#and like..i guess its in part to how i can barely visualize anything in the future nowadays

[the-gayest-sky-kid]

one thing they dont tell you abt not expecting to make it to this point is how it fucks up your plans for the foreseeable future

[dat-town]

yours truly

Characters: fate!Sunghoon (prince of hearts) & mortal!female reader

Setting & genre: caravalverse au, fantasy, forbidden romance

Summary: “... ballads don’t end happily, and neither do the two of us.” ‒ Stephanie Garber

Warnings: Sunghoon’s character is canon-typically mean and flirty in the beginning, blood, dagger and arrow-caused injuries, mentions of people dying, ambiguous ending

Words: 2.9k

Playlist: moonstruck, criminal love, fatal trouble, still monster, lucifer, fate

Author’s note: for those who haven’t read the books, just imagine a world where deity-like creatures called fates walk among mere humans; for those who did read the books, imagine this as an alternative for the plot, the worldbuilding is the same but the actual romance plays out different since Sunghoon is NOT Jacks, just a different Prince of Hearts. i know personality-wise it’s very not Sunghoon-like but i chose him for visual reasons #theplot

for @restlessmaknae because you worked hard and i believe that you will see its results <3

The Prince of Hearts was exactly how the stories described him: devastatingly handsome and infuriatingly wicked.

The first time you met him, he just broke a naive girl’s heart.

The Prince of Hearts was the hopeless lovers’ Fate. Many turned to him to fulfill their hearts’ desire or get revenge on their unfaithful significant other but there was a reason why he had always been portrayed with bloody tears running down his sculpture-like face and his perfect lips pulled up in a cunning smirk.

“What did you do?” You heard the girl’s trembling, frightened cry over the garden fountain’s lovely bubbling sound and you could tell she didn’t notice you on the other side of the installment. She must have dragged the young man out of the celebration to have a word with him privately. Too bad it was your hiding place.

“Exactly what you asked from me. I made sure he can never look at another girl again,” the man replied in a silky smooth voice, his tone almost melodic. He must have sung lovely lullabies, you thought, but then he continued and his voice turned something dark, something poisoned and sickly amused. “Or at anything for that matter.”

There was a cruel laugh carried by the night breeze and your eyes widened, thoughts running wild.

“This isn’t what I wanted,” the girl protested weakly between sobs but no use, it didn’t seem to affect the man at all.

“Isn’t it? Then you should have asked more… precisely,” he scoffed and with a rustle of clothes you could tell he turned around, ready to leave.

“But… but I kept my side of the bargain. You are a Fate, you should keep your word, too!”

You sucked in a breath because you didn’t have to guess much to know which Fate she was talking about. There was an infamous one for broken hearts.

“Are you seriously accusing me of not fulfilling my part?” The Prince of Hearts spoke up again and this time you could hear anger bubbling up beneath the boredom in his tone. He spoke quietly yet every word of his punctured like bites of a viper. “You wanted your lover to not look at other girls, so I took his sight. Would you have preferred if I plunked his eyeballs out? Or even better, if I simply killed him? Is that it?”

The girl’s crying turned pathetic and you almost felt bad for her even if she should have known better than to make a deal like that. Fates tended to take more than what they had promised.

“Look at you, a sobbing mess. Is your great love really only enough for this? Will you leave him now that he’s blind? Who’s the unfaithful one now?” The ageless creature tsked, his harsh words enough to make the girl run, crying and devastated. The air was once again filled with silence and crickets chirping. Out of curiosity, you quietly stood up from where you sat in the fountain’s shadow but you could see nobody on the other side of the monument. You let out a small sigh, turning back around only to gasp in surprise.

Right in front of you, barely an arm-length away was the most beautiful man you had ever seen. He had porcelain skin and elegant features, artfully tousled raven black hair and almond shaped eyes reflecting the moon. His mouth was pulled into a lopsided smile as he leaned closer, resting his hand on the fountain’s rim beside your waist.

“You know, I can hear your heartbeat, love,” he said, syrupy sweet, and you had to deliberately remind yourself to breathe properly. “It beats rapidly like a trapped bird’s wings. Is it because of fear or attraction? Both?” The Fate arched a brow, provoking.

“I’m not playing your game,” you raised your chin with more confidence that you actually felt in yourself but you didn’t back down, not even when the young man’s eyes burned through you.

“Too bad. I didn’t even tell you the rules yet,” he pouted but he seemed more amused than anything else.

“Are all Fates this bored?”

“There’s a better question, love; are all Fates forgiving towards this blunt attitude of yours?” The Prince of Hearts raised a brow, challenging, his breath fanning over your cheek, his closeness painting it a rosy color. There was something predatory in the way he looked at you and your rabbit of a heart wished nothing but to run. Then he abruptly pulled away, his frown melting into an all too sweet smile.  “But see, I’m a gentleman and I will let it go. For now.”

The threat was clear in his velvet voice and the shine of his midnight dark eyes. It took your breath away and you only let out the air you were holding in when he walked out of sight, your heart still beating crazily as you watched him disappear like smoke in the dark.

The next time you met him, you were smarter than to walk into his trap. This time you were actually looking for him because you were about to do what you had never imagined yourself to: gamble for a Fate’s help.

But really, this was your last resort. No matter how many reasons and proofs you had listed, your best friend was dead set on marrying a duke with no land and no morals. He just wanted her for her family’s money but she didn’t believe you. She even told you that if you weren’t happy for her, you weren’t welcome at the wedding. So you had to make sure the wedding didn’t happen, that she realized that her fiancé was a selfish bastard. It was the perfect kind of job for the Prince of Hearts since he seemed to hate other people’s happiness. No wonder even his Destiny Deck card’s meaning was unrequited love and irrevocable mistakes.

As you opened the church's gate, your sister’s voice echoed in your ears. She had told you not to make deals with Fates but if you must, always make sure to double guess the meaning behind their words and not let them have leverage over you. She had known after having her own deal with the Jester Mad. Fates weren’t evil nor saints but as ageless deities, they had different moral compasses than mere mortals. They also lived a long, long life, so what could have been more fun for them than playing with human feelings?

Back in the days, Fates had been private creatures hidden from plain sight. People had built churches and altars for them, waiting for their miracles to happen. But then one day, the Fates disappeared. Nobody knew why or where. There were countless rumors but it didn’t matter because eventually they returned and they weren’t hiding anymore. The Poisonmaker kept wreaking havoc at events where drinking was involved, the Maiden Death started warning people about their loved ones’ dying in the middle of the main square and the Prince of Hearts had heads turning at every noble gathering pretty much in the entire country based on the rumors. Whispers followed his trail, so you knew exactly where to find him.

“Looks like wind blew a little birdie my way,” you heard the familiar smooth voice from behind you once you dropped your golden coins into the well inside the old marble church. You spun around, facing the Fate and you hated the instant effect he had on you. The way his mere presence was enough to weaken you. You tried focusing on the tiniest details on his face to keep yourself grounded like the moles adorning his cheeks, his defined eyebrows or the way the skin around his pretty eyes wrinkled when his mouth pulled into an amused smile. Your heart was a traitor once again.

“Missed me?” He teased, further decreasing the distance between you. He didn’t even touch you yet his closeness set the air around you on fire and you desperately tried to find purchase on the edge of the well, your well kept nails digging into the stone.

“I have a favor to ask,” you forced out and recited the entire monologue you had practiced with all the details in order to make sure there was no loophole in your request. You couldn’t have your best friend getting hurt because of you. You just wanted to get rid of her fiancé subtly. So you came prepared and judging by the almost impressed look on the Fate’s face and the pondering tilt of his head, he must have noticed too.

“Oh, you’re actually a smart one,” he mused out loud, a chuckle escaping him. “It sounds exactly like my kind of fun but you don’t think I’m doing it without a price, right? So are you ready to pay, love?”

You expected it, of course, there was always a price to pay. A bargain with both parties committing to something. You thought you were ready for anything the Prince of Hearts could ask of you: your reputation tarnished, memories of your first love destroyed, cursing you to never love again but maybe you were naive. Because in that moment he looked at you hungrily, eyes dark and tempting. He darted out his tongue, wetting his lips as he angled his face over yours, still not even grazing against your skin, yet you could feel yourself shiver.

For a moment you were sure he would kiss you. That he would kill you.

Because the thing with Fates was that all of them were cursed in one way or another. As for the Prince of Hearts, his kiss was fatal to all but his one true love. They said it was worth dying for and so many naive girls wanted to be the one to break this hex, he left a trail of corpses behind him.

“Not yet, love,” the Fate taunted as he swiped his thumb across your lower lip, leaving tingles behind, and you felt incredibly embarrassed for thinking he would actually kiss you. Gosh, you weren’t normally like this.

“What do you want?” You found your voice after pushing the silently laughing man away from you. You needed space, you needed to focus. You came to save your best friend’s future, not to kiss murderers no matter how much they erupted a garden of butterflies in your stomach.

“Let me be your plus one for the wedding and I promise to make sure your precious friend realizes her mistake before tying the knot. No bodily harm, no future consequences, yadda yadda,” the Prince of Hearts mocked your way of negotiating your conditions and you squinted your eyes because it sounded too good to be true.

“That’s it?”

“That’s it,” he flashed you a charming smile before leaning in close again, this time his breath fanning over your ears, teeth grazing against your skin, leaving goosebumps behind. “Oh and call me Sunghoon.”

The Prince of Hearts kept his word and you started to wonder whether he wanted to accompany you to the wedding because he wanted to see the drama he caused in person. He seemed rather amused when both the duke’s creditors and mistresses showed up and your best friend threw a vase at him.

It was naive of you to think so though, of course the Fate came on his own accord for his own ulterior motives. You didn’t even know that the infamous Witch of North, holder of the Fated object of the Unbitten Fruit, would be at the wedding but Sunghoon sure knew. He disappeared from sight in the middle of the chaos and you could only find him after calming your best friend down. The wedding hall was empty and broken into pieces and in the middle of it all, surrounded by blackened rose petals, there he laid like a beautiful fallen angel. His white shirt was snug over his broad shoulders and where his wings would have laid, blood spread like wine on tragic days.

“Oh my fates,” you mumbled as you rushed to his side.

Fates had once been immortals but even since their re-appearance, they were merely ageless and could be killed and while you shouldn’t have cared, something didn’t let you let him bleed out. Maybe it was because he just helped your friend like he had promised or because you had always been weak for the helpless ones even if the Fate was nothing but one.

“What happened?” You asked with trembling lips, pressing a torn piece of your skirt onto the bleeding wound on his side.

“Somebody wasn’t too happy that I said hello,” Sunghoon croaked a smile, still all too arrogant even with blood on his lips and pain on his features when his own laughter made him hiss.

“Do you have many enemies?”

“Enemies is all I have,” he said, reaching for the buttons of his blood-soaked shirt to get rid of it and you could feel your face flush at the sudden exposure of bare skin and toned stomach. But trust the Prince of Hearts to tease you even in his stabbed state. “No need to be so shy, love, you can look.”

You cleared your throat and hardened your gaze, looking him in the eye, unwavering. You accidentally applied a bit more pressure on his injury though because his face suddenly distorted in agony.

“Actually, there’s a vial in my front pocket. Would you be kind enough to pour its content on the wound?” He spoke up again, softer, a bit of breathlessness in his usually smooth voice and if it wasn’t for that, you would have believed he was still teasing.

But you actually found a potion in his pocket and once the liquid contacted his torn skin, it started healing at an amazing speed. Oh, so he came prepared, you realized and it made you smack his chest hard. He made you worry for nothing. So stupid of you.

Sunghoon caught your wrist and pulled it over his unbeaten heart, laughing at you. You should have been angry and yet, it was the most beautiful chime of bells you had ever heard.

That should have been the last time you saw the Prince of Hearts but he kept showing up. He kept bothering you at balls, scaring away suitors, stealing apples at the market you had to pay for. He found your reluctance and annoyance amusing, poking fun at the way your heartbeat spiked in his company. He put flowers in your hair, called you love like he meant it and touched you briefly only to make you crave more. You thought it was all just a joke for him because he was bored and you weren’t as easy as the other girls but then you were bleeding out and he looked ready to burn the whole world down.

