#and yes the trailer it played in is just as anime as the song is

[calebwittebane]

im not even gonna say anything abt the minecraft movie trailer i hope nobody says anything about that thing ever and it flops and they never do that kinda shit again. just like the damn mario movie shouldve flopped but no you guys went and paid to see it and pretended that bowser song from it was good. im sorry you guys know that despite my occasionally pretentious attitude i very much love me some very popular media and some all ages entertainment but you might as well be discussing and making fan content of youtube kids finger family nursery rhymes. except with a budget of 100 quintillions and vast amounts of severely underpaid labor. the stench. like i prommy i prommy im not normally the kinda person who gets mad about this type of stuff i mean damn man my url and pfp are from a disney channel animated show. but this, this whole thing, this is the type of shit where thinking about the money and effort being put into it the sweat and blood the physical and mental health of the artists the budget the fuckin. carbon footprint of it all. genuinely make my head hurt so bad. it could all be going somewhere else. anywhere else. like there has to be a line. there has to be a point where youre just like Ok this is stupid. if youre reading this dont engage with that shit. you yes you. ignore its existence. live in a world where nobodys making that kinda shit. have a smoothie. play some minecraft (pirated). donate to a fundraiser. go to sleep. 8 hours.

[munson-blurbs]

@corrodedcoffinfest Day 13: Sex, Drugs, & Rock n Roll

Word Count: 677/Rating: M/Pairing: None/CW: drug use (marijuana), mentions of sex, moaning, general debauchery with the guys/Tags: Eddie Munson, Gareth, Grant, Jeff, Wayne Munson, competition

Divider credit to @silkholland

“Dude,” Gareth drawls, taking a long hit from the joint, “y’know what we should do?”

Grant laughs before his friend can even finish his sentence, plunging one hand into the bag of pretzels to his left. 

Eddie plucks the joint from Gareth, earning a scowl from Jeff who was next up in the rotation. “What’s up?”

Gareth grins. “We should record a song—”

“Already did that,” Jeff cuts in. 

“Shut the fuck up! Anyway,” Gareth takes an exaggerated breath, “we should, like, record a woman moaning and put it in the track. Like in Rocket Queen.”

Grant drops a pretzel. “You’re a fuckin’ genius!” He tries to clap Gareth on the back but misses, sending the two into a fit of giggles. 

“Yeah, a genius.” Eddie rolls his eyes. “Except for the fact that we’re not exactly drowning in moaning women.” He stretches, exposing a sliver of torso. “In fact, I’m pretty sure you’re all still virgins. The handy that Jeff got behind the Hideout doesn’t count.”

Jeff elbows him, but Eddie’s too high to notice. “Maybe we don’t need women,” Jeff muses. “Ed, you still got that tape recorder?”

Eddie’s brows shoot up. “Yeah. Somewhere around here.” He digs around under his bed until he finds it, blowing off the dust. 

Jeff presses the PLAY and RECORD buttons in unison. The cassette’s wheels spin. “Check, one, two,” he mumbles into the mic. 

And then he lets out one long, shrill moan. 

“What the fuck,” Gareth guffaws, “was that?”

Eddie yanks the recorder away from Jeff. “Someone’s gonna think we’re torturing puppies and call animal control.”

“Seriously, dude. What porn are you watching?” Grant adds. He takes the recorder from Eddie. “It’s gotta be sexy. Like this.”

He holds the microphone close to his mouth, breathing out moans in short bursts. After ten seconds of that, he glances around the room to gauge everyone’s reactions. 

“Well…” Eddie starts, taking another hit, “that was…less bad than Jeff’s.”

A triumphant grin stretches across Grant’s face. Eddie’s too stoned to elaborate that their other guitarist had set the bar in hell. 

Instead, he turns his attention to the drummer. “Gare? You willing to give it a shot?”

Grant snickers. “Should be easy for him considering he’s barely hit puberty.”

“That’s not what your mom said last night,” Gareth shoots back. Grabbing the mic, he lets out a series of what sound like pained yelps. 

Eddie scrambles for the tape recorder. “So that’s gonna be a hard pass from me,” he says with obviously feigned kindness, “but we’ll keep you in mind if we ever need an impression of someone being electrocuted.”

“Whatever.” Gareth crosses his arms over his chest. “Why don’t you give it a try, Sex God?”

“Just because he’s gotten laid doesn’t mean he’s made her moan,” Jeff points out, earning a high-five from Grant. 

Eddie flips them off. “Fuck all of you. I’ll have you know I’m a goddamn giver.” 

He double-checks that the cassette wheels are spinning, then indulges the guys in the most realistic moaning they’ve ever heard outside of Family Video’s adult section. 

“Oh my god! H-oh my god! Yes, yes, yes!”

“Boy, what the hell are you doing?”

Wayne Munson stands in the trailer’s entrance carrying two brown paper bags filled with groceries. 

Eddie’s cheeks turn bright red, sobriety infiltrating his brain. Long gone is his hazy high. “N-Nothing.” He drops the microphone. “Just messing around.”

“Sounds like a goddamn brothel in here,” Wayne grumbles, shoving Chef Boyardee cans into the pantry. 

“Wait.” Eddie forces himself to look at his uncle. “Like, did it actually sound good? Did I sound like a woman moaning?”

Wayne studies him with a look of sheer disappointment and disbelief. “I’m gonna go out to the truck and get the last bag,” he says slowly, “and when I come back, I want these numbskulls gone, and I want you to never ask me something like that again.”

“Got it.” Eddie nods, but the second Wayne leaves, he turns to his bandmates. 

“Looks like we have a winner, boys.”

--

[the-eeveekins]

Why The Witch From Mercury is Important to Me

This will be a long, somewhat rambling and mostly personal thread. It's not about the show's quality or any issues I had about it (and YES, the show is flawed and has issues), but about why G-Witch's characters and themes were important to me and I think many others. Most of this I've already shared to a degree, but I wanted to expand my original thoughts, and put them all into one post.

I've been a Gundam fan for over 20 years, I got into the series with Wing on Toonami and have watched the vast majority of the animated series. As a woman, I longed for the day Gundam would have a female main character in the spotlight of a major show, but honestly at some point I'd given up on it. I just thought that if they hadn't done it by now, they never would.

Then, last March, they released this short 30 second trailer revealing The Witch From Mercury, and showing off Suletta and Aerial, and I was ecstatic! Finally, a female MC in a Gundam series, I was so excited for a new Gundam series for the first time since 00! I watched that short clip countless times over the months in anticipation of the series airing, I even grew addicted to the little song that plays during it.

Over time, the characters and key art were revealed and I saw some people float the idea that maybe Suletta and Miorine would be love interests. I didn't pay it any mind at the time. I was sure they'd milk their relationship for bait along the way, but there was no way they'd commit to Gundam's first female MC being gay. Even after the first episode aired I was still skeptical: There was the bait I was expecting, they're not seriously going to go through with it though.

And here we are, almost 10 months after G-Witch started airing, and Suletta & Miorine are married. It not only wasn't bait, but they committed to it in a way I never would have imagined coming from a franchise I loved like Gundam. It was done with care and respect for the characters, it didn't feel like it was exploitative or added just for fanservice, but was a very real relationship.

I'll admit, I was initially among those disappointed we didn't see a kiss or the wedding at the end, but my greatest fear was the ending would be as ambiguous as possible, or even worse, walk back what we'd seen, so as not to offend people. Instead we got the sister-in-law line, the matching wedding rings, how close they were and they way they looked at each other with love and talking about going home together. We didn't see them kiss or see the wedding, but we got to see them married, and I think that's incredible.

