichton is, for the most part, pretty excellent. He has a lot of presumptions to unlearn because almost anyone in his cultural position would, but he’s also just a stand-up guy: compassionate, intelligent, open-minded, decent, forgiving, brave, hopeful.

And the galaxy tries to kick a whole lot of that out of him. It doesn’t succeed, mostly, but if Farscape is about anything other than culture shock, it’s about the lasting effects of trauma. How you can go through a wormhole one person, and experience things that turn you into someone you don’t recognize.

That’s kind of grim-sounding, but ultimately, what I’m trying to say is that Farscape is almost fanatically devoted to character work. Crichton is not the only character who sounds like he should be one thing and ends up being another. All of the characters—all of them, all of them, even the annoying ones—are complicated wonders. And you don’t have to wonder whether the events of the episode you’re watching are going to matter. They will. Everything that happens to the characters leaves a mark. Everything leaves them forever changed. Whether it’s mentioned explicitly or not—and often enough, it’s not explicit—the characters remember what has happened to them.

3) The living ship houses a lot of excellent women, among them the ship itself.

Ah, the women of Farscape, thou art the loves of my fucking life.

There’s Aeryn Sun, former Peacekeeper (that’s the military that the “insane military commander” hails from) now fugitive, currently learning the meaning of the word “compassion” (literally). She will break your fingers and also your heart. John/Aeryn is the main canon romantic ship.

There’s Pa’u Zhoto Zhaan, a priestess of the ninth level, current pacifist, former anarchist. Sorry, leading anarchist. She orgasms in bright light! (Oh my god, Farscape.)

There’s Chiana, my fucking bestie, a teenage(ish? ages in Farscape are weird) fugitive on the run from a repressive authoritarian state. Chiana is like a seductress con artist grifter thief who mostly just wants to survive so that she can have fun, damn it. Characters on Farscape do not really discuss sexualities (sex, yes, sexualities, no) and it would be fair to say that several of them do not fall along human sexuality lines generally, but I’m gonna go ahead and say that Chiana is canonically not straight.

Then there’s Moya, the ship herself, and it’s hard to get a straight read on Moya’s personality, since she mostly can’t speak. But she definitely has opinions, and things and people she cares about. And she moves the plot, though that gets into spoiler territory.

Past first season, further excellent women show up: Jool (controversial, but I like her), Sikozu (I once saw a Tumblr meme where someone had marked down that Sikozu would lose her shit when someone pronounced “gif” wrong, and that’s absolutely correct, and it’s why I love her), and Noranti (who is incredibly weird, and incredibly hard to summarize, but man, you gotta love her willingness to just show up and do her thing). Plus, there’s a recurring female villain, Grayza, who I could write probably multiple essays about. (I don’t know how you will feel about Grayza, as not everyone loves her, but I think she’s fucking fascinating, especially because she’s not actually the only recurring female villain. We also get Ahkna!)

(Side note: I should mention, here, that the cast of Farscape is really, really white. There is one cast member of color, Lani Tupu, but he pretty much represents the entirety of even, like, incidental diversity in casting for the series.)

Anyway, Farscape is full of awesome women, and also awesome and unexpected men, and it really enjoys playing with audience expectations of gender roles, generally. Literal entire books have been written about the way that Farscape fucks around with sex, sexuality, and gender. It’s a little weird because it was the late 90s/early 2000s, and sometimes that does come through, but Farscape’s guiding principle was always to try not to present American culture of the time as the norm, so like. It is not.

(An aside on Farscape and sex: Literally every character on Farscape has sexual tension with every other character. If you are a shipper, this is a Good Show, because no matter who you ship, there will not only be subtext, you will get a Moment of some kind. Multiple characters kiss the Muppet. Farscape is dedicated to getting into the nitty-gritty of the galaxy—I like to think of it as showing the guts of the universe—so a lot of the show is kind of squishy. They live on a biomechanoid ship, instead of androids there are “bioloids,” there’s a lot of focus on strange alien biologies, and lots of weird glowing fluids and things. I think the sex thing is kind of part and parcel of the larger biology focus: Farscape is really fascinated with how we all eat and evolve and live and die and, well, fuck. Which is in turn, kind of part of its focus on making everything really alien.)

4) Other stuff you should know.

Farscape as a whole is excellent, but it was kind of the product of creative anarchy—an Australian/American coproduction (oh yeah, everyone except Crichton speaks with an Australian accent) that was also partnered with the Henson company, whose showrunners were based in America but whose actual production all took place in Australia, and who was just constantly trying new things. So individual episodes can vary wildly in quality. It really takes off in the back half of season one, but no season is without a few off episodes.

It is extraordinarily funny, and I really think I haven’t stressed that enough. It’s one of the shows I want to quote the most in my daily life, but almost all of its humor is really context-dependent, and if you just wander around going, “Hey Stark? What’s black and white, and black and white, and black and white?” people look at you really funny.

It’s very conversant with pop culture generally (although obviously sci-fi  specifically, and Star Trek most specifically of all) and really enjoys deconstructing tropes, often to the effect of, “Well, Crichton really does not know what to do here, does he?” but sometimes just to be interesting.

There are also a lot of themes about science, and its uses and misuses.

The whole thing is fucking epic, and if you get invested at all, will take you on an emotional ride.

This show is weird. I know that that’s probably come across by now, but I think it’s worth reiterating as its own point: Farscape is so weird. Like, proudly, unabashedly, trying its hardest, weird. An amazing kind of weird.