It was a typical case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. You were just in the way. It wasn’t meant for you but the arrow pierced through your chest nevertheless.

You coughed up blood, barely catching your breath, when Sunghoon caught you in his arms before you could have fallen onto the flower bed beneath. Deliriously you looked up at him in wonder, at Death’s most beautiful angel. 

“You’re not dying,” he told you through gritted teeth but his voice was torn, feelings you didn’t recognise scratching the surface.

“They say you can’t feel, not because you have no heart but because it stopped beating long ago. Is it true?” You forced out weakly as you put a hand over Sunghoon’s chest just over where his heart was still as always. “I wonder what kind of girl it was, the one who broke your heart.”

All Fates were humans once and their assigned traits and powers were aligned with how they had been once as mortals. It was silly but you couldn’t help being jealous of the girl who had once held his affection because the way he looked at you then made you feel like nothing else mattered to him but you.

You knew that Fates felt everything in extremes. They didn’t hold grudges, they took revenge. They didn’t know love, they only knew obsession. Yet so many made the mistake of falling in love with a Fate and you couldn’t find it in yourself to blame them. Not anymore. Not when the Prince of Hearts’ hands were stained with your blood but you wanted nothing more than to succumb to this overwhelming feeling of being held by him.

“Kiss me,” you whispered, feeling faint. You were dying anyways, it couldn’t have hurt more to try. Because what if it was true, what if true love’s kiss could cure all curses, what if he had been looking for you all this time?

“Love…” Sunghoon’s voice was ruined. It was just a word yet a plea at the same time. A simple word you associated with your name ever since you had first met him.

His eyes shining like bright stars in the night sky were the last thing you saw before your eyelids fluttered close. Tears streamed down your face or blood, you couldn’t tell, but the lips on yours tasted metallic like iron and the sweet taste of the forbidden fruit. Like sin and redemption at the same time. Like you were his in this fairytale and he was yours. Yours truly.

[blabberoo]

Saw the first ep of Dead Cells Imortalis

Honestly i easily get excited with things. Especially this one. But oh man do i have a lot of things to say and im trying to hold it back 😭

So its blabbin' time.. (spoilers first ep)

Yknow, this feels like those game trailers that does exposition of the introduction of the plot of it... But slightly extended. And it just leaves it underwhelming.

The pace is very quick (possibly budget issue who knows). I dont think i got enough time for Laure's character introduction. She felt like shes just.. there?? (I guess shes literally lore expositor 😭)

I'm kind of ok with Bobby, because they left him as he is, or how i always thought of him. Still an apathetic jerk who has a death wish (WOOO LOVE THAT IN IMMORTAL CHARACTERS MY FAVORITE SOUP ✨✨)

The part where Bobby and Laure started to work as a team only got told through a narration voice over. (Ig with background visuals) So not much back and forth between characters :( Till the end..

Love Bobby's little dialogue at the end (i love how much of a jerk he is screw me), but it felt like its too early for that. Well, knowing how short these series would be i guess they would cut a few things. And i guess that was needed for Laure to strike a deal with him.

And honestly, with how bare and simple the story is so far, it is still possible to have Bobby mute. There are other shows that had already done that. The game itself did. And with the first episode, I could still see it work with him not saying a word.

Laure tells him the deal. Bobby nods and gives a thumbs up.

Laure witnessed him walking away when guard said she'd kill her if he leaves.

Laure calls him out. He turns to her smirking, and continues to walk away. Laure calls him a liar.

YKNOW HOW FUN THAT WOULD BE??!?! JUST HIM MAKING SILLY GUESTURES?!?!??

(i swear i am so tempted to rewrite the whole ep with him mute)

I guess except for that whole Bobby dialogue at the end (and maybe the lead up to the death deal)?? But perhaps the show can express that more in later episodes??

All in all, i guess im a bit frustrated. Because I really do see the potential, and the potential makes me very excited over it. But thats just that: potential. I love Laure's conflict with her own religion and i love how she weighs on what's important to her in the moment. I love how Bobby doesnt care about anything much, because all he sees is that familiar hell and wanting to see a way out. But almost half of it seemed to be resolved in the first ep.

I'd honestly take those short, whimsical silly nature of the game trailers. If they've kept the old artstyle, i woudnt have mind if it was shorter or lesser episodes. But if theyre gonna keep this new style and make a lore heavy story out of it, at least maybe commit to it?

Perhaps im just jumping to conclusions right now since it's just the first episode, and im just fresh out of it. I've only seen it twice. So my only hope was they expand on these characters rather than just plot tools to keep the show going,.. or maybe im asking too much lol.

TL;DR.

First ep impression:

Pace way too quick. Not much character build. Guessing on budget issue. Love the idea, but a bit poorly executed.

Anyways thats probably it... Some thoughts i might keep for later.

And i just wanna say i screamed giddily at this image...

[plitaka]

Okay so because I’m gay and mentally ill I have decided to take it upon myself to go through Kafka’s demo frame by frame and overanalyze the shit out of anything I find interesting

It’s insanely packed with blink or you’ll miss it details so buckle up folks- this is gonna be a ride

Right off the bat she starts off with the same coin she also ends the demo with. This isn’t something that’s been part of her character so far nor do I think it has any real significance, so she just brought it to be extra and torment the poor souls she’s planning to slaughter anyway. Annoying dramatic bitch

Also just to get this out of the way now, this is indeed the Belobog museum, or at least its assets. The floor of some of the inner rooms, the staircases, the chandelier and the big golden clock thingy are the same, and in one of the shots you can clearly see the portraits of the former supreme guardians which is. Makes you wonder if they just picked the museum for grand dramatic interior or if she actually had reasons to have business there.

This. This fucking part is probably no longer than 5 seconds and yet, even with the video on 0.25 speed I had to constantly rewind and pause to catch everything and it still probably isn’t 100% accurate. Also I had to cut out a lot things because Tumblr only allows 30 images per post but like, you get the picture

“What do you see” over and over again as images of Rorschach tests flash across the screen so fast you barely have a chance *to* see. Personally I mainly see spider like things and butterflies. Among them are images are some flashes of the robo guards, which to me give the feeling of them getting caught in her web, losing themselves and their control to her mind games and technique.

Something else worth nothing is that this sequence is kickstarted by her throwing the coin and ends with it still in her hand, just thought that was an interesting choice

Before moving on to the next point, however, I want to point out the obvious irony of her telling the guards “don’t be afraid”. Truly words to hear from the woman who is incapable of feeling fear. And what is the name of the demo? Dramatic irony. We’ll get back to that.

Anyway, after that we see the camera pan away from her and over the guards as she uses spirit whisper. The camera movement is accompanied by a single rose petal that starts from Kafka and flies over the guards, which kinda feels like the visual representation of spirit whisper, a gentle rose petal innocently brushing across them as if carried by an invisible breeze

I wanted to make a joke about how her bounty is as large as her strap but seeing as I’m restricted in the number of images I can put I’ll just state the obvious and say she has the largest known bounty of the Stellaron hunters. I’m going to guess the only one higher than hers is Elio’s.

can’t be 100% sure this is what’s going on here, but the imagery makes it look like she’s taking a nice calming stroll and playing Vivaldi in her head while letting the guards slaughter each other, either by controlling them with her strings or with spirit whisper

Dozens of hands reaching out for her, trying to grab her as she’s cocooned in a vulnerable state, pupils visible. I’m sure we’ll eventually get an ingame explanation as to what’s actually going on with her eyes, but for now I do think this is a VERY interesting time to show them. She’s in a compromising position, she’s cornered and vulnerable, but she’s confident and cocky and always, always in control. To anyone else this would be horrifying, but she can’t feel fear, why should she care. Like genuinely this is terrifying imagery that in media is more often than not used to showcase or symbolize sexual violence of sorts and personally makes my skin crawl. I don’t want to get too much into it here I think it needs its own separate post, so for now I’ll keep it short and say that up until now, her pupils have only been shown in situations where she’s at a physical disadvantage (held prisoner at the divination commission, whatever this is etc)

Something a bit lighter to focus on is what she’s saying; “the silk is too fragile to be a treat… unless you’re more fragile than the silk.” Symbolism aside she always seems to refer to silk when talking about fragile things, which we know are, in her opinion, the most beautiful. I really don’t think she’s referring to herself here seeing as the next scene demonstrates she’s far from fragile, so I think she does mean it in a much more literal way and is talking about a spider web; too fragile to capture humans, strong enough to capture its intended prey, this being weaker bugs. All in all she’s probably insulting them by comparing them to bugs weaker than a fragile silk web.

Nothing much to say about the fight scene other than that it’s incredibly choreographed and confirms that Kafka is strong enough to roundhouse kick a guy in the head (god I wish that were me) and do backflips in midair while firing her guns. Also the elevator counting down the survivors as their forces dwindle is fucking rad.

“Destiny has thousands of faces, why does it choose to wear this one?” In the context of the scene this reads to me as her mockingly lamenting the guards’ fate as she beautifully takes them down one by one, but it’s also one hell of a peculiar sentence from someone working for a guy who supposedly sees destiny and directs his followers according to that. She’s a nihilist, everything is predetermined in her eyes, she’s one of destiny’s slaves, but destiny also has thousands of faces? Is she really so nihilistic that even her own worldviews are contrasting in her eyes? As I’m writing this it makes me think of dadaism more than anything else. To quote from wikipedia: “an early 20th-century international movement in art, literature, music, and film, repudiating and mocking artistic and social conventions and emphasizing the illogical and absurd.” Kafka herself in an artist in many ways; she’s an actress first and foremost, always dramatic and theatrical, following a script to a T. But she’s also a musician, everything about her steeped in classical music and references. Anyway, dada is an absurdist nihilistic movement, and you know which real life author known for his absurdism lived and wrote parallel to the Dada? Franz Kafka.

Genuinely Idk where I was going with this I just thought it was worth sharing, MOVING ON-

Neat way of visualizing what I’m assuming is supposed to be her spirit whisper. Also I’m extremely stingy with images (thanks Tumblr), but if you slow down the video around 1:17 you could see that the shot of her katana very quickly flashes into another spider, just wanted to mention that.

These are all narrative screenplay terms that flash by in like a millisecond each after the big ult (that, btw, has a similar shot saying ‘intermission’ right before she casts it but it flashes by so fast and with such bright colors that I couldn’t take a proper screenshot of it) and shown on the Belobog Museum’s projector. The most interesting one here imo is Oneiric Structure; “a cinematic story using dream like visuals, exploring the structure of dreams, memories, and human consciousness”, very fitting considering how much of her abilitieseing how dramatic irony is yet another narrative device.

All these movie terms and framings, however, feel to me more like a wink to Kafka’s roots than anything else. This is the third time she’s been tied to movies somehow (the web event, one of her leaked messages that actually mentions how she’d hate for her life to be turned into a movie), and this is one time too many for me to stop denying that the inspiration for her character was at least in part Makima from Chainsaw Man. I won’t elaborate too much not to spoil the 3 people unfamiliar with csm, but this whole thing feels like a homage, a love letter to Fujimoto’s own love letter for cinema.

Also she *is* an actress following a script, so there’s that as well.

The demo ends with her taunting the one remaining guard with the very same coin from the beginning, flipping it in her palm and asking the guard to guess the ending with heads or tails, prefacing it by saying “sooner or later, the curtain has to fall”. To me this indicates that she sees life as kind of a one gigantic play, with no fear and no value for human life everything is a performance to her, it doesn’t matter beyond what’s happening on the stage in the presence. But also the way this is all framed makes it very easy to assume she’s actually talking about the end of the guard’s life, and asking him how he thinks this encounter between them will end, lol.

Another thing about the coin that Meadows mentioned “her flipping the coin over and over is both like, play with fate, a distraction (like, think in movies, you see someone flipping a coin your eyes are drawn to it and not the sleight of hand happening elsewhere), and ofc her clear obsession with vintage shit”

This has been it from me for now, too dead to properly edit through this rn so I’ll probably go back and add some details once I’m feeling better. Would also love for anyone to chime in with their own conclusions since this is just one person’s interpretation. Especially if you have more knowledge than me about classical music and have ideas regarding the use of Vivaldi’s winter

[8bitsupervillain]

Higurashi When They Cry Ch. 1 Onikakushi Part 14

This doesn't really have anything to do with anything. I just decided since I for some reason have Higurashi chapter 1 on Steam I would take a quick look at some of my favorite scenes with the 07th Mod art style. The PS3 style?

