#and quite a bit of nuance is definitely lost in the subs

[oyeicher]

Unknown Language Notes

This post is inspired by @thisonelikesaliens 's post & @luthienmpl 's tags on the post. If you've ever taken a Mandarin class you probably know all of this already, but for those who don't speak any Mandarin, it might be helpful to familiarize your ear with these words✨

Note: all audio clips are from episode 2

小遠 xiǎo yuǎn [xiáo yuǎn] lit. Little Yuan

Here, 小 (xiǎo), which means small/little, is added in front of 遠 (yuǎn) as a diminutive term. It's pretty common for parents and older relatives to add a 小 in front of the last character of a child's name as an affectionate nickname. Note: In case you're wondering why I've included a second pronunciation in square brackets, it's because the first pronunciation is the one you'd find in a dictionary and the second one is the actual pronunciation of 小遠. This is due to the tone change rule known as "tone sandhi". Basically, when a third tone is followed by a third tone, the first one becomes a second tone.

魏之遠 wèi zhī yuǎn Yuan

魏 (wèi) is his surname. In episode 1, the gang boss says that Wei Xiaoyuan is a bad name and suggests 魏之遠 Wei Zhiyuan (literally Wei's Yuan, Yuan that belongs to Wei) instead. Note: While 小 (xiǎo) is often used in nicknames, it's no longer common in to have this character in one's legal name. You can still find people with names including this character in the older generation, but such names sound uncultured and uneducated to most native speakers (*cough* classism *cough*)

魏謙 wèi qiān Qian

弟弟 dì di younger brother

哥 gē older brother (akin to phi in Thai and hyung/oppa in Korean)

The first audio file is from the scene in which Yuan hands Qian a graduation bouquet, and if you speak Mandarin, you can probably tell that he sounds extremely soft here. I would upload a clip of the scene, but I haven't had much success uploading video clips in the past, so a gif will have to do.

[justicerikai]

graduation

In Japan, when one decides to move onto greener pastures or simply quit the current job they have been doing for quite a while, that is referred to as graduation.

And thus, I too, will be graduating from translating Charisma House.

Earlier this month (May 2023) I decided to go on a break due some medical and personal issues I had to deal with. No thinking about translating at all, just doing what I want and what I like. It's been roughly two weeks now and for someone who is doing things all the time, it was more than enough to decide where I want to keep going with translating.

Of course, this isn't a spontaneous decision. It's something that weighed in the back of my mind for a bit- can I handle all of this? I love translating, but can I handle all of it? No, I cannot. I need to know my limits.

But most importantly, know what's fun.

Charisma House was very novel for me. I had to learn to understand the humor, grasp what's being implied, the nuances of the jokes that can be easily misunderstood if not read properly. It was a challenge that definitely pushed me beyond anything else ever could. And yet, that honeymoon phase of grasping something so novel, so different, has come to an end.

I still love Charisma House, and always will. I actively keep up and peruse the interwebs for fun theories and content. Yet with the direction of Season 2, I have noticed... translating it no longer sparks joy as it once did. It is still good content, but not the one that made me lose my marbles, or perhaps I have simply gotten used to it?

Or perhaps, I simply just... lost the spark and drive I once had for it. And that is fine. Such is the beauty of what's fleeting, 物の哀れ if you will.

Translating Charisma House was, and will always, be a fun experience for me. I'm happy I took the risk, a mere amateur like I, to still translate it. I learned a lot, I laughed a lot, I shared a lot. I never thought I would translate drama tracks, or even still try with song lyrics (which I did give up on but alas). Besides this, I have also dabbled in subbing anime, I have even attempted manga translating. But at the end of the day I realized that what truly sparks joy, what actually is fun for me, for me is visual novel type content.

Not only that, I also want to translate because... I want to. Not because it is an obligation to give the people content. A few weeks ago, my favourite mobile game released an event with my two fave characters and I had so much fun working on it. I felt so excited with each phrase I translated, I couldn't wait to show this to people.

Even when I am thinking of an other mobile game that's coming out soon, all I can think of is "God, I cannot wait to share this with the masses! I have to! It's my duty as a human being!"

That feeling is, alas, what I have been lacking with Charisma House for a while. And that is when I should know better, and draw the line.

As I said, it is no longer fun.

Is it that serious? That I'm dropping a series that I have translated? No, probably not. Happens all the time, I'm sure there are others waiting in line to continue what I was doing, or maybe not. Who knows.

But to me, it is, and that's why I wanted to convey it in a long hefty post.

As closure, I will share some words of one of my favourite manga. Something I live by, and will for as long as possible.

"The world is filled to the brim with nice things... and all of them are carrying someone's intentions and feelings.

When those feelings get across and manage to make someone happy... I gain little pieces of confidence,

that I'll gather together and carry with me as I move on."

And I believe something like that, is only achievable when you do something that is fun, to you.

Thank you for reading, this post, and my translations. Thank you for being able to find enjoyment in Charisma House through my translations. This blog is not going anywhere and will stay up, of course. You will probably still see me around on my other ventures, just not here.

And never forget,

Rikai-kun is cute and he will always be.

Sayonara

[tsukiyadori]

Translation Quality of Fukou-kun wa Kiss suru shika nai Episode 1 on Viki

Since I saw somebody asking about the translation quality of Fukou-kun wa Kiss suru shika nai - I took a little look.

(Just the Viki episode 1 though, since I don't have a subscription and that's the only free episode right now. No Idea about Gagaolala's since I also don't have a subscription there either. Couldn't find what fansubs were referenced on quick look, so also no idea about that one. If somebody wants to provide sub-files I can take a look at the lines, too.)

My brain also blanked out with the OP and the ED has been skipped. (Spare me that bland canned Jpop please...) So no idea about the lyrics.

TL;DR first: Viki's for that episode is… passable. I have seen no hair pulling super major botches that are just utterly wrong and plot/context/characterization breaking. That being said, definitely don't expect brilliancy, either.

Some things that picked my attention in order of appearance:

In the prologue when Kouta talks about his type he uses 子 (ko). That implies a girl. After he drops the act, he's using 人間 (ningen) which means human. This was quaint, because usually you would opt to 人 (hito, person) for something more neutral. No idea what this is supposed to imply or if at all. Translations are fine there, just a lost nuance.

I'm sure I'll meet some great friends -> I'm sure there will be wonderful new meetings/encounters 出会い (deai) is used, which is meeting/encounter. This can mean all sorts of things in that vein, but expressly also means you might have your fated mate meeting (運命の出会い, unmei no deai). So it's definitely implied he's hoping for a bit more. (But the context also supplies this information already, so nothing really lost.)

This introduction was all lies! -> By the way, this prologue just now was COMPLETELY all lies!

That got shortened and also looses out on the typography of the sign. There is this playfulness JP typography that never seems to translate well outside.

Dropping the sweet act, here's my actual introduction This one is actually a good localization. In the fake prologue he uses boku for I (usually more innocently boyish) which then is switched to ore (more rude, manly).

And I've finally come to this conclusion: I'm just meant to be unlucky -> I've arrived at the truth, I have an unlucky condition This is maybe a bit nitpicking. But it's less a conclusion but more like he found the root cause (the truth) and the way he describes his condition is using (体質, taishitsu), which is a physical condition. So basically he takes it in like an identified chronic illness he has no means to get rid of, and that's a mood that reflects across everything he says (to himself), which is full of bitter salty anger, envy or resignation. He also gets pretty venomous nasty often enough, with much ruder, colloquial speech (extension to the switch to ore) which I don't quite think the English captures with as much of a contrast to what he says out loud all that much. The actor's voice does tho, so it still has that vibe from there.

Kirari is a sound effect onomatopoeic word describing a twinkle. Which is why this is a bit of a wild nickname to have as an adult (and a guy).

Typo Izakoi instead of Izayoi once, so QC is probably not the tightest, but also not the worst since there was only one.

Shinomiya gets translated to Naoya, which means this one abides by Western name referencing of first names rather than keeping the Japanese one of referencing last names and its registers of intimacy it denotes. This is jarring by default if you hear Shinomiya, but read Naoya, but it's pretty standard a thing to happen with Japanese translations. What definitely is bad tho is that there is no consistency, because Kouta's acquaintances call him Fukuhara, which is his last name. (If this show ever starts making Kouta switch from Shinomiya to Naoya, and they make a big blushy drama out of it, which the Japanese love to do, probably expect this to make no sense in the translation.)

What a formidable guy -> What a dreadful/frightening guy

lady killer This is obviously a bit awkward with it being in a BL coming from a guy describing the effects on himself, but that one kind of has no short English word. Japanese uses 無自覚天然たらし (mujigaku tennen tarashi). mujigaku means unaware, tennen is a natural airhead (the one that breaks hearts like breathing and never notices) and tarashi means very (in a bit of a condescending manner) and amplifies this once more. (If there is a good Engilish expression, I'm all ears!)

I was hoping we could stay together always - let's stay together That is super awkward, but the translator probably tried their best to retain some levels of ambiguity for the misunderstanding. The word used is 付き合い (tsukiai), which can mean accompany but very much also means dating. The way Kouta asks it is literally how you'd ask somebody out for dating, and he does this even in a very typical girly shy manner (completely in contrast with his thoughts in more guyish informal register).

Other than that, the translation definitely doesn't feel like natural English, but also not like that Engrish you'd get from a Japanese native person usually. (My guess is it's intermediate-advanced proficiency, one of the typical pit traps in that stage is still to be too literal and have Japanese sentence structures invade your translation.) Refreshing for one doesn't sound like anything a native English speaker would say to describe a person. What is meant here is a person who is kind of upbeat and agreeable to their surroundings, or somebody who's good at smoothing things out with their way of talking. (But also not suave or so.) Maybe affable, amiable, pleasant? (But then I don't think Westerners ever mumble so fascinated about a person after they're gone, bar in a more sexually/romantically/idolizing coded fawning sense to begin with…?)

[bidonica]

Are jaime and Cersei both the golden child? And Tyrion the scapegoat. Or is jaime the golden child, Tyrion the scape goat and Cersei the lost child? As in the roles of children with a narcissist

Ok but: is Tywin a narcissist? I don’t think the definition applies to him. Granted, I’m not a psychiatrist (and most sources regarding narcissistic parents available online seem to be anecdotal or from dubious pop psychology sites), so my assessment is as valid as anyone else’s, but I don’t think that’s Tywin’s specific deal. He’s abusive and emotionally withdrawn, but his self importance is Lannister self importance (and by extension, all the highborn characters have a bit of that; it’s literally baked in the social system, that some people are better by others *by birth*), he doesn’t love bomb, doesn’t play the victim when things don’t go his way, he’s ambitious but in a realistic way, not in a delusions of grandeur way.

Now, it’s inevitable that a contemporary author like Martin has assimilated some pop psychology along the way, and generally speaking, I believe we all understand the psychological impact of familial relationships differently than people from the pre modern era asoiaf mostly draws from. Parents loving or not loving their children, the things those children do to gain that love and approval, is kind of a big theme in asoiaf; and it’s because us 20th and 21st century people have assimilated the notion that the relationship with your family is crucial for your development as a person, but Martin is also good at writing characters that can’t really conceptualize that in-universe. They feel the same aches that they would in a contemporary setting, but they mostly trace them back to things like being unable to fulfill their duty within the family (whatever that duty is supposed to be), or feeling robbed of their birthright, etc. And then there’s things they simply don’t expect to happen, like most highborn people wouldn’t feel deprived of love and attention for having spent more time with wetnurses and septas and maesters as children than they did with their own parents (but they probably would now, and that’s why we have so many seasons of The Crown).

For example, take this quote from the wikipedia page for Narcissistic Parent: “narcissistic parents may speak of "carrying the torch", maintaining the family image, or making the mother or father proud”. This is something that Tywin does, and he is… right? Because in the world they live in, this stuff matters. He takes it to extremes, because he is an asshole, but while one could argue that all narcissists are assholes, not all assholes are narcissists.

But even assuming we could apply the golden child vs scapegoat roles to the Lannister children… I don’t think any of them fit so neatly into those boxes. Even Jaime and Cersei, who live most of their life getting Tywin’s apparent approval (especially in comparison to Tyrion) seem to perceive Tywin as more like a distant god that needs to be appeased rather than as someone they get to be an extension of. Tyrion is definitely a scapegoat in the grand scheme of things, but it’s not out of nowhere - his birth coincided with the death of Joanna, a stabilizing force in the family, and by most of the accounts we get genuinely loved by Tywin (not that that stopped him from having a secret passage to a brothel built for him. Anyway); he’s also disabled in a society that sees outward deformity as a sign of moral failure. But Tyrion is also a Lannister, which in Tywin’s worldview (which is Westeros’ worldview amped to 11) still puts him a step above most people in spite of the personal disdain he has for him, so he also bestows some pretty big responsibility on Tyrion such as subbing for him as Hand or being master of coin. I guess you can squeeze these dynamics into the “a narcissist and his children” boxes, but in my opinion that would require overlooking quite a bit of nuance in these characters’ personalities and history, as well as the cultural context Martin has placed them in.

[commentaryvorg]

Digimon Data Squad Dub Comparison Episode 5 - Digital World, Here We Come!

This is a companion to my commentary on the original Japanese Digimon Savers! Reading my commentary on the original version of this episode (which you can find here) is recommended before reading this dub comparison.

Original name ~ Dubbed name

Masaru Daimon ~ Marcus Damon

Yoshino Fujieda ~ Yoshino “Yoshi” Fujieda

Tohma H. Norstein ~ Thomas H. Norstein

Captain Rentarou Satsuma ~ Commander Richard Sampson

[Since several characters share the same name between the original and the dub, quotes from the dub will always be in italics, while quotes from the original will not, in order to distinguish them.]

A fun thing the dub does with recaps is that the narration is done by one of the characters, commenting on the events of the episode in-character. This time, it’s Thomas. (It’s actually usually Thomas, far more often than it really ought to be, but it makes sense for this one.)

Recap Thomas: “Marcus couldn’t take orders if he were a waiter in a restaurant.”

The in-character-ness of these recap lines helps add a little more flavour to the recaps than the original has, which I appreciate.

Recap Thomas:  “So in order to clean up Marcus’s mess, I took it upon myself to disobey orders…”

Thomas definitely did not do this out of believing this was solely Marcus’s mess and he was simply being gracious enough to clean that up for everyone. But, it does make a lot of sense that he might frame it that way when describing the situation to somebody else rather than admit that he felt like he’d failed, so I don’t mind this at all.

Agumon: “Quiet as a sleeping mime!”

Agumon how do you know what a mime is

Yoshino:  “What are you doing.”

~~~~~

Yoshi: “What are you doing?!”

Alas, Yoshi’s delivery of this line is very much loud and frustrated, rather than delightfully deadpan at their terrible stealth skills.

Masaru:  “Tohma did a Digital Dive? Damn it, he got away before us!”

~~~~~

Marcus: “Thomas did a Digital Dive?! I’ll teach him to be sneakier than me!”

He was definitely sneakier than you, Marcus.

Yoshino:  “Before?”

Agumon:  “Nothing, he’s just talking to himself.”

~~~~~

Yoshi: “Huh?”

Agumon: “Aw, don’t be jealous.”

Though I enjoy the “sneakier” line, as a result we do lose the fun bit where Masaru accidentally pretty much told Yoshino his intent to follow Tohma, and Agumon awkwardly tried to cover for him (and Yoshino didn’t really notice anyway because she was too busy worrying about Tohma).

Yoshino:  “Doing a Dive when the equipment hasn’t even been tested on humans…”

~~~~~

Yoshi: “What was Thomas thinking, going into a Digital Dive when it hasn’t even been tested on humans yet?”

Yoshi isn’t mentioning this specific equipment and appears to be saying that any Digital Dive has never been done with humans before. …But then again, she probably doesn’t know any better.

Masaru:  “I’m just going there to settle my fight!”

~~~~~

Marcus: “I’m not gonna let Thomas finish the fight that I started!”

Marcus brings up the notion that this is partly about not wanting Thomas to steal away his fight a little bit earlier than Masaru does. (Even though this can’t have always been about that, because he didn’t even know Thomas had gone over there too until Yoshi told him.)

Yoshino:  “You’re just going to make things worse!”

~~~~~

Yoshi: “You’re just gonna make things worse for me and everyone else at DATS!”

The dub apparently had some extra lip-flap for this line and filled it with Yoshi making a pretty relevant point about who’s going to have to clean up their mess.

Agumon: “I’ll help you break it ‘til it’s fixed too, Boss!”

Here’s some fun oblivious dub-Agumon snark-that-isn’t-snark.

Yoshino:  “Return to where you first entered by 0500. That’s where I’ll bring you both back.”

~~~~~

Yoshi: “Make sure both of you are back to your port of entry by 0500. Otherwise I won’t be able to bring you back.”

In the dub, apparently the time limit is for Yoshi being able to bring him back at all, rather than the implication I took from the original that this is mostly about her not wanting Satsuma to learn that this ever happened. I guess it could be reasonable to think that the return-transfer without any actual equipment on the Digital World side has to happen within a certain time window after the initial Dive or the signal’s too weak?

Masaru:  “Bah, it’s like having a curfew.”

~~~~~

Marcus:  “Oh boy, it’s like havin’ a curfew again.”