If you’re into fantasy, you should know that there’s a recurring villain who’s just a wizard. Like, they don’t bother to explain it any more than that, he’s just a fucking wizard.

In summary: You should watch Farscape because it is a weird, wild, emotional, epic romance/drama/action/allegory full of Muppets and leather and one-liners and emotional gut punches and love, and if you let it, it will worm its way into you and never let go, which, now that I think of it, is another Farscape plot.

Send me meta prompts to distract me from my migraine!

[kbetacygni]

Fate through the lens of Karate Soap Operas and Sci-fi Thrillers: a comparative analysis on Cobra Kai (2018-present) and Dark (2017-2020)

The following is a (non-essay format) essay comparing Cobra Kai / The Karate Kid and Dark. 

[oh god oh frick tumblr messes with the bullet point formatting on the dash, you’re gonna have to read this on my blog]  

 A note before we begin, regarding spoilers: 

I’ve left a lot of the info on Dark intentionally vague, because Dark is a show that is meant to be experienced and spoilers for it feel absolutely illegal. THAT BEING SAID, the following isn’t entirely spoiler-free for Dark, because it’s impossible to talk about the parallels without some spoilers. I feel terrible about it, which should clue you in on how IMPORTANT it is to watch it. I’m not kidding when I say this: Dark is and will be, for a very long time, the best show in the history of humankind. 

(of course, best depends on category. If you wanna say “best comedy show”, Dark is... not it. But this is as clear as I can make it, and I am 100% serious: Dark is fucking good. It’s so fucking good. It’s incomparable.)

I don’t have spoiler warnings for Cobra Kai because all my mental energy has been devoted to spoiler-filtering Dark. Sorry about that. 

So let’s just jump right into it! 

Overall parallels:

Timespan

“34 years later” | “the 33 year cycle”

Location-specific over multiple decades

San Fernando Valley | Winden

Same characters over multiple decades

(need i elaborate)

(Interesting note: whereas Dark uses different actors, KK/CK has the benefit of being able to actually transcend time, using the same actors. Big props to the Dark casting directors, though, because they do a damn good job of it, to the point where Dark’s casting choices are easily comparable to Zabka and Macchio’s actual aging-up)

General 80s vibes

KK1 being set in 1984 + music/scene choices in CK | many storylines in Dark

Primary theme song is an 80s song: “You’re the Best” | “Irgendwie Irgendwo Irgendwann”

Recurring events

(need. i. elaborate.)

This bears repeating: recurring events

(ok i’ll elaborate, with the clearest examples:)

1984 - 2018 All-Valley Tournament | 1986 - 2019 missing children

With each iteration of events, things fall apart even more and the consequences are worse

In the latest iteration (I know that isn’t the best terminology to use for Dark, but bear with me), The Kids(tm) have been looped into the hellscape

Three factions at war:

Cobra Kai / Eagle Fang / Miyagi-Do | Adam / Eva / Claudia

Visually, both shows have multiple mirrored scenes and shots comparing events from decades ago to events in the present day

Cobra Kai’s flashbacks and general mirrored scene-positioning | Dark’s montage scenes

Themes, Tropes, and Broad Characterizations:

Self-fulfilling prophecies / Inescapable fates

(this is the big one)

The more a character tries to avoid a fate, the more likely it is to happen (Johnny re: bad parenting, Kreese coming back and fucking things up, his son Robby falling into Kreese’s hands and probably suffering the same fate he did | Jonas re: e v e r y t h i n g)

Parents going to great lengths to protect their children

This is a pretty central theme to Dark, and to Cobra Kai as well. In spite of estrangement and tension, parents do many things (in the case of Dark, All The Things) to try to save their kids.

And it doesn’t work out very well, which makes it hurt all the more.

Forbidden love

Miguel and Sam | Jonas and Martha

Broken families and/or single parents

Johnny’s parents and his own family, Daniel’s parents, and Miguel’s family | Jonas’s parents and the Nielsen family

Main character is a social outcast

KK: Daniel, CK: Johnny and Miguel | Dark: Jonas

Trauma / incapability of letting go of the past

“This suffering has made you who you are.”

Teens Being Manipulated By Adults

Especially being forced by adults to take sides in a larger war

Miguel, Hawk, Tory, Robby / Johnny, Bobby, Dutch, Tommy, Jimmy being manipulated by Kreese | Winden teens being manipulated by Adam and Eva

The Police Don’t Do Shit

Characters:

Johnny Lawrence | Ulrich Nielsen. Both characters go through a traumatic event in their teens in the 1980s. Their respective losses have compelled them to involve themselves in the work that caused it

Ulrich: the police never found his missing brother, and in the present day he’s a police officer himself

Johnny: lost the AVT in his senior year, was almost killed by his sensei for it, and in the present day he’s a sensei himself

In their teens, both were kinda punk / angry “bad boys” 

Also: their sons (Robby Keene | Magnus Nielsen) are a mirror of their own teen years/personality.

Daniel LaRusso | Jonas Kahnwald. This connection isn’t strong (other than the stuff I mentioned earlier re: single mother, social outsider), but I just wanted to note that both are famous for their off-the-rails explosive rants about how much they “hate it here”.

And finally, to end on a lighter note:

Skeleton Boys: OG Cobra Kais and Miguel | Mikkel in the forest