I lied, I'm also going to include my thoughts about Chapter 1 since I didn't really give any final thoughts in the last post. Despite my complaining about how slow I felt the plot was progressing I'm willing to say I enjoyed Onikakushi. At least I enjoyed it well enough that I'm definitely willing to give Chapter 2 Watanagashi a read. The only thing I really want to criticize is the music, I don't care for how whimsical it can be. It's not that it doesn't fit the moments its used, I just don't care for the silly clownish blooping music that plays during everything that isn't a tense horrifying or mysterious moment.

Meep

I like the extra facial expressions the PS3 version gives them.

Unfortunately for the visual upgrade they took away Tomitake's guns. Which I guess makes sense, in the GOG/steam art the guy looked pretty jacked. I can only assume he was a secret guest fighter in the Umineko fighting game.

I guess the teacher is going to be an important character later on? I don't recall her having a sprite in the GOG/Steam/original arts.

Love Satoko's shitkid look in this version.

I wasn't quick enough on the button to screenshot when she screams LIAR at Keiichi. It takes up the entire window basically, it looks pretty neat.

I like these extremely polarized screens that occasionally pop up in game. It's a nice stylish effect. I think that's what this is called anyway polarization.

I'm a sucker for the soulless stare.

See, this is what I meant by the single screen zoom in on the eye in part 5. It's a simple, but effective tension builder.

Another simple tension builder is the manic repetition of a statement like this. It's a simple effect, and you can very easily overdo it, but when done right I think it works like gangbusters. It's not a visual novel but one of the ones I think does it well is the Chzo Mythos games with "it hurts."

Just a nice contrast of Rena here for you. Mentally disturbed, creepy, and wet cat. When I read the part where Rena is trying to get into the house with the amount of food it said she brought over to Keiichi's I was envisioning something the size of a suitcase just jampacked with food. Not that small rinky-dink lunch box. Maybe it's just a perspective thing.

Also I just really like the comparison between these two shots. They convey a very different type of threat. Mion has a more direct and unmistakable air of threat to it. Whereas Rena has a more unsettled just barely holding it together energy.

[localgardenweed]

About to lose my shit over my shitty Algebra teacher cause i think he’s the devil incarnate cause he doesn’t respect kid’s 504 plans, there is this kid who may not always show up to class on time for some reason im not sure why but they try their best to catch up and work hard and they asked to send over and take the recent test they missed in a certain classroom and he was like “No you cant, you have to show up tomorrow in here to take it” when literally in their 504 plan says they can take it in that room no one can force them to take it in their classroom, but DOES HE CARE??? NOOOOOO. I think he was just trying to be tough or smth god knows what cause he has a huge ass power complex like dear god dude we get it you were a army guy but is yelling at teens really what you wanna do to feel that high of power again?? The kid then complained to the school and he got a ass whooping but sadly not fired and then the next day was pissed as hell and took it out on all of us 😍

he doesn’t care to actually help students at all, he just gives up on them if they don’t understand the first or barely the second time and tells em to basically fuck off and find someone else to explain it and i get it teaching is hard you might not be able to get everyone to understand BUT ITS LITERALLY HIS GO TO RESPONSE WHEN YOU DONT UNDERSTAND SMTH IN HIS SHITTY RAPID FIRE EXPLANATION WHEN HE JUST JUMPS FROM THING TO THING WITH NO VISUAL OR EVEN SENSE CAUSE WTF HOW DID YOU GET THAT ANSWER HELLO?? SLOW DOWN?? We were going over the study guide and he started doing a question and then realized half way it was “too hard” to do on the board so he gave up and kept going to the next question and a kid at my table who didn’t do that part pf the study guide cause they dont know how asked “Can you go over that please i don’t understand it” and his response was “im not going over it just to fill it in” and the kid said “im not asking to just fill it in im asking cause I DONT KNOW HOW TO DO IT” and guess what. HE DIDNT DO IT HE JUST IGNORED THEM AND KEPT GOING. YOUR STUDENT IS ASKING FOR HELP AND YOU AINT DOING SHIT. HELLO??? AND THIS ISNT THE FIRST TOME HE ALWAYS PULL THIS SHIT ALL THE TIME, GOD FORBID YOU ASK A QUESTION MORE THAN ONCE THATS TOK SCARY AAAHHHHH.

I hope all his classes fails and they fire his ass cause omg there has never been anything positive said about this man that isn’t from favorites/people who already are godly at math. The average student who’s had him HATES HIM.

Im really debating like cussing him out Thursday after my final cause i cant just walk away and act like it was a okay class no he needs to get fucking humbled at least see what he does is harmful and shitty and douchey. I dont care if i get in trouble im not gonna go down like this so many kids in that class have struggled cause of his ass not doing his job. And sure some of there are rowdy and sure some are a bit off task but that doesn’t give you the right to abandon them. If i ever kicked my own bucket he would be 5 of my 13 reasons why.

[actuallylorelaigilmore]

2023 Movie Journey #3: Elvis

elvis. i watched this with @actuallylukedanes​, which is the only reason it landed so early in my viewing this year. it was on my list but not a high priority at all: obviously i love tom hanks but i knew he wasn’t playing his lovable usual here, and i really have no feelings towards elvis either way. i barely grew up aware of who he was, my exposure to him was entirely secondhand through an episode of designing women and a john waters movie that i imprinted on like a baby duck when i was way too young to be watching a john waters movie (and which i can never enjoy again cuz now Some Things ruin my childhood retroactively).

so honestly, the only reason this movie went on my list is because i read a long profile about it that was really about baz luhrmann, and because moulin rouge was like a gift he gave just to me that lasts forever, i’ll give anything he makes a chance. once i was reconsidering my disinterest in the subject matter, the plan to watch it with leander sealed the deal. 

putting it behind a cut even though i have less to say about it than some other movies, because it really...wasn’t good, exactly. i wouldn’t say it was bad, either, but it was structured really similarly to every other biopic, which surprised me. the visuals were baz luhrmann all the way, but other than deciding to make this a story of ‘elvis through the lens of the complicated figure whose presence both made him and doomed him’ (as opposed to just centering the story on freaking elvis, whose name is on the poster!) his life and career story is told almost identically to how they framed the whitney houston biopic i saw. start near the end, then take us back to the origin story, and eventually make it back to where you started after showing how we got there. then conclude with a tragic death (offscreen).

so i mean, the performances were good. i can give the movie full credit for that. austin butler did a good job and is very talented. tom hanks (who i already knew is talented, obviously) really fills up his character so that even though he’s a truly cruel and masterful huckster, there’s still a chance that he might believe his own lies in the end. i didn’t recognize elvis’s father as being played by the duke from moulin rouge but leander did right away, so they get all the points. :) and billy from stranger things was there! wearing eyeliner! he is very pretty in eyeliner and i highly preferred his styling in this to stranger things.

but underneath all the glitz and the big performances, i guess to me the movie just felt so shallow. watching it didn’t make me feel more interested in elvis, though it did make me like austin butler more...and i have to wonder if some of that is because for all its big visuals, this movie didn’t go as big on emotions. 

it is so invested in the character tom hanks plays, but he’s a canny operator with few sincere feelings we can connect to. a lot of elvis’s emotions are all about his love of performing, so we get establishments of his marriage and family but quickly speed past those things to his affairs and eventual divorce. when he loses his mother and when his marriage ends, he’s given about a minute onscreen to mourn each before it’s quite literally back on with the show, prodded forward by gambling-addicted tom hanks.

and so instead of being a movie that explores elvis, exactly, this is a movie where we watch elvis be so often a passive actor in his own life. a young man naively trusting a greedy influence, a lonely man accepting affection from strangers despite its effect on his family, an addicted man taking whatever drugs he’s given to keep moving. it was hard to feel connected to the main character when he was being constantly taken advantage of or only seemed happy onstage and was, in this telling, a star who kept doing whatever he was told no matter how much it hurt. (his very brief rebellious phase before they sent him to basic training was my favorite part of the film. that had some power.)

i can’t help comparing this movie to the whitney houston one because there was such life and joy in that, which gave its sad ending all the more impact. i knew to expect a similar depressing ending for elvis, and yet, this movie held his death at a distance, repeating the framing of tom hanks narrating about elvis in the end. i was glad that the whitney biopic didn’t show her death, and didn’t need to see his--but we could have seen his family and friends reacting, or some moment of him in private, rather than the last shot we got which was literally physically distanced, too. 

using colonel parker they way they did gave tom hanks a lot to do, but it felt like a concept the filmmakers were too excited about as a ‘twist’ to realize that it sapped what makes a biopic great: the force of the star at its center. if they elevated tom hank’s role because they were worried about fully giving austin butler the stage, i don’t think they needed to be. he was a good choice, and i just wish they had trusted him to do more. then maybe i could’ve seen the movie i expected this to be, in which baz luhrmann told me the story of elvis--rather than one where tom hanks did so while defending his villainous actions as he got the last word.

(though technically elvis got the last word in a delightfully predictable post-credits moment and i do give them--ahem--credit for that. and leander more points, for playing that part on purpose.)

in conclusion, not my favorite viewing experience for a lot of different reasons, but i’m still glad i saw it. because austin butler was fun, and, well, baz luhrmann. the man makes the shiniest glittery movies, and i love them so much for existing even when i don’t love them at all.

[ram-de]

[read] oxnard is my son

Reading wolfsong rn and why is the writing style so eerie LIKE... you know what it reminds me... Like typical murder thriller storytelling in mangas I used to read. (like I know it will? Eventually involves murder) BUT MAN ITS SO EERIE

I guess it's the way the story is told like a diary. Like a dissection to the innocent thoughts of ox... he's so precious like I get why gordo wants him in the pack it's the paternal instinct. Ox's dad is probably the murderer right...

Not going to comment about the romance bcs it felt icky at the point I know I know no yucking peoples yums and its just like, what, 5?6?years age gap. but idk they're like at different levels of school... Like... Typically high schoolers wouldn't date a middle school kids right?? Then again idk when I was in middle school, ive heard of (typically girls) students that thought of dating highs schooler as something, like, normal... Idk how they would meet in the first place but?? Like alright ill stop writing. This is a post about wolfsong asshdhdjjj idk the point is im not too keen on age gaps...... Typically I wouldn't even mind 6-7 years if that happened when they're both adults at their 20s or something it's just this one they met at the very young age... ;-;

But I looked up at some spoilers and got reassured that the romance part happened in later parts, which I guess?? Makes it better??? I DON'T KNOW guess I'll see how it's handled OK, in tj klune I trust

ALRIGHT AGE DISCUSSION ASIDE I love love love the writing of the book so far. It has the thrills, the suspense but also... How soft it can be. I've read like, what, two books involving werewolfs so I get the gist of like wolf-traits but not so much on packs and groups aspect of it. Wolfsong delves heavy (as far as I read) and the affectionate (I would say platonic) touches, ruffling heads, patting backs LIKE... ox deserved that yes give my son the affection he deserve

Idk why ox is in two packs tho aren't wolves like territorial how come he has gordo's and the bennets... Hm...

UGHH OX LEARNED HOW TO TEXT😭 that's my son right there (we're barely years apart)

Joe uses =D emotes... I uses :D (and I know I've said enough about the age topic but the fact that joe has to ask for his mom if he can go to cinema with ox is a bit... Like this doesn't make it better, mentally THIS kid is a kid!!! what do I do im like pretty invested in this book but also... Is the age gap rly necessary mr klune... I'll pretend that joe is only two years younger for the rest of my readthrough for my own sake and see if that changes anything. Crisis averted! I'm a genius.)