Heh, that added “again” makes it even clearer that Marcus has definitely had curfews before.

Agumon:  “Aniki, I’m kinda nervous…”

Masaru:  “Don’t get scared now, idiot.”

~~~~~

Agumon: “I’m getting’ kinda scared, Boss…”

Marcus: “N’agh, don’t be a big baby.”

Bah, the dub loses the interesting nuance of Masaru calling him an idiot for getting nervous and instead turns this into a very simplistic and derogatory “being scared is for babies”.

Agumon:  “You sure this is okay?”

Masaru:  “You think I know?”

~~~~~

Agumon: “You sure this is safe?”

Marcus: “Let’s find out.”

I am also sad at the loss of Masaru letting slip a tiny hint that he isn’t sure about this at all. Marcus’s line does have a non-enthusiastic, very firm “shut up and stop trying to make me freak out” tone to it, which is better than it could be, but still.

Agumon:  “Aniki… You’re the one who’s upside-down.”

Masaru:  “I knew that.”

~~~~~

Agumon: “Boss, you’re the one who’s upside-down.”

Marcus:  “I see.”

The dub goes with the “I see” translation of what Masaru said in Japanese rather than how the subs interpreted it, and I approve.

Masaru:  “So this is the Digital World…”

~~~~~

Marcus: “Wow… My first time in the Digital World!”

You… you talk like you’re planning on making coming here a regular thing, Marcus. (I mean, he will be, but he shouldn’t have any reason to believe that right now.)

Agumon:  “It’s my first time seeing it too.”

~~~~~

Agumon: “It’s mine, too.”

…Though I guess this was just so Agumon could say the same thing about it being his first time here despite having less lip-flap to say it with.

The BGM cue is weirdly sinister leading up to Agumon telling Marcus to come over and see something… because it’s about to go to a commercial break. Cut back from the commercial break and Agumon’s just pointing out some perfectly non-threatening Digital World weirdness. The troubles of having to fit in more commercial breaks than a show was originally written to have.

Agumon:  “Look, Aniki! They’re here, too!” [some Airdramon fly past in the sky]

Masaru:  “They’re flying!”

Agumon:  “And them!” [some Tsunomon bounce past nearby]

Masaru:  “They’re bouncing!”

Agumon:  “And them!” [some Pyokomon walk by]

Masaru:  “They’re walking!”

~~~~~

Agumon: “Look, a flock of flying dragons!” [some Airdramon fly past in the sky]

Marcus: “You don’t see that every day.”

Agumon:  “Or them, either.” [some Tsunomon bounce past nearby]

Marcus: “Wow, they’re cool!”

Agumon: “What are they?” [some Yokomon walk by]

Marcus: “Walking plants!”

The original bit here always struck me as weird, the way Masaru was just excitedly exclaiming “they’re verbing!” at each Digimon. Possibly it sounds more natural in Japanese somehow? But either way, the dub did well to change this to remarks that are a lot more sensible for Marcus to make.

Yoshi: “‘Forget him. Let him figure out how to get back on his own.’ I mean, what’s stopping him from just saying that?”

Yoshi actually tries to do an imitation of Marcus’s voice for this bit. And she gives it quite the moody tone, because she is understandably rather frustrated at the thought that Marcus might really just ignore finding Thomas. It’s pretty great.

Lalamon:  “You’re over-thinking it.”

~~~~~

Lalamon: “Marcus would *never* say that!”

Lalamon in the dub is somehow way more sure of this and sounds like she’s trying to defend Marcus, which doesn’t really seem right.

(Marcus does in fact then deliver the line with a bit more pointed emphasis than Masaru, who was just being unbothered and nonchalant, so I guess Yoshi was somewhat right to imitate him saying it like that.)

The BGM while Marcus and Agumon explore the Digital World is not remotely equivalent to the original’s Main Theme that evoked the sense of discovery and exploration. Instead this BGM just seems to want us to feel like this is ominous and alien (even though the Digital World really isn’t that alien at all).

Agumon:  “I feel like I’m having déjà vu, Boss.”

Marcus: “How would you know what that means?”

Exactly, Marcus! Agumon knows way too many terms that he shouldn’t know; apparently the dub finally felt like lampshading it for once. (Though honestly, déjà vu is more reasonable than most, because it’s not an inherently human concept.) This isn’t going to stop them having Agumon continue to do this, of course.

Sampson: “What are you doing?”

Yoshi: “Just helping the hopeless. Why does this stuff always happen to me?”

I approve of Yoshi complaining even more about always having to be the one to clean up after those idiots.

Kudamon:  “Looks like you are searching for something, but just what are you searching for?”

Yoshino:  “Um… A rich bachelor! …Just kidding… La… Lalamon…”

Lalamon:  [slowly backing away] “I think I’ll stay out of this…”

~~~~~

Kudamon:  “It looks like you’re searching for something. What exactly?”

Yoshi: “It’s, umm… mm… An earring! That’s… it…! Right… Lalamon…?”

Lalamon: [slowly backing away] “I think I left my bathtub running…”

I approve of the dub changing this joke to not be about Yoshino apparently looking for romance (although, since she was joking, that doesn’t necessarily mean that she actually cares about finding a rich bachelor just because she’s a woman). Lalamon’s bathtub comment doesn’t make any sense, of course, but it doesn’t need to since this is just a comedic excuse.

Masaru:  “Doesn’t matter where this is! Let’s go, Agumon!”

~~~~~

Marcus: “Now’s our chance! Let’s go!”

Lost that line in which Masaru is either still straightforwardly ignoring the terrain, or only trying to tell himself to ignore the terrain and the fact that Drimogemon is at a huge advantage here.

Agumon:  “Aniki!”

Masaru:  “Idiot, don’t get scared over something like this!”

~~~~~

Agumon: “We’re done for!”

Marcus: “Don’t get all melodramatic on me now, Agumon!”

The dub takes away the fun nuance of Masaru’s opinion about getting scared again… but at least this dub line is still perfectly reasonable in its own right.

Agumon:  “At least we had these soft rocks to break our fall.”

This sounds like another obliviously-not-snarky Agumon line… but surely he has to know that the rocks aren’t actually soft? (Maybe this is just the dub writers taking a shot at the fact that they somehow didn’t get badly hurt from that fall, which is fair.)

Masaru:  “What’s this? Does that mean the same thing happened to you?” [he and Agumon burst out laughing] “I see, you’re just like us!”

~~~~~

Marcus: “Hold it. So basically, you were outsmarted by a giant gopher.” [he and Agumon burst out laughing] “Get a load of the ‘genius’!”

Ugh, nope, I don’t like this version. Masaru’s line made a really clear point of him realising that Tohma is just the same as him. He’s not shying away from the fact that he fell into Drimogemon’s trap as well, and he’s not looking down on Tohma; he just suddenly finally feels on the same level. But Marcus completely avoids mentioning that he and Agumon met the same fate, and instead this is all a mocking “ha ha, look at the genius being an idiot”, trying to drag Thomas down and feel above him.

In the original, Tohma’s leg injury was visibly bleeding, but the dub edited the blood out because I guess even a small patch of blood was too much for the dub’s censors. It’s still reasonable that Thomas could have some kind of non-bleeding injury like a sprain, but it does mean that the shot focusing on his perfectly unhurt-looking leg as Marcus realises he’s injured looks kind of silly.

Tohma:  “Stop that. I don’t need you to help—”

Masaru:  “When you’re a man… When you’re a man, there are some things you just have to *do* despite yourself.”

~~~~~

Thomas: “Let go. Whatever help you have to offer, I don’t need—”

Marcus: “Yes you do. Wake up. Put aside your stubbornness for once and let us help you.”

Don’t really like this either. If the dub had removed the manliness mention like it insists on doing and otherwise kept Masaru’s general sentiment intact – he’s putting aside his stubbornness because this is the right thing to do – I’d have been basically okay with this. But instead, this is putting the focus entirely on Thomas needing to put aside his stubbornness. It comes across like it was easy for Marcus to help Thomas without any kind of hesitation, almost like he didn’t even have any stubbornness of his own to put aside in the first place.

(And this is despite the fact that Marcus was being more of a dick to Thomas than Masaru was just a moment ago.)

The change in sentiment also doesn’t quite fit Masaru’s expression, which is one of firmly declaring his manly principles. When he’s making a point of offering help like this, I’d have expected Marcus’s expression to be something a little softer.

Agumon: “You’re making me cry, Boss!”

Agumon’s moved response to this – exactly the same as in the original – also doesn’t fit quite as well here when it’s not in response to any kind of manly principles and making compromises to do the right thing on Marcus’s part.

Masaru:  “Let’s get outta here first. Then we can think about other things.”

~~~~~

Marcus: “First we need to get out of here. After that, we can start arguing again.”

Marcus bringing up the arguing is fine, I guess, since that is definitely what he’s thinking, but I did really like how Masaru didn’t even outright bring it up while they were in this truce situation of needing to work together.

Masaru:  “It’s that way.”

Tohma:  “No, it’s this way.”

Masaru:  “Why?”

Tohma:  “I’m not like you. If we move around randomly, we’ll never get out of here.”

Masaru:  “But why?”

~~~~~

Marcus: “Let’s go this way.”

Thomas: “No, that way.”

Marcus: “How come?!”

Thomas: “Don’t argue with me. If we go with your no-plan method, we’ll never get out of here.”

Marcus: “Just say how come!”

In the original, Masaru was genuinely just wondering why, but in the dub, Marcus’s tone is notably angry and argumentative. Thomas’s “don’t argue with me” is also harsher, but then it’s kind of called for with Marcus’s tone.

Masaru:  “Hey, you’re pretty smart!”

~~~~~

Marcus: “Hey, maybe you are a genius!”

This is still Marcus acknowledging Thomas’s intelligence for the first time, but I like it less because he mentions the genius thing. For one, it really doesn’t take a literal genius to think to mark their path with something, and this is just making Marcus seem stupider for him to think it does. But mostly, I really liked how Masaru acknowledged Tohma’s smarts on a regular down-to-earth level that he himself could understand and relate to, which doesn’t work when Marcus still makes it about him being a genius.

Tohma:  “As I said, I’m not like you.”

~~~~~

Thomas: “Compared to you? Believe me, it doesn’t take much.”

This and the earlier part of the argument loses the bit with Tohma still trying to make the point that he’s not like Masaru despite Masaru having started to see them as similar earlier, because the dub messed up that part earlier. Instead, Thomas is still just implicitly calling Marcus stupid.

Agumon:  “Aniki… When are we gonna get outta here?!”

Masaru:  “Don’t worry! Keep up your spirits and we’ll use it to work this out somehow!”

Tohma:  “Spirit has nothing to do with it, but we *are* heading up.”

~~~~~

Agumon: “Boss… When are we gonna get outta here already?!”

Marcus: “Stop complaining and think positive! We’ll get outta here soon!”

Thomas: “Being positive has nothing to do with it. However, we *are* heading towards the surface.”

This is almost exactly the same – “spirit” and “positivity” mean basically the same thing in this context. But I did like Masaru saying that keeping their spirits up will help them to escape in and of itself, which Marcus didn’t say. Masaru’s not wrong to say that! If they didn’t believe it was possible to get out, it’d be a lot harder for them to do so.

Masaru:  “You’re really unbearable.”

Tohma:  “You too.”

~~~~~

Marcus: “You know, you really are a downer sometimes.”

Thomas: “You too.”

The original made sense as both of them agreeing that the other’s opposite attitude can be frustrating for them personally. But Thomas agreeing that Marcus is also a downer kind of completely contradicts the part where Marcus was literally just encouraging them to stay positive.

Satsuma:  “Hurry!”

~~~~~

Sampson:  “No excuses, just do it! Hurry!”

This is as Miki and Megumi are trying to find Marcus and Thomas’s Digivice signals but are struggling because there’s too much static. Which isn’t an excuse; it’s a legitimate reason why this is taking so long. There’s no way they’re deliberately slacking off and making excuses to do so, so Sampson comes across as a lot more unreasonably harsh here. It’s still easy to read it as him only being harsh because he’s worried, but still. Chill, Sampson, they’re doing their best.

Masaru:  “Hey, are you okay?”

~~~~~

Marcus: “Hey, what’s the matter *now*?!”

As Tohma tries to walk back from the opening to the big cavern without Masaru but stumbles due to his leg injury, Masaru is just checking if he’s okay – but Marcus is being a jerk and acting like Thomas has been constantly making up reasons to complain. As if Thomas wouldn’t have been stoic and refusing to complain about the pain the whole time, and as if Marcus wasn’t just willingly helping him with this exact problem. Geez. Dub, stop making Marcus more of a jerk, especially when it doesn’t even make any sense among the rest of his actions here.

Thomas: “Earth to Marcus! Didn’t you hear me when I said the caves are unstable?”

I do enjoy this English-specific way for Thomas to get across his frustration at Marcus ignoring how it’s dangerous to fight in here. (And implying that he lives on a different and very fighty planet to everyone else is fun too.)

Masaru:  “I’m not gonna run or hide! A man takes his fights head-on!”

~~~~~

Marcus:  “A real champion doesn’t run and hide! Let’s meet the enemy head-on!”

Since the dub insists on removing the manliness, changing it to “champion” and keeping the rest of the sentiment intact is just about the most adequate thing they can do here. But it still loses that delightful connection this kind of thing has to all of Masaru’s other manly principles (such as helping out people who need it even if you don’t really like them!), and it makes it seem like his fighting thing is just about winning rather than that it’s connected to this concept of being a good person in his head.

Gaomon:  “Master!”

~~~~~

Gaomon: “Thomas!”

Sometimes Gaomon yells “Master!” on its own with no other dialogue, and since that’s two lip-flaps, the dub can’t replace it with “Sir!” – so instead they have to have Gaomon use Thomas’s actual name in these instances, which gives a bit of a different feel.

Masaru:  “Yo.”

~~~~~

Marcus: “…Hi there.”

Marcus’s line as he reaches the Drimogemon’s head is a lot more nervous in delivery, which is less fun than Masaru’s audaciously bold “Yo.”

Thomas has a comment specifying that the colosseum is made of ice. Its composition is never actually stated in the original and I assumed it was crystals, but I guess ice works, too? …Maybe not, though, because you’d expect GeoGreymon’s attacks to melt it, and they aren’t shown doing so. And digging through ice would probably be a lot easier than crystals and maybe still possible for Drimogemon.

…Oh dear, they cut out the brief moment of impact when Marcus punches Drimogemon. Apparently that’s too violent or something, a guy punching a huge cartoon mole. While I think this is the first time this has been done so far (unless I wasn’t paying attention in the earlier episodes), this will be happening a lot. It’s really quite bewildering to me why the dubbers have been required to cut the punching out of this anime which is a lot about its main character punching things. If the execs don’t want punching in their anime, why the hell are they licensing this anime for their channel?

Unlike in the original, the dub’s evolution music does play while they evolve their partners. Rather than being used to highlight triumphant moments, it feels like just an obligatory fanfare of evolution. It even essentially plays twice, starting in the exact same way as each of them begins their DNA Charge – though in fairness, the second loop of it has some extra elements and layers added to the music so that it isn’t completely repetitive.

Thomas: “Wait!”

Marcus: “What now?”

Marcus’s delivery of the “what now?” is amusingly deadpan and sounds so Done with Thomas constantly coming up with new reasons why he can’t just fight the thing, and damn it, it made me chuckle.

Thomas: “Marcus! Do you remember the last battle?”

Marcus: “The last *what*?!”

Marcus’s response here is weird. Why would the mention of a battle be the part that he’s questioning? Since that doesn’t make any sense, the only way to read this is that he’s being pointlessly argumentative again.

To make up for the dub’s unyielding insistence on only using the evolution music for literal evolutions rather than triumphant moments, at least they use Probably Marcus’s Theme for the actual victory moment, which has a similarly triumphant sort of mood. However, it does kick in a bit later, only when they begin to attack, rather than as soon as Tohma decides to try the Masaru-like strategy, which is a bit of a shame.

Tohma:  “Their combined powers enhanced each other and became amplified to more than before!”

~~~~~

Thomas: “With their powers combined, I wonder how much the strength of their attacks increased by?”

Since Thomas phrases his line as a question, it reads a lot less like a metaphor of him and Marcus working together. I… don’t know if the dub writers actually realised this was a metaphor in order to keep the line sounding like that.

Masaru:  “Did you see that?!” [he starts laughing]

~~~~~

Marcus: “He’s an egg!” [he starts laughing]

Masaru is laughing out of exhilarated excitement at their win, but Marcus meanwhile just sounds like somehow the fact that Digmon is now an egg is the most hilarious thing ever. Uhhhh? You’ve seen Digimon turn into eggs when they’re defeated before?

This also has a bit of a different tone in the dub because the triumphant music has ended and there’s no BGM here, while Believer is still wrapping up at this point in the original.

Speaking of BGM, the heartwarming acoustic guitar version of Probably Marcus’s Theme plays during this scene where he and Thomas officially become friends, and it’s cute.

Masaru:  “Nah, that was just spirit!”

~~~~~

Marcus: “Nah! That was absolutely pure luck!”

