#animated things i watched in x

[evilisk]

Animated Things I Watched In 2022, Part 2

I (try to) describe the animated shows I watched in a sentence, but this time for stuff I watched in late 2022

= = =

Inside Job Season 2 (2022)

This season did not go in the direction I thought it was heading, I expected Reagan’s relationship to go in a completely different direction due to the obvious contrast between Reagan’s own parents. What we got was much more bittersweet...

Favorite Episode: “Brettwork”

Hilda Season 1 and 2 (2018 - 2020)

Dunno what else to say than “it’s good” and “watch if you haven’t already”

Favorite Episode: “The Deerfox”

Extra Note: I may have teared up (just a little) because of the above episode

Harley Quinn Season 3 (2022)

Same comment for this show, except I also have to say “thank god this series has survived the purge over at Warner-Discovery”

Favorite Episode: “There’s No Ivy In Team”

The Owl House Season 2 (2022)

Same comment for this show AGAIN, except I have to say “of course Disney execs are coming into ruin a good thing yet again”

Favorite Episode: “King’s Tide”

X-Men (1992-1997)

The artstyle has aged like milk and I wouldn’t call the show “good for its time” when Gargoyles and Batman: The Animated Series are from the same period... but I admit, the show has some high highs, even if it also has some very low lows, and generally isn’t consistent as the those other two shows

Favorite Episode: “Beauty & the Beast”

Extra Note: If voice actor for Fabian Cortez wasn’t so awful, I probably would have put the “Sanctuary” 2-parter as my favorite one in the series.

Niko and the Sword of Light Season 1 (2017)

This show is perfectly fine, it has a good voice cast and a classic setup, I just wasn’t the target audience for this show

Favorite Episode: “From the Sea of Suffering to the Faraway Shore”

Ultimate Spider-Man Season 1 (2012)

Maybe it gets better in the later seasons, but the first season is pretty rough.

The skits, which I didn’t mind, get annoying when they start undermining the serious episodes. You can also tell the writers didn’t want to give Spider-Man a team at all, because they barely explore Spider-Man’s teammates and it feels like they're always sidelined when the main plot is actually happening.

Favorite Episode: “Freaky” Least Favorite Episode: “Awesome”

Extra Note: Awesome is such a bad episode. Mr. “Great Responsibility” flunks on his science fair project and decides to steal technology from SHIELD to pass off as his project, EVEN THOUGH his principle is literally works for SHIELD and would probably notice stolen SHIELD tech if he saw it

Dead End: Paranormal Park Season 1 and 2 (2022)

It’s hard to call this show a “must watch” when I think all the legitimately good episodes are in the back-half of Season 2 and it’s not clear if there’ll even be a Season 3. I recommend checking out the first few episodes for yourself and seeing if the story and characters vibe with you

Favorite Episode: “My Super Sweet 1600″

Dogs in Space Season 1 and 2 (2021 - 2022)

It’s hard to describe what I don’t like about this show... it’s like this. The cast is very fun and funny in low stakes episodes. But when there are actual stakes, the cast (especially the main character, who is literally named “Garbage”) becomes very frustrating to watch. And the problem is that the writers keep trying to do story heavy episodes instead of sticking to their lane (sorry if this sounds mean but I really preferred the self-contained stuff over the main plot).

I don’t want to completely disregard this show: it’s mostly unknown and it’s not actively terrible. I actually had a lot of fun with Season 1 but I wouldn’t bother with Season 2 since it writes off the best character (Kira) and has a very unsatisfying conclusion.

Favorite Episode: “Paws & Rewind”

I really wish the writing for this show was as good as its animation

[jicklet]

Ember and Wade in Elemental (2023)

[blackkatdraws2]

Baby I'm Home [Blank Scripts AU]

[Song: Baby I'm Home - ODETARI (feat. Kanii & 9lives)]

[starry-bi-sky]

finally giving fem danyal her own au and fulfilling my 'danny is an animal whisperer' agenda at the same time: mother of monsters danyal 2.0

i say "2.0" because TECHNICALLY 'mother of monsters danyal' is an au I made back in June for Dark fem!Danyal (who I promptly named Layal). However, I haven't posted much for her yet, and I like the "mother of monsters" premise too much to leave it only to Layal. Plus Danyal in that au was going to become the mother of monsters anyway, just with significantly less world domination and mass extinction.