Did my son ox really just had his 𝕴 𝖜𝖎𝖑𝖑 𝖕𝖗𝖔𝖙𝖊𝖈𝖙 𝖞𝖔𝖚 moment HSGSHJSSJJ

Did gordo just sneak into ox's room in the middle of the night... like is he,, is he sneaking through thee windows or the front door. And did they lock the house when they left I HAD SO MANY QUESTION

PackOursMineBrotherSonLove

STOPPPPP IF I ENDED UP LIKING WEREWOLF STORIES I'M BLAMING TJ KLUNE AHHHHH

Why is he leaving my man gordo in the forest why is this so eerie and why I am having a lot of fun reading this chapter... noooooo he's leaving gordo's pack😔

I LIKE PUPPIESS I've been watching a lot of cute doggies wagging their tails videos though I'm not too keen on alpha/beta/omega dynamics (why the hell i read a werewolf book then, uh, tj klune)

They really spammed (pack pack pack pack) in my son's head hsgzhsjsjhs so are they sharing like a mind?? Telepathy??? Is ox tethered to two packs now... Pls no abusive alpha😔 I trust in you nephew joe

Omega were dark things in the wolves society??? I thought they're the one that can get pregnant??

Tethers... Possessive... ANYTHING TO SAY GORDO....??? I'm sure he's gonna be paired up with Mark for second chances stories in another book bcs I know this is a series

This isn't fair to Jessie ngl

I'm visualizing the story as if it's told in a manga medium and I'm floored... It fits so well... The dramatics...! The sound effects in the bg. I'm being weird

"I'm always going to be here." Ox denied what his mom said, but he promised Joe the same thing himself. Loyalty runs wild within the pack...

JUSTICE FOR JESSIE she was brought to the story to be given dirt I hate this tropes in mm books sometimes AND WHATEVER HAPPEN TO GORDO'S GUYS, like Chris?? (fuck me I spoiled myself looking for posts about Jessie, WELL OK THEN)

Ok I wrote too early there he is, chris

thank the lords that my son ox is checking out peers his age at this point bcs pls let joe's be one-sided until for a longer while. on another note, Carter... Cutie... same age... what we could have... 😔 I could get away with forgetting but mr klune kept reminding me of the age problem ughgcgj (and I keep writing it to the point of casual reminders) I will try harder to ignore things I do not want to perceive.

I was so used to see a/b/o dynamics being soooo sexualized (is it a sexual term? Idk) in like memes when I casually scroll Twitter or YouTube so I can't take the whole 'My Alpha' thing seriously... Tho it's nice to see it portrayed like, possessiveness, taken two levels higher I guess, then again it's... This isn't really Abo per se?? It's like typical cute wolf pack dynamics. If so, I don't mind pack dynamics that much.

wait they took ox's mom (I forgot her name) to training and bonding too that's so cute AAAHHJ I love love love tu klune's side character and how it brings a lot of life to the story, how they're incorporated and like have character growth... (I STILL LOVE THE KIDS AT CERULEAN SEA though I forgot most of their names except Lucy I'm sorry dwarf daughter slime son uhh fairy kid and griffin (not?)kid and Lucy too)

my son ox forgets names easily too, he got it from me😭

Carter and ox being domestic. this is love... I LOVE THIS PAIR.... Who tf is nick? Wdym he never saw him again. DID... DID JOE KILL HIM...

Four years later, and Joe is actually 20💕 brainwashing myself has never been this easy

AHHHHH I remember ox's mother name... Remembered the spoiler I saw.... Connected the two....... Spoilers alert even tho it's in tags pls😭 ok I'll mourn ig....

Fuck me ox is catching feelings... I tried to ignore the age but they kept mentioning Joe's age and how short he is AND I'M.... OKAY... But then Joe turned 17 and suddenly ox is realizing the butterflies like I'm sorry is the age gap really necessary mr klune 😭 but I like everything else.... The characters, the world, the writing... I need to pause and sleep it off for now...

I CANT SLEEP I WANT TO READ AHHH ok ok it's ok, haven't even see how it's handled so it's ok. Alright denial is a river in Egypt whatever which means I'll get over it soon so...

I warmed up to joe(21) and ox(23) already😭 CUTE my son is so clumsy and delusional (mildly)

am I yucking someone else yum... if so I'm sorry but the later half of this chapter, seriously... The word underage is mentioned and this is still the direction they went with shzvjsjshshshs how can I live in denial if things kept getting shoved on my face wdym it's okay carter😭

flustered ox is so... Hes so cute UGHH not to mention joe(21) being smug about it like this man (guy (kid)) is confident as hell. He's gonna be the death of ox (hopefully not literally)

I folded so easily because why is this so cute... This is like peak friends(both adults and /over/age) to lovers pipeline

PLEASEEE joe(21) just did a proposal... a cutiepie and a half

this is cracking me up so bad I love this book (certain trope aside) they're just hiding outside listening😂

Okay, okay, so the reasoning being that thing about experiences and how some kids mature early and stuff balut werewolves minds and compatibility and stuff. Fair, fair, but, AHHH whatever, moving on...

Maybe I teared up a bit,,, oxnard my son you're indeed worth everything😭

Joseph you possessive pup... His speech? Poem? Is peak creep and obsession... As expected from alphas ig

[transmogrified-in-the-void]

I've been going through a very interesting, and important gender and gender presentation journey over the past four months, which culminated into a comment that has been bothering me for a while.

Since about mid-September, I've been slowly gaining a lot of self-confidence for various reasons, and I've also been looking at the parts of myself that I've hidden underground inside my mind for a long while. Including my own feelings about my own femininity.

For those who have known me for a while, you'll know I've always been more masculine leaning in presentation and gender. As it turns out, I sort of pendulum swing across the entire spectrum.

Me and the friend who's been by my side this entire journey (who, funnily enough, is the only allocishet friend I have), had this inside joke with each other that if I showed up to a meeting with the gang in a skirt they wouldn't know what to do. And so we eventually got me a skirt.

I can't begin to describe the amount of pure bliss I felt when I saw myself in it. I'd only felt that feeling once before, when my dad put one of his old ties on me for a fun little game we were playing in 2020. The only difference was that when that happened, I was still in denial about who I was. When I looked in the mirror, it was something I couldn't even begin to grasp onto. When I looked into the mirror just barely two weeks ago, I finally saw me.

And so we ended up making a whole "scene girl" outfit for me. This was revealed in almost its entirety a few days later, and we were right. They really didn't know what to do with me. With the exception of my mom and one of my oldest friends (who both said I looked cute, and I did! I felt cute!), the actual group I hang around with didn't know how to react to it. One of my friends just ignored the whole thing like it was normal (hurtful, but it's whatever), another kept asking when it happened and trying to wrap his head around the change (funny), and one eventually ended up saying something that's been bothering me.

Initially, they were really surprised I had legs because he forgot that I did. But later, when we were talking about a character that me and the aforementioned friend had made for a sitcom (a transman who dresses femininely for the most part), he turned to me and said "so like you, a transmasc drag queen".

While yes, that fits that character fairly well, it didn't sit right when about me. Because no, as it turns out, I'm not a transmasc drag queen. I'm not really . . . anything. When I dress more masculine, it's queer because it borders on tomboy/butch and transmasc (which, I know those terms can coexist, but I'm using it as a scale of masculinity because I can't explain it any other way), and when I dress femininely it's also queer because I'm someone who inherently goes towards androgyny/masculinity as my comfort expression.

Here's the funny part, though. Of the four people I hang around, three are queer in some way. The only one, the only one, who saw that I'm fine with fluidity in pronouns, jokes about my gender, and just sort of knew from the beginning that I was suppressing my femininity (which he told me after the Skirt Moment, so that was a fun night), was allocishet. I could get into all the weird shit that has gone on with me and the group, but the least queer person in the group understood, almost immediately, that I, the most verbally and visually queer of the group, enjoy funny little gender jokes. Hell, a few days after meeting I was doing something in my friend's kitchen and he said "oh sorry I was raised in a republican household, if there's someone in the kitchen I assume it's a woman".

So I guess what I'm saying, right now, is that I'm not any particular gender identity, I'm not trans anything, I don't really enjoy the fit of genderqueer even, I just. Am. And I wish that people irl would be willing to have fun with that more, rather than being so fucking afraid that I'm going to have a breakdown and kill someone for misgendering me.

[thefirstknife]

I feel like the descriptions of the other supers is willfully oversimplified given we're talking about the fantasy end of things. Hunters have a bow that lays traps, that's pretty Hunter to me. The other part of the Hunter identity has always been Cowboy, so a six shooter, especially one with a fan fire animation, absolutely fulfills that. Warlocks, i'll give on because their identity is more elaborate in ways that can't totally be shown in game, however I'd still argue they get at least close enough for the Wizard part, summoning raw energy rather than filtering it through tools like the other two classes do. Titans already have something that, even if not Literally laying out plans ahead of time, makes you feel like that "front line tactician" in the form of Bannershield and Ward of Dawn. Sunbreaker is still a roaming super and yet feels more interesting than punch-supers if only for the simple fact that you have a weapon that elevates the brutalism from Hulk to Warrior, especially in its Burning Maul alternate. It's really less the effect in gameplay, and more the presentation, and even then I think a different presentation can in turn inspire more fun gameplay.

True, I definitely oversimplified, but I also feel like people are oversimplifying Titan supers a lot. Your breakdown is much better and shows that there's plenty of different fantasies baked into the class.

I'm pretty sure Fists is still here only because it's a remnant of the ancient days of Destiny and just kinda stayed here with barely any updates on how it works. And that is the only mindless punch super that has nothing else going for it. All other Titan supers are different. You'd think with how people are treating it, it's as if 90% Titan supers are just different colour punches.

I think the simplification is coming just from the visual idea of having an element on your fists and using a button to make punching motions, but that ignores everything else that Behemoth and Berserker are doing. Also I guess the major issue is because Behemoth and Berserker released so close together with no alternatives that we're used to with Light subclasses. I feel like viewing it in that superficial way and ignoring the effects in gameplay for purely presentation is counterproductive. If we do that, then my oversimplification of other classes would also stand. But when you think about it, it really doesn't.

Weapon-based super is also not a Titan fantasy primarily; it's a Hunter one. All Hunter supers are based on pulling weapons out of the element (gun, bow, staff, knives, kamas and now rope dart). Titan has a hammer and maybe shield sometimes in some circumstances. Titan is definitely half tool/half energy class with a high emphasis on melee combat and a lot of abilities that give benefits for melee. Naturally, supers will follow that and we see it with strand gameplay with how seemlessly it blends the melee charges into a super for maximum movement and battlefield control.

But as I said, I would definitely love to see more. There are a lot of activities where I am really not encouraged to go in with a close range build, which I think is more of an issue with the activity and enemy design than anything else. Because I genuinely enjoy the close range builds on Titan and the gameplay loop of it. Being able to feel like I'm leading the charge and to be indestructible in combat is the reason I hop on my Titan. Unfortunately, with a lot of bosses floating in the air out of reach, various buffs and debuffs in raids which make it impossible to move, stomp mechanics, map sizes and other stuff, it can be really tough to take that type of a build into anything but strikes.

I really hope that the mobility and damage resistance + crowd control on strand will mitigate some of these issues. I feel like a lot of the disappointment is built on the idea that close range builds are simply not "meta" and the idea that they will be useless. Titan mains don't want to be forced to switch off the newest toy because it's not good in a GM or raid while the other two are enjoying theirs. That's one thing I am in full agreement with everyone who is upset, because we know how the game plays and thinking that you won't be able to use strand outside of messing around in Dares of Eternity can be a bummer before the thing is even out. So hopefully the utility side of strand will be helpful.

[jjoelswatch]

Big ol' health rant under the cut.

I'm beyond frustrated with my care team and how hard I have to advocate for myself to get tests/labs done.

I've been not feeling well symptomatically for over a year, and been dealing with lack of appetite issues for about three years. Started with right side stomach pain last August that led to potential gallbladder issue concerns. I had every test under the sun to rule it out (abdominal ultrasound, upper scope, HIDA scan, stool sample) and everything came back okay aside from some inflammation (no H. Pylori, no celiac, no gallstones, no ulcers-- gallbladder, liver, pancreas, etc function all normal). So it was just like "well okay, I guess nothing's wrong with me except that my right abdomen hurts from time to time" and I tried to move on with my life.