As a gay woman, and a Gundam fan of over 20 years, Suletta is an immensely important character to me. Suletta and Miorine's relationship, and it being a central focus of the story, is immensely important to me. They're things I dreamed of having in Gundam, but never really thought would ever happen. I've been so happy about them for a long time now, but these last two days I've been so unbelievably happy that I was given their story. I love them so much and I'm never going to forget these two.

And this ties into why I think G-Witch has been important to so many people, regardless of how they feel about it's quality, because of it's representation and themes. Suletta, the main character of the show, is a queer, neurodivergent, disabled woman of color. She was well written, and she got to have a happy ending married to the woman she loves, where she's thriving and happy despite her mobility. She's not treated with pity or remorse, and she's still pursuing her dreams of making a school.

And not just Suletta, there were so many characters belonging to different minority groups that got strong representation and happy, satisfying endings. If you're a woman, if you're queer, if you're a POC, if you're any sort of ND, if you're disabled, The Witch From Mercury not only gave you good representation, but also said you're deserving of love, empathy and happiness.

With regard to it's themes, I absolutely love how G-Witch stressed love, empathy, compassion, acceptance and forgiveness over hate, vengeance, punishment and karma. Suletta and Miorine made many mistakes during their journey that they could never take back, but they accepted each other, including their mistakes, and resolved to move on together and makes amends for them if possible. Suletta never got mad at Miorine, Prospera or Eri for the things they did to her and she never blamed them, all she did was understand and accept why they did the things they did, and move forward with her love for them. She accepts the people she loves, mistakes and all, because of her unrelenting love and compassion for them.

Even Prospera, the main antagonist, ultimately rejected revenge for the sake of saving her daughter. She was a less than stellar parent to Suletta, and her actions lead to a heavy death toll, but ultimately Suletta accepted her and her actions to save Eri. And rather than go for an easy karmic death, she was allowed to have a happy ending: Eri was saved, and she's living a peaceful life with her family. A life that was robbed from her 24 years prior.

And ultimately, those themes are why we had an ending where literally no one died, and nearly every character got to have a happy ending. Gundam has always said that violence is bad, but The Witch From Mercury was the first to say "Alright, then we'll solve the problem without violence." We got a big magic spell that was a Gundam Pride Parade in space, and combined with Miorine's actions, events were resolved peacefully.

That's why G-Witch is important to me. It gave me and many others representation in ways you almost never get from a major franchise like Gundam, and without feeling like it was doing it to just check boxes off on some executive's diversity list. It stressed themes of love, empathy and acceptance and rejected hate, revenge, karma and even death. And I think that's incredibly important in this day and age. Representation Matters. Love Matters.

I've been very emotional over this show the last two days because I've been loving it for a while now, and while I'm sad to see it end, I'm so grateful that it happened, flaws and all. I've been crying on and off since the last episode ended and I've had trouble sleeping, but I've been so unbelievably happy over what this one show did and how much it's meant to me. The characters may not be real, but the happiness Suletta & Miorine have brought me is very much real.

For me; Suletta, Miorine, and The Witch From Mercury were truly a blessing.

[handsomethrowrug]

SILLY M.UFASA REVIEW

Featuring my niece, who has decided this is her faceclaim:

I'm putting her opinions in [these brackets]. Some of them are written by me, most are by her.

We were going into this expecting this to be terrible, and we were not disappointed by that. We had a great time making fun of it!

Spoiler free rating: 1.5/5

[niece says I'm being too generous]

Note: We're judging just the movie. We're not making comparisons to the animated, just to be clear. This is just the movie by itself. It's also me ranting about my muse. (Yes I know it is technically a different version that I don't technically write, but still)

Spoilers ahoy!!

-

Let me be clear: I think this movie should not have been made. We were fine without it. However, as a Scar writer, I needed to go see it to do some character research.

Overall.... The movie was... Okay. I wouldn't be recommending people to run out and get tickets. If you want to watch it, go for it, I suppose.

The plot as a whole felt a bit spread out. There was literally a lot of ground to cover. The pacing went back-and-forth. The music and the visuals were nice, but there were also some heavy-handed references to the original movies. The good thing is that the P.ride Lands didn't get his by a snowstorm like we all feared. They're unrelated scenes!

I left the movie in heaps of giggles, mostly because I couldn't believe what we just watched.

Now, onto the pros and cons that we could think of.

---

PROS: (Yes, we found some pros.)

I loved the visuals. The scenery was really pretty. [sometimes. Niece hated the desert scenes]

K.iara was a national treasure. Best part of the film by far. I am glad she was there.

[Niece liked some of T.imon and P.umbaa's scenes. Not all of them.]

Two songs. The first: the brother song was rather cute.

The second? bye bye :)

(I also liked the song with M.ufasa's parents but niece said it doesn't count)

THE ANIMALS CAN EMOTE. I REPEAT. THEY HAVE EMOTIONS THAT ARE VISIBLE. I AM SHOOKETH.

That one bit where there was a white lioness and then an elephant ran by and she was YEETED to the sky. (bye bye!)

The P.ride Lands was SO PRETTY. (Yes I like the visuals shhh)

They played familiar leitmotifs at certain points, like when he became king. I got really excited to hear them.

R.afiki. :D

Cons:

Oh god.

The pacing was a bit weird. It felt like some bits were rushed, but others dragged on. There were parts that felt like they were adding onto the time to bulk it out.

[I was sooooo bored lol. There was one point where T.imon mentioned act 1 finishing and I swear I was zoned out from there until the climax of the film. I don't think its anything to do with my, admittedly varying, attention span. IT WAS JUST SO BORINGGGG.]

I'm biased but I wanted more cub time. Having the timeskip be part of their song after they officially met was a little bit of a bummer. But I should have expected that from the trailer tbh.

Niece didn't care for white lion. We were impressed at his villain song until he said that line over and over. Then we couldn't take him seriously and spent the rest of the movie making fun of him. We absolutely would have been eaten had we been there. :D [He was so goofy but in an unremarkable way? Like yeah bro you're so scary flashing your smile and doing nothing, mhm sure you are.]

I still don't like how they made Z.azu. I LOVE the idea of him being a scout but I just don't like the version of him that they show in general. It's not a comedy partner, it just made him... Incompetent?

WHY. WAS. THERE. A. GODDAMN. LOVE. TRIANGLE. I HATE IT. I HAAAATTTEEE IT. We audibly GROANED when we realised. I think I lost a year of my life in disappointment. WHYYYYYYYYYY.

No joke there was a song and I was tapping my niece's shoulder to tell her how it was nice that there wasn't a love triangle despite my worries and T.AKA IMMEDIATELY STARTED SINGING ABOUT HOW PRETTY S.ARABI WAS LITERALLY AS SOON AS I SAID IT. I'm fairly sure I slumped against my niece at that point.

I predicted the love song before it happened. I'm amazing.

There were a LOT of heavy-handed references. This isn't the same as the musical references, as these were trying to reference things that happen in the main movie, and giving Mufasa a lot of the same key life points as Simba. Which, again, I get because of the 'Circle of Life' circular aspect, but it came off a little too strong at times. [I was really happy to hear the ending music from the original L.ion King again, not because it was actually impactful but because I could tell the movie was nearly over]

The getting of the scar was soooooo meh.

I wish more time had been dedicated to the P.ride Lands. It felt super rushed like they forgot that they had a time limit. It would have been nice to explore it a little more somehow.