'Animal whisperer' Danny has been something I've been thinking about since my latest DP 'wolfpack au' post and it's! So fun to think about, and who no better to assign the idea to than Danyal Al Ghul? Who comes from a family infamously known for their love of animals and nature?

Fem Danyal is just purely self-indulgent. *gestures wildly at her* i just lomvb,,, her,,,, I've only really mentioned her in context of the 'Things in Threes' au/my first Danyal al Ghul au with the facial scar, but she's!!! I love her. She deserves her own au <33

So kill three birds with one stone! Make a post about it.

Anyways, Danny has a large lair. Similar to cult leader danyal, her lair is a giant mountain region resembling nanda parbat with a big temple/palace-like area built into the mountain. It's large, it's overflowing with natural flora, with its own mini-floating islands hovering over some areas, and it's also completely empty.

Danny takes one look at her lair upon first meeting, -- noting that it looked relatively smaller from the outside -- and promptly, with the elegance of an Al Ghul, goes "What the hell??" Because yes, while she does enjoy her own solitude and privacy, this is a bit ridiculous.

For heaven's sake, there's even a massive lake in there! What's she going to do with all this space? Can she make it any smaller? Why is it so big in the first place? This looks borderline like one of the mega-islands!

She finds out later that apparently, the amount of ectoplasm a ghost has can have an effect on the size of their lair. And since she has such a large core, her lair reflects that. Wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff, it's bigger on the inside so it doesn't take up "too much space" on the outside. Don't worry about it too much.

Danyal isn't totally opposed to having such a large lair, she's just... a bit baffled by it. It feels like so much wasted space is all. All this flora and no fauna to enjoy it with. It's practically eerie.

She decorates her temple-palace area, transforming rooms to match her needs as she sees fit. In the center of the inner gardens is a massive tree that she likes to climb, with twisting, winding branches. Sam and Tucker have honorary rooms, even if they can't safely leave the specter speeder for long periods of time, even with proper safety equipment. So does Jazz. Ali (Dani) has one too, but he can actually use that one, and Danny brought him to her lair so he could decorate it himself.

She has a personal garden, but for the most part she lets the flora exist as it is. Too much space to cultivate it en masse anyways.

Skip to a few weeks later, on her next visit to Clockwork. She developed a habit of going to see him semi-regularly just because. She enjoys his wisdom, and he has a lot of stories to tell, and when he's not being the cryptic and esoteric timekeeper, he's a bit goofy.

(pushing my dadwork agenda here,,, i think Danny deserves to go 'hey, Lord Clockwork, do you want me to buy you something' while she's at walmart, only to receive a singular glowing sticky note that says 'cucumber gatorade'.)

(She insists on referring to him with his proper titles even for the most mundane of things because it's proper, but Clockwork sees a future where she eventually calls him "Cee" and by all things in existence is he determined to get there. Anyways,,,)

On her next visit to Clockwork, just as she is about to leave, Clockwork stops her and goes; "Ah, I have something for you. Hold out your hands."

Danny does as such, and Clockwork doesn't give out things often, so her curiosity has spiked to the highest levels. He turns away from her for a moment, using his staff to summon whatever it is he needs, and when he turns around.

He drops a fish into her hands. Granted, a fish in a small glass tank. But a fish nonetheless. A small one, roughly about the size of her finger, with a blue-black, eel-shaped body and four sets of glowing eyes. She can see thin, almost translucent, but spiny fins down its back and the start of bioluminescent markings. It's swimming around in circles in its small container.

"Lord Clockwork." Danyal says all too calmly.

"Yes, Danyal?"

"What is this?"

"That is an adolescent leviathan, Danyal." She’s transfixed onto the tank, but she doesn’t need to see Clockwork’s face to hear the smile he’s stifling.

The myriad of emotions that runs through her all at once threatens to overwhelm her, and she can’t tell if the feelings are negative or positive. So she carefully closes her eyes to breathe in through her nose.

“Clockwork.”

“Ah, I see you’ve dropped formalities.”

She ignores that.

“Why have you given me an adolescent leviathan?”