I started having strange neurological symptoms back in March of this year (tingling/numb sensation in my face, strange senses of touch in parts of my face-- like parts of my face felt like a balloon). I've always suffered from ocular migraines with aura and no pain (and flashes of light/visual snow), so I thought it was just fun new migraine symptoms. They went away for a few months then came back in full force with even more fun symptoms (tingling in my hands and feet, lack of sensation in my right leg but not total numbness, a gradual increase in forgetfulness/short term memory issues that are SO not the norm for me, middle back pain??), so I scheduled an appointment with a neurologist and went to my shitty CNP "doctor" (disclaimer, CNPs are not doctors despite how the American healthcare system treats them like doctors) and basically pleaded with her to run bloodwork on me and to try to do anything to get me into for brain scans or something. Because weird neurological symptoms are super scary and it's hard not to assume the worst when you're experiencing them fairly suddenly.

She ran my bloodwork and found that my B12 levels were really low. I learned that B12 can cause literally all my symptoms, so I was relieved and they put me on 4 weeks of weekly B12 injections, with the plan to start monthly injections afterwards. She also told me they were going to test my bloodwork for folate levels and talk to one of the doctors in the practice to get to the bottom of what's causing my deficiency since I wasn't anemic or vegan/vegetarian. I felt...hopeful? and like we were headed down the right path.

Well, the office failed to click "submit" to order my blood to be tested for folate. So my CNP couldn't work with the other doctor to try to puzzle out what's wrong with me.

I was feeling pretty good during those 4 weeks of injections. My memory was sharper and my symptoms were gradually reducing (there is apparently something called "nerve wake up" when dealing with neuro issues from B12D, which can still cause symptoms to show). I knew that recovery would be gradual, as it can take 6 months to a year to really recover from neuro damage/issues from B12D, so I tried to stay positive. But a week and a half out from my last weekly shot, my symptoms returned with a vengeance.

Now my symptoms are a right leg that wants to cramp up from hamstring to calf, a left toe that just...twitches of its own accord, other random muscle twitches/tenseness, and (possibly unrelated?) increased acid reflux issues. My neuro appointment isn't until the first week of October (because the US sucks and it literally takes 5-6 months to see specialists at the bare minimum), so I messaged my doctor in a bit of a panic with some questions about my symptoms and asking if we could more aggressively treat the deficiency, because like...I'm concerned about perma nerve damage at this point?? And she tells me she's going to refer me to a neurologist without answering any of my other questions or trying to see me any eariler.... If she'd looked at my file or remembered our last conversation, she would know that I already have a appointment with one.

I caved and did several things. I tried to switch to the other doctor in the office she said she was going to work with to get to the bottom of my issues, because...why not go straight to the source? That failed, as the practice "doesn't do that, as a rule" which like...okay? Desperate for relief, I started sublingual supplements of B12 (fucked up at first at did the methyl version which just didn't agree with my body and switched to the same form as my shots were). I started seeing some relief in my symptoms, including my muscle tension in my leg (which was previously causing me to have trouble walking) and some of my muscle twitching.

I also called the neurologist's office like, "listen I know you guys haven't seen me yet, but can you order some scans to give me some peace of mind?" and they finally agreed to send me in for a cervical spine MRI and an EMG. I did the MRI only to find out that the reason they had me down for one was "neck pain" which I've literally never said I had and they didn't include a brain MRI like I'd expected given my symptoms. MRI turned out fine, which was a relief as much as it was kind of expected. The EMG is yet to be done (on the 28th).

I finally had my appointment with my CNP on Monday for my first monthly shot and to do labs, including the folate lab they screwed up. I told her that I wanted her to run labs for the missed folate, iron, vitamin D, magnesium, and copper. She sort of...laughed at me?? and told me that we ran those labs already. I told her to look at my chart because we didn't, and she obviously had to walk back her sentence and was like "I don't think we need to run labs for vitamin D but we can if you want?" and of course I said that I did. She refused to run labs for magnesium because that was "a more serious lab" and then said she "didn't know how to even test for copper because that's a heavy metal". I get my labs done, get my first monthly B12 shot. She sends me on my way with "depending on how your labs turn out, we'll see if we need to continue B12 shots"...when it can take a year for my symptoms to correct themselves.

Go figure~ my labs come back - the labs I had to TELL her to order for me - and out of a desired 30+ range for vitamin D, my level is 7 lmao. Thankfully I still am going to be getting monthly B12 shots since my levels are higher (due to self-treating) but still low. I also have to take vitamin D and a multivitamin now. She also referred me to a hematologist because I brought up the MTHR gene that can affect B12 absorption since I'm not anemic or vegan. I just want to know what's causing this deficiency, because she seems to have dropped the ball on the matter altogether.

I'm close to a week out from my last shot now and my muscles are getting tense and twitchy again. It's so, so hard to sit here and tell myself that this healing process is just going to take time-- trying to reassure myself that my muscle twitching is just "nerve wake up" and not a sign of something much worse. I've been going quietly crazy worried about ALS, Parkinson's, or MS because these deficiencies can mimic their symptoms. I just want it to be the 28th so I can get my EMG done and over with, and then see my neuro on the 2nd of October. I so tired of going to the doctor. I'm tired of feeling like they don't take me and my symptoms seriously. I'm tired of feeling like an annoyance. I'm tried of having to go out and do my own research and then bringing that research to my doctors, because between the two of us, I don't have a fucking medical degree. I'm tried of hearing "don't consult Dr. Google" when what else am I supposed to do when you're not doing your job thoroughly?

I'm just tired and I want to feel better.

[wordsandrobots]

It occurs to me that I've now watched all the past Gundam shows I'm inclined to. So how about a totally arbitrary personal ranking? Here are brief opinions on each iteration of the franchise I've seen, mostly surface-level, bad to good, intended purely to get them out of my head and mark the 'achievement' of having binged quite so much giant robot nonsense. Every one of these shows will be someone else's favourite and I respect that. I too have things I like a lot that other people don't. That's how it goes.

(I stress this chiefly because there's a new Gundam airing right now and that probably makes this a really bad time to start weighing in with opinions on the internet. For the record, I am watching The Witch From Mercury too, but consider it way, way too early to say what I think of it.)

So, first up, let's exclude the ones I bounced off too hard to finish, which are Mobile Suit Victory Gundam (1993) and Mobile Suit Gundam SEED (2002). I quit each after a few episodes, so I don't feel like I can form a proper assessment beyond 'I didn't like it'. I will probably continue with Mobile Fighter G Gundam (1994) some day but that too is hovering at the 'I'm not sure this is worth it' mark – it's just not the kind of show I enjoy.

Also – honourable mention for Code Geass. Utterly batshit crazy, tonally all over the shop, and possibly the worst attempt at anti-imperialism I've ever seen in my life. If that's even what it was going for, which I am not sure it was. Frequently delightful anyway and the slashiest closing art you could imagine.

Now on to the Gundam shows I actually got through. Mild spoilers to follow so everything else will go under this cut.

Mobile Suit Gundam AGE (2011) – Actively fascistic. Not intentionally, I don't think, but while it's got a decent structural conceit, it's off with the birds in its grasp of how conflicts actually work and ends up relentlessly painting an abandoned underclass as the aggressors. I realise part of the point is flipping that around at the end. My point, though, is that it fails to land in the worst way possible. Plus all three of its protagonists are extremely irritating.

Mobile Suit Gundam F91 (1991) – I . . . can barely remember anything that happened except that watching this was like pulling teeth.

Mobile Suit Gundam 0083: Stardust Memory (1991) – Top Gun with mobile suits was an experiment worth doing but the cast is pure cardboard.

Mobile Suit Gundam: Char's Counterattack (1988) – I originally watched this without the full context of the preceding series and honestly, coming back afterwards doesn't really improve things. I'm not sure I have a strong opinion, except that a lot of it feels deeply mean-spirited.

Mobile Suit Gundam: Hathaway (2021) – I'm dropping this low primarily because I despise the battle animations. They make the mistake of assuming 'at night' means 'dialling the contrast down' and it undercuts the visuals entirely. Textbook example of poorly implemented CGI ruining an otherwise well-thought-through creative decision. Beyond that, it's mostly OK, I guess.

Mobile Suit Gundam (compilation movies; 1979) – Yes, I wimped out on watching the whole thing but in my defence, I don't like Amuro Ray very much. That said, there's a real charm to the animation that very few of the other series ever match. This show renders guys being dorks like nothing else. And I do absolutely see why it lasted. It's a rough first draft but there's a lot to get the teeth into, even if it is, ultimately, not my thing.

Mobile Suit Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket (1989) – Technically leaps and bounds ahead of its predecessors both in terms of animation and story construction. Absolutely unafraid to be soul-crushingly cynical, which works to its advantage. Also not my thing but I respect its ambition.

Mobile Suit Gundam Thunderbolt (2015) – Same, really. Plus a test case in how far empathy for people on the side of the space-Nazis can be pushed. Actually, it's worth pausing on that because the contrast being 'extremely psychopathic' Federation pilot Io and 'generally sweet-ish' Zeon pilot Daryl highlights the grey vs grey morality inherent to the Universal Century (UC) timeline. At its best, that leads to genuinely nuanced stories about what conflict does to both people and ideals when various factions use them to vie for power. At its worst, it leads to a total muddling of audience sympathy and political message. Thunderbolt is, I think, squarely in the middle.

Mobile Suit Gundam 00/Mobile Suit Gundam 00 the Movie: A Wakening of the Trailblazer (2007/2010) – This, for me, is what's called a Curate's Egg – parts of it are very good. Get yourself someone who looks at you the way Patrick Colasour looks at Kati Mannequin. Or if you're into it, the way Kati looks at Patrick. The super-soldier stuff is interesting in ways the Newtype idea generally isn't. And random cross-dressing is always welcome. However, I can't say I like it overall. Rooting early sections in 'resolving' real-world conflicts is tasteless and it's the epitome of Gundam not understanding pacifism as an ideological position. It also plays straight the idea of humanity making an evolutionary leap to godhood, which I don't enjoy for a wide variety of reasons.

Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam (1985) – Honestly, I'm mainly giving this such a high ranking because the English dub gives Char such an incredibly sexy voice. On balance, I'd say I enjoyed more of this than I did of 00, but it probably ought to go lower for being an example of that thing a lot of Gundam shows do which is having interesting female characters, then doing feck all with them or mashing them into teeth-gnashingly bad unrequited love subplots.

Mobile Suit Gundam: Unicorn (2010) – I am putting this ahead of 00 and Zeta because it's a technically superior piece of story-telling, with a much clearer idea of what it's doing. And it does indeed do some things very well; they're just not ones I gel with.

Mobile Suit Gundam ZZ (1986) – And now to stress that quality does not necessarily equate to enjoyment, here's the comedy one placing above Zeta and Unicorn. Well. 'Comedy'. It's not necessarily especially funny. But I find the characters and set-up to be generally more appealing than a lot of the UC shows, and some of the slapstick works pretty nicely. Plus, you know. Haman Karn. Who doesn't love a dastardly villainess? (I actually do think she's one of the more interesting UC antagonists, albeit mainly when she's in active contrast to the others.)

Mobile Suit Gundam Wing/Gundam Wing: Endless Waltz (1995/1997) – I am delighted by the story Gundam Wing's many fans have hallucinated into existence. I genuinely think it's a lovely example of how fandoms construct and expand on things only gestured to in the original text. Which is the nice way of saying coming back to this 15 years on from first watching it was a bit of a slog. There's something very theatrical about Wing, in that it does a lot with narration and flimsy set-dressing. It's insanely ambitious in what it's attempting and I have a lot of nostalgic affection for it. But in the end, I think it's less than the sum of its parts.

Mobile Suit Gundam: Twilight AXIS (2017) – Very lightweight and inessential. Nevertheless, an interesting exercise in telling a complex story with extremely limited space.

Mobile Suit Gundam: The Origin (2015) – OK, fine, I'll admit it. I might not rate a lot of the Universal Century stuff but watching Char connive his way to power is fun. And this assays the original animation style very well, even if the CGI mobile suits jar in the extreme. Overall, this is a case of general quality boosting where I'm prepared to rank it.