[Niece thinks there was too much desert. To much canyon. So dry.] [just like the 'humour'.]

M.UFASA KILLS LIONS. HUH??

-

(S.car rant ahoy! Niece has given up on me and is playing games on her phone instead) [I just let her do her thing]

I'm putting all this together but I'm sooooooo bummed by T.aka. This isn't even about comparing him to the animated version (though I do accept this may accidentally happen), as the reason I went to see this was to gain inspiration for writing him. I knew the story was going to be about him being an heir, losing everything, and watching all his dreams being fulfilled by someone else but... I feel like they were missing something, you know? And, again, I know they were implying that he was spoiled and expected everything to just land at his paws but... Still.

The idea was that he was supposed to be spoiled and entitled. At the same time, there was a real lack of that throughout the film. He was really just the 'sidekick' for a while, and really got pushed to the background once S.arabi was introduced. Only that I was deliberately paying attention to his scenes, it would be easy to forget he was even there.

In several key moments in the film, he stays back, runs away, or hides. I know it's to emphasise the fact that he's cowardly, but they could have easily shifted it to "I'm going to be king, you fight for me", to align with his later stance of disliking violence. It would have been cool for him to solve a problem, or properly help out and latch on to that thirst of power. Instead, they have him obsessed with the one thing he did do.

(I do not kid. When he discovers M.ufasa has fallen in love with S.arabi, T.aka literally goes like "I saved you when we were cubs and this is how you repay me?". This isn't even because his dad pushed the idea that those outside the pride will betray him, this is him insisting he's amazing because he did one thing.)

I think this might have been fixed a little if we had more time with them as youths to see other examples of how T.aka might have 'helped', but we didn't get that.

Every time he 'turned evil', it was literally like they put in a stunt double. His voice changed, his accent changed, everything. It was so jarring, and literally wasn't hinted at prior to this. In the main movie, S.car boasts about his intelligence, yet we don't actually see it in play until he decides to betray M.ufasa for him falling in love with S.arabi when he knew T.aka liked her. We only see this cunning side once when he was persuading the white lions to work with him, and that was SO COOL. Where was this the entire way through? (Seriously, if he had turned bitter from losing his family and his home and took on that snarky attitude while still on M.ufasa's side, I would have been SO happy with that.)

I didn't like how, yes, his descent to evil was because he didn't get the girl, and not because of something like how everyone was turning to his brother for ideas and guidance instead of him, the one with royal blood. It felt like they had an idea for who T.aka should be, and who S.car should be, but couldn't properly connect the two. They had T.aka's father be lazy, self-centred and willing to use underhanded tactics to get his way, which is supposed to give a glimpse of what Ta.ka himself would be like... Yet Ta.ka technically doesn't display these traits either. He blames M.ufasa for winning over his parents, but at the same time wasn't particularly close to either of them himself.

But at the same time, T.aka never goes 'truly' evil. His moment of bravery that his mother predicted would happen is when he gets the scar and takes a hit from the big baddie for M.ufasa, but it feels slightly flat; and once everything is over T.aka skulks away. It just felt a little... Messy, I think. There's no mention of how the throne should be his, no confrontation with M.ufasa at the end before he's told to stand down, nothing. They spend so long calling M.ufasa a 'stray' that I thought this was going to be a fighting point at the end. It wasn't. :(

All in all, I just feel like something was missing from the character. He was trying to play two roles - a sidekick and a traitor - but it didn't fully succeed in either.

tldr: S.car was basically "GO GIRL! GIVE US NOTHING!!".

[tldr: be prepared for boredom AND disappointment]

[icekingofhope]

(Enjoy this meme here-)

so the Sonic 3 trailer is out and I decided to go on and make a silly post and a small announcement

I have decided after much debate I will start officially making sonic art NOW KNOW I am new at drawing the sonic artstyle so the characters may look like something out of the shining or something cause I’m getting used to drawing them I done the same with the lmk style until I perfected it

Anyways I decided to ramble my thoughts on the trailer and why I love Sonic

now I am a sonic veteran I have drawn sonic before but when I was way younger but Sonic has stuck by me I remember back in the 2000s I used to watch sonic underground a lot on Netflix that’s how long ago it was I always loved sonic I loved the video games even own some sonic games myself!

my first one was sonic unleashed one of my favorite games I always loved and still love to this day the time where he was a werehog and sometimes I even wish he can go back to werehog sonic and plus it introduced me one of my comfort songs endless possibilities

I got way more into Sonic thanks to the anime Sonic X I didn’t watch the whole series cause it started to get weird but it was how I was introduced to shadow one of my favorite characters

I remember I was so intrigued I tried to find other content and then I found YouTuber named animebromii (who unfortunately is a…well piece of shit to sum it up he was one of those found out to get to close to kids type of YouTubers category but that was found out right after I stopped watching him) I remember his Sonic videos always made me filled with joy and made me love the characters more

although I stop getting into Sonic as fans started to get a little to weird for my taste and such and Sega didn’t know what the fuck they were doing

what rekindle my love for Sonic was well the Sonic movies and as I watch I remembered the joy I had for it and started to slowly get into Sonic again and explore more of it due to being more mature and such I turned out to have well a lot of unpopular opinion that I know will have a mob of angry Sonic fans chasing me with pitchforks

Just Some headcanons and ships I don’t agree on and such even some dislike on how Sega is going about like trying to make sonamy now NOTE I don’t mind sonamy hell as a kid I was one of the people who ship it or more specifically the werehog sonic x Amy (i saw so many AMVs and one of those story shits….you have no idea how much of a huge werehog sonic fan I was) but the reason it makes me uncomfortable cause I found out Sega have gave the group canon ages at one point….

which where Amy is 12 and sonic is 15 NOW I don’t know if this is true I haven’t seen proof and out of all honestly I personally think the ages shouldn’t have been confirmed cause well it feels like to me it fucks up the lore and a lot of ships people love and you could have your own headcanons and such for their ages and to me Sonic doesn’t feel like he is 15 to me like hell when I was younger I thought he was ALEAST 18 or 16

There is only few ships I feel comfortable with that is Elise x sonic and sonia x knuckles

now admittedly yes I maybe not the biggest Sonic fan I haven’t read any of the comics i haven’t played all the games hell sometimes I don’t know half of the characters sometimes but still I love Sonic with all my heart and I hope you guys enjoy this little adventure of mine of Sonic the hedgehog

[sirfrogsworth]

Review of Blue Eye Samurai on Netflix

There are some spoiler-ish things below, but I think most of it is in the trailer, so I don't think I will ruin anything. I'll warn you during the most spoilery section, though the show makes the "twist" pretty obvious from the beginning.

Premise

Blue Eye Samurai is a Kill Bill-style revenge tale that takes place in 17th century Japan. The samurai is half white/half Japanese. The show states that no white folks were allowed in the country back then, so the samurai tries to conceal blue eyes with some sweet BluBlocker™ orange glasses. The Samurai is displeased to have white heritage and decides to try and kill all the "white devils" hiding in Japan.

Will some reactionaries complain there is a show all about someone trying to murder white people? I have no idea. But they're all bad white people, so I'm hoping it won't become a thing.

My Hot Takes

A few episodes meandered a bit, but I enjoyed the series as a whole quite a bit. If nothing else, the sword fights were epic and bloody. I would have watched it for that alone. And there is some gorgeous art direction where they really take advantage of the 2D styled, 3D animation. Plus, Japan is just really pretty. There is also a puppet show that was brilliantly mixed in with the story and the way they animated it was next level awesome.