It wasn’t pure luck, though! There was deliberate strategy involved of directing Drimogemon towards the surface and then towards the colosseum – he even mentioned that he was looking for a suitable battleground. It wasn’t something he had planned from the very beginning when he jumped down and was instead improvised as he went along, but calling it luck is completely wrong. Masaru’s a lot more appropriate to call it “spirit” – he used his spirit to make those in-the-moment decisions!

Marcus’s laugh here again sounds like he finds something weirdly hilarious, rather than that he’s just being an excited dork.

Thomas: (How do you make the illogical logical?)

Come on, Thomas, the illogical is logical! All you gotta do is make it so! Obviously Marcus doesn’t even worry about how, that’s completely the opposite of the point there.

Agumon:  “Aniki’s got himself another follower!”

Gaomon:  “Master is no follower!”

~~~~~

Agumon: “Looks like the Boss has got himself another employee!”

Thomas: “Let’s not push our luck.”

I am sad that they took this sentiment away from Gaomon. Let him be a good dog who can’t see his Master ever not being a master!

Satsuma:  “As members of this organisation, you must uphold the rules!”

[pause; everyone looks ashamed; Satsuma turns his back to them]

Satsuma:  “You four… Well done in returning.”

~~~~~

Sampson:  “As members of this organisation, you must follow the rules! I have only one more thing to say to you two!”

[pause; everyone mumbles in nervous anticipation; Sampson turns his back to them]

Sampson: “…Well done. It’s good to have you safely back home.”

I like the presentation of this moment better in the dub! The added angry-sounding “I have one more thing to say,” like he’s about to reprimand them even more and then subverting their expectations works well to make the sudden praise and concern for them hit harder.

Overall differences

This one’s very similar! A lot of the stuff I pointed out here is really quite minor stuff, and some of those minor changes – not all, but a higher proportion than usual, I think – were lines I actually kind of liked a little more in the dub. Wow. (Though there are of course still some minor things I like less, such as the usual Marcus being more of a jerk.)

The only real significant differences I want to note are the changes to Masaru’s “You’re just like us!” and “When you’re a man, there’s some things you just have to do despite yourself” lines. Those are some of the most important lines in this episode in showing why Masaru begins to bridge the gap between him and Tohma, and the dub watered down that interesting nuance quite a bit.

[dutchdread]

Hello! I'm quite new in FFVII fandom and I have a doubt. Soldier Cloud doesn't remember he loved Tifa, right? Why? It's a confusing point and I'm finding contradictory opinions on the web. Thanks

Edit: I originally went into a lot of specifics for this post, but I just realized that since you're a newbie, your question might have been a bit more surface level than how I read it. I figured you were asking about how it's possible to forget a feeling, but you might have been asking about the mechanics behind his memory loss in general, so I'll give a quick answer concerning that first, then if you wanted a more in-depth answer, you can read on. Clouds memory loss is the result of three different parts: 1: Jenova cells. Cloud has been injected with Jenova cells, Jenova is able to read minds and adjust its host based on that. Jenova tricked the cetra by coming in the guise of their loved ones. She's a parasite, through Jenova Sephiroth is able to exert his will on those who share Jenova cells. Clouds persona was made up for a large part of memories that were read from Tifa. Had Cloud not received that specific input he would likely have become one of the black robed individuals, completely sub-subservient to Sephiroths will. 2: Mako poisoning. Cloud was drenched in Mako, Mako is made up out of condensed lifestream, which are the souls and memories of the dead. This basically jumbled up his own soul to where it became difficult for him to keep his own identity intact. This is similar to dying where your soul is mingled with the lifestream and you lose your individuality. Cloud had a weak sense of self and was therefore very susceptible to this effect. 3: Emotional trauma. Cloud is ashamed of his failures, he failed to protect Tifa as a kid, failed to join soldier, failed to save his mother, failed to save Nibleheim, failed to save Tifa AGAIN, and failed to save Zack. Cloud can't live with the past and set-up emotional barriers in order to protect himself from the truth of his past. Those are the three reasons in a nut-shell, for a more detailed explanation about how it's possible for Cloud to actually forget his feelings, read on. These are the kinds of things where a bit of interpretation and reading between the lines is unavoidable, there is not some kind of detailed guide on exactly what Soldier Cloud remembers and feels, but this is my informed opinion.

We run into a problem here where first we have to go through the tricky business of describing what love actually is. If you want my more detailed opinion on that, I recommend reading this post: "What is love, baby don't hurt me"

You said you're new to the fandom, so let me first warn you that I will go into spoilers about basically everything, so if you happen to only have played remake, I'd advise against continuing. What is important for this question is that one of the main things that distinguishes love from merely a physiological reaction is an intellectual understanding of who you are, who the other person is, what they mean to you, and why. Otherwise, love would be reduced just a chemical reaction in your body. If, for some reason, I were to totally forget about my brother, and were then to run into him would I still have an emotional reaction to him? Would I sub-consciously still know that this is someone who matters deeply to me? Or would he feel the same as a stranger? I can't confidently say one way or the other, nor do the real life working of love necessarily apply to a fictional setting, but I do know that my memories of him, and my conscious knowledge of what he means to me is at the very least an important part of the emotional experience. Lets break up your question into several parts to get some nuance, because you might be asking one of several things. 1: Why does soldier Cloud not remember that he used to have feelings for Tifa when he was a child. 2: Why does Cloud losing his memories also make him temporarily lose his current love for Tifa. Both of these questions have similar answers. The first thing to point out is that Clouds condition isn't "memory loss", memory loss is a part of it, but it's more like a symptom. The real problem is closer to repression. Cloud doesn't just "not remember" the past, he's repressing it. He's repressing who he was, and everything that might conflict with the fake persona he's built for himself. When he hears the word "Zack", it's not just a name he can't remember, no, his mind straight up refuses to even hear it. This is the first clue to why Cloud might not "remember his feelings", because if they don't fit the image he's trying to convey, he would repress them. But I think Cloud is, on some level, aware of his feelings. When he thinks Tifa gets injured, he panics, when someone flirts with Tifa, he gets jealous. He gives her the flower, he calls her beautiful. But if he were to act like a smitten village boy, that would definitely not fit the cool soldier façade he's putting on, so he's hiding those emotions from both the outside world, and himself. In my opinion we all put on some sort of mask when dealing with other people, although for the most of us it's not that intense, it's pretending to be happy when you're sad, keeping calm when really you're fuming, but for Cloud it's a bit different his façade is not just a mask he puts on for the world while he himself knows he's different in private, Cloud himself believes the lie. His mind will even lie to itself in order to protect himself from the truth. And the truth is very much entwined with his feelings concerning Tifa. All of his posturing, all of his failures, all of his inadequacies spring from those events in his childhood. So not only is Clouds mind repressing all the real memories of those times, causing Cloud to not realizing how important Tifa really is, but it's highly likely that it would even repress the memories of the feelings that caused all of it, along with the feelings themselves. I think most people can relate about having embarrassing childhood memories about stupid things we did to impress some girl or boy. And to recap the mechanics behind it, there are three main contributing factors. The first are the Jenova cells in his body, Jenova can read minds and shapeshift, and acts almost like a parasite taking over its host. This is the first and most important part of the actual mechanics of how Cloud lost his memories, and since this is a little more tangible than just normal human repression, it's not to be wondered at that the effects might be a bit more extreme and far-reaching than they would be if a person in our world was suffering from trauma induced memory repression. The second is the Mako

showers Cloud experienced. Mako is made from condensed lifestream, and contains the thoughts and feelings of the dead. When someone with a weak sense of self, like Cloud, is showered in Mako, it becomes easy to lose sight of who you really are in the maelstrom of thoughts and voices. This would very likely aid make your mind more malleable. The third is normal human psychology. Most stories have internal and external hurdles to overcome, when done correctly the external hurdles are in some way representative of the internal emotional struggles. The mechanics through which something happens represents some deeper, more human moral lesson or experience. In this case, while mechanically Clouds fake persona is created by the Jenova cells, narratively it is caused by his feelings of inadequacy, his fear of failure, and his desire to be someone he's not. That's the human story that is being told through swords and explosions. You have to look at these things together to really understand Clouds fake persona, the narrative purpose it serves, and as a result, why his relationship with Tifa would be one of the things that gets repressed. It's not the memories themselves that matter most, it's the emotions associated with them.

There is some irony here, Cloud originally wanted to be a soldier in order to get Tifa to notice him, but actually living out that "cool guy" persona requires him to not acknowledge those feelings, luckily for him, "soldier Cloud" isn't the version of Cloud that Tifa is interested in anyway.

[reversemoon255]

Healin' Good Precure

I finished another season of Precure; yeah! It's not that I didn't watch Hugtto or Twinkle, but I had issues with the sub groups I was following during both seasons, and fell off half-way through. Which sucks because I heard Twinkle ended up being really good. I do have all the episodes I haven't watched saved somewhere, but whether I'll get to them or not is up in the air as I'm really bad at binging shows.

But we're not here to talk about those seasons, we're here to talk about the latest season, which I quite enjoyed. It was definitely on the more mellow side of the spectrum, but it had a very well-rounded cast of both humans, faeries, and villains, which fits the more slice-of-life attitude the show rolled with. Is it my favorite? No, but I think it still had a lot of positive things going for it.

The Good: Let's start with the characters. Nodoka was a very chill pink, which is a nice change of pace. Pinks are usually very energetic and outgoing, and Nodoka still has those characteristics, but a much more laid-back personality. Her backstory is also very poignant for the series, and how it ends up tying into the plot was not unforeseeable, but still well executed. Chiyu is a standard cool blue with chinks in her armor, but like Nodoka is usually very laid back which helps her stand out amongst the crowd. Despite how generic she seems on paper, I can't really think of another blue that acts like Chiyu, which is a point in the positive. Hinata has the quirky yellow thing down flat. In terms of general personality, she acts more like a pink than Nodoka does. She's also two character tropes we haven't seen in Precure yet: Gyaru and Dumb. I don't mean anything bad by that, but Hinata definitely acts very anime-gyaru, which is very funny to me as I feel like Gyaru are typically not portrayed as role models. She's also not smart; and don't get me wrong, there are plenty of Precure that aren't geniuses, but Hinata actively tries and doesn't have the attention span to do it. It makes her far too relatable as someone who was not the biggest fan of school. Asumi was an interesting take on the fairy-turned-Precure idea, basically being a husk that has to experience emotions for the first time. She is also very mellow, making it 3-for-4. It's a very laid back team.

Rabirin, Pegitan, and Nyatoran are all very good faries. They can carry entire scenes and episodes on their own, and despite their cute appearances are able to do it with as much weight as a human character. Latte may also be my favorite fairy ever, as she's a non-talking dog, and just acts like a very smart dog. It's both adorable and hilarious. The Pathogerms are also pretty well done. They all have very standard personalities and drives, but there's nuances to how they act and do things. When we get to them evolving, each of them creates their own way of making more powerful Mega and Gigapathogerms. And the fact that none of them are redeemed is very different for Precure, but not unwelcome. They have their funny moments, but they were bad guys through and through.

I'll also say that the character development for this season was very different than what we normally see. Like, most of the time it's "I'm shy and want to be more outgoing," "I'm aiming for my dream job," or something along those lines. Here, other than maybe Pegitan, nobody really goes through that type of standard, measurable progression. Nodoka's big character moment is realizing she doesn't have to put herself at risk to help others if she doesn't want to. Chiyu's is realizing she can have multiple interests. And Hinata is just realizing she's ok as she is and doesn't need to try and change. None of them are bad revelations, it's just none of the characters really go through anything that fundamentally changes them as a person; they're all pretty much the same from start to finish. Which, they're all 14. It's not super weird.

The plot feels very in-style with what Toei's been doing for a bit now. It's very episodic. Not a ton of huge shake-ups, and those that we do get are resolved pretty quickly so people tuning in for the first time or skip episodes don't get lost. It's the type of show that feels formulated to attract new viewers, and I'm ok with it since everything was well written. I can't think of an episode I didn't think was at least decent, and there were a few gems sprinkled throughout. The one-off characters from all those episodes have very distinct personalities, and nothing ever felt too rushed.

One thing though; I get this is the doctor series, but I find it strange that they went with the usual Earth-Water-Sky motif, and not have any aspects of the animal partners be incorporated into the actual costume design. They didn't have to go all out, like in Kira Kira, but I don't think they even had a paw-print on anything but their weapons.

The Bad: So I mentioned one-off characters earlier, and one of my problems with this show is that it's filled with one-off characters. Other than the parents, there are no real reoccurring characters. No other friends they all hang out with. It's just the main cast most of the time. This isn't necessarily a bad thing as it allows more time for developing the characters you care about, but at the same time it makes the focus of the show very narrow, to the point that  near the end of the series you can't help but think "Oh yeah, this takes place in more than a small town." And while I feel for the characters when they're going through something tough, there weren’t that many moments like that. There’s a lack of overall investment. Even near the finale, I never walked away from an episode begging for more. There were plenty of times where I'd just binge through a month's worth of episodes while doing other stuff. And, again, that's not a bad thing, but, even if I didn't finish it, I got that feeling of investment from Star Twinkle, from Kira Kira, from Maho. Maybe it's because the Precure themselves were seldom attacked? The only mess-with-your-character moment I can think of is when Nodoka get infected, and that was just because she stumbled onto Daruizen; he wasn't actively targeting her. It's more that the chill nature of the show has a double-edged nature to it. It's cute and fun and easy to watch, but you're not going to walk away with it changed in any way, like I was with Go! Princess.

And on the ending, it was very abrupt. I know a few episodes got cut, but that would have been known near the start of the series, and there was plenty of filler. As much as I complain about the time issues associated with the epilogues in accordance to new series and crossover movies, this felt like a season that could have used it. In fact, I think it's the first since Princess to not have one.

Overall, I'm fealin' good ‘bout Healin' Good. It's a nice, easy watch with some fun characters. It's just not very meaty, and I could have used a little more. I'm looking forward to Tropical Rouge. It's already starting out with some interesting premises, like having Summer copy the Zenkaiser color scheme, staying away from the typical colors, etc. Also, whenever I try and design a Precure season (because I get bored at work and do that sometimes) I always do an ocean theme in a seaside town. In fact, Coral is usually the name I give my pink. But enough about how my mind wanders; let's hope the next season is just as fun, but a bit more compelling than this season.

[comradeclown]

OK, so in honour of my top posts now being me saying at various degrees of length that Arthur is gay (hashtag mylegacy, lmao…), I thought I should just go for it and actually dive in a bit a lot into why I read the character as gay. Now, usually all the justification I need to read a character as gay is “wouldn’t it be cool if this character I like/relate to/etc were gay like me?” and “it’s OK, officer, I do what I want”, and I’m well aware that 99% of the time it’s me using my own creativity to do a resistant reading + the film/book/whatever bumbling into subtext entirely by accident. And while I definitely don’t think there’s ever any more justification needed for any kind of LGBT reading, lol, as it comes to Arthur, obviously feel free to disagree with me, but I honestly think my read of him as a gay man is entirely textually supported, however unwitting and accidental that might have been on the part of the filmmakers (mind you, I don’t think it was Todd Phillips’ conscious intent, but I’m like… 85% sure Joaquin Phoenix knew exactly what he was doing).

(ETA that this is extremely long, so I’ve put it all under a cut.)

First of all, there’s of course… pretty much the entirety of Joaquin Phoenix’s performance (a very, very small sample can be found in my he gay son tag and just generally in my arthur fleck tag, ha), from his mannerisms to his physicality to the way he interacts with other characters. I know part of it is a function of wanting to go back to the character’s campy roots (which are themselves… you know…), and I know I’m relying on stereotypes to some extent, but first of all, you can’t divorce either camp or gender non-conformity from LGBT history and existence, and secondly this is literally how characters have been coded as gay throughout the entire history of cinema. What I’m saying here is that you can’t have a character who acts like Arthur does, literal limp wrist and all, or says “come on, Muuuurrrayyy, do I look like the kind of girl clown who could start a movement” the way he does, to pick one of many, many examples, and not evoke the long history of cinematic wink emojis at People Like Me.

That in itself would… honestly be plenty, lol, but it could be chalked up to, idk, Joaquin Phoenix doing his own thing, were it not for the fact that it’s completely reinforced at every turn by the filmmaking language, even down to his wardrobe choices, and it’s worth noting at this point that the framing is always one of empathy — albeit with nuance — and affording the character subjectivity, rather than being “ew, look at this gross [homophobic slur]”. Like, the very first time we see Arthur, literally our first impression of the character, he’s at a mirror, putting on make-up and then ruining it by crying, and while the make-up is of course part of his job, this is just not how the inner crises of straight male characters are expressed in the language of cinema. Of note too is the fact that he’s clearly visually separated from his co-workers in all the scenes at Ha-Ha’s, indicating his alienation from them, and while this could be chalked up purely to his disabilities, I don’t buy that that’s the only reason, given that Gary gets shit due to his dwarfism, sure, but at the end of the day he’s clearly “one of the boys” in a way Arthur (can’t be) isn’t.