Mobile Suit Gundam Narrative (2018) – Proves you can go a long way with a decent soundtrack. Also, I think I prefer stories about people caught up in the wake of Newtypes than about the Newtype characters themselves. Benefits from knowing the wider UC backstory going in and not necessarily 'good', but definitely enjoyable.

Mobile Suit Gundam: The 08th MS Team (1996) – Dumb as rocks, driven solely by machismo and excitement, very dodgy in its handling of sexual politics, and the single most fun piece of UC media I have watched. A case of hitting a genre so squarely in the bullseye, forgiving its faults is easy. Gundam as an 80s action flick and it knows it. Has one of the few UC protagonists who fully commits to giving the Federation two middle fingers and peacing out of their bullshit, and ends in a surprisingly sweet and thoughtful manner.

Gundam Reconguista in G (2014) – I could not begin to describe to you the plot of Reconguista and I'm not sure anyone involved in writing it could either. However, I did find the main characters to be a delightful bunch of total numbskulls to hang around with for twenty-six episodes. Also one of the more successful aesthetic shifts in the Gundam franchise. I suspect this is the one that will have the greatest influence on the current iteration's look and feel.

After War Gundam X (1996) – I covered much of my thoughts on this already. A great final act twist and all the benefits of streamlining over continuity wrangling. Nicely focused on the idea that what humanity screws up, humanity can undo (in both senses of the word). I admit to ranking this highly partly to spite the reviews quoted on Wikipedia, which are straight up wrong; it does have a lot of flaws, just not the ones those reviews point to. But also I really enjoyed it. It does Wing's breakneck geopolitics better and UC-esque themes with greater clarity. I'd love to see this setting and cast developed more, so it's a shame it's joined Reconguista in G as the also-ran of the franchise.

Turn A Gundam (1999) – Where to even start? Beautiful to look at, audaciously clever in how it relates to the other Gundam series, a wonderful, engaging cast of characters, and the splendour that is Harry Ord's fashion sense. Manages the rare trick of having an intelligent, genuinely meaningful identity switch plot, as well as showing that Gundam can treat pacifism with respect and real engagement if it tries. Brought down in places by lazily racist genre tropes and gets a touch rushed towards the end, but overall a very solid show. All this and the main mobile suit is referred to by its moustache throughout. What more could you want?

Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans (2015) – This. I mean, this is what more I could want. After making the experiment over the last year and change, I'm quite happy to declare that I am not a Gundam fan, I'm an Iron-Blooded Orphans fan. For me, this one stands head and shoulders over the rest in terms of plot, characters, aesthetics and general vibe. While I've enjoyed going back and seeing first hand where the self-references come from, I think this is the only Gundam show that is ever going to occupy so much real-estate in my mind as to fixate me on writing fan-fic for a solid year and a half. I won't bore you by repeating stuff I've said in my other posts on the subject. However, I would quite honestly recommend this as A Good Show to anyone interested in the mecha anime genre, with the upfront warning that it is plotted as a tragedy and should be approached as such.

And there you have it. Again, this is all personal feelings and not intended as any slight on anyone with a different opinion (I will probably look at you askance if you say AGE is your favourite, but only because I had such a visceral negative reaction to it, it's going to take me a while to be open to reassessing). Now if you'll excuse me, I have to get back to being pathetically ill in the most annoying way possible.

[tussive]

Something stupid about me is I just kind of inherently respect people who have insane levels of dedications to things. I think probably because I've never been that dedicated to anything and I do envy it in a way.

But I'm reading this thread of Bluelight and I don't want to go into too much detail about the drug information/chemistry involved, because it's not really important, I do want to kind of explain because I think the level to which he's dedicating himself to achieve what he's achieving kind of helps make my point that I'm stupid, lmao. So in its pure HCl form, MDPV is a white powder. When it first came onto the RC, this is how it was available. At some point however someone came out with a tan MDPV, which produced significantly different effects. The white MDPV is prone to causing paranoia, hallucinations, is very tweaky and compulsive and has a terrible comedown. The tan MDPV is a smooth, euphoric ride that is apparently so hypersexual many people would refer to it as "perv powder." Nobody is actually sure what the difference is, however part of the process involves freebasing it. But that isn't the whole process, it is also necessary to leave the resulting oil in water for extended periods of time, during which people assume the MDPV degrades and some impurity results which is the actual source of the desired effects. This man is fucking dedicated to understanding how to produce the tan MDPV. He has done countless experiments on doing so and at one point details the various ways that he has been harmed even in doing these experiments.

"Now---- I haven't tasted this stuff. Over the past two years I have played with mdpv using ether, tuloene, xylene, baking soda, galacial acetate, vinegar, water, ethanol and dirt from my garden(the bacterial connection). I have precipitated, heated, frozen, incubated, dissolved, evaporated, combined and separated every possible combination of precipitate, solution and oil. In the process I have come up with substances that were less than enjoyable to ingest. I am my only test subject for these experiments. I temporarily blinded myself for three hours after drying and ingesting a brown goo that appeared after five days of incubating an odd gray precipitate after an ether/acetate experiment with pv. I once ended up with a dark brown substance that looked similar to the darker tan pv versions. It gave me an incapacitating headache that lasted 4 days. I had overheated the pv oil during precipitation and created something horrible. I got PV oil on my skin and didn't sleep for 72 hours, during which time hellish visual and auditory hallucinations had me locked in the bathroom where I hid in the bathtub for 30 hours. My first hit of the acetate salt that I created from the tan had me hallucinating again for a few days. I had not considered that the salt version of the tan freebase might have dosages measured in micrograms. I should have guessed from the huge residual slush left over from the Acetic Acid wash. But I didn't. I bumped 3 milligrams. 300 micrograms is a large dose.

What I'm saying is that my body is barely being held together, and what little cohesion is left is the result of vitamins and pure will power. So I just don't have the courage to go down the acetate road. The HCL road has used me up."

(He is essentially explaining that when converted into acetate salt of MDPV, the result is extremely promising for the desired effects, however he has had so many horrible side effects just from experimenting with the HCl he no longer has it in him to attempt new experiments with the acetate. That may be obvious from the quote but I feel like out of context it may not be entirely clear.)

Now, he's gone to such extreme efforts and put himself through so much suffering and for what? He only uses drugs to enhance sex. He's doing this just so he can fucking goon for hours and jack his stupid dick and it's all just kind of pathetic through that lens, raelly. In terms of motivations I have absolutely zero respect for him or his efforts.

But when I read that quote about the things he has put himself through to achieve his goals, I can't help but feel like he's kind of cool. Even though he very much is not.

[dojae-huh]

i saw the ask where anon talked about how woo is taking a lot of potential from a better dojae unit and i couldn't help but agree. its kinda of a hard pill to swallow but there are some reasons that i could think of.

jungwoo is there as doyoung's support systems. its unspoken how doyoung seems to be awkward and uncomfortable acting around jaehyun esp in front of the camera where he needs to restrain himself. maybe he'a avoiding to do anything that could cause a stir amongst shippers (inevitable, we live off crumbs) or from him being self cautious. but with woo, he's more comfortable to act like a close brother and hugs him (will there be a day where we get a proper hug this era), and it seems that doyoung relies on jungwoo alot and vice versa. so maybe that's why jungwoo was chosen to be in the unit.

jungwoo's image. he's refreshing, youthful, boyish and very lovable that i think would be a loss if the company won't profit off such idol. jungwoo has decent singing and better dancing skills. he performs so excellent in perfume and kiss so far, his parts were my favourite. there's something about how his expressions showed his enthusiasm and excitement to be onstage got me. this image was a special add on to dojae. of course we know how well jaehyun and doyoung complement each other but if i were to make an analogy:

jaehyun's the base note that acts like a foundation for the combination. without him, the group will fall. he's the most popular member in nct, and lets agree we all had a crush on him at one point. he's perfect visual, vocals, dance and performance wise.

doyoung's the middle note that brings the group together. with jaehyun they would be enough to become one group. doyoung's smart (jae's words) and he's considered as the group's manager. so i'm guessing doyoung did more than an idol's job for this unit, he was the one working behind the scenes. his vocals, visuals and popularity amongst his loyal fans guarantees success. dance/performance wise he's decent, but damn he did outperformed himself this time - esp in kiss. i might be biased but who can control themselves when doyoung's bare waist and chest was out like that? hehe

lastly jungwoo. the sweet cherry on top. he's the top note. it's like how we can have ice cream on its own (jaedo), but we can make it better with toppings on top - that's jungwoo to me in this unit. as a jaedo shipper myself, i really wanted a jaedo only unit but that's just wishful thinking. sm knows, they all know how jaedo will bring more than profit to the table. its risky, and they're playing the safe card. but hey, i'm happy for both of them. back to jungwoo, he fits in surprisingly with the two and i'm very interested to see more of their performances. i'm rooting for woo all the way.

You described dojaejung. Dojae alone would have a different concept and image, that would work around their strengths as two. It's like TaeMarkYY vs TaeMark.

Doyoung really put effort into practice of the two choreos we saw. He is quick, sharp and even has good hand gestures in places. His stiffness in torso is barely in the way because the choreo is adapted to his kind of motions.

I really hope Jungwoo will stay the way he was during the countdown live. He was charged and enthusiastic, but didn't try to stirr things his way, disrupt Do's set manner of presenting things, didn't attack Jae. Because he worked as support, followed the same vector as the two others, he felt in place, fitting. Vacance type of push and pull although is fun as variety, is also an exhausting way to function as a group as someone has to give in, to sacrifice to keep the peace.

[lrandconkdors]

You know how anime usually have a packaged animation that they slowly run the ending credits over? Like, they just repeat this one song and dance with each episode and it's up to you to choose whether to let it run or not. Like, maybe you groove with it, maybe you cool down with it, maybe it clashes with the tone of the episode's last scene and you skip it, maybe it's just boring and you skip it. point is, they're not going to surprise you across the anime's run. But, what if they were... non-predictable? What if each iteration of the ED did its own thing?

Well, stop "what-if"ing. That literally just happened this fall. And I'm here to look back at each ED session and decide which I thought were cooler. The anime that dared to uproot convention like this is one that probably needs no introduction.

...actually, was Pop Team Season 2 that popular? I didn't know it was being made until it had already started. Either way, I don't feel like writing any more intro spiel.

D-tier

Episode 4 - the one where they make faces at each other

This is one of those classic Pop Team Epic absurdist moments where typical human concepts like "twist" or "punchline" are abandoned. The visual humor of watching them go off-model wears off once you realize they're looping back to reuse faces. But whereas this spurt of oddity lasted (I presume) for only four little panels in the original comic, the anime makes you gawk at them for 60 seconds before you can confirm that, yes, that's the whole skit. At least the rerun makes itself useful and decides to play outtake footage of a previous skit over the credits.

(No clue where to fit this into the summary but: Why are Popuko & Pipimi supplemented by chiptune noises that all acutely sound like SFX found in Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga? M&L players, back me up.)

Episode 5 - upon which the anime's stock market value mysteriously drops

I enjoyed the company of Pop Team Epic B-side, one of the few aspects distinguishing this anime run from its original season, which acted out your ""ordinary"" PTE comedy, but replaced our ""heroines"" with lavishly animated bishonen counterparts. So, feelings were definitely felt when Pipihara informed Popuoka that their segment had, apparently, been cancelled. The latter responds by tossing a grenade at the conveniently nearby Takeshobo HQ, then looks back with a subdued smile, as the building explodes off-screen. The frame freezes on this visually arresting moment, and the credits sequence begins.

As a sad piano version of the ending song played and the screen slowly filled up with images of the boys' past moments (all five of them), I slowly succumbed to the realization that they probably weren't joking about the cancellation.

I saw B-side as the antithesis to the long reign of Bob Epic Team. By countering the uncanny off-model antics with unexpected off-brand sexiness, Pop Team Epic was instilled with balance. Seeing the new blood get sniped out of the sky, my chemistry with Bobunemimimmi dropped from tolerance to resentment. I no longer possess the moral high ground with which to point at people who complain about a network cancelling a cartoon they were rooting for while sustaining one they don't like.