They fell into cliche a few times. I think they were trying to do homages and tributes but ended up in Derivative Land and some of them felt a bit cringe.

They used "Battle Without Honor Or Humanity" which is that rousing instrumental song from Kill Bill and it was way too on the nose. Like, yes, this show is obviously a 1600s version of Kill Bill, but you're not supposed to make it that obvious.

Also, there was a Metallica song that equally made me roll my eyes and think, "That is badass" so I give them a pass on that one.

And there were a few sections where it felt like you were watching someone else play a video game. I don't know how else to describe it. As if the narrative melted away and suddenly a bunch of Prince of Persia obstacles appeared.

That said, the story was enjoyable, the actors were great, the characters were interesting, the animation was solid, and the fight choreography was top notch.

The nice thing about animation is you don't have to do any jump cuts during the action, so you get to really *see* the fights develop. Thankfully they didn't make use of a lot of impossible-in-real-life camera moves, so it all felt very grounded. As if these fights could actually be filmed in live-action. I suspect they may have even used motion capture or closely adhered to reference footage. Most of the non-fantastical choreography felt like something a stunt performer could actually do. They even had some legit Japanese samurai-style sword fighting moves before it got to the "John Wick with a katana" part of the show.

Back in the day, samurai duels were more akin to jousting than fencing and usually only lasted one or two moves. It can be pretty exciting as long as you build tension and anticipation. But if every sword fight in the show was like that, it would probably get boring. But it was still nice to see it toward the beginning.

So the quality was a bit roller coaster-y at times, but I think it was a solid first season. And I am really hopeful they get a chance to smooth things out in a second. But it is Netflix, soooooo...

As far as content warnings, there is a lot of blood and sex and nudity. Women are very subjegated and some of those depictions are rough. There are some brutal torture scenes. And I think there is implied rape, but it isn't made super clear.

The nudity was surprisingly balanced which felt refreshing. So get ready for boobies and floppy cartoon peens. All the genitals get screen time.

Quick aside about erotic scenes...

There has been recent discourse about nudity and sexy time in media. My biggest issue has always been that men's bodies are rarely shown aside from the patoot. It is never balanced and I always felt uncomfortable with that arrangement. I know movies are a bit stuck because the MPAA has decided dicks in a sexual context are an automatic NC-17. But even in newer HBO-type content where they do show penises, they are usually prosthetics. Hyper real fake dicks on top of real dicks that probably cost tens of thousands of dollars to develop and apply.

Like, the folks with boobs don't get expensive prosthetics. Only the most famous actresses can opt for a body double. For years, if an actress wasn't willing to get naked they would just say, "Well, I guess we'll just have to find another actress."

And now if a guy doesn't want to get naked, apparently the response is, "Don't worry, we'll raise Stan Winston from the dead so he can make you a perfect megadick."

Women are usually asked to do the brunt of the nudity and I have long felt that wasn't fair and it was exploitative whether intentional or not.

I just think if you are going to ask actors to be vulnerable, everyone should do it or no one should do it.

I also think we need to see more normal non-porn genitals. Like, you can't brag about your progressive all-inclusive nudity if you slap a giant fake wang on every time.

/end tangent

And now, the spoilery part...

The big twist, which is really only a big twist for a character in the show and not the audience, is that the Blue Eye Samurai was born a girl. To avoid capture and death they essentially hid in a different gender identity. And I'm trying to decide if this is a trans story or not.

Sometimes it felt like the show was bluntly saying, "She's a girl. See, she has boobs and no penis. And we make a big deal about her getting caught naked. It's like Mulan!"

But then the show kinda/sorta implies that while identifying as a man was a tactic at first, the Blue Eye Samurai came to feel much more comfortable as a man most of the time and only revealed their feminine attributes to a select few. They also had a binding scene which felt like intentional trans imagery.

Since there wasn't the same concept of trans-ness in 1600s Japan as we understand it in modern times, I'm having trouble determining if this is just an homage to Mulan that wasn't thought very deeply about, or if this is allegory exploring a trans identity.

It is unclear if the identity was chosen purely out of necessity or if there was more to it.

Was it like... they tried on a coat because it was cold, but then they really liked how it fit and made it an essential part of their wardrobe?

Or was it just pure pragmatism? If they don't wear the coat they will die from exposure.

I'm worried they wanted to stay close to that line where they could say it wasn't a trans story if that ended up being more convenient. I don't know. I'm fine with allegory and I really enjoyed how they did it with Nimona, but this felt more deliberately ambiguous and it frustrated me a bit. It would be nice if we could just have blatant trans stories that didn't need to hide in ambiguity to avoid controversy. But maybe there were more obvious things I missed and my confusion is unwarranted.

I also think an argument could be made for ol' Blue Eye being genderfluid. Actually genderfluid would make a lot of sense. Their masculine side is the stoic warrior and their feminine side is their vulnerability, love, and humanity—reserved only for those most trusted. And when the two blend and they are a warrior woman they get super horny. So the entire spectrum is there.

I'm sure there will be a long complicated video essay analyzing this gender dynamic.

/end of spoilery section

In any case, I think if you liked Kill Bill, this might be a show that interests you. It has much less cultural appropriation and blatant stereotyping. No Pussy Wagon, but there is a cool horse. And they did use an all East Asian voice cast, so that representation was cool. And the co-showrunner was Japanese, and I think that influence definitely made a difference.

I give Blue Eye Samurai 7.5 Froggies out of 10.

[lunawings]

Just watched the new Pretty Series livestream. I read no one else's comments, I just woke up, watched the stream, and am posting now.

First impressions.

WOW. WOOOOW. Aikatsu is really deader than a doornail if they are allowed to do this...... (Aikatsu Friends Planet the Pretty Series anime). That's kinda sad.

Uhhhh first series with two protags? Did they really say that? EXCUSE ME!?!? L-I-E-S! Do they really expect us to forget that's exactly how they promoted Idol Time when it came out because they were afraid to just say Yui is the new protag?

The new arcade cabinet looks kinda familiar. Are they... Are they reusing a card fighting game cabinet for a rhythm game!? I don't really like that.... you're going to damage your cards.....

THE MACHINE JAMMED. ON THE LIVESTREAM. This is the most Pretty Series thing that has ever happened and I'm glad some things will never change.

Okay, it's not a rhythm game, really. It's like a draw a shape while a song plays game. I like the whole judging concept but otherwise not feeling too depressed I can't play this game. It doesn't even have coord change?

OOOOKAY here it is. AiPri Verse is the one I am depressed I can't play. But like. Aikatsu is gone, they have no one to compete with, so they're making two arcade games to compete with themselves!!?

(Ohhh you can use the same character on both so yes but no.)

Honestly though, PriMagi still looks like more fun. I really hope this means they'll just leave the PriMagi machines where they are until the upgrade!? Please please!!

(But, this also probably means Prism Stone will just upgrade their PriMagi machines when it starts, leaving none behind...)

(Uh ohhh........ she didn't read any comments. Haha I wonder if everyone else feels the same.)

In the anime trailer, Himari debuts but needs to keep it a secret from her longtime friend Mitsuki. But, clearly Mitsuki will do or already does AiPri too. I wonder if she's like already a big AiPri star and has been hiding it from Himari the whole time? Will the big reveal come in the beginning, middle, or end of the series... could be frustrating or fun!

So yeah. The whole "secret" concept is interesting. Teaching kids they need to keep their AiPri debut a secret from their friends may not be the best marketing? But for an adult who plays kids games, I love it hahah...