There are honestly so many examples of the framing working to separate Arthur from conventional masculinity and heterosexuality that I’m just going to pick some highlights, such as: obviously, the way he expresses himself emotionally through dancing (to the point that one of his coworkers explicitly ribs him about it, “if your dancing doesn’t do the trick”), which again is not something that straight male characters do in the language of cinema. The fact that all the media we see him consume is musicals, classic comedies and a talk show he’s obsessively fannish about and watches with his mother — and we know he’s a fan of the show as a whole, not just Murray, hence him saying “I love Dr Sally” (and the way he says it…). Or, speaking of his media habits, when he’s dancing with the gun while watching Shall We Dance, this could have so, so easily been about him ~regaining his lost masculinity~ through, say, fantasies of revenge or badassery, but instead it’s about him being acknowledged as a great dancer and punishing bad dancers, and it all ends in slapstick anyway.

Also, while I’m on this topic, I want to address the nature of Arthur’s dissociative fantasies about Sophie. Honestly, I don’t read them as indicative of genuine romantic/sexual interest at all, because the film frames them as identical to Arthur’s more deliberate daydreams about Murray. I mean, not that I’m adverse to gay readings of that if that’s what you want to do, lmao, but to me they’re both very clearly post-traumatic fantasies of having another person look after you for once, of having someone value and cherish you and take care of you emotionally (which obviously has massive appeal if you’ve been dealing with the after-effects of catastrophic trauma all your life but nobody has given a shit about your suffering and you’ve had to be the one to look after other people to boot). Note that after the get-together with Sophie — which is clearly patterned after all those old comedies and musicals Arthur watches — the Sophie fantasies are incredibly platonic and involve things like having another person be there for you in a crisis, telling you something supportive, getting you a hot drink (in contrast with the reality of the hospital scene, in which Arthur is alone and he’s the one trying to comfort someone else, i.e., holding Penny’s hand), essentially no different from fantasy!Murray hugging Arthur and knowing exactly what to say to make him feel good about himself. Also note that both fantasies involve being the object of someone else’s affection, Murray picks Arthur out of the audience and Sophie comes to him, it’s a pillow princess Cinderella fantasy, more than someone loving you it’s about being loved. (And, once more, this could easily have all been v. v. different, the Murray fantasy could have been the much more conventionally masculine fantasy of being a famous comedian and being invited on Murray’s show, the Sophie fantasies could have had an undeniable sexual component, etc.)

Anyway, to get back to the general point of cinematic framing, again if the movie didn’t want me to read Artie as gay, it shouldn’t have had a pivotal moment in his character arc be him sitting at his mother’s vanity table, doing a new make-up look which involves using her lipstick, and then having a Moment while he’s literally holding a quasi-glamour shot of her.

And the thing is, all these reams of stuff aren’t even the key piece of the puzzle for me, which is the way in which the film as a whole can be read as a gay narrative. I’ve posted before about how part of the emotional catharsis of the film is about Arthur finally shamelessly embracing and even revelling in all his freakishness and socially-despised traits, a big one of which being what is arguably his effeminacy and… honestly I don’t need to explain how that’s a classic gay (and more generally LGBT) narrative, do I? Like, there’s a reason why a pivotal scene is Arthur having his hair-dyeing underwear rave in a flat that’s suddenly incredibly bright and sunny for the first time, it’s about reclaiming the pain and ugliness of your life and your circumstances into a space of potential liberation, which is honestly why this movie is always going to be incredibly personally meaningful to me for so many reasons, but definitely meaningful to me as a gay woman. (Again, this could so, so easily have been about him becoming some stone-cold badass or whatever, but instead the film has him dye his hair, put on a super garish new outfit and new make-up look, dance shamelessly in the street, and be incredibly campy on national television.)

More generally, there’s other aspects of the narrative arc that tie into this general theme and which also serve to continually distance Arthur from the conventional cinematic narratives of heterosexual manhood: for instance, once he starts fully embracing the Joker persona — which is… just Arthur, the crucial difference is in how others perceive him and how he perceives himself — any attraction to women, feigned or real, goes completely out the window and the only genuinely affectionate interaction he has with another human being is with Gary (I know we all love to joke about his first kiss being with Dr Sally, but it’s obviously Comedy Jokes and he doesn’t even kiss her for real, his make-up is completely intact; Arthur’s only real kiss in the movie is when he kisses Gary). Or, when Arthur’s personal narrative finally intersects completely with the larger social narrative — which is itself about upheaval, reclamation and potential liberation — the big triumphant moment is him once again dancing, this time for a cheering crowd, and using blood like lipstick to redraw his smile.

Or even, to a lesser extent, his whole sub-plot with his mother, before I watched the film I was worried that this was going to be the usual narrative about the henpecked guy who finally puts the bitch in her place as part of becoming a Real Man, and it’s not at all, quite the opposite, Arthur is not henpecked and is clearly in charge of the household, he genuinely loves Penny — and is confident she loves him back — and enjoys doing at least some things with her (them watching the Murray Franklin Show together), and up until the reveal any issues he has with her are largely the product of having to look after an ill person with zero social support and while working a physically and emotionally demanding job and dealing with his own disabilities. When he kills her, it’s a deeply sad and self-destructive scene and it’s the result of his profound anguish and sense of betrayal and he frames it as the bitter, trauma-haunted dark half of self-actualisation and self-acceptance (“that’s the real me”, “I haven’t been happy one minute of my entire fucking life”, “now I realise… it’s a fucking comedy”).

Or, at a more meta-textual level, the way the film is unabashedly both a pulpy thriller and a melodrama, just shamelessly embracing all its emotions, its pain and catharsis, without a trace of irony. Like, yeah, part of this is the immense sincerity and compassion Joaquin Phoenix brings to his performance, but it really is the movie’s approach as a whole, and when there is humour — and I do think there’s quite a lot of humour in the movie — it’s not the distancing, let’s-not-feel-anything-too-deeply-bro humour of your typical MCU movie, it’s the camp sensibility of laughing with and at your own tragedy. (Myriad examples down to the use of certain songs in the soundtrack.)

On a final note, you guys know how much I don’t care about authorial intent, but I feel compelled to point out that in his director’s commentary, Todd Phillips says, while discussing Arthur’s journey into becoming Joker, that he reads the larger pop-cultural character of the Joker as someone who doesn’t want women, and like… Again, it’s not like I think that he was deliberately making a gay narrative in any way, it’s just that if you’re creating this journey of a man who eventually becomes a character who’s not interested in women in that sense, you’ve also just ended up stumbling into a gay narrative accidentally on purpose, lmao, what’s the real difference between “at the end of the story, Arthur doesn’t want women because he’s ~da Joker now, baby, he doesn’t want anything~” and “at the end of the story, Arthur doesn’t want women because he’s gay and he’s no longer deeply repressed and closeted”?

Anyway, like I said, feel free to disagree, he’s a fictional character, lol, but this is where I’m coming from, and the reason why if everyone involved in the movie decided to make a statement tomorrow about how much Arthur Fleck wants to bone women I’d just say “shit, idc, I’m afraid you made a gay movie about Arthur Fleck, a gay man, it’s a little too late to retcon this bitch now ¯\_(ツ)_/¯”. Also this is over 2,000 words long what the fuck I am so sorry

[ronnytherandom]

Accidental Animated Film Week, or Watch Me Continue To Know Nothing About Media Analysis While I Liberally Abuse The Semicolon In An Attempt To Sound Smart

18/1/2021: Hotel Transylvania Lots of fun but this is a weird one, varies drastically in some strange ways. The comedy takes hit and miss to extremes, simultaneously being laugh out loud hilarious and possessing moments of ungodly cringe. The pacing is unbalanced with the first half feeling awkward, taking a while to really get into; the latter much too fast and not taking the necessary time, some scenes seeming to serve their function as minimally as possible. This metronome of quality exists primarily in these respects and is quite noticeable, but doesn’t ruin the experience and I think that’s testament to just how good the rest of it can be, though there are still caveats. The animation is fantastic, incredibly expressive and creates truly hilarious physical comedy, and I feel this is to be expected of a Genndy Tartakovsky film, I grew up with and deeply appreciate his animated features. The emotional core of the story really begins to hit in the latter half and is very effective though the Zing concept I take issue with the name because it just sounds too silly without being humorous; its just a weird little gripe, the word zing annoys me. That said I was genuinely invested in this love story which is a feat, I’m not a romantic person at all. The acting is generally very good, I enjoy the expanded cast and Adam Sandler is excellent but Andy Samberg’s Johnny has an accent that gets on my nerves and feels like he’s being a bit too heavy handed with it. Again, just a little gripe. The message is clear and heartfelt, strange as it seems to make the message for the parents of the features target audience it still works and resembles in parts the “dadification” that’s been occurring in media (especially video games) over the past decade. Ultimately, it’s a good time so long as you can deal with a few groan inducing moments and a little strangeness.

19/1/2021: Princess Mononoke Holy shit, why haven’t I watched this sooner. Transcendentally good! My new favourite film, an absolutely incredible achievement. For fear of wading into sub v dub controversy the English dub is good though I’m definitely going to watch it subbed at some point. Its Studio Ghibli, everyone knows that Miyazaki runs a fantastic operation, thus the art and animation is faultless. There are moments where every single frame is a true work of art. Induces nostalgia though I’ve never seen it before, the art style and tone of the soundtrack are endemic to the late 90s and remind me of the animation from my childhood. The message is also wonderfully nuanced, focusing less on Humanity’s responsibility for the natural world but rather a reconciliation between the ambition of humanity and the life of our world through respect and veneration of that which we’re dependent on to survive. I love the world so much; I think one of this film’s pinnacle achievements is conveying the impression of a deep living world with relatively little worldbuilding. Just watch it aight, everyone needs to watch it. Fucking Incredible.

20/1/2021: The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie (rewatch)

Very Fun. Powerful nostalgia, I think I saw this literally hundreds of times as a child, may have had the whole thing memorised, and have always been a huge fan of the SpongeBob series. Even despite that I think there’s a lot of quality here. Pretty much every aspect of the film is enjoyable and well done, even if I think the moments featuring real people are kind of awkward. The gags and humour mostly hold up but I don’t think they have aged so well as the original run of the series, but there’s not much as can live up to that standard. Has a little to say about being a goofball, but ultimately its all about the gags for me with this one.

21/1/2021: Nausicaa: Valley of The Wind

Magnificent. Meaningfully very similar to Princess Mononoke, not quite as good, but still very worthwhile. I really like the mid-century sci fi vibe going on here and think the worldbuilding is excellent, though some of the expository dialogue is a little clumsy. I imagine there’s a little bit of nuance lost in the dub but cannot be certain as I don’t understand Japanese. That said, the voice acting is generally good. The art is magnificent, as it is wont to be in Studio Ghibli films; or in this case the proto-studio-Ghibli-film. That every culture has its distinct style is one of my favourite things, amongst which rank the Ohmu, Nausicaas glider and most of all Teto. Look at his little tongue! Most of all I love the ecosystem that arises from the polluted earth, how the earth cleans itself, it is a spectacular thought. I have an interesting thought about the soundtrack, specifically during actions sequences. The musical quality is good, especially the main theme, but there are issues with the editing of the action sequences’ music which intrigue me. Because the edit is always jarring and I don’t think the style of music necessarily fits the film; but I think it is a technical limitation, that contemporary audio systems were not necessarily able to apply the soundtrack in a less jarring manner. Just an interesting thought I had and I may look into the history of sound software etc. to see if that’s right. I think it is a beautiful work and well worth watching, I enjoyed it greatly.

23/1/2021: Howl’s Moving Castle

Good. Far and away less impactful than Mononoke and Nausicaa but still very good. Standard Ghibli points: Its beautiful, well animated and full of character. I find all the lead characters quite charming and well performed; it is set in a very interesting world with lots of interesting quirks and cool magic. Further it is powerfully meaningful, with a clear statement on confidence and empowerment. There’s just something about this one where the vibe is slightly off and I could not fully explain why. It feels disjointed, as though all the parts of the world are not fully connected. I feel like if you were to list the plot points in order some would be labelled “??????? Make it happen” as some events and conclusions are reached without purpose or motivation. Only some though and I’m not trying to seriously say it doesn’t make sense that’s just how I feel in post. I enjoyed it but I feel like I don’t fully understand this one.

24/1/2021: Spirited Away

Beautiful. This one I think is the best showcase of Ghibli’s style: the art is beautiful; the water is viscous and the spirits are fantastically grotesque. There’s a vibrant world shown here with a lot of charming characters and expressive animation which I think creates the most visually stunning of the Ghibli films that I’ve seen so far, though I fear I’m a bit basic and unsophisticated as I still prefer what I recognise as more traditional fantasy and sci-fi worlds like Mononoke and Nausicaa. I feel the story is also a well nuanced coming of age tale as it balances between relying on your friends and standing up for yourself. I also really like Yubaba or more generally how antagonism is handled throughout this movie; and to an extent in the broader Ghibli canon. Rather than create comically evil villains who exist purely to do bad these features all showcase antagonists with genuine sensible motivations driving their action and the only thing defining them as antagonists is the framing and perspective. On that point you could argue that Yubaba is the closest to a genuine villain but I think the materialist-critical aspects are more of an aside than a genuine statement, as appreciable as they are.

[fuse2dx]

August ‘20

Ruiner

Ruiner frames its action at an isometric tilt. There’s a lot of red; in the game’s interface, as the prominent colour of the neon lighting that adorns its stages, and in the blood that is frequently spilled. Its cyberpunk setting isn’t anything particularly new, but as a unifying aesthetic, the glitchy effects, and out-there personalities doing their best to cope in a dystopia do well to build a convincing and intriguing world. Stages are action packed and throb with electronic noise and big loud industrial bass hits, with the play being akin to an arena shooter; enemies surging at you in bite size, minute-at-a-time waves, with each of these closing out with a grading screen serving as the pat on the back to keep that dopamine rhythm pulsing. It’s a pretty hypnotic cocktail.

These stages evolve out of a singular hub city, and while it’s not particularly big, there’s just the right level of hubbub, and it has a lovely Hirusawa Susumu track acting as an excellent, melancholic mood-setter. Based on the size of its world and the the quick-fire action being split between a very small number of stages, it’s not surprising to say it’s fairly brief - I mean, how could it get so big? But what is important is that it’s plenty of fun and and has style by the bucketload. I got a good kick out of it.

Carrion

On one hand, a horror game where you play the horror is just the kind of flip on a genre that’s needed to freshen things up a bit. On the other, it’s one straight out of the spoof ‘Peter Molydeux’ playbook. What a carri-on.

... I’m sorry. After your initial escape from a lab, Carrion centres around a hub world, with individual stages then breaking off to allow for more specific themed stages. What you’re trying to do within these is to spread your big, goopy self around, where certain spots will act as save points but also count toward unlocking an alternative path back to the hub and opening up new routes in the process. What’s unique to this particular metroidvania take is that while there are new skills that open up new routes, your movement in general is uniquely freeform - point in a direction and off you go, free of any worries about platforming and the gravity that’d otherwise bind you. While it may not be the most precise movement given the size to which you grow - and boy does this become a point during some forms of combat - it does remain responsive, and quite fun to simply shamble about like a giant congealed blob of bloody, multi-toothed sinew-y mess. Everything scales up nicely on both sides of the fighting, with distraught pistol-equipped humans turning to shielded folks with flamethrowers, all the way up to drones and mechs that are just as mobile and / or deadly as yourself, even in spite of your own upgrades that allow for more ranged, varied, and sharper extremities. It’s not especially long, and is never so taxing as to demand too much expertise of you, but it is fun and importantly, quite unlike anything else out there.

Yoku’s Island Express

Pinball continues to feel like a lost art form to me, with the nuance of skilled play being more like a foreign language than another type of game you can easily pick up. Yoku, newly-appointed postmaster, is but a tiny little bug, and as such is indebted to these skills in his efforts to travel and clamber about an environment much larger than he. Flippers are casually littered about to shoot you from one area to the next, but there’s also plenty of sections you’re led to by the story that are small yet just detailed enough to play like a neatly sectioned off area of a complete table - complete with requirements for precise shots to move forward, and those inevitable moments where you have to sit back and watch as your ball falls with miserable, exacting precision between the flippers. Failure typically sets you back a few pickups, but given these are just as quickly re-earned, you’re never punished too hard - there’s certainly no three strikes and out mentality here. It’s a very friendly interpretation of pinball’s mechanics, and there’s a decent enough story layered on top, with its characters and art demonstrating enough pleasant charm that you can definitely see this being a great way to introduce pinball to a younger audience. That’s not to say it’s not enjoyable from an older player’s point of view - just that you know what’s being presented is a wisely palatable version of a classic hobby, rather than the arse-kicking ordeal you may be used to. 

Rime

I am certain that Rime would love me to compare it to a certain Fumito Ueda PS2 game. There’s the ultra-minimal scene that’s set as a boy washes up on an island; a sparse, beautiful, somewhat Mediterranean set of landscapes, and with very few ways to interact with it all that don’t involve clambering over things or shouting out in wordless desperation. But as you’ll have noted, I haven’t found it in myself to justify using that game’s name here. 

As much as I wanted to give this a chance, it often felt directionless, uninspired, and at worst, slow and tedious. The puzzles are derivative of any number of games I’ve played before, and the biggest danger is that you might assume as to their difficulty and over-engineer your approach, rather than not be able to tackle them. The platforming is simplistic and regularly drawn out with ledges, ledges, and more ledges to climb across and dangle from; even if you were to find a way to fall to your doom, as is tempting, it is unlikely to take you back much further than a few seconds. Crucially, there’s really very little to sink your teeth into on any front, and even when the game does finally start to weave some plot threads into the game’s canvas, it’s well into the latter half - long after I’d already racked my brains for any hint of an allegory that’d fit, and given up on expecting one. Sadly, to the point that the actual story felt like a cheap afterthought when it did finally start to unravel. This bounced off me much harder than I’d expected - I came away wishing it had forged a bit more of an identity and a purpose rather than just an aesthetic strung together with some weak elements of play. 

If Found

As far as interactive elements in visual novel-type games go, If Found has a different approach to most. The story’s primarily told by means of a diary - one that’s full of witty observations, personal reflections and enigmatic sketches - that you actively erase as a means to push events along. The diary belongs to Kasio, a trans girl returning to their small Irish hometown after a stint away at university in the city; a return that’s not met in the warmest or most understanding fashion. As a mechanic, the erasure of this diary is loaded with meaning; peeling back layers of a scene often matches a more poignant set of observations, and the scrubbing of such personal details away offers a painful reflection on an identity being chipped away at. It’s very much a story about finding one’s self, about coming of age, and as it rides these highs and lows it does an excellent job in making you ride along these alongside the characters, and it does one hell of a job to make you think about the compassion that you both see and offer in the world outside. I’ll put my hands up and say that there are some elements of the story running in parallel to this main one that didn’t gel with me quite so well, but this is a minor footnote to an otherwise highly enjoyable play through. In a short space of time, Annapurna have done a great job in winning me over with their publishing choices - particularly in holding up the kinds of voices and ideas that fit these smaller titles so perfectly. 

Double Kick Heroes

It’s a rhythm game. I like rhythm games! It’s about a zombie apocalypse. Oh no. It’s... a heavy metal rhythm game? Ok, maybe we can work with this.

After a trailer name dropping a bunch of familiar artists - Jinjer, Carpenter Brut, Gojira - what surprised me straight off was that none of these licensed artists featured in the game’s story mode. They’re all sectioned off in a separate menu, and while on the bright side they’ve each given a unique stage with a visual theming in keeping with the bands in question, it feels like a bit of a missed opportunity. Instead, all tracks throughout the story were composed by just one person, and with only a small handful of featured musicians being included to diversify things. It starts with more (arguably) palatable hard rock numbers, but goes up to and includes grindcore, death metal, black metal and the like, meaning that not only is it going to put a lot of folks off right away, but that it’s asking a heck of a lot for one composer to cover all of these sub-genres with the appropriate care. While it was refreshing to hear some types of music I’d normally not expect to hear in a game, some tracks inevitably grated, and while I enjoyed some others, I wasn’t ever bowled over too strongly either.

The story itself is fairly by the numbers. It sees an on-tour band fighting back against a zombie uprising, and has unsubtle references to any number of heavy artists, albums and songs shoe-horned in at every opportunity. It also bears the hallmarks of its dialogue being written by someone that has a very particular sense of humour which personally all fell very flat. While the team undoubtably do love music, the over-enthusiastic style rubbed me in a similarly uncomfortable fashion as Jack Black does regularly, with his half-comedian, half-musician schtick. The gameplay itself is based around the drum parts of its songs also corresponding to different weaponry on your car that holds the hordes back, and while this on its own can prove tricky, higher difficulties also mounts other expectations - like steering your vehicle, or alternating pedals to shoot different parts of the screen. Some of my frustration with all of this is likely my own fault for having chosen to play on the ‘Hard’ difficulty, but traditional wisdom feels a little bit lost when you can still get damaged when your combo meter is racked up well into triple digits.

In all, Double Kick Heroes presented some pretty unique gaming scenarios; like having to work out the best controller configuration to play blast beats with, or asking out loud “did I just hear the words ‘we are Genital Absolution’ coming from a Nintendo console?”, and it’s clearly a small team working on something they really care about. I respect that. I didn’t enjoy it as much as I was hoping, but I hope they’re proud of what they’ve created.

Manifold Garden

A puzzle game taking significant inspiration from the works of M.C. Escher is a pretty good starting point in my eyes. It being presented in a wonderful manner certainly doesn’t harm either; from the UI all the way into the game, it’s beautifully clean and defined, opting for delicate shading rather than messy textures, and with its intricate, recursive geometric patterns, you’ll likely find cause to stop and take stock on a regular basis.

One button looks after your basic interactions with the world (pushing, picking up, and so on), with your other crucial way of interacting with the world being the ability to approach a surface and then assign it as ‘the new down’ - spinning everything about an axis, planting your feet to it, and changing your perspective on everything. There’s a nice steady introduction of puzzle pieces as you ease your way in, but they all stem gracefully from these simple mechanics. That I - not the world’s greatest puzzle gamer - was able to enjoy this without every getting too stuck may hint at it perhaps not being as complex as some puzzle fiends might desire, however this amounted to me coming out the other side with great waves of satisfaction, and nought but positives to say. I would go so far as to say that it’s the most fun I’ve had playing a puzzle game in a long, long time, and to boot it’s also perhaps the game where I’ve used the screenshot button the most copiously. Wonderful stuff.

[mautadite]

january book round up

27 books this month! the most i’ve read in a month in quite some time, and a good start to the year. a couple days late because i’ve been feeling a bit meh. i doubt i’ll be able to read this much at any point this year. but it’s nice to get a good strong head-start on my yearly goal. a mix of audiobooks and e-books so far.

a land so wild - elyssa warkentin ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ a really lovely epistolary/found media m/m romance story, set during the 1840s, about a ship captain and a naturalist trying to chart a northwest passage in the arctic, and find a ship that was lost five years ago trying to do the same thing. very beautifully told, with lots of emotion that you’d think would be lost because of the mode of storytelling.

how to bang a billionaire - alexis hall ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ a re-read. i remember being very sceptical of this when i first read it, but now that i’ve finished the entire series there’s so much i appreciate about it.

trade me - courtney milan ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ my first courtney milan book, after hearing a lot of good things about her. the hype was deserved! i like her writing a lot and this book (a romance between a poor chinese-am daughter of immigrants, and a billionaire heir with an eating disorder) touched on a lot of stuff that you don’t typically see in romance novels. particular what it mean and what it feels like to be poor. this was probably my favourite treatment of billionaires in a novel (at least, ones where they don’t get beheaded).

hold me - courtney milan ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ the second in the series, equally enjoyable. the hero of this novel has to confront and own up to his sexism in ways that a lot of romance novels would simply let men get away with! if i’d known that that’s part of what the book covered i might not have been enthused to read it, because while i genuinely believe bigoted people can change for the better, i’m not super interested in reading about it. but i really enjoyed how milan wrote it, and the romance was lovely. (also the heroine is trans, nice.)

my lady’s lover - nicola davidson ⭐️⭐️⭐️ not a lot of substance, but it’s historical lesbian romance, which is my eternal catnip. a lady’s maid who’s the member of a society for sexual freedom falls in love with her mistress, and happily discovers that the feelings are returned. there’s sex, some angst, and a happy ending,

a lady’s desire - lily maxton ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ another historical f/f romance. pretty low stakes, without much external conflict, but it had good writing and great characters, and i’ll always have a soft spot for childhood friends to lovers. and let’s be real: i mostly picked this up because of the cover. a woman with her head in another lady’s lap, gazing gayly at her? yes, thanks.

rebound remedy - christine d’abo ⭐️⭐️ eh! m/m holiday romance, about a guy who gets dumped before christmas, has a whirlwind rebound romance with his bartender, and then starts falling deeper for him. nothing bad about it, but i just wasn’t feeling the romance. i’ve read shorter stories that had more chemistry and character interaction.

don’t let go - cynthia dane ⭐️ another f/f romance that i got mostly because of the cover, but this one let me down hard. i liked that it was set in taiwan; had a lot of cultural nuance and tidbits that i enjoyed, but everything else, the writing, the editing, and characters, the chemistry... it was a bust. it also had a weird and baffling approach to mental illness, and managed to be yet another book that makes me hate rich people. also... the two authors credited are the pseudonyms of the same person skfjhdfkj ihni why she’s crediting herself twice.

alone - e.j. noyes ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ LOVED THIS. f/f mystery/thriller-ish romance, though the mystery aspect is admittedly light. noyes has lovely prose and a good sense of storytelling, but the romance is where this really shone for me. which... idk, i’m aware that it might not be for others who read this book. but something about the way olivia fell so helplessly in love with celeste, everything celeste does to hold on to olivia... it appealed to me on a visceral level.

boystown book 1 - marshall thornton ⭐️⭐️⭐️ three short stories about a gay private eye solving mysteries in the community in the early 1980s. it reminded me of how much i love short form mysteries; there’s just something about stories being told that way that i can’t resist. i was also kind of charmed by the way our main character tripped into bed with a cute twink like every 10 pages. :3

poems i sleep next to - shelby eileen ⭐️⭐️⭐️ a collection of contemporary poems. really enjoyable. nothing wowed me, but several poems moved me.

how to talk to nice english girls - gretchen evans ⭐️⭐️⭐️ early 20th century f/f romance between a spirited american heiress and a nice proper english girl. low stakes, character driven. not really character driven enough actually; i felt like they didn’t get to spend enough time knowing each other. and some more external conflict wouldn’t have hurt. but it was hot and fun and well-written.

by his rules - j.a. rock ⭐️⭐️⭐️ an m/m romance that looks at abuse in bdsm communities, and spends a good long time on recovery, survival, and healthy relationships that involve kink. i really could not get into the discipline stuff, but i really liked that the main characters worked for their HEA; nothing clicked magically into placed for them, and aiden was given space and resources to work out his trauma.

the wolf and the girl - aster glenn gray ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ a retelling of little red riding hood set in early 20th century russia and france that focuses on the friendship between two young women. simple story, very beautifully told.

the secret diaries of anne lister - anne lister ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ i started reading this in the middle of last year, after i finished gentleman jack, and i was basically reading snippets at a time until december, and then by january i was eating it all up. i LOVED this. i loved the diary of this at times manipulative, haughty, but kind-hearted and tender and clever woman, and all of her loves and struggles and observations. there’s just something... very good about knowing and seeing that lesbians have always existed, and hearing her first hand accounts is just... GREAT. really looking forward to the next volume.

oh, earthman! - berlynn wohl ⭐️⭐️⭐️ an anthology of short stories. weird, fun, scifi-flavoured m/m erotica.

emma - jane austen ⭐️⭐️⭐️ took me long enough, i know! but i really really thoroughly enjoyed my time with this book, especially the audiobook, whose narrator i loved. i loved emma: her cleverness and wit and finesse and all her terrible blunders. though i could tell where the story was going, the getting there was really fun, and i super duper enjoyed the romance (though at one point i got seriously squicked out haha). and fight me: i adored miss bates, i thought she was the best character in the book. LOVE a spinster who don’t know when to shut her trap but is earnest and kind and gentle-hearted and GOOD.

«légendaire.» - kai ashante wilson ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ kaw, i’m begging you, PLEASE write another fell length novel. or novella. please! i love his writing and world-building so so so much, i flip out thinking about it. until he does, these short stories will have to suffice. this was great: everything i love about his writing, revisiting the world and concepts that we’ve seen in his other books, with mesmerising characters and a tragic, but soulful tale.

a conspiracy of truths - alexandra rowland ⭐️⭐️⭐️ i love stories about stories, and as far as that goes, this a pretty good one! the one way it failed to grasp me was on the character front; i just didn’t enjoy the main character as much as i could, or as much as i was meant to, and i felt at times he was too far removed from the plot. basically, chant is a master storyteller travelling in a foreign land, when he’s falsely accused of witchcraft and spying. the novel details how he uses storytelling to get himself out of the pickle, and all the consequences that follow. there are some amazing side characters in this (esp. his apprentice, who i will definitely read the nest book for).

animal farm - george orwell ⭐️⭐️⭐️ felt like rereading this, so i did. and i mean, it’s animal farm! it holds up.

the overdue life of any byler - kelly harms ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ like i said above, i like books about books, and i got this thinking it would be something like that? but it’s more about a single mother who gets the chance to take some time off from her kids and her life, have fun, find romance, and how she deals with managing that, and the guilt, and all the elements that are introduced/reintroduced to her life. i don’t think this is an amazing book, but it’s a lovely one, and i know there are middle aged mothers out there who would benefit from reading it. it’s not about romance (though there’s a cute romance in it); it’s about motherhood and being there for yourself as much as your kids.

the subs club 1&2 - j.a. rock ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ the first two books in an m/m romance series. a group of friends is still reeling after one of them dies at the hands of an irresponsible dom. they decide to form the subs club; a website to review and rate doms, with an eye towards making the community safer for subs, though it doesn’t really work out that way. the first book follows dave, who ends up getting involved with a guy who’s eerily like ron swanson from parks and rec, and the second follows miles, a masochist who gets involved with a guy who likes to pretend to be a vampire (lmao??). i have to tip my hat to j.a. rock, who seems to have a knack for getting me to read things i’d be otherwise sure i wouldn’t be interested in. and i mean, even after reading, i’m pretty sure i don’t want to read other books about domestic discipline or s&m or pretend draculas, but her characters and plots are well written and engaging and i had a really good time. although, i have to mention: the second book dealt with internalised racism in a way that... while well meaning, was definitely not very deftly done.

alice & jean - lily hammond ⭐️⭐️⭐️ post wwii f/f romance set in new zealand. a young widowed mother falls for the dashing woman who delivers her milk every morning. they have to contend with community scrutiny, an old friend of alice’s husband, and her bitter old mother to fight their way to happiness. i enjoyed it; it was simple and the romance was incredibly sweet, though the writing did drag at times.

american dreamer - adriana herrera ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ DELIGHTFUL. the very definition of feel good romance! a young dominican-american man moves to the outskirts of new york to start his food truck, and almost immediately meets a cute librarian who turns his head. i flipping love queer romances with characters from the caribbean; it just feels so good when slang is part of the language of love.

minotaur - j.a. rock ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ i read four books by this author this month, and this is hands down my favourite. i don’t know man, combine girls and monsters and lesbian romance and i”M THERE. thera is a teen orphan sent to a home for girls at the edge of town. there, she makes friends, raises hell, falls in love with the mysterious new girl, and also becomes obsessed with stories of the minotaur, half woman half monster, locked the labyrinth in a cliff not far away. this story appealed to me in so many ways, and i really hope the author writes more f/f in the future.

two dads and three girls - nick (yu) he ⭐️⭐️⭐️ the autobiography of a gay man growing up in china, and the story of how he finds himself, finds love, and becomes a father. very sweet.

whew. that took me a while lol. that’s it for january. i probably (hopefully) will be too busy to read as much this month, but i have some interesting books on my plate. currently listening to an audiobook of beneath a scarlet sky, which is unfortunately underwhelming, and i’ll probably move on with some fun YA.

[fyrapartnersearch]

original, percy jackson, pokemon, avatar, skyrim, fallout ;

I’m AJ! I lost a couple partners in the holiday craze, which is totally fine! Now I’m lookin’ for some RPs to head into the new year. If we had something lined up and things fell off the wagon, no sweat, just message me again and we can get the ball rolling again! :)

  For original settings: apocalyptic (zombie, disease, extinction event, whatever), supernatural (fantasy, urban, sci-fi, literally anything). For fandom universes: Percy Jackson, Pokemon, Avatar: The Last Airbender/Legend of Korra, Skyrim, and Fallout.

  Gonna run through my basic info and then onto the particulars. 💕

  ⥽ About Me ; ⥼

  • Name/Age ; AJ! 22! Finally!

  • Timezone ; CST! I don’t mind time differences, this is just so you know my general schedule.

  • Length ;  Depends on whether it’s novella or multi-paragraph. If m.para, around 3-5 minimum I guess? Novella would obviously be much longer.

  • Reply rate ; Varies depending on whether we’re doing multi-paragraph or novella. I can respond anywhere from every day to every other day or a few times a week to weekly depending on the writing style of the RP and my schedule.

  • OOC ;  I like getting to know my partners and sharing enthusiasm over our ideas and characters. Nothing hits quite like mutual investment! I like making playlists/pinboards/sending you videos or songs or memes that remind me of our characters!

  • Contact ; Strictly email for OOC and roleplay unless we’re using GDocs for the RP itself. You can find me at jackrabbitsonata@gmail.com.

  ⥽ On the lookout for ; ⥼

  • Doubling ; Not a deal-breaker!! I just prefer writing a cast of characters, so this is something that’s more of a bonus. Ideally we’ll double, but I’m down for writing just one character each. Let me know how ya feel about it!

  • Will only write MxM or FxF ; MxF’s not my cup of tea (I’m extremely picky with it, fellow gays u know how it is). If we’re writing a cast of characters then I’m fine with having an MxF side couple. And I STRICTLY write OCxOC! Canon characters won't be found anywhere near this stuff, folks!

  • 20+ ; Partner’s gotta be 20+ even if we don’t write anything explicitly adult! I’m outta my teens now and don’t have any interest in writing with them. Same goes for characters. It’s a 20+ zone for both partners and characters ‘round here, folks!

  ⥽ Yes! ; ⥼

  • Smut ;  I enjoy writing it, but it’s not a deal-breaker if you’d rather fade to black.  All characters will obviously be adults. I expect versatile characters in bed by default, that way we’ve got an even route for playing roles in bed. Admittedly this shifts a bit depending on the character I write but for the most part, yeah, I stick to verses.

  • Face claims ; Spent a huge chunk of my roleplaying years on tumblr (it was very over-the-top and flowery and weirdly formatted and grossly difficult to read, I know I know), so having a face for characters stuck with me. If you don’t have any of your own and want good resources to find a face, I’ve got some recommended sites I can throw at ya! Not a deal-breaker, though, and for certain fandoms (Pokemon, Avatar) I actually prefer not to use realistic face claims so we can just opt outta that when writing in these universes.

  • Depth & growth ; Not a fan of one-dimensional characters or characters who act the same from beginning to end! People change with experiences and the people around them, so this is to be expected. ESPECIALLY when doubling with a cast. I loooove complicated characters growing together.

  • Plotting & Worldbuilding ;  *For original settings/worlds! I’m not picky with this if we’re working with a canon setting, so if that’s what you’re looking for, we can skip this section. I run into loooads of folks who say they do this when they really don’t. We’re writing an entire world together, so there’s some degree of effort involved! I need specifics to use as a start-off point for the roleplay and a general outline for where the story’s going. RPs that are just random, spur of the moment with writing as we go on tend to burn out REALLY quickly for me. I know not a lot of people are into this, so I’m sorry about that.

  ⥽ No! ; ⥼

  • Single paragraphs ; I’m not too picky with a lot of length a lot of the time, I just don’t mesh well with people who don’t write more than that. Go ham. I like my responses meaty!

  • Limits ; Abuse, nonconsensual/sexual assault, pedophilia, incest (includes step-relations, adopted relations, and that figurative like if one character essentially raised another or they were raised as family), weird age gaps, BDSM, any kind of master/slave or dom/sub dynamics.

  As for the goods, I’ve laid ‘em all out for you here! Keep in mind that while all of these are fun on their own, I’m definitely the type of writer who’s into mixing and matching. Sci-fi apocalypse? Fantasy apocalypse? Fantasy supernatural stuff? Sci-fi fantasy? Sci-fi supernatural stuff? Supernatural apocalypse? Period settings? Literally whatever you could think of, I’ll give it a whirl. The particulars down below are just to get the ball rolling and catch some interest, some asterisks for current cravings but I’m soooooo honest when I say that I’d love to write anything down below and won’t shoot you down if you come at me with stuff. Hit me up with whatever you’d like!

    APOCALYPSE: My bread and butter! Bro. I’m all about the tense, harrowing, and especially gut-punching when it comes to how close people become to survive together in quiet moments of a world they used to know. I’m a big fan of zombies, so that’s my loose preference. I loved Black Summer on Netflix – the earlier episodes, at least, as well as The Last of Us. That’s the kind of vibe I favor with zombies/zombie-like creatures. But, ofc, an apocalypse can be anything! I love writing different takes on the genre since there’s so much to cover. Extinction event, pandemic, impact event, monsters/beasts, man-made, whatever. The more creative the apocalyptic setting, the better, so I’d love to bounce some ideas back and forth. Not too into a nuclear apocalypse setting, since that overlaps a lot with Fallout down below. I’ve also had some ideas of a futuristic/sci-fi apocalypse that I’d love to tell you all about if you’re interested!

  FANTASY***: High fantasy, low fantasy, medieval fantasy, urban fantasy, whatever. Love dragons, love magic, love weird fantasy flora, definitely love the classic prince/princess x knight or commoner schtick. You want prophecies? I’m game. You want elves? I’m game. You want steampunk? I’m game. You want none of that and wanna do something else? I’m game, baby. The possibilities are endless. I’ve had two particular ideas floatin’ around in my noggin lately: an apocalyptic-fantasy that takes place in a medieval fantasy realm wherein an ancient curse/plague erupts across the land with horrifying zombie-esque symptoms (obv with more fantasy elements than just that) that involves a quest to try and awaken a god or two OR some magic journey to the heart of it all and out and end to it, and a modern fantasy involving a run-down summer camp secluded deep in the woods. Two new counselors (our characters) start working there over the summer and things slowly unravel from there, either with faerie stuff involving replacing campers/staff (definitely aiming for the freaky horror faeries as opposed to like, beautiful or only slightly unnerving faeries) or the camp being run by a secret cult that sacrifices campers/staff.

  SUPERNATURAL/PARANORMAL***: Vampires and werewolves and demons, oh my! Can’t go wrong with horror, especially can’t go wrong with comedy-horror. I’m more of the type to prefer humans and supernatural beings together in a ragtag duo type of way as opposed to two supernatural beings, but anything’s cool in my book. Medieval/fantasy setting for a dark fairytale vibe, urban/modern supernatural beings slinking in the shadows outside of the human eye, supernatural sci-fi stuff, mysteries and danger lurking around every corner? Seriously, it’s a great genre! Any and everything is fantastic. I’ve got a loose concept of demons/the Underworld I’d like to get into revolving around a human accidentally summoning a demon or making a really poor deal with a demon and the eventual threat of the opposite effect (humans who work with angels/angels who clean up demonic stuff) since I’m struggling with the worldbuilding of it, so applying all that to a roleplay to give it a whirl sounds like a great way to work out the kinks. Plus, c’mon. Paranormal romance. End of the world. Flipping the script on angels and demons with the demons being “good” and the angels being “bad” but really there’s more nuance to that since they’re two sides of the same coin. What’s not to love there? I’m a sucker for human/demon relationships and/or human/angel relationships, what can I say!

  PERCY JACKSON*****: I haven’t ever roleplaying this verse before, so this is completely new grounds for me. I’ve seen some fun takes on it, though! Scoured older ads but haven’t reached out to anyone because the posting time’s pretty old, but a couple ideas I’ve skimmed through sound fun. HP got a period take on it, so why not put that spin on PJ with a period setting rather than in modern times? Or just a regular modern setting. Y’know, keep it classy, keep it sexy, keep it fun! I’m definitely interested in life outside of camp since they’d all be adults. Life’s supposed to suck for demigods, so let’s get into that. I’ve only read the first series but I’m game to read more or look over the Wikipedia if it suits your fancy! I’m REALLY looking for a PJ RP, seriously, message me.

  POKEMON: Man, I just… miss Pokemon, dude, what else can I say? :( I miss fun adventures and goofy scenarios and taking a more serious or realistic route with threats. I’ve got a couple of ideas from heists to evil Elite Four members to Poke-Jurassic Park, but I’d love to hear anything you’ve got in mind!

  AVATAR*****: Alright, not gonna beat around the bush, I had a killer post-Korra RP setting like a year ago that died off early on and now I’m kinda itching to put it back into action! Basically this whole thing just revolves around our own Avatar and world/conflicts. Something before Aang could be fun too? Or a couple Avatars past Korra? There’s so many routes we could take this! And so many things we could bring in! I had an Avatar marathon with my brother this weekend and I just miss this universe. I’ve never actually managed to RP it before, so I wanna remedy that!

  FALLOUT***: Played 3, watched various playthroughs of New Vegas, 4, and working on 1+2! I’m a recent fan and I’ve fallen head over heels for it! I’ve got ten prepped OCs for this universe so feel free to take your pic once we get into contact! :D I think it could be fun if we make our own setting for this, but I’m so down for piggybacking off canon settings. I love the Mojave in particular, but everything’s cool in my book. I’ve also got a couple plot ideas, so I can tell you all about ‘em when we get into things!

  SKYRIM***: Well I’m a new Fallout fan so it should come to NO surprise that I’m new to Skyrim too. I recently got into it after someone recommended it to me and I’m having a blast playing the game on the Switch! I don’t have any particular ideas but I’d love to dip into the water here and see what comes of it. I’ve got a couple character ideas already so if I manage to rope anyone into this universe I’ll be one happy camper.

[scratchybeardsweetmouth]

Game of Thrones’ Iain Glen on the fiery finale and saying goodbye to Emilia Clarke

Game of Thrones is coming. And as the world’s most  popular TV show gears up for its fiery finale, Iain Glen – aka Ser Jorah Mormont –  explains what life  in Westeros is really like. ‘Tits and dragons’ and all… By Chris Harvey 23 March 2019 Photos by Frank Allias 

Put under a read more because I included almost the entire article. It Is quite long:

[...] One abiding memory of Glen will be from the last season, when Jorah, infected with the slow-creeping but deadly greyscale, bites down on a leather strap as the thick, scaly layer that covers his torso is cut away piece by piece with a scalpel. It may not have been his most nuanced performance but the agony on his face made it impossible to look away. ‘I was pretty spaced out,’ he tells me. The prosthetic took eight hours to apply – it had underlayers that would ooze pus and blood as it was sawn off – so Glen had to be on the filming base at 11pm, have make-up applied all night and then shoot a 12-hour day. ‘After what it required, the acting became quite easy,’ he says. We’re in a photographic studio near the Thames. Glen biked here from his home in south London. ‘I’m addicted to cycling,’ he says. He will even cycle to red-carpet events and park his bike around the corner. ‘I find it a very sterile atmosphere being in the back of a limo… and [cycling] is quicker. I duck and dive, and I’m not somebody who will wait endlessly at a red traffic light.  I go up one-way streets the wrong way, too.’ He looks fit and lightly tanned. He was at home in Dulwich, where he lives with his partner, actor Charlotte Emmerson, and their two children, Mary, 11, and Juliet, six, when the scripts for the final season of Game of Thrones landed in September 2017.   ‘Security around the series has got more and more fierce,’ he says, ‘to the point where nothing was allowed on printed paper throughout the whole season.’ It could only be accessed online, with extensive security protocols – it wasn’t even allowed on the cast’s own devices. ‘There was a bit of resistance from actors to that,’ he adds, ‘particularly of an older generation.’ He performs a convincing harrumph – ‘“I need to look at my lines, how can I possibly…?”’ When he read the scripts, ‘I felt, “they’ve done it, they’ve pulled it off”,’ he says, ‘that balance of satiating people’s desire for things to be complete, but leaving enough questions in the air for people to try to project forward what world will follow, individually for all the characters and universally for the world that Thrones has occupied.’  Sadness at the end of ‘the best ride in the world’, after almost 10 years of the show, was tangible at the read-through of the series with all of the main cast in Belfast 10 days later. ‘There’s a real sense of loss, it’s like a family… there were lots of tears because it was coming to an end, but real excitement and joy that we were going to shoot it.’ As characters died within the story as they read, it felt to Glen and others as if they were really being lost. ‘We’ve all grown very close to each other.’  The filming would prove to be punishing. An enormous battle scene involving many of the key characters, pitched against the Night King’s invading Army of the Dead, was shot at the set of the fictional castle of Winterfell, in County Antrim, Northern Ireland. It took 11 weeks of night shoots in sub-freezing temperatures, enduring rain, mud, high winds and ‘sheep s—’. Glen has described it as ‘a real test, really miserable’. [...] Young actors like Kit Harington (Jon Snow) and Emilia Clarke (Daenerys Targaryen) ‘are made’ by being in the show, Glen says. His storyline has been joined to Clarke’s almost from the start. What was their parting like in real life? ‘We’re friends and we’ll always be friends,’ he says. ‘Emilia went through an extraordinary story arc for herself as a person, and her character. I saw her as a nervous young actress, who had just got this big gig and everyone, [from] directors [down], was saying, “Is this the right actor? Is this how she should look? Does the wig look right?” It’s an incredible amount of pressure and I saw this young girl cope with it incredibly well.’ ‘She did ask for guidance and invariably I was saying, “Just keep doing what you’re doing.” Emilia’s very gifted, she really has no idea how good she is – she remains very vulnerable but it’s not a destructive vulnerability, it keeps her very focused… She’s [also] a very altruistic, warm person, who was the great generator of social life during Thrones. I’ll always keep an eye on what she’s doing and take pride in it.’ In the series, Ser Jorah is in love with Daenerys. Although Clarke’s character was aged up from the books for TV (in George RR Martin’s novels, she is in her early teens) fans have worked out that Daenerys can still only be 16 or 17 at the start of the show (Clarke was 22 at the time of the first season). ‘There was a point when it was definitely unrequited sexual love,’ Glen says, ‘but I think there’s always been a reciprocated love without the physicality.’ Given that Ser Jorah is in his mid-40s in the show and Glen is now 57, is his love for Daenerys age-appropriate? ‘You have to say that there’s a lot in Thrones that’s not “appropriate”,’ he returns, ‘but it feels plausible for a very different period.’ At the end of season one, Daenerys emerged from her husband’s funeral pyre unburnt and naked, with three newly hatched dragons. I wonder how Glen feels about former cast member Ian McShane’s contention that the show is ‘just tits and dragons’? ‘If tits and dragons is a negative, it doesn’t seem to stop it being a massive hit, does it?’ he says. He accepts that ‘there might have been a degree of HBO trying to arrest people’s attention, and you could accuse The Sopranos of doing that as well – there were tits and violence but there was a psychology that was underlying the whole thing.’ He thinks it might have been overstated in the first season of Thrones, in ‘putting everything on the line’ to establish the world, but says he has never felt concern about the many controversial scenes in the show, from sadistic sexual fantasies to rape. ‘At the end of the day, you can choose to watch or not to watch. When I look at history, at things that have taken place in real life that are just awful, I think there is room for dramas that try to depict that, so I’m not into censoring. I never felt things were gratuituous… Violence wise, it’s never bothered me.’ After filming their final scene, each of the main cast members was presented with a drawn storyboard from the making of the show. Glen’s depicted the bloody gladiatorial battle Jorah fought to win back Daenerys’s favour in season five. It was shot in the bullring of Osuna, in Andalusia, southern Spain, and had special memories for him. His family were with him, and the director took his daughter Mary, then seven, into the make-up tent to get blood all over her face ‘so she looked like Daddy’, then had her shout ‘action’ and ‘cut’ for the scene. After the presentation speech by writers David Benioff and DB Weiss, Glen says he was in floods of tears. Glen, who also has a son, Finlay, 22, from his first marriage to actor Susannah Harker, says he adores being a father. ‘I keep producing children… it imbues your life with a great amount of fun and magic and exhaustion. I have to be away working sometimes, and if I could I would have them with me all the time, because being woken up by a child, or having to wake up a child and deal with the minutiae and a lot of the boring crap, just having those eyes looking at you full of discovery... I love it.’ 'I always think it’s a woman’s prerogative,’ he adds, ‘I think my lady is now done on the kids and that’s fine, but I would always have more.’ He breaks off to take a call from her. As a boy himself, growing up in Edinburgh (he has two older brothers, Hamish and Graham) he was equal parts shy and extrovert, he says, and had no sense of danger. He would happily crawl out of a very high window and climb along gutters. His escapades saw him hospitalised a few times. He was adept at pretending to fall over and hurt himself – ‘I could even do it for you now.’ He still has an earring in his left ear, which he pierced himself with a pin, aged 12. ‘Dad refused to take me to the golf club unless I took it out. I thought, “F— it, I’m not going then. No.”’ His investment banker father paid for him to attend the independent Edinburgh Academy, but he had to stay on to try to improve his grades, then got the same ones again. He  managed to get into Aberdeen University to study Russian, where he discovered the joy of drama and dropped out to go to Rada. He studied alongside Ralph Fiennes, Jane Horrocks, Imogen Stubbs and Jason Watkins, but still walked away with the top acting prize for his year, the Bancroft Gold Medal,  previously won by the likes of Mark Rylance, Fiona Shaw and Kenneth Branagh. Glen built an acclaimed stage career alongside early TV roles, but has always managed to mix blockbuster  paydays – for films such as Tomb Raider (2001) and the  Resident Evil franchise – with more personal work. As Thrones’ popularity has grown, salaries have risen exponentially, with the top-end cast paid a reported $500,000 per episode (around £380,000). He notes that it’s a flat fee for a season, however many episodes you’re in. Have the rewards felt life-changing? ‘No, not really,’ he says. ‘I’ve always been lucky and busy as an actor.’ Glen experienced the negative side of press attention when his first marriage broke up in the early 2000s. Some of it was ‘intrusive’, he says – questions that related to the fact that he ‘sailed close to another relationship,’ which was [that of] Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman. ‘I did a two-handed play with Nicole, which was about a sexual relationship.’ The play was David Hare’s adaption of La Ronde, The Blue Room, which famously featured Kidman’s nude bottom and Glen performing naked cartwheels. It led, perhaps inevitably, to tabloid rumours of an affair between Glen and Kidman, whose marriage ended around the same time. Glen has always denied it, but it ensured that his separation from Harker was played out in public. ‘Compared to what some people have to deal with, it was fine,’ he says. ‘But you have a lot of eyes on you and pressure on you, when you just want to deal with your own private life.’ There’s generally no other downside to fame, he notes (‘My wife says it’s like getting your bottom patted every day’), although he will politely refuse to pose for selfies if he is with his family. Game of Thrones’ vast, global appeal means that he was once even surrounded by fans while visiting a township in South Africa. [...]

[aparecium-hq]

Welcome to Aparecium, Addie! You have been accepted for James Potter. You said you’ve been playing James off and on for a while, and it shows. He’s such a nuanced character and seems to have a lot of great potential. Check out the new member checklist, and jump right in.

Character Basics

Birthday (Age): November 3 2004 ( 23 ) Gender (Pronouns): male ( he/him ) Sexuality: pansexual Blood Status: half-blood Hogwarts House/School: Gryffindor Occupation: Keeper for the Chudley Cannons Faceclaim: Jordan Fisher

Any requested changes? n/a

Biography:

As the first born child of ‘the boy who lived’, the world quickly took interest in everything to do with James’s life from the moment he was born. He was special simply because his parents were famous and everywhere he went people seemed to know who he was. It was overwhelming at times, and a bit scary being so young and having complete strangers knowing your life story, but at home Jamie was just Harry and Ginny’s boy, another one of the Weasley’s spawn that seemed to be half of the British Wizarding population by this point. At home, lost in a sea of far less red heads than one would expect, is where James knew he was truly significant. Sure, it was easy to be overshadowed with his parents so busy and two younger siblings that couldn’t take care of themselves like James could, but Harry and Ginny made it look easy balancing work and a growing family.

James was a curious child, always managing to get into something he shouldn’t, but there were just so many amazing things around him he couldn’t always help himself. He had a need to know everything about everyone and was constantly in trouble for sneaking into his daddy’s office, or trying to see how to work his mummy’s wand. But his daddy would always let him curl up in his lap after being punished and read him any story he liked, so it really wasn’t that horrible.

James had gotten a calendar for his eleventh birthday and counted down every single day until he got to start his first year. He had been listening to stories of best friendships, Quidditch finals, and adventures since he could remember and was more excited to get to Hogwarts than he had ever been in his life. What James had not prepared for, was the unfamiliarity of it all. He had never been in a situation before where he didn’t know at least the majority of the people, and anyone he had not known his parents introduced him to. Now he was supposed to make friends on his own, decide if someone was best friend material or if he should have chosen a different compartment, and interact with people who expected things from him solely because his last name is Potter. The Prophet, professors, various school day quidditch captains, they all expected him to have the best traits of both of his parents and namesakes. It had been a lot to take in at only eleven years old.

At Hogwarts, James wasn’t surrounded by family members who were careful to make sure he was aware it was okay to be his own person. He knew he couldn’t cling to his cousins all the time, and what do you want, James? quickly turned into so much like Harry, or it’s like they knew when they named you. Instead of using his teen years to figure out who he was, James came to the realization he could become the person he was supposed to be, he just needed to try harder. He had never been the best in school, he became distracted too easily and had a hard time keeping up with all the material; but he needed to keep up pretences that he didn’t care about grades, but did well in school without trying so he would never go for help, instead staying up sometimes for 24 hours straight studying until he fell asleep sitting up.

tw: anxiety , panic attacks , and disordered eating One thing that had always captured James’s interest was flying, so when third year rolled around and James still hadn’t managed to make the house Quidditch team, he had gotten sick in the grass by the lake and hadn’t known what to do. His dad was the youngest seeker in over a century, his mum played professionally and he couldn’t even get a spot on the team. Terrified his friends who were now all on the team were going to forget about him, James spent hours from the second he got out of classes until curfew practicing. Whenever he wasn’t in class he was studying all night, then waking up at the earliest hours of the day to get time on the pitch before the teams wanted to use it for their own practice. Stress weighed heavily on him and he would manage to go days without stopping for a meal. With the extra weight off from days of not eating and extra workouts, James was faster, more agile on a broom than he had been and when one of the chasers landed a detention on game day, James was asked to fill in.

When fourth year came around and one more spot opened up on the Gryffindor team, James had shown up to try out for not the chaser position that he had been subbed in and practiced his entire life, but for the keeper spot. Sure people whispered when he got it over three seventh years, ‘ everything always came so easily to James Potter. It wasn’t fair. ‘ He didn’t correct them ( even if it bugged him that all his hard work was overlooked ). Rumors were flying that he decided to try out for keeper that morning and was simply so talented he beat out kids who had been playing the position their whole lives. It was a lot better for his image than admitting the entire previous summer he was out flying every second he wasn’t needed anywhere else.

He definitely hadn’t expected to fall in love with keeper as much as he did. Sure, his Uncle Ron played in school and they had bonded even more over his interest in the position, but the spot felt like it was his to own. He wasn’t being compared to his parents or his grandfather. He could focus on playing, not beating stats of his mother at his age, although his own progress on the house team had become something that drew the attention of quite a few people outside the walls of Hogwarts. A “natural born talent” people had called him.

It was Easter break James’s fifth year, only a few months before he sat his OWLs that Harry and Ginny quickly caught on something was wrong and perhaps he hadn’t been as easy-going the past few years as he had been throughout childhood. The boy they always had to pull out of bed every summer was now up and out the door before even they were and the cabinets holding all James’s favorite snacks seemed constantly full. But they hadn’t thought it was anything more than the stress of teenage years until Ginny walked into James’s room at four in the morning to find him throwing textbooks across the room in the clothes he had been wearing since the day before, sobbing openly. His marks on his practice exams had all been lower than he wanted, and the more times he took the practice tests the worse he did. Of course he hadn’t been the only one in his year struggling with test anxiety, but after days of talking through what was happening ( and his Hogsmede weekends being taken from him the rest of the year and being replaced his parents bringing him to therapy ) he realized it was a lot more than stress over his exams.

It was difficult accepting that maybe James could just do what made him happy; he didn’t even know what that was and wondered if he had forced himself into being this person that was a watered down version of what he thought he wanted. His parents had not even been sure they were going to let him return to Hogwarts for his sixth year, but James managed to convince them with promises of weekly letters home (which quickly turned to bi-weekly, then monthly) and closer eyes on him than necessarily made him comfortable. His final years at school hadn’t magically become perfect, but James had managed to at least make himself aware he was allowed to be true to himself and ask for help when he needed it, even if he didn’t always follow through with the actions.

After finishing school, James had no idea what he wanted to do with his life. He had gotten more OWLs than he ever thought he could ( nine Outstandings and the rest Exceeds Expectations) and did amazing in all the courses he continued onto for NEWTs level, so maybe all of his hard work really did pay off. Still, there were so many things he could do with his education but none of them sounded interesting in the slightest so his first year out of school James worked as a clerk at Weasleys’ Wizarding Wheezes, partially for money to start saving for his own flat, and part because it was so stereotypically ‘Weasley grandchild’ to have a job there and he couldn’t help himself when his Uncle George offered him the position.

However after a few months working at the shop James had been approached by a man he had remembered seeing at multiple Quidditch matches over his years at Hogwarts. They had watched James play for years, and wanted to offer him a position on the Ballycastle Bats. Of course his parents had their concerns about James moving so far away, as well as the pressure of playing professional Quidditch, but he couldn’t give up an opportunity to seize his dream job since he was six years old. He had loved his time in Ballycastle, the town had begun to feel like home and James had been upset to learn he has to leave it behind. However, his trade to the Canons had come with a raise too large to pass up on, plus he was equally as excited to be closer to home as well as his family.

Character Questionnaire

How does your character feel about their family?

“I- I don’t think there is anything in the world more important, really. Sure, family isn’t always blood, there is family that you just sort of find, and that’s just as important but family is still my number one priority. I think out of all the similarities people try to force on me and my late grandfather, this is definitely the one thing I’m positive we had to have shared, although I think I get it more from my dad than anyone else. He taught me more about family than anyone. It’s why I’m so excited to move back to England. Even though I haven’t lived here since I was eighteen, home is where your family is.”

How would your character describe their own work ethic? Is that an accurate measure of themself?

“I’ve always liked to run with the stories you hear about me, you know the ones? Potter never even plays the position until he’s fourteen years old and somehow manages to go pro. But how can’t I with my genes? Mum played pro and Dad could have if he wanted I’m sure, I was just born talented. Truth is I tend to overwork myself until I’m sick. I had a great team, and I’m joining another great team that I need to work twice as hard as any of them to be half as good.”

How would a stranger who has just met your character describe them?

“Probably say they always knew I was handsome, but didn’t realize I would be this drop dead gorgeous. Then likely wonder how I manage to even fly a broom with how clumsy I am on the ground, but that’s only because I refuse to wear my glasses half of the time and I can’t see where I’m going. I don’t know really, people always want me to be like my dad. People have always thought they knew who I was before they ever met me, now even more so since they know me for my own accomplishments not Mum or Dads. I’m shorter than they thought I’d be, and quieter.

I’d really like to consider myself more than Harry and Ginny Potter’s kid and I’m working really hard to be that. But they’re the only reason anyone pays any attention to me in the first place, I doubt that scout from the Bats would have ever taken the time to watch me play in school if I wasn’t Ginny Potter’s son. Perhaps I’m good enough to be where I am on my own, but I’m not better than all the other people who worked so much harder than me whose last name isn’t Potter. I don’t know.”

Para Sample

It had been a long day, although lately everyday seemed to feel like a long day. To be fair, James did it to himself; when he got overwhelmed he purposefully put more and more on his plate, refusing to stop as if looking for a way to self-sabotage everything he had going on. His father  had been the only one who could ever talk any sense into him when he got like this but he hadn’t exactly told anyone he was back in England just yet. He had wanted to finalize a place to live, have a plan before he told anyone he was moving back home. He was still playing quidditch  professionally, living his greatest dream since he was a child, but for some reason he still was nervous everyone would see him having to move back home as a failure. He wanted everyone to know he was still doing well before he told any of them he left Ireland. But he had been apartment hunting all day and the fact that his lease was up and he was no closer to finding a new place to live left James exhausted but unwilling to just stop for even a moment.

He looked up at the person next to him only for a moment, passing them a drink before taking a sip of his own before plastering a somewhat plausible grin on his face, faking a weak attempt at a laugh, just hoping they wouldn’t recognize him. If his family found out he was in town because someone posted it online he’d never hear the end of it. “I never would have thought it would be this difficult to find a place to live, I mean Merlin’s beard you’d think I was asking for an entire bloody castle to myself with how few options are available.”

[wishforwash]

5 Reflections after 5 Years of Leading the Social Impact Organization Wish for WASH

ODecember 12, 2019 by Jasmine Burton

Still reeling in the surreal. I was on stage with two other Georgia Tech women in STEM, wearing colorful dresses and talking about toilets. It was 2014, and we were bright-eyed and bushy-tailed undergraduates from one of the best colleges in the world. And we were driven by a mission — to bring innovation to sanitation with a gender equity and design thinking lens.

Then following the pitch, which I had overhauled a few hours before based on some last minute, deeply critical feedback, Emmy Award Winning CBS Contributor Faith Salie shouted our names on stage and on live TV that was being streamed across the state of the Georgia. We had won both the People’s Choice Award and the First-Place Award at the Georgia Tech Inventure Prize Competition, making us the first all-female team to win the largest undergraduate invention competition in the United States.

And from that moment on, I have continued speeding ahead full throttle across 10 countries, in the public, private and social enterprise sectors, and all in the name of inclusion and innovation in the sanitation sector. Still reeling in the surreal.

Six weeks after our astounding win, our team experienced our first “glow up” where we progressed from the on-stage foam prototype to nearly a dozen manufactured toilets which were shipped to a refugee camp in northern Kenya. Here, under the auspices of the sanitation enterprise Sanivation, we participated in our first usability pilot.

Our journey was launched in a beautiful display of love and community when our Georgia Tech peers, professors and individual families (Shout-out to the best parents and sister in the whole world!) hustled to help us. They helped us manually pull plastic toilet molds at strange hours in the Georgia Tech design shop, shipped the parts and construction materials to the refugee camp, and provided an enabling environment in which we could grow and thrive.

We concluded the summer with a series of learnings about how to improve our toilet based on user feedback, and we sought to iterate it in the name of design thinking, which has been integral to our work from the start. In the fall of 2014, I founded Wish for WASH, and I have grown by its side over the past 5 years.

While in this season of thanks, as I marinate and meditate on musings that are the Wish for WASH story, I want to share 5 notable reflections that are top of mind.

1. Defining What It Means To Be an Expert

I have frequently asked the people in my immediate spheres of influence about ‘what it means to be an expert’. Do you just wake up one day and feel that you have now absorbed enough knowledge in your interest area to claim the status of ‘expert’? Or do you immediately become an expert the day that you complete a degree or certificate program? Or if enough people call you an expert, is that when you become one?

I began grappling with this issue over the course of the past 5 years as I have increasingly been labeled as an expert when I myself had not yet claimed that professional status. Beyond talking and processing with my communities of support about this, I have also begun defining what ‘being an expert’ means to me and what things I will align with as well as what I will not align with.

For instance, my 5+ years of work in the water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) sector in primarily the innovator, researcher, and communicator functions does make me a relative expert in a host of roles within the WASH space. However, while my extensive work in Sub-Saharan Africa over the past 5 years gives me a more realistic and nuanced picture of the realities of WASH-related work within the region compared to others who have not worked in the region as long, it does not, by any means, make me an ‘African expert’, which is a label that has been given to me quite a few times over the past few years.

I have come to align with, and increasingly claim, my growing expertise in my technical area of interest (WASH); however, I do not subscribe to the notion that non-African nationals can be ‘African experts’ as I believe that reinforces a pervasive neocolonial narrative and silences the voices of the brilliant minds that are actually from the region. These definitions that I have outlined for myself have helped me in both my personal and professional development, as I strongly believe that words matter.

2. The Importance of Claiming Your Space

Similar to my personal journey with the term ‘expert’ as described previously, Wish for WASH as an organization has experienced a bit of mission drift as we sought to find our niche within the WASH sector. We started as solely a product company and then pivoted to include research and education, which has been an incredible adventure in finding a way to have sustainable impact through a mission-oriented organization.

Due to high manufacturing costs and the complexity of overall logistics, with the support of our organizational advisors and my individual mentors, we have needed to redefine ourselves several times over the past few years. But while that process was often ambiguous, for me as the lead, it is really amazing to reflect back and see where we are today: a network of 100+ young and diverse professionals, all under the age of 30, who have been a part of the Wish for WASH journey since 2014.

And we now can claim our space as our growing mission is to bring more diverse minds, talent, and innovation to the problems of global health and water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) through the lens of research, design and education because #everybodypoops. With this change of our mission statement, it is clear that our organizational impact is no longer tied to the impact of a single toilet design, but it is captured by the youth-led and women-led movement that we have created to help the world reach the 6th Sustainable Development Goal. Claiming this space has enabled us to be more clear internally as we seek to grow in the future. I am incredibly grateful for the people who walked with me through all of these iterations and helped us reach this point of clarity and purpose.

3. Applying a Design Thinking Iterative Approach To Yourself

As a product designer with deep professional roots in the Design Thinking Methodology, I am quite familiar with the concept of not being married to any professional products that I create but being married to the process. The goal of approaching work in this way helps me to reframe ‘failures’ as just a part of the process of iteration and implementation until the output (be it a piece of design work, a research proposal, a manuscript, communications strategy, etc) best meets the needs of the end user or audience.

However, over the past few years growing as the leader of Wish for WASH, I have realized the importance of internally applying these same principles to myself. As a human-being who happens to be occupying a leadership role, I do make mistakes. And for me, some of those mistakes have hurt and felt more personal than others.

I am still working on truly internalizing this reflection into my life’s practice. However, I think the idea of approaching personal or leadership ‘failures’ as parts of the journey (and reframing them as opportunities to iterate and continue to grow) is a healthy way to strive to be both a responsible and servant leader. And in this increasingly polarized world, I have a deep respect for those who strive to lead with these leadership approaches.

4. The Need for Leaders to Lift As They Climb

Over the course of the past 5 years, it has become increasingly clear to me that ‘with great power comes great responsibility’. I have been blessed with incredible communities of support that have enabled me to grow and thrive as blossoming innovator and thought-leader in the WASH sector.

The opportunities that have been afforded to me by my communities of support have given me a platform to better advocate for increased representation of diverse voices in the WASH sector with a particular focus on women, youth, and people of color. I firmly believe in the notion that responsible and servant leaders seek to lift as they climb to amplify not only underrepresented voices in the sector, but the voices of their team to ensure their professional development and ownership of products.

The decentralized and remote nature of Wish for WASH has facilitated an environment where our team members have had the opportunity to own products and processes rather than having it all led directly by me. While there have been some logistical challenges, overall, our 5 Year Wish for WASH Impact Survey revealed the value of the professional development opportunities and autonomy afforded to our team members.

5. Family Over Everything

And last but not least — family. As a person of faith, this mantra has always been central to my ethos, and as a young and growing leader, I could not align with it more. For those who know me personally, you know that my family is my rock. They are my biggest cheerleaders, support system and enablers, despite how crazy my ideas may sound. My family is always there for me, no matter what the topic is or which time zone I am based in. And as I have gotten older, this blessing is not lost on me and I am so thankful for it.

Because of this, I have sought to create a family environment within Wish for WASH. While not completely successful and with room for improvement, I do think that my team members feel seen, heard and valued. The work that we do is important, but the people doing the work — and their stories, visions, and needs — are equally as important.

My biggest realization over the years is the value of loving your people. Seek to love your teammates, your co-workers, your supervisors. Despite hardships, obstacles and differences. Show up for them. And approach them with respect and grace. It is not always easy and is a space where I am excited to continue growing. But overall, family — no matter how you define it — is everything.

So with that, I am ecstatic to still be reeling in the surreal. It has been 5 years and we are just getting started. Happiest Birthday, Wish for WASH! I am forever grateful for the person you have inspired me, and continue to inspire me, to become and the amazing people that I am blessed to work and grow with.

Onwards and upwards. The best is yet to come.

To learn more visit our website here and subscribe to our newsletter here.

Original post can be found here. 

[courage-a-word-of-justice]

Shield Hero 11 - 13 | Price of Smiles 12 (FINAL) | Morose Mononokean II 12 - 13 (FINAL) | Spec Ops Asuka 11 - 12 (FINAL) | My Roommate is a Cat 12 (FINAL) | Mob Psycho 100 II 12 - 13 (FINAL) | Yu-No 1 | Fruits Basket (2019) 1 | We Never Learn 1 | Kimetsu no Yaiba 1 | Kono Oto Tomare! 1 | Mayonaka no Occult Koumuin 1 | Fairy Gone 1 | Rendai Utena 1

Notably, Sarazanmai’s first ep isn’t here, but it’s a huge contender for making my spring watchlist.

Shield Hero 11

Okay, someone’s trying to remind me of Goblin Slayer, aren’t they…? *grumble grumble grumble*

I wonder if Naofumi has a Thunder move like those guys…?

Why isn’t Raphtalia, who was cursed by Rage Shield, affected, but Filo, who was eaten by the zombie dragon, is???

Price of Smiles 12 (FINAL)

Is Huey…not an a$$? Is he just really tsundere…?

Fingers don’t move that way, Layla…

Post-credits segment. Keep watching…

I feel like making Stella and Yuki meet off the back of Layla’s death was a bit much and pushing the button together was a bit…much-er, if that’s a concept. Anyways, see you next time!

Morose Mononokean II 12

The Cobweb = Above the Spider (by literally translating that ep title, that is).

I’m finally listening to Koura’s voice. Koura sounds like she’s always teasing Itsuki…

Jinja = Shinto shrine. That nuance is missing from the translation.

Why did that one track (when Itsuki was escaping) sound like Mission Impossible…?

What’s an analeptic? I can’t seem to pause the video…Update: Apparently my ad blocker was stuffing with the pause button. Also, an analeptic appars to be a restorative drug, or describing a drug as restorative.

Rippou sounds so enthusiastic (sarcastic) when Shizuku offers to make him tea.

Spec Ops Asuka 11

Wat. A girl in Thailand going “nya”? Update: Uhh…apparently the girl in Thailand…was Peipei??? Wuh???

Hmm…I never actually put 2 and 2 together regarding karate and the whip. It makes sense in retrospect, though.

“…sever the…” – Sever the…what, exactly?

I thought human!Giess didn’t exist anymore under that armour…so seeing him surprised me.

Sometimes I feel like I sympathise with Chisato more than Asuka or Kurumi…that’s how developed Chisato is.

Mob Psycho 100 II 12

Serizawa is playing Bomberman.

I like the symbolism of the umbrella as a “light”.

My Roommate is a Cat 12 (FINAL)

The ep title is “Kimi to Boku to” (You and I and…). Presumably it should end with “everyone else”…or something.

Wait, wasn’t Subaru’s umbrella handle round before??? It’s straight now!

What a waste of a perfectly good umbrella!

Somehow I knew Subaru would go to Nana once he needed cat knowledge.

*Subaru rescues Haru* - *cue Lion King song* Ahhhhhhh ze ban yaaaaaaaaaaa…or something like that.

Why is it that I want a dub for this so…darn…badly???!!! Wait…*record scratch* it already has one. Scratch that.

Shield Hero 12

“I can’t stop trembling,” Raphtalia says as she stands there, still as a statue…geesh.

I’d assume there’s a Meteor Shield in there for Naofumi as well…?

Come to think of it, we never learnt that weapon merchant guy’s name until now, huh? Elhart. I’ll try my best to remember it.

Spec-Ops Asuka 12 (FINAL)

Twin-headed Dragon Peipei, huh?

Morose Mononokean II 13 (FINAL)

*Fuzzy gets punched away* - Fuzzy, noooooooo!

In the same way Mob became a so-called “bishonen” for s2 ep 5 of his show, Hanae became kind of hot – but also kind of weird – for the finale.

Notably, the “Ashiya” Abeno is referring to is only Hanae…not Sakae at all. Hmm.

Mob Psycho 100 II 13 (FINAL)

“Bishonen” Mob returns!

I keep getting the feeling that Mob will sacrifice himself this episode. It’s a very Mob thing to do, but…I worry about him, because without him we have no show.

*explosion* - I wanna yell “KANEDAAAAAAAAAA!” Is that appropriate for this scene?

I LOLled at Dimple wearing Serizawa’s chunk of hair, haha.

Anyways, that was way too fun (and way too worrying at the end). See you next time!

Yu-No 1

Okay, first episode of this particularly meager season…coming right up!

I’ve never had to watch an ep on phone for subs before…I much prefer a bigger screen.

Okay…as soon as I heard Potato-kun say “Panties?” I knew I was in for a bad time. I’m watching based on the title and the series image, not the fact it’s based on an adult VN.

I can’t believe we have to be told about these ladies from the guys first…I feel sorry for Yuki.

I-Is Arima-mama the kind of person one would call a “MILF”…? I dunno since I don’t swing that way.

Seriously, how long ago did Potato-kun’s father die??? (I know his name is Arima Takuya, but…he’s “Potato-kun” to me, even as a joke.)

Potato-kun is so obviously following his…pen island, so to speak.

Ah, Potato-kun. The only time you make me laugh is when you humiliate yourself on public news. Thank goodness this show isn’t particularly lewd…yet.

It’s like Grand Blue…only with less drinking.

Seriously, why does Yuki call Potato-kun “boss”???

The one time I hear the name “Neumann”, it’s this time travel show, of all things…*remembers von Neumann architecture* Yup, that’s where I remember his name from. By the by, Googling “Neumann space” yields this site on travelling to the…stars? Wrong frontier, folks.

Okay, that was probably the least exciting way to pull off a big reveal like that. Drop.

Shield Hero 13

To be honest…I like Rise better…

“You’re are surrounded.” – I know you’re in a hurry to sub your content, CR subbers, but seriously?????

It’s always funny to see Motoyasu get a good socking from Filo, LOL.

Fruits Basket 1

I have zero experience with OG Fruits Basket outside 1 episode I didn’t really finish (but finishd the entire manga and may have caught a tiny bit of it - not enough to mark on anyone’s anime list as “complete” - while it was on TV), so…this’ll be interesting.

This is exactly as I remember it! Beautifulllllllllllll…so beautiful I wanna cry…(Keep in mind I binged most of the manga years ago, so it’s getting harder and harder to remember the exact story every day.)

Holeeeeeeeeeeee…sugar. I just realised how old Fruits Basket is! Also, rumour has it Motoko has differently coloured hair in the OG version, but I didn’t watch (or didn’t remember) that part, so…I don’t have a standard to hold her up to, really. Plussssss…I love how Motoko and her Prince Yuki fanclub are like Mean Girls. The reason I had to check up how old Fruits Basket is is because of that comparison. Mean Girls is from 2004, thereby being 5 or 6 years younger than Fruits Basket.

The angelic “ahhhhh” in the background really sold how good Tohru’s food was (for Hanajima).

This CGI fan is going to haunt me until the end of my days, isn’t it…?

Ouch…I think I just realised why Fruits Basket is so powerful (at the part where Tohru is working hard at her job). It resonates strongly with those who are lost in life. I found I couldn’t really relate when I first read it though, which may have been attributed to the fact I was…what, 13?...at the time.

Shigure, you a$$!!!!!!!!!!!!! I wanna kick you for laughing at poor Tohru!!!!!!!!!!!

Photorealistic clouds…no. I think that Indian festival with the dye (I don’t remember which one it is off the top of my head) happened to my eyes…(i.e. my eyes…my poor eyes…)

I didn’t think Vickeblanka was capable of doing slower songs. This song’s kinda nice…but only because I heard the last few seconds of the ending (the rest was obscured by background noise and I don’t have time to play it again).

Between the comment about Shigure and the comment about the clouds, I was internally bawling about how stupid and spoilt I’d become. This is the power of Fruits Basket!

We Never Learn 1

Hmm…I thought the manga of this (or what I saw of it, at least) was kinda vanilla, so…this’ll be an experience, one way or another.

Yuiga’s face game is spot-on, LOL.

Aw, this show encourages the growth mindset…how cute. *does Kaguya-sama face*

The eyecatch is about what classes the main trio are in, but Furuhashi is taking it as related to boob size…*sigh*

The sign just says “library”. There’s no need to contextualise it more than that…

Yup, this is vanilla like ice cream…

Come to think of it, why did I pick this series up? I’ve read the manga parts that correspond to this episode…Well, I remember when this series was still new. I think it was that it was refreshing to see these guys so gung-ho about uni, because recently I’ve been in doubt about my own future (and to tell the truth, I’ve been thinking different things about what I want to do at different stages of my life anyway). I’ve literally only settled on the things I’m doing because I suck at everything else, but I can do whatever I put my mind to…for most things I try. Much like Fruits Basket is for those who are lost in life, We Never Learn is an affirmation that you can change your future…or something like that, anyway.

…The disembodied mouths creep me out…anyways, this show isn’t bad, it isn’t 100% a keeper either (unless I get co-opted into a collab for it). It’s just squarely in the middle.

Boob grope…eesh. That brought down the keeping factor down a little.

Kimetsu no Yaiba 1

[big chunk of information redacted because it’s me stressing over what has to be done before I go overseas...and also it reveals I had a collab for this lined up, which I’m trying to keep a surprise at the time this post went out]

To be honest, I don’t like 1st person cam.

Hmm…there’s more CGI than I’d like to admit is in here…

I remember reading a while ago that the “Tan” in Tanjiro is the word for “charcoal”.

Take = bamboo, and he’s a woodcutter kid. LOL.

This is exactly as I remember it! It’s kinda cool, since the smelling thing is obviously foreshadowing.

I remember I didn’t quite get the idea that Nezuko was growing in size in the manga…well, now I just did.

Oh-hoh-hoh-hohhhhhhh! Giyu Tomioka, me boy! There he is!

I didn’t know Giyu Tomioka was basically a ninja, LOL.

This is definitely one of the better series out there this season. It might not be the best due to its sheer amount of shonen trappings, but it’s still dang good! (I like Giyu Tomioka already, but now that I think of it, I’d like to see Lightning Boy in action within the show and not just the OP…hmm.)

[Sarazanmai 1 is not here because I saw it at the anime club first. I do intend to cover subsequent episodes here though…]

Kono Oto Tomare! 1

I find Funi’s video player unwieldy, to be honest. Maybe it’s because I’m too used to CR’s…

Oh! It seems like the Defence Club has a legacy now!

Surprisingly, this is very funny…!

Hmm…this seems like a show where you should ship people, but there doesn’t seem to be enough of a connection between anyone that I can see anyone shipping. I guess that’s why this thing is basically a shoujo in appearance, huh…?

By the way, who’s “Nadeshiko”? Takezo…?

Do you guys even know what a koto is? If you do, that’s great, but if you don’t, you’re going to have to infer…that’s a bit nasty for an ancient instrument the West doesn’t know about. Then again, this clearly isn’t something made for the West.

I’m wondering why the culprits confessed so easily…

Well, that was…alright. I went “aw” more than I expected and laughed more than expected. It’s not going to top the other shows I’ve got though.

Mayonaka no Occult Koumuin 1

For some reason, I’m just not used to calling this show “Midnight Occult Civil Servants”…that sounds clunky. That’s why I’m calling it “Mayonaka” for short…oh yeah, right now Funi is undergoing maintenance which is why I had to shuffle Mayonaka forward. I was meant to be doing Fairy Gone in this slot, to be honest with you.

Hmm…*thinks about time talking with Plyasm* *thinks about how Seo trid to kick this Reiji Kyoichi person* I see a resemblance here…with the kicking and all…Update: There is a guy called “Reiji” in this show, I just read “Kyoichi” wrong because I was trying to type up comments here.

Somehow it never actually occurred to me that Seo was a gender-neutral name. I’m normally quite good with these things…or maybe it was Ply keeping me up late that’s making me not notice…or even the fact I’m not listening to Seo’s voice, since that’s sometimes a hint to a person’s gender in particularly ambiguous cases (I’m currently not listening to the audio). Update: Okay, that’s definitely a man’s voice coming from the effeminate-looking Seo.

Oh yes…I forgot to mention, this show does an awful lot of telling and not showing.

I keep noting this episode is set on April Fool’s Day…what a day for pranking, huh?

I’ve seen a Cait Sith in anime before…so there’s a dog version too (Cu Sith), huh?

Tape? That’s so mundane…then again, I guess this is what happens when you have boring jobs in interesting places, huh? Reminds me a lot of my own stabs at this kind of story.

This is…angel-tengu Romeo and Juliet…

Now this is the real Reiji…I think?

Ohhhhhhh crab balls…these CGI angels look terrible.

I never thought cherry blossoms could look so terrible…urgh.

I’m of two minds when it comes to this show – on the one hand, I like its plot (it’s better than Charlotte in this field, at least). It’s a bit cliched, but it might lose against competition like Sarazanmai or even Kono Oto Tomare. On the other hand, its visuals are kinda…ugly.

Fairy Gone 1

Fa-Fanatica…? What sort of name is that??? (That’s not a good sign if I question the first name on the screen now, is it?)

Lay Dawn, would you please…lay down? (Okay, that joke only works with a particular pronunciation of “down”, but you get the bad pun…right? Right?)

So this is Spec-Ops Asuka without the huge boobs, I expect? That would make Fairy Gone at least 10 points (on my anime list) better than the thing I’m comparing it with.

I think the tiny symbols under most of the credits are stylised English, although I was looking at a credit for a guy with the surname Yamamoto and it wasn’t quite working.

The CGI is one of the better efforts I’ve seen, but still slightly obvious.

Veronica’s run reminds me of Akira from Devilman Crybaby. You know the one GIF of him running while leaning forward at an impossible angle? That one.

Post-credits scene…keep watching.

This is another anime Jesus…(the first one was Kagura’s dad in Ga Rei Zero.)

Rendai Utena 1

(Update: This was an anime I had to watch via VPN. Notably, the last time I resorted to one was B Project...however, no one remembers that but me, so the last big time I had to use a VPN was for Sakamoto Desu Ga?.)

Uh…yeah. This is the one Buddha anime this season. But before you run off, screaming about how blasphemous I must be to Buddhists, I’ll have you know I was originally not intending to watch this…if you know me well enough, you’ll know I like bishies. Only after I compiled my to-watch list for this season did one of the star bishies show up and convince me to watch…yeah, now you can run away screaming. (Oh and if you’re interested as to what image caught my attention enough to make me watch a show…it’s the top image on this CR page – not the thumbnail, the other top image.)

Okayyyyyyy…for a show about bishies, you sure aren’t capturing me right now with this plight of a salaryman.

Aw, dangit. I actually liked the few moments this was a zombie anime! Give me High School of the Dead, but with bishies instead of jiggly-boob girls! *shakes fist at cloud*

Oh, great…I can’t even tell who’s who around here. They even had little name cards and everything! So much for my great memory…*grumble grumble* But hey, at least I recognise some names…not from being Buddhist, but from other anime. I mean, Miroku is the guy from Inuyasha and Fudo Myouou is the guy who inspired Okurikara in Touken Ranbu, yeah?

Uh, hey. Isn’t sloth meant to be a vice? Isn’t “lounging around” a vice???

Another thing. I get the feeling that putting these guys in tracksuits is just trying to coast on the success of Touken Ranbu. Touken Ranbu is nice, but only because I was familiar with the source game and a bit about the fandom. This? I have no such basis.

Lotus Head – Bonten – his nagging is starting to get on my nerves already. I came for Taishakuten, not you!

Yeah…even in Touken Ranbu, they have washing machines. Convenience, but also…vice in terms of that old-timey Buddha stuff, I guess…? Update: Actually, I thought about it and I don’t think they’ve ever shown a washing machine in Hanamaru, but I think they might’ve had a fridge.

Wait, wait, wait…the bird was a bishie tooooooooo?????????????? I think that’s the biggest bending my brain’s going to get all premiere season (for this season)! Even more so than the entire debut of Sarazanmai!

Wait, wait, wait…Bonten likes porridge?! D’ya mean “congee” or “oatmeal” kinda porridge? I can’t tell because I’ve got the volume off, but if it’s the latter then Bonten wouldn’t have known about it. Update: It appears to be the latter. How Bonten would’ve ever known about porridge…I don’t know.

New aesthetic – Taishakuten’s hair. I like me a man with a ponytail (which is why I fell hook, line and sinker for him in the first place), but his hair done up like it is in the bath…*swoons, then goes back to normal* That is all.

What’s up with Paomi anyway…? And…this is kinda petty if the central conflict is just getting Shaka to get off cooking duties. That’s too low a conflict for even Hanamaru, methinks.

So…you introduce all these Buddha guys and then expect me to care about some human who doesn’t even have a name? Wuh…?

Okayyyyyyy…I’ve never seen an earthquake that was that fast before.

Wait, wait, huh???????? The guy who voices Taishakuten is…Choreo (Brave Beats)??????????? Oh no, I should’ve listened to it! Anyways, I’ve decided I’m dropping it, simply because if I want Taishakuten only for his looks, I can just find a wallpaper of him.