Episode 9 - the one that got away

The last skit of Episode 9 opens on Popuko seemingly racing an R/C car - a very Popuko thing to partake in. But eventually, she runs out of stamina, so I guess she was only human after all. The ending music starts as the car drives off into the sunset, and then barely anything else happens until the chorus, which triggers a slideshow of the toy car visiting sites around the world. I feel like the bulk of this one's intrigue is trying to guess what this moment was like in the original comic. Maybe the whole travelogue sequence was adapted from one sole panel, for instance that panel could have been the image of Popuko receiving a post card we see at the end. Or maybe the anime crew made up that whole part, and it originally just ended on Popuko staring at the horizon.

C-tier

Episode 1 - the one thriving off of port priority

This scene is a bizarre cap off to a bizarre skit with a bizarre setup, bizarre punchline, and bizarre conclusion. It's also just a 60-second-long animated image that slowly zooms out. This may not be a great ED (they didn't even bother to upload this one to the official channel), but it's automatically a good first-episode ED, because it got to be the first to introduce my ears to the soulful triumph that is Nakayo Peas (is that what it's called? The English subtitles translates the song's refrain as "we're just two peas in a pod," but a later ED implies the ピース refers to 'peace,' and then I also saw an outside source that called it "Nakayopiece"...) I don't know of the comedy in Pipimi staring at a picture of herself pulling a super rare on her phone, while sitting at a window revealing the most beautiful ocean sunset of the anime season, but it sure does complement well with the wistful piano into techno breakdown of the ending theme.

No-Subject-tier

Episode 7 - the most bespoke scene of a man heading to the public restroom in anime history

This ending is hard to sort because a lot of the cool things about it are just an extension of the cool things about the episode itself. Episode 7 not only dedicates the entire 11 minutes to telling the story of Hellshake Yano's fall and comeback, but forgoes all animation and motion graphics in favor of recording two guys playing with notebooks using as few cuts as possible, with even the OP and ED using original sequences. If there's something the end credits have going exclusively for it, it's the way it handles the credits varying slightly between original and rerun. They shot two takes of the journey to the restroom, and in the second, a cut-up page is flipped over the cast list replacing the names accordingly.

██████-tier

Episode 11 - the one you've probably heard about already

So, have you seen the works of Kékéflipnote? That guy who draws the funny-cute animations of animals using an animation tool exclusive to a handheld gaming system? Well, someone at King Records clearly had, because we got an ending sequence depicting Pop & Pipi as Kéké's trademark blob-pigeons (among other creatures), engaging in Kéké's trademark buttery-smooth bouncy-dances, all the while presumably flipping the camera off. Furthering the homage, Nakayo Peas sports yet another rearrangement, peppered with synth arpeggios* which sound awfully similar to Robot Rock by Daft Punk, a track used in one of Kéké's more popular videos.

*Did I use either of these words properly here?

If you already know all this and have witnessed ED11 for yourself, you may be questioning why this isn't higher on the list. Well, while I acknowledge what an insane crossover of worlds this was, I also have this petty annoyance with its execution. I just personally think that maybe they shouldn't have sunk all that time and talent into one joke if they were just going to, y'know, censor it out of existence?

By combining the time-forged wholesome aes of funny baguette Flipnote guy with the vulgar slant of kuso manga/anime, this animation holds the potential to revitalize the shock the world originally felt upon witnessing the sight of two (vaguely) moe school girls 🖕🏻deucing🖕🏻 the camera with comically large, anatomically menacing hands. Also, I heard a claim that the ending song's cryptic lyrics about "a game you can play with your fingers" is a disguised reference to the Gesture, so if true, this animation is very in sync with its BGM. But this show should know well that Japanese television broadcasters have feelings about deuces.

They should also know well that said feelings don't extend very far beyond overlaying a dinky pixel effect that doesn't leave much up to imagination. So why, then, did the animator decide to instead erect giant black boxes that cover their entire arms? Besides the opinion that that's distracting, there's the fact that anything could be behind these boxes. Consider the following: do Popu-ké and Pipi-geon have KKFNesque, doodly thin arms? Or do they follow the PPTP way and use hyperrealistic human digits? What if they're not doing that at all? Maybe the birbs have nipples and that was what had to be ██████ed? What if the animals are, uhhh, are waving dildos around? And how would any of the above apply to a snake? I Guess We'll Never Know!!

I remember staring at the screen in disbelief, solemnly waiting for the credits to confirm that, yes, they did get the real Kékéflip to animate this bit. All that I could think about was how people all over the web would be talking about how cool it was that this happened, and how no one would feel the same way I did. I kept thinking about it, past the setting of the sun and into the next day. Whenever my mind wandered, I would hear the war chant set in again: Nakayo peeeeeeeaaaas, nakayo peeeeas, peeeeas, pi-pi- peas... I have used this word frequently in my life, but considering the place it mentally put me in, 仲良ピース （Ｄａｎｃｅ Ｒｏｃｋ Ｍｉｘ） is most deserving of the term "Cursed."

Also, this anime partnering with a French animator reminds me that the JAPON MiGNON segment wasn't able to return this season, which by extension reminds me that its "replacement" Pop Team B-side died an early death GRAAAAFLKGJHDSK

B-tier

Episode 2 - The calm after a storm

This ending caps off episode 2's main story, which places the girls into a giant robot battle for the future of the anime or something like that. Not much visually to write home about, but for a one-use sequence to a parody of a mecha-drama, there could be a lot less. If this were the full-time ending to a real series, I would still respect the seq showing the internals of Biggus McHugeGuy for its unique-while-still-animation-efficient-ness. The music is also tasteful, starting minimalistic and letting the wistful vocals shine, before giving way to dauntless guitar riffing. Though, when I first watched this, my reaction was more like, "It's acoustic now?? But I was looking forward to the cool techno breakdown!"

Episode 12 - wake up babe, Shouta Aoi exercises are starting

So, uh, the season finale, am I right? They just... directed an entire late-game episode of a practically imaginary live-action tokusatsu series. And just when you've forgotten what you came for, and gotten unironically invested in the world of Endless L.O.V.E., the show leans over and mutters, "On your left." And then out of nowhere, an entire horde of Popukos and Pipimis from across the season's run show up to help our heroes (heralded by a triumphant marching band performace of Pop Team Epic's original theme song)! It was the most legendary moment of the anime season... up until they actually started battling, at which point the anime, in one final act of trolling the audience, elects to merely move around stiff .SVGs of the characters knocking a bunch of enemy mooks around, with "eco-friendly anime 😋" printed at the top of the screen.

Thankfully, after all was said and done, the final end roll, in its own way, did the concept a little more justice. Similar to the last episode of Season 1, Shouta Aoi takes the spotlight and does a little song and dance, but this time, he is backed up by (multiple variations of) Popuko and Pipimi, and they're actually animated this time! Hands down, Aoi Shouta Taisou is the most wholesome display to come out of this 4-D prank of an anime. It even takes its idea to a clever conclusion by including designs for Pop+Pipi never before seen - to Shouta Aoi's bewilderment.

Episode 3 - Pop Team Epic will become real in three minutes.

In this one, two mascot costumes of Popuko and Pipimi take a tour of King Records' building. It's demonstrated that Popuko is such an aggresive gal that even her hairdo can't traverse a closed space without getting in a standoff against any bypassers or protusions in the wall.

When I saw this ED, I was under the conception that this was going to be the ED for the season proper, with the first two being special exceptions. (Specifically, various anime hide away their proper OP or ED on the first episode, and episode 2 was clearly a one-off for the bit - imagine Kaguya-sama's first season, but if the special Chika ED was placed even earlier.) And I was completely fine with that. This sequence may not be at the top of this list, but if each of these entries had an entire season each to reign over, things would be different. It's unique and charming enough to be repeatedly entertaining (at least moreso than last season's Poppy Pappy Day), but not so weird and specific that it becomes exhausting.

I missed this when I first watched the episode, but the rerun features totally different footage, of the two visiting Takeshobo instead. Personally more of a fan of the female vocal version, it has a better excitement curve.

Episode 8 - the one where... where the... the..when..... uhhhhhm...

I mean, it's certainly, uhhh... the mixed media is so mixed that it... there are copious amounts of untranslated text, which... the arrangement...bass slaps surprisingly... every chord is somehow the wrong one, creating a sense of... 90% of the footage is different between versions, tricking me into a false Mandela effect..... HOT CAT.

Okay, as much as I want to talk about this one, it's a lot harder since I have no idea what I'm looking at. Like, this must be a homage to something like with ED11, right? there's no way a PTE staff member just felt like making it look specifically Like That, with no precedent. I wish I knew of the context (or at least could read all the on-screen text), because I do not know how to thread my thoughts on this otherwise. It trippy.

A-tier

Episode 10 - the reveal that nature is healing

The tenth ending uses a series of watercolor murals to depict the duo fooling around in some savanna - amongst a gaggle of fauna that prove Okawa bkub's iconic eyes have the potential to make for some freakin' cute critters, and not just the ugly-cute critters that are our protags. Its ending theme, which is now more relaxed than it already was, obtaining the aspect of a lazy river when the original already felt like waves rippling on a beach shore, is arguably the least necessary rearrangement of the bunch, but I'm not complaining.

But of course, there's something more about this safari that made me put it so high up. What's the first animal you see in it? An otter with a duplicitous grin. It looks just like the one in a skit from this very episode! And after that? There's Unyumaru, the thingy also featured earlier! And this jungle setting in general... it's clearly connecting to the nature documentary that centers the episode's Pop Team Story! (Said story kind of loses interest in the "let's import some hyenas with Popuko eyes before this ecosystem collapses in on itself" plot and turns into some sort of quiz parody instead, so it's nice to see how the biome has been doing since.)

Whereas every other credits sequence is connected to whatever came directly before it (like the 2nd), or welded onto the last skit of the ep (like #4), or it just does its own thing (like 8), End-roll № 10 has the innovative idea to draw from the events of its respective episode. And by innovative, I mean that a similar effect can be peeped in multiple video game credit sequences, and the endings of every other animated feature film ever. and probably also a handful of anime that ended their runs. But not one that ended a random one of its episodes! Episode 10 capitalizes on Season 2's unique ED format in a way that the others don't quite, creating a cute moment that isn't just "The credits that roll during skit 𝒙" or "The experimental short played at the end of Episode 𝒚," but truly "The Credits Sequence of PTE2 Episode 10."

Episode 6 - the one Peer Gynt was afraid to diss

My opinion on which ED is my fave flip-flops between the previously discussed and this about-to-be-discussed. But, if asked this question in public, I would find explaining the appeal of essentially four image pans inefficient compared to presenting the comedy gold that is Ending 6.

All cards on the table, I love the animations of Asami Ike. She's only responsible for three bits across both seasons, but they were so revolutionary that I failed to notice there were only three before I was handed her Sakugabooru page. (Mini ranking, why not: this, then the shark short from season 1, and then the giraffe short at the top🦒)

And I love how hard the components of this scene devote themselves to the comedic timing. We get thirty seconds of Popuko acting like she's about to spit fire in the booth, before pulling up a flute, and then just as the song is about to hit the bass- the music cuts off. The art style shifts. The background turns bright yellow. Popuko absolutely holds onto this one note. She seems to get less on-model with each passing frame. The on-screen credits have gone completely scarce in this credits sequence. And then these little dudes crawl out of a hole in the ground and start throwing it back?? (Special shout-out to the official subs for not giving away the switch: the usual "just two peas in a pod" line is displayed in full, for all of one second. it would have been more honest to type only as much as, say, "We're just two--" but honesty wouldn't be as funny here.) The raw power of this bit's execution becomes a lot more impressive if you see the strip it was based on:

Wow!! That's not funny at all! The boys clearly put an insane amount of elbow grease into transforming this pile of ink and screentones into a brand new legend! If you think about it, the whole ethos of this anime series is based in striving to put a bit too much Time and Effort into adapting the world's most nonsensical manga. It's motivational, kinda.

Okay, goodnight, folks!

Originally, I was going to be stumped as to what to write at the end of this, but... you know, every time I came back to this listicle of a post in my drafts, I would see the visage of one miss Makima, backlit by the heavens.