What I am not sure if I like, is that the Pri in AiPri is for Princess? Idol Princess?

Aikatsu meets Go Princess Precure the Pretty Series anime.

[dg-outlaw]

X-Men '97 and the Gambit Ford F-150 Trailer Hitch Clutching

So I haven't watched all the episodes yet, but I wanted to address the stuff I've seen/heard about certain dudes in the "fandom" getting all upset about Gambit's crop top and how it made him seem gay or bi coded, even though in the entire episode he's classic Remy LeBeau from the original 90s series--not too interesting in helping out or doing anything other than what he wants to do, shamelessly flirting with Rogue, and busting everyone else's balls/possibly flirting with them too, but will still jump into the fight when it's time.

Oh, and Gambit was my favorite X-Men character growing up and I'm a cishet male, if that matters. Spoiler alert: It shouldn't.

"Holy Sports Illustrated Swimsuit edition, Batman! It's his belly button."

If that's you, you clearly were too young in the 90s to remember the fashion of the day. The top photo and the ending basketball scene (a references to the comics as well), was soooo 80s/90s. Bishop's got a lime green tank top on and Cyclops' tank top is tucked into his shorts. The animators understood the assignment.

If anything, Remy (above) is rock-n-roll coded more than anything else. Just Google most 80s era rock bands that had songs about partying, sex, hot babes, etc. and you'll see big hair, eyeliner, bright colors, leather pants, jewelry, fishnets, fingerless gloves, and yes... crop tops. Maybe the 80s and 90s were "gay", IDK, but I remember most of my childhood clothes in the 80s and early 90s were some variation of a neon color as was every other kid's regardless of gender.

As mentioned above, he soooo badly wants in Rogue's pants, which possibly eliminates any gay coding, which only leave bi coding if a 90s crop top = being bisexual.

Who. Freakin'. Cares. Say this out loud with me. You can like, love, and enjoy a character without identifying with that character in any way, shape, or form (and that's probably a good thing for some characters). This can mean their sexuality, gender, ethnicity, religion, morality, or anything else about them. Yes, we can bring in the Punisher debate and how military and law enforcement appropriated the Punisher logo as their badge of honor and intimidation, and how they cherry-picked traits from that character to signal their toxic masculinity when Frank Castle is not meant to be a patron saint of law enforcement or the military. But it is also possible to just enjoy a character without making that character your identity. You can enjoy their characterization, storylines, or even something as simple as their costume, superpowers, or where they're from because you were born or grew up there too.

As mentioned above, Gambit was my favorite character growing up when I first got into X-Men, mostly thanks to this series, and he and I are very different. To me, Gambit was the cool, confident guy that I wasn't. He also wasn't Cyclops or Wolverine.

As a kid, most kids wanted to be Wolverine when playing X-Men on the playground because he had the claws and the healing factor. To us, he was OP which fit in with the whole childish argument of big, bigger, biggest, and finally infinity whatever... until someone busted out with the infinity times infinity argument. Also, there was no real internet and comics weren't readily accessible, so most of the knowledge at that time was from the show and limited comics one might've had. Plus, I think the whole Magneto pulls the adamantium from Wolverine's body storyline hadn't happened yet so yeah, that would've been a good game changer on the playground.

Anyway, outside of Batman, I was never a fan of the "popular" thing growing up and often preferred more underdog characters, teams, and things. Also, due to self-esteem issues I always felt less than, so while I liked Wolverine it was hard for him to be my favorite since he was everyone else's and I felt like I wasn't cool enough to like him. Cyclops on the other hand was the clean cut boy scout, which also didn't appeal to me because that was also something I didn't relate to. Outside of Beast and Morph, who got sidelined earlier in the series, that then left Gambit. (Note: Bishop wasn't a part of the main group and came later on.) But Gambit also seemed cool to me. He had a cool looking outfit, was agile and knew how to fight (I was into martial arts at the time as well), and could throw explosive cards. He definitely fit the "Rule of cool" in my child brain.

Lastly, and this goes back to point #4 above, it shouldn't matter what a character is like or how they identify. They're fictional and enjoying them as a medium should be fun. They are not you and you are not them, even if you have things in common. That said, I do think it's great when there's representation as well. I don't recall if this was in the OG series, though I seriously doubt it was, and I don't know about main Marvel canon, but I also think it's cool that Morph now has they/them pronouns as seen in the profile credits and Marvel wiki. I'm sure some people have missed this and I'm sure that'll be the next hot-button issue, but whether Gambit is gay, bi, straight, or whatever, he's still one of my favorites and it's why I grabbed this guy when it first came out.

I have more things to say about this first episode and my experience with the X-Men growing up, but I'll save that for other posts as this has gotten long enough already.

[ghostie-gengar]

i missed pla's anniversary again but i don't have anything to post anyways, so i'm just gonna list some of my favourite parts of the game cuz it's one of my favourite games ever and i'll take any excuse to talk about it

i love the way the sky is modelled! pla's artstyle didn't do everything perfect but the sky is so pretty i look up at it all the time

the music! pokemon music is always good but pla absolutely nailed it when it came to mixing dppt tracks into new ones to create something atmospheric and nostalgic, or just coming up with new songs. some of my favs are aftermath, crimson mirelands 2, jubilife village, cobalt coastlands 1, ancient retreat, volo's battle theme, professor laventon's theme, the trailer music, palina's theme and caution (legendary)

the part where you walk through the cave with ingo!

professor laventon! he was so nice to me and made me feel loved always <3

kamado's character arc! i will defend kamado until the day i die yes it was not cool of him to kick a child out of the village into the wilderness but like!! he was scared! he wasn't thinking rationally! the village where he used to live got blown up by a pokemon and he didn't want that to happen again so he was trying to get rid of what he thought was the problem! sure he was wrong but-

the pokedex! i absolutely loved reading professor laventon's pokedex entries they're so cute. i really want to make a physical version of the hisui pokedex but i can't find a notebook with enough pages

the gameplay! i've spent so many hours just running around cuz the game itself is fun to play even when you aren't doing much. catching pokemon feels very smooth and seamless

hisuian zorua!

on that note, the animated series hisuian snow! that show deserved way more than 3 episodes man

i didn't necessarily like this part but it was very well executed- being banished from jubilife village. i was so upset i had to put the game down for a while. there were tears

and speaking of tears! i loved the arc with the noble arcanine

the battles against the nobles! they were a good mix of fun and challenging, especially against arceus (mildly related- watching purplecliffe fight electrode was extremely funny)

uh yeah thats all i got

[chdarling]

hi CH! this is a bit random but I was wondering about the process behind making the trailers for TLE. for example re future TLE trailers, do you already know which shows or movies you're gonna take clips from, or do you just have a general idea for a vibe? When watching something do you sometimes make a mental note of a scene that you think would fit that vibe? Thank you for everything that you do!

Hi there! I would say for the most part, no, I don’t typically know which clips I’m going to use. Basically, I find that crafting the trailers is just a slightly different translation of the same source material that fuels my writing, which is to say the images that plague my brain lol. I already have all the trailer songs picked out for each book and the AU (because of course I do), and when I listen to those songs, I can pretty much see the trailer in my mind shot for shot, sourced from the same internal movie that plays in my head when I’m writing scenes in TLE. This is a highly entertaining experience for me, and when I lose motivation for writing, I will often play all five trailer songs back to back and watch the trailers in my head and then I’m like “Yeah! This looks so exciting! I wanna watch this series!!!” And then I have to face the brutal realization that in order to do that I have to find that right words to describe those images, and that’s kind of a bummer but it usually works to motivate me for a little lmao.

Anyway, when making the trailers, it’s that same experience, except instead of finding the right words to mould around an image, I have to find the image itself, which is actually so much harder because I’m relying exclusively on films that already exist, and not the ones that live in my brain. (Good lord, if I had the patience and talent to learn to draw and animate…that’d be great.)

All this to say! No, I don’t know what clips I’m going to use for future trailers, but yes, I absolutely take notes when watching things because sometimes I’ll see clips that match the images in my head and I’m like aha! Gotta jot that down and add it to my little hoarder file of moving images I can decoupage together so I can continue to desperately try to get as close as possible to this vivid internal experience that I want everyone else to have too just so I can talk about it lolll 🙃🙃🙃

[everygame]

Hi-Fi Rush

Developed/Published by: Tango Gameworks / Bethesda Released: 25/01/2023 Completed: 09/12/2023 Completion: Finished it!

I loved this.

I’m not quite sure why, but saying so feels very exposing. Maybe it’s because before playing Hi-Fi Rush I had no idea what it actually was, and the game’s bright anime-adjacent stylings somewhat had me discounting it out of hand, so I assume the extremely cool people who read this would be doing the same.

Maybe it’s also just that Hi-Fi Rush is… pretty straightforward? It’s not particularly trying to move the medium forward (although I think it does some clever stuff) it’s just trying to be very, very good at what it’s doing. And what it’s doing, actually, isn’t so much “anime” as “full on Sega blue skies” while being an incredible competent 3D action platformer/brawler with a likable (dare I say loveable) cast of heroic misfits telling a simple but effectively structured narrative with some very savvy music choices.

The thing is that… succeeding at something that hits that many beats isn’t actually… easy? Something I’m most struck by is actually those characters. By now we’ve all seen the nadir of Marvel-inspired quip-a-thons thanks to the likes of that Forsaken trailer, but even looking at something like, say, Guardians of the Galaxy, where they have something that (at least previously) had worked, it’s remarkable how flat it falls. Here, you have a goofy, act-first-think-later hero, Chai, the cleverer-than-him female leader, Peppermint, the funny robot, CNMN, etc. in a very simple “baddies are doing bad things, let’s get the different things we need to defeat them” story, but it completely pops because there’s been care to keep the story rolling naturally so you flow through it and grow into caring about them. I’m so insanely curmugeonly that I can’t believed to ride that line for me. But they did!

Now you could say, “ah, but the secret weapon here is that the game uses actual songs that you actually like! That always works!” But it doesn’t work if all the pieces don’t fit together. There’s no better example than one of the game’s latter levels that uses The Prodigy’s Invaders Must Die. It plays at a moment where narratively all hell is breaking loose. It feels like you’re in a climax of an action movie, not just because the music is playing, but because the story has taken you there. That the level design is clever enough to cool down, let the music pull back a little, and then kick it back in for a climax? Absolute chef kiss.

(It only really gets better from there, too. Ending strong is rarely something I think video games aspire to, but Hi Fi Rush is sensibly around the 10 hour mark and the last three levels or so rip. Did the appearance of The Joy Formidable on the soundtrack literally make me emotional? Yes. Yes it did.)

Now interestingly, I haven’t actually played any other Tango Gameworks titles so I don’t really know if I should have expected rock-solid play, but either way I was surprised by how well it does. What makes Hi Fi Rush genius, I think, is that it takes a type of game I am incapable of not button-mashing through and adds a rhythm action component that doesn’t expect but rather, uh… politely asks you to hit your combos on rhythm. And it works!

I can criticise it, somewhat, however They quickly add quite a lot of subtleties to the combat and don’t tutoralise them heavily enough–I didn’t understand how to use Chai’s “partner combos” until well over half-way through the game, and I don’t know if I ever got comfortable with parries because standing around waiting for enemies to attack seemed the antithesis of everything else I was doing. There end up being a lot of buttons and you have to internalise the order of your partners and switching between them rapidly in situations where there are like 3 different kinds of enemies at once meaning at times combat is just a total stramash. But even then, there’s always the beat to follow. It’s very clever.

Anyway. I loved this. It’s one of my favourite things I’ve played in years. Your mileage may vary!

Will I ever play it again? When it finished I wanted to play it more. That literally never happens. I sort of hope there’s a sequel, but the story of this is so pleasantly complete that I’m not sure if there should be one.

Final Thought: I may also be a bit of a sucker for this game because you’re always accompanied by a black cat. Inspired by the game director’s!

Support Every Game I’ve Finished on ko-fi! You can pick up a digital copy of exp. 2600, a zine featuring all-exclusive writing at my shop, or join as a supporter at just $1 a month and get articles like this a week early.

[sug01s3al]

How would a Spiritfarer puppet show work exactly? Would you use special effects for stuff like meteor dodging, jellyfish popping, etc., or would they be cut from the show altogether? Would it be a musical since a good chunk of the cast can play instruments? Sorry if I'm asking too many questions, it's just that the idea itself is rather fascinating.

Yeah, I spent a lot of time figuring out how I would best translate such a special game to stage- with it being a farmsim- adjacent kind of game, game play is endless or at the very least it takes (according to google lol) about 25 1/2 hours to complete the game so keeping everything I would want to would be unfeasible.

In my research in making my adaptation I looked at a lot of other games turned theatre pieces and learned of the 2.5D musical theatre. It a genre originated in Japan and I believe originated with adapting otome games to stage but there has been plenty other ones. One in particular was is the DanganRonpa stage play (yes I sat through all three of them for research :'') ) since Danganronpa is also a very, very long game and I wanted to see how they would adapt every single murder and trial or what would be cut out. It turned out for theirs ended up cutting out a lot of the filler and basically going from kill to kill to kill and losing quite a lot of what made it charming. As much as I enjoyed them you didn't really ever get long enough with each character to really care when they died and it wasn't like they were short either I think they're all 1.30h - 2h shows. If I was watching it for the first time and not someone who had played the games/watched the anime with the additional context I think it would have been narratively unsatisfying.

And with SpiritFarer being such a special game to me the last thing I would want to do is to compromise the stories and blow through each character incredibly fast because it would lose its meaning and gravity. So when it came to figuring out how I would plan the stage play I had to consider a lot of what I could bear to cut and the story that could be told in the time I had to tell it. It never got as far as an official script but my solution to keeping what I wanted ended up being cutting characters out sadly so that at least a bit of each story could go in as well as having an element of their mini games. The minigames happen so often in the games it would be impossible to add so many in a stage play so I had planned for it to happen just once, perhaps at a poignant part of their story arch so there was more gravity to it and less of a 'I need lightning in a bottle so I'm gonna run Atul through like ten storms to grind resources' thing :'). Apart of their song would be a good way to do it I think, but having Atul and his inner conflicts being paired with traversing a raging storm just before he leaves I think would wreck me emotionally :'').

That being said I think a musical would be a really good way to convey the story in a succinct way without compromising on the emotional aspect. I can just image Summer singing in the gardens with Daffodil meowing along 🥺. I think I would only trust the music to Jorge Rivera-Herrans (Epic the Musical) though, I think he could do something REALLY special with the SpiritFarer cast. Or heck Toby Foxx maybe? I know he doesn't do musical musicals but I don't think anything has ever moved me quite as much as the Undertale Soundtrack... well the spiritfarer soundtrack too of course 😂 I don't know what sauce they put into the firefly mini game song with Gustav or Giovanni's meteor shower but I get goosebumps every time. The main theme goes hard too, I didn't realise it had lyrics until the trailer for the special edition (final edition?) came out with the animation and the singing then I was just sat there like :

I can't see it in my scan folder right now but if I remember correctly I had picked a set of characters stories to tell and then planned them in which order they appear to what order they disappear to plan out what I could fit into one 2h ish stageplay. I believe the characters I had kept for the story were Gwen, Atul, Stanley, Lily (as a part of Stella's story and potential conclusion), Gustav (couldn't bear to cut him), Buck and Summer. Possibly Jackie and Daria too they have puppet designs but are a package deal like Astrid and Giovanni and then it becomes too many cooks in the kitchen and too many stories to tell in such little time. Although I think Jackie is such a good foil to Stella he would have to be included to have a more satisfying ending. Beverly wasn't out yet and I am . not . a fan of Elena so she was cut. Ideally of course I would only have to cut a few, if I could plan it well enough to have the majority of the cast that would be ideal.

I think instead of trying to fit in a conclusion and compress the story down leaving the story open ended might be the best solution. Like not having everyone we meet leave or Stella either. Then again you can do a lot with a musical so who knows!

The only mini game I had planned for in the time I had was Summer's. I was trying to figure out how to best convey the serpent in a way that would let Stella move around dynamically. But yes I would want special effects for the minigames like flashing for the lightning in Atul's or the fire works in Giovanni's but paired with practical effects and smaller puppets. I mentioned this struggle to my tutor and she recommended the Frozen musical for visual reference because they do quite a wonderful job of conveying Elsa's ice powers with animated graphics/projects.

They're not the best sketched but for the staging what I had in mind was each scene being compressed into a story book style stage that could fold out each bit of furniture needed in the scene and flat pack back down to transition into the next scene. I also liked the idea of each island being like a 'chapter' in Stella's story. The boat would be the main façade of the stage, one side being the outer ship for larger scenes and then when you spin it around the inside reveals the set, like the inside of the buildings you had just seen the outside of- if I'm making any sense :') .

[ibusukiss]

Boueibu Rewatch

Thursday's for the Boys! 9

Boueibu OVA

Here's what I remember: "That took forever! It was lazy, too!"

At least they created a new opening for the OVA

When HK dragged me back into Boueibu after a bit of time that I wasnt super into it (freshman and sophomore year of college) I started back up by listening to the music from the OVA so i kinda associate this OP with HK haha

Atsushi dont say his name

I have never forgotten the thing En says about sakura trees being a graduation thing rather than a beginning of school thing - i think about it every spring when the blooms start up where i live

SEITOKAI ILY

"come take a bath" Ata cover your ears

Kinchan I relate to you so much

i am so glad they put the Zundar bit from the seitokai manga in this!!!!

god i wish Kinchan were in more of the show post-redeem he's so cute

ah yes, the flashbacks hath begun - really makes me wonder why they didnt just make a 24-minute ep

yep theres that kinchan line that represents the whole OVA

AKOYAAAA

i have a newfound appreciation for Io that i didnt expect - hes just so pretty haha

same, ryuu

I...have not heard Akoya's character song in YEARS. It was my fucking ANTHEM in 2015.

this rly shows how little Akoya is in the show T_T

Good looking boy! Precious human being!!!!

I guess this is a good episode for be to muse on character songs bc they are near and dear to my heart

My fav character song awards go to Akoya, Io, En, and Kinchan.

ok...with the recent trailer where Io is definitely older and has a ponytail (which i still am in disbelieve is even happening) - long hair isnt really a hallmark of 'successful business man' in anime. do you think.....he had offscreen character developement? do you think he isnt the money guy anymore????

hotaru really gives the gifts that keep on giving, their lyrics are so choice

"Oh is it that kind of episode?" Unfortunately, Arima

Arima is funny bc the fandom calls everyone their surname except for him - i know very few ppl that call him Ibushi, even Akorima has his family name lmao

EN'S SONG SLAPS

on the note of the recent trailer - the thing is, i dont trust boueibu staff with good-looking adult redesigns. so Im gonna take what they give us and infuse my own flavor where I can. Long hair Io is incredible tho - the last one i expected them to give long hair was him

kinchan's song is the one i can sing the best

oh boy im so glad that took almost 30 minutes :)

thank you En for reiterating that

kinchan is such a great character genuinely - hes so emotional and petty and so obviously repressed (reminds me of another boy i love *ahem*)

pon pon pon pon pon is a good bit

im glad we get to see all the 2nd years as friends

tawarayama sensei is a gilf

kinchan leg is still best transformation

at least there is a little bit more character plot in this ep than a normal one

"your love is in letting things go" has anyone understood what that even means

flying train is such an old anime thing, i remember watching Sasami Magical Girls Club as a kid and thinking the flying train was the coolest shit lol

Way-too-long story time: Kokoro to kokoro de is probs my favorite defense club song - its genuinely really emotional. I have a very meaningful memory involving it: like I mentioned before, HK dragged me back into Boueibu hell when it started airing and i went back and downloaded the OVA songs and that one non-sequitur Summer album. I was driving from college to my dad's house for a weekend and it started POURING rain, the most rain I have ever seen - and this is the Seattle area I'm talking about. It was A LOT of rain. So I'm pretty tense while driving, its dark out and pouring rain, traffic was way too fast for how many cars were on the road going through Renton that evening (google 'renton s-curves') and I'd just put my new boueibu songs playlist on - Ole Lovless Oblige had already played and I was HYPED about how much I already loved the new student council. And then Kokoro to kokoro de comes on - now I had heard it before so I knew it kinda well but i hadnt really emotionally connected with it during the OVA bc, ya know, the OVA was Like That. But with all my excitement about HK, and how heightened my emotions were from the insane weather, I start SOBBING listening to this fuckin song - singing along terribly because im crying so hard, trying my best to not completely fuck up driving. That memory feels like a fuckin emotional rebirth for me, it was a dang catabasis. I genuinely cant explain it - i think being able to feel nothing but unbridled joy and excitement about something despite a very stressful environment did something to me. I have never felt a high like that since LMAO

ANYWAY - next week HK!! and then MOVIE AFTER THAT!! Lets fuckin go!

[2braincellslz]

Eddie or Billy with a southern reader who's teaching them to line dance, yes just yes

Southern Dance

Ship: Eddie Munson x Gn!reader

Desc: eddie is stubborn but weak to y/n. So, when y/n wants to teach him how to dance, he cant say no.

Not proofread.

Y/n grew up in the south. The whole nine yards sort of speaks. A small farm with many different kinds of farm animals. Some form of party during the weekends at the big red barn down the street. Horse riding. Mama's home cooked meal. And dancing. 

Boy from Y/n's family loves dancing. At the parties, they were always the best on the floor. Line dance, square dance, swing, two steps, and a little bit of waltz. Y/n knew it all.

Their life was perfect. Y/n wouldn't trade it for the world. So, you can imagine their displuser when Y/n´s parents sold the farm, all the animals too, and moved into a trailer park. A bloody trailer park. 

They had a house and a farm and friends, and now they live in a trailer park. 

It wasn't all bad though, some people in the park were quite nice. They were very welcoming folk. Y/n mourned not being able to go to those parties, but Y/n still would take their free time to do a little shimmy in their (very small) room. 

y/n liked the school. They liked how it didn't take hours to get there. Y/n liked their new friends that were quick to take in the new kid. Y/n liked the silly game they roped them into. y/n liked their time with their nabor, Max, who was trying to teach Y/n how to skate. But, most of all, Y/n adored that lovely Dm, as they called him.

Eddie Munson. A heavy metal enthusiast. A very creative guy. A very sweet man. 

After about a week in school, Y/n started hitching rides from Eddie. He would ramble on about the going ons in the rock world or DMing or school while Y/n listened carefully. 

On Fridays, when Eddies and Y/n´s gardens were both at work, they would crash at Eddie's trailer. Watching movies, eating snacks, what not. Sometimes, they would just chill out and listen to music on Eddie's bed.

Tonight was one of those Friday nights. Y/n was laying on Eddie's bed and Eddie was sitting on the floor.

¨wanna pick the next song?¨ Eddie asked, looking up at Y/n.

¨I have my own cassette with me, if you don't mind me playing that?¨ Y/n sat up, reaching over for their book bag. They grabbed it and unzipped the front pocket, pulling out a closet full of country dance music. 

¨its not country, right?¨ eddie asked. He watched as Y/n stepped over him and squated infront of the speaker. 

¨bluegrass.¨ Y/n corrected him.

Y/n pulled out the rock caset and replaced it with their music. Dance music quickly replaced the heavy metal. 

¨Its is country!¨ Eddie groaned, flopping on the floor. ¨turn it off! My ears! Its killing my ears!¨

Y/n rolled their eyes, getting up and going over to Eddie. They stood over him with their hands on their hips. ¨get up, im going to teach you how to dance.¨

y/n had to pull Eddie up on his feet. Eddie flopped on to Y/n, leaning in to them. 

¨you cant make me! It would break the code!¨ 

¨what code?¨

¨the code of metal! Im not allowed to enjoy country!¨ 

¨get up! Humor me a bit!¨

Eddie whined but stood up straight. 

¨ok, now. Stand with your feet together and follow what i do.¨

Y/n steped out to the right, then crossed their leg behind the right one, taking another step. Y/n looked over to Eddie, watching his copy.

Y/n took another step then stood with their feet back together. Eddie copyed.

The pair repeated the steps back to the left. 

Then a step forward. Then another step forward. Then another step forward with their left foot. 

Y/n showed eddie the next step and Eddie followed to the best of his ability. There was a bit of stumbling, ofcoures, but the laughter and joy that filled the room made up for Eddies awful dancing skills.

They ran through the whole dance one or two more times, slowly getting faster with each attempt. 

¨now, at tempo. Do you think you are ready?” y/n asked.

“I was born ready!” y/n rolled their eyes, turning up the music.

Eddie and Y/n followed the steps one last time, with minimal fumbling.

“See! See i told you i was born ready!” Eddie smiled wide, ear to ear. He flopped on to his bed, pumping his firsts in to the air as a silent victory. 

“What happened to the code? Not being able to enjoy southern music?” Y/n asked, sitting next to their friend.

“Code smode. The code dosnt matter!” eddie threw his arm over his eyes.

“You are terrible.” y/n layed down.

“You love me.” 

“sadly.”

[ice1074]

I am actually so mad at what they've done with the minecraft movie. It could've been so good, but instead they took an incredible game for all ages and made it... that.

Rant under the read more. Beware, it is Long.

Does anyone here know Songs of War? That's a movie length animation made using minecraft and it's amazing. That's the sort of thing I was hoping for if we ever got a minecraft movie, and instead we got this THING that looks like they didn't even try. Black Plasma Studios, or, as they're known now, Squared Media, is SO GOOD at minecraft animations and I'm just mad that an actual 'maker of movies' can't do something even half as good looking.

It DOES look like one of those hyperrealistic texture packs and I HATE IT. I've ALWAYS hated the looks of those because they completely miss the point. You can do so much with just the normal blocks, make incredible builds and landscapes without the need for realism. Minecraft is not meant to be realistic! It's a game made of blocks and you go through it all, exploring and learning how to survive in each new world you find yourself in. There's danger, yes, but also beauty and you can take that into your own hands to create whatever it is your heart desires. There is no one enemy either, Especially not the piglins! They are actually really helpful! There's a whole bartering system in place to make sure that you know they are friends! They don't want to take over the world, they turn into zombies almost as soon as they reach the overworld!

They could've gone either way: completely realistic, set in 'minecraft' but it's somewhere on earth and there's people and there's minecraft mechanics in a realistic setting, OR they could've gone all in on the animation with the blocks and avatars and all the minecrafty goodness. Instead, they decided to go in the middle, and it looks horrible to be quite frank. THE PEOPLE DO NOT FIT!! also why do the animals look like that. What did they do to them and why. I'm all for creative freedom, but also why and how did they decide this was a good idea. There's being creative, and then there's doing this. Reminds me of that DHMIS line - now let's all agree, to never be creative again!

I honestly enjoy the whole 'sucked into minecraft oh boy how are we going to get out? oop, now there's Danger' trope, but why did they do it like this? Everything looks hairy and weird and Wrong. Why are there circles in minecraft. that was a rumor back in like 2013. stop it.

They could've had it all. They could've done it so good that everyone would've been blown away and left like 'wow, that was amazing'. They could've put actual heart and soul into it and people who don't play would see that and go 'huh, maybe this game is worth checking out', and we could have new friends!

I know I'm talking like the movie's already out and I'm sorry, but I just can't find it in me to have any hope when the trailer looks like That.

I'm just. so mad rn

[forlornmelody]

Queer Movie Review #28: Nimona

Nimona is one of those movies I kept hearing about over and over, so I put it in my endless queue. Then one of my favorite music artists, K.Flay, wrote a song for the soundtrack. And it was a BOP. (Someone remind me to buy this song STAT.) And she played part of the trailer to debut the song. And then I put the movie at the top of my list. I'm so glad I did. Nimona is ALL heart--a fun romp for all ages.

Nimona, the titular character of the movie adaptation, and the graphic novel it's based on, is a shape shifter of unknown origin. Voiced by Chloe Grace Moretz, Nimona seeks out would-be knight Ballister Boldheart (voiced by Riz Ahmed), after he seemingly commits treason and murder. She offers to be the sidekick to his villainy, because if the whole world sees them as monsters, why not embrace it? Ballister, on the other hand, wants desperately to clear his name and reconcile with his love, Ambrosius Goldenloin (Eugene Lee Yang.) Their unlikely friendship will turn their world upside down--and will warm hearts of all audiences.

The first thing I noticed was the animation. In an era when studios push 3D, computer animated cartoons over and over, it was so surprising to see a movie in 2D. And there's something about the animation that just POPS. I've seen others point out how expressive the characters are, and I think that's part of it. But also, the world is so vibrant in a way that isn't jarring. All in all, the movie is a meal of visual stimulation.

Nimona, originally a graphic novel by ND Stevenson, constantly made me think of Tumblr culture. (Also, why has no one told me that Steven was the creator of the Netflix series, She-Ra?) Turns out, Nimona started as a webcomic on this hellsite. And it shows. Multiple queer characters--including BOTH the protagonists. ACAB themes throughout. And well, chaos. Lots of chaos.

I absolutely loved the progression of Ballister's story. He believed fully in the institution he was raised in, and finds out he's naturally an enemy of the state, all because of his inate differences. How he goes from seeing Nimona from the enemy, to seeing her as family. So so, SO good. Also, can I just point out how amazing it is to see queer characters, queer FAMILY front and center in the story? How often are queer folks fighting just to see ourselves as side characters in media?

Would I recommend this movie? Heck yes. Go watch it. Go watch it with your entire family.

Queer Movie Review Masterpost

Recommend A Queer Movie