She's expecting the trickster to look amused when she opens her eyes. Instead, he just looks endeared. "I know you're fond of animals," he says, "and you always look amazed when you come across an animal of the realms. So I thought you might enjoy taking care of the young beast, it's mother is dead so it has no one to care for it."

Oh.

"But, if you don't like it," Clockwork's hands reach out for the tank, "I can simply take it back--"

Danyal shifts the tank out from his reach and hugs it possessively. "I never said that. How do I care for it?"

And so clockwork gives her a list, and when Danyal returns to her lair, she sets up a large tank in her room for the leviathan to swim in -- it's much too small for the lake right now, she thinks. She'll feel better if it's somewhere she can find it. She names him Suhā.

Suhā grows quickly, and by the end of the mortal month she transforms one of the rooms into a large pond for him to swim around in. He's a very loyal beast, recognizing her as it's mother of some kind. Danyal takes great care ensuring that her beastie gets quality care, and Suhā swims to the surface to see her when he senses her in the room.

It spirals from there. Somehow, Pandora catches wind that Clockwork gave her a leviathan, and so the next time Danyal visits the Greater Athens, she gives her a baby chimera. It's eyes are still sealed shut, Danyal can't bring herself to say no. She names the little beastie Firas.

Frostbite hears about it too, and not to be outdone, gives her an animal she's never even heard of. Infinite-realms born, apparently. A fox-like creature with two small horns like an impala, four eyes, and tall legs. The name isn't something she's quite sure how to write down, and she's positive that her friends won't be able to comprehend it. She names her Eira.

Getting the three of them used to each other was... interesting. Suhā tried to eat Firas when Danyal first introduced the two, and they've hated each other ever since. Firas and Eira are seemingly getting along. Her island already feels full enough with the three of them on it.

Of course, that's not the end of it. With her luck, she begins stumbling across other monsters. Realms-borne or otherwise. An injured hydra in the Grecian islands that, through lots of trial and error, Danyal is able to rehabilitate and heal. It routinely comes to visit her afterwards.

A griffin with a broken wing that she moves permanently to the island that likes to keep to itself, but tends to come down when she's near. It gets along best with Firas.

A panther-like monster from the Shades Woods that had six legs and three tails, with ends that reminded her of a venus flytrap. It stuck around the heavy foliage and she can only make out where it was when she saw its golden eyes reflect.

She befriends a young indrik with its leg injured, and much like the hydra it follows her back to her island, and stays there in the mountains. It comes out when she's alone, much like her other beasts.

She receives two more leviathan -- one from clockwork, and one she finds herself while exploring the deeper and darker recesses of the Ghost Zone. It was huddled against the carcass of its mother, and she managed to befriend and get close enough to it to bring it back to her island. Suhā is fully grown by then, with a head bigger than Danyal herself and he still likes to stick her head out of the water for nuzzles when she's near.

He's not very happy with his new siblings, but he's not trying to eat them when she's not looking. So she calls it a win in her book.

And it's not just large beasts either; smaller animals begin popping up when she's not looking. Bird-like creatures and small mammals, and she swears she saw a doe (or something resembling a doe) grazing in the forest while she was walking by.

She takes back with her a lone snake egg once, and it grows so big it wraps around her island and sleeps with its massive head on the mountain beside the temple, like some smaller breed of Jörmungandr.

And on and on it goes. Some of the beasts she comes across never step foot onto her island, some of them follow her back, while others she has to carry back. Not all of the ones that follow her stay, and Danny rehabilitates the injured and releases them when they're fully healed.

It's hectic, and busy, and frankly she loves it. Some of her rehabilitated beasts return to visit her, or to have their children somewhere on the island, or whatever it is they need to do.

She becomes a bit infamous for it. She goes to visit Dorathea once, and as she's walking through the streets she can hear some of the denizens whispering while she walks past.

"Is that her?"

"Her highness' friend? Yes--"

"--that's the one--"

"--Mother of monsters--"

Danny's not sure how to feel about that.

Although, she can't say she's opposed.

Danyal Al Ghul, Mother of monsters, raiser of beasts. It has a nice ring to it.

[spkyart]

I am so normal about them

[alexiethymia]

Yor Briar, Yor, and Yor-san

I was reading an excellent post about the nuance in the original japanese and now I thought I’d take a crack at what this means for Loid (although other people have already made an excellent analysis on this).

Loid has only called her Yor Briar in the beginning and when he was suspecting her of playing him. But Fiona’s insistence on her full name, Yor Briar, and her notice of Loid’s seemingly stubborn refusal to use it seems to me that Loid had always previously referred to assets by their full name. It could also be pragmatic in that he knows Fiona wants the ‘role’ of his wife hence her stubborn insistence of using Yor’s maiden name, so he uses Yor-san to counter Fiona’s way of delegitimizing Yor’s role. But I don’t think Loid can sense the real reason for Fiona’s insistence, so while in his view Fiona may be acting unprofessionally, generally speaking, I think Loid would be the one acting unprofessionally in constantly using ‘Yor-san’ to refer to his ‘wife’ to his WISE colleagues especially if he didn’t use to do that before (which yeah it’s hard to imagine him addressing his other marks that way).

Although the audience knows that Fiona is acting far from being professional, with Loid’s limited knowledge of her feelings, wouldn’t she actually have a point in referring to Yor as YOR BRIAR in a working setting? Because isn’t that all she was supposed to be? An asset or a tool? And yet Loid seems annoyed by that and insists on humanizing her by calling her, Yor-san.

Now someone might say, that’s nothing to make a big deal about. It would have been a big deal had he referred to her as ‘just’ Yor without the honorific. Because using someone’s name without honorifics is supposed to connote a deeper sort of intimacy. But that’s the thing. It would have been a forced intimacy for show. ‘Yor’ is his mode of address when he’s putting on a show of being a loving husband, complete with that <fake> Loid Forger voice. Yor is what he calls her around her colleagues or his colleagues (Nightfall undercover as Fiona at the hospital) to present how they’re a completely ordinary, close and loving family. In a way, it’s a subtle cue to Yor as well that they’re in ‘family’ mode now or ‘husband-and-wife’ mode. Yor denotes her as being a mask.

Which is actually why Yor-san is perfect. If Yor Briar is her as an asset, Yor is her as a mask, then Yor-san is her as a partner. He’s used women to get to his goal before. The only thing different now is Anya and the fact that on some level he is also working together with Yor. Had he actually succeeded in his first honeytrap attempt with Yor when he thought she had fallen in love with him, I imagine that he might have started treating Yor the same way he did his other assets before. But thank goodness it didn’t succeed, and in my view, he ended up falling into the trap instead.

Yor-san is perfect because it parallels the way Yor calls him. It’s perfect because it conveys the perfect level of intimacy. They’re not actually a lovey-dovey couple as ‘Yor’ would imply, but unfortunately for Nightfall, she’s also not just ‘YOR BRIAR’ another tool to him. It’s perfect because it conveys respect which Loid has a healthy amount of for Yor. If he can help it, he doesn’t like using her. And Nightfall is right to be worried that this comfortable mode of address of Loid’s is bleeding over to Twilight as if to blur the two. Loid is supposed to be an entirely different person or character so what does it mean that Twilight also calls his wife the same way Loid does? ‘Yor-san’ and ‘Loid-san’ are partners in a lot of ways. Yor-san is whom he can let down his guard down around, and someone this perfectionist spy can ask help from and rely on.

So what about Yuri Briar? He doesn’t know the true nature of Yor and Loid’s arrangement. Shouldn’t he be calling her Yor in front of him to keep up the ruse? Again, I think part of it is pragmatic. He doesn’t want to further aggravate the siscon. But especially in light of Chapter 86 and Volume 10’s inner cover, I think (at least unconsciously) it’s because Yuri is family. I notice that Twilight hasn’t even kept up the Loid persona as much in front of Yuri anymore (which tbf can’t blame him cause how do you even react to Yuri) but it’s not as if Yuri is someone to be underestimated. Some way or the other, even if he doesn’t fully realize it, I think Twilight is starting to treat Yuri like how Yor treats him or at the very least he can’t treat him like any other enemy or bystander because he’s someone important to Yor. Which again as CH 86 would show, Fiona has already noticed, and Twilight himself is angry at himself about. I don’t think Twilight has realized any sort of feelings for Yor yet, but I guess