I feel like there's a higher-than-usual chance my fakeout opening actually worked. Up to and during the time Pop Team was once more on air, I was seeing this woman's visage all over the place. Not so much for the girls. If you were to move a few strings of circumstance, I may simply have never found out that PTE was back. When Poptepipic was first unleashed upon television, it was unlike anything man had seen before. But when it received a second wave, its quirks were just what we expected from the famous 'kuso-anime.' PTE2 didn't do very much to subvert expectations. Maybe that's why this run didn't make as many waves. There were, like, how many new elements in this season? You had B-Side, whose fate I've already gone at length about. There was the way each episode had a collab with Square Enix or some sort of advertisement.. the episode previews for a nonexistent anime were replaced with voice actors chattering.. The most ambitious season 2 got was the two episodes they offered up entirely to a single bit each. (I feel like Gal and Dino did a better job of being a Pop Team Epic 2, or at least a cooler one.) This is why I hold the EDs so dearly - it was a mechanic that broke from both its predecessor and from general anime convention. What a shame that they ended up unveiling this the same season that a more popular anime pulled the same stunt but slightly better.

...Anyways, see you in six months when I post a ranking of Chainsaw Man's EDs, and go on a tangent about how your favorite artistic collaboration filled me with existential horror!

[fanfictonlover]

Donghyuck’s Favorite Nurse part I

Synopsis: You are Haechan’s private duty nurse… 😉

Genre: Some fluff, flirting, work life balance

“Why do I always have to go there at noon?! That’s too close to my lunch break.” You pout. You are pacing back in forth in your nursing agency manager’s office.

Your boss rolls her eyes and exhales. “That’s the time your client chose, ok. And besides that’s when he wakes up. Everyone knows this. Do you want to go there at 1am instead?” She crosses her arms with a smirk.

You wave your hands no dramatically. “When can I change my assignment?” You smile cutely hoping to get the answer you want.

“I honestly don’t know. He requested for you specifically so…”

“WHat?! When were you going to tell me this?”

Your boss gives you a blank stare.

“I thought I was taking this assignment temporarily until his original nurse returns from maternity leave?!”

“… yeah she quit.”

“When?”

“Yesterday…”

“Are you kidding me?! So I’m stuck with this assignment?”

“Looks like it.” Your boss smiles.“What’s the big deal? He’s one of our few VIPs left and he’s the highest paying at the moment. You are also one of our best nurses on staff that have experience in cardiac.”

“Whatever… thanks… but I can’t believe you didn’t tell me his nurse quite.”

“…Ex nurse…” Your boss grins. “Byeeee… it will be over before you know it. Its only four hours… then you can eat.” She escorts you gently but quickly out of her office. She closes and locks the door behind you.

“Wow…” You take a deep breath and head to your parked car.

After 15 minutes of driving through Seoul traffic you arrive at you VIP patient’s luxury apartment.

Inside you enter an elevator and travel up to the 5th floor.

On the 5th floor you deliberately slow down your step to extend your peace as much as possible. Standing outside your patient’s door. You take a very deep and exaggerated breath and press the doorbell. You make sure you are visualized on the built in camera lens.

You wait for about 20 seconds which feel like forever before the door opens slowly. You peak over with a forced smile.

“Hi, I’m the nurse here to assess Lee Donghyuck for his noon appointment.”

“Still calling me Mr. Lee… that’s my dad… call me Donghyuck please. Come in already!” A paler than usual Donghyuk wearing a baggy gray hoodie over a white T-shirt is standing in front of you with a serious case of bed hair. You follow his command and enter the apartment.

“I just woke up… about 10 minutes ago.” He yawns loudly as he closes the door behind you.

“How have you been feeling?” You place you bag on the coffee table in the living room.

“Fine I guess.” Still behind you, his eyes slowly travel up your body.

“Any more chest pain or tightness?”

“Nope… just been tired a lot lately. I have like no energy. I feel weak as fuck all the time.”

“Did you eat today?”

“No. I’m so hungry.” He walks around you and sits down on the sofa with a look of sorrow. He rubs his tummy.

“You have to eat Donghyuck.”

“I don’t know what I want to eat. And I’m too weak to cook anything, and takeout don’t fit my diet plan. This is so annoying.” He crosses his arms and slams his head back on the sofa.

There is a moment of silence then he looks at you with a bright smile. “Can you cook for me… pleeease?”

As you have heard from colleagues his aegyo can shoot through your soul. You try to avoid his gaze and pouting lips.

“Please, please, please, pleeeease?”

“STOP… I’ll cook you something after I examine you, ok?”

“Okay” He speaks with a baby voice. Then he suddenly jumps up takes off his hoodie and T shirt revealing his bare torso. You still haven’t gotten used to seeing it.

He skips to his room and plops back first on his bed. “I’m ready!”

You grab your bag and head to his bedroom.

When you step inside his bedroom you see him in a starfish position. You’re annoyed and tickled at the same time.

“Hurry! I’m hungry.” He continues to pout.

You don gloves, pull out your stethoscope and sanitize it.

The moment you place the diaphragm on his upper chest.

“Oooh it’s cold.” He giggles and begins to stare at you.

You continue to auscultate his heart, lungs, and abdominal sounds as he stares up at you expressionless.

Next you palpate all his pulses starting with the neck and ending with the feet. You remove more tools from your bag and measure his vital signs, and perform a 12 lead ECG. “All of your pulses are present. Your vital signs are good. Your ECG is normal sinus rhythm, which is what we want…” You look up and catch him still staring. “Is everything ok Donghyuck??”

“Yeah… why you ask?” He wonders innocently.

“Well… you’re staring. Is there something you want to say to me?”

“Um… no. I was staring… at you? Yeah right.” He smirks while continuing to stare at you intently.

“Are you still hungry?”

“Of course…” He folds his arms behind his head. “You smell sooo good…” A tiny smirk forms.

“…Uh… thank you Mr. Lee” You try to mask your discomfort. He continues to stare.

“… You know it’s just us here. The others are running errands or with their lovers.” He grins broadly.

Your mouth drops for a split second. “I don’t think you should have told me that.”

“Oh, don’t worry. I trust you with this information.” He turns on his side and faces you. “Did you ever wonder why I requested you as my nurse?” His smirk and eyes widens with anticipation.

“Nope not at all” You lie with a straight face. You avoid his gaze and the flesh of his torso.

“Not even once? I find that hard to believe… well… you can do whatever you want to me. I won’t stop you.” He nods approvingly.

“Mr. Donghyuck!!”

He begins to laugh hysterically.

You stand up to leave. “I’m going to prepare your lunch.”

He mutters under his breath just loud enough for you to hear. “I rather eat you, but ok.” He lays back flat on his back.

Your eyes widen. You pretend you heard nothing and quicken your pace towards the kitchen.

“What is wrong with him today?!” You open the fridge door and scan the ingredients. “He’s way more flirty than usual… I guess he’s bored” You grab all the vegetables you can find. You grunt. “I can’t believe I’m making food for a functioning grown man that’s not my husband… and I didn’t even eat yet!”

You start chopping the vegetables.

“Are you ok?”

You hear his small voice creep up from behind. You force a pleasant tone. “Oh, nothing just fixing you something to eat.”

“Did you eat?”

“No…” You hear the concern in his voice and turn to glance at him. You watch him move closer to you. You also see he has put his shirt back on.

“Well, we can eat together… if you don’t mind. I really don’t like eating by myself.” He leans over to try and peak at what you’re making. “It looks good.”

“Really? I just started.” A small smile forms.

“Whoa…”

“What?”

“You finally smile.” Donghyuck leans on the kitchen countertop next to you and stares up at you in awe.

“Oh come on…” You turn and continue to chop vegetables.

“Really. You know how hard it has been for me to put a smile on your face?”

“… you’re joking.”

“No, I’m serious. I’ve been wanting to see your smile since I met you last month.”

“Are you flirting with me?”

“Um… maybe” He smirks at your astonishment at his bold reply.

“Donghyuk… please stop. I’m your nurse for today.”

“Ok… wait. What do you mean for today?” His mouth drops.

You guide the chopped vegetables into two large bowls. “I honestly don’t find this time the most convenient for my schedule.”

“Why??”

“Because this is the time I usually eat lunch.” You step away and open the fridge. You grab a pack of raw tuna.

“Well that’s perfect. You can just eat with me. I usually eat alone at this time. I hate that.” His voice trails off.

You roll your eyes. “I like to eat alone sometimes.” You return to your chopping station and start creating thin slices of tuna.

“… Ok…”

“I’m sorry…”

He shrugs. “It’s fine. You’re here now so might as well sleep- I mean eat with me.” He smiles broadly.

You ignore that last comment and finally finish making his lunch. You prepared two large colorful bowls of salad with a side of tuna slices. You both sit across from each other at the dinning table.

“Thank you. I really appreciate this.” He takes in a mouthful of salad.

“You’re welcome… Mr. Lee.”

His eyes widen at you. He breaths hard through his nostrils as he chews.

You smirk at his frustration and begin to eat.

“That was so good.” He leans back and rubs his tummy while licking his lips.

“Thanks, I’m glad you enjoyed the meal.”

He stands up and enters the kitchen. He grabs two bottles of water from the fridge. He sits back down at the dining table and hands you a bottle.

“Thank you.”

He smiles softly.

You remove the top and take a sip of water.

He begins gazing at you again. “Now I want desert.”

You fight the urge not to roll your eyes. Not wanting to prepare another dish for this fully functioning adult. You think to yourself. I want to go home… Through a forced smile and professional tone. “What would you like for dessert?”

He continues to stare at you. His lips are slightly parted. He doesn’t answer.

You lean back and finish your bottle of water with one last gulp. You stand up to throw it away.

“Ahh… shit! That hurts… ahhh…”

You whip around and see he is slumped over clenching his chest with his eyes shut tight.

“Oh no…” You run to him. “Donghyuck?! Are you ok?! Mr.Lee?!!” You gently slide him off the chair, and lay him down on the floor. Now on your knees you palpate his carotid artery at the neck. He still has a pulse.

“Mr. Lee!” You shake his shoulders. He is silent with his eyes still closed. He appears to be sleeping.

You also notice his chest rise. He is still breathing. “Mr. Lee!”

You shake his shoulders once more. Still no response. You lean closer to his face. With a soft whisper you utter. “Donghyuck… please…wake up…”

He instantly opens his eyes. “Ok” He swiftly flips you on your back.

Now looking up at him, you are completely startled… and speechless.

“The answer is you… I want you for dessert.” He leans in to kiss you.

You turn your head to avoid his lips.

After two minutes of squirming under him and avoiding his lips you finally speak. “Why are you doing this?!”

“You really don’t know…? I like you.”

“Sure, now get off of me!” You slap his face hard.

“Ow… what was that for? Hmm?” He quickly moves away from you.

“That’s for faking a heart attack!”

“Im sorry… but… you were ignoring me.”

“No I did not!”

He begins to smirk. “You want to date?”

“No…! I am your nurse. Mr. Lee we-“

“Will you please stop calling me that.” His tone is stern.

You nod quickly realizing he is serious.

“I like you, and I want to date you… are you interested?” He looks at you longingly.

“Donghyuck…” You are at a loss for words.

He watches you and when you make eye contact he winks at you.

You quickly stand up and begin to clean up the table. You start washing the now empty bowls.

He stands up and follows you into the kitchen.

“I know it is sudden, but I don’t get to meet women a lot… especially women like you.”

“After I finish cleaning this bowl I’m leaving. I will tell my agency to send you another nurse from now on.”

“I will refuse and ask for you instead… again… and again.” His voice is soft, almost a whisper.

“Then I’ll join another agency.” You quickly snap back.

“I’ll find you.” He leans towards you with a playful smile.

You lean away and finish washing the dishes. “I don’t understand. You are a popular idol with women throwing themselves at you every day. Why me? Are you messing with me? Do you get a kick out this??”

He goes into deep thought. “… I have a type… I’m seriously interested in you… I don’t date my fans.”

“Really… so I guess I have to take your word for it.” You step around him and head out the kitchen.

He grabs your arm and pulls you towards him.

Your chest collides into his. You’re forced to face his handsome face just an inch apart from yours. You gulp down hard.

He suddenly kisses you. The kiss soon evolves into a deep and passionate dance of the tongues. He grips your waist as you completely surrender to him.

The end of part 1

Part 2 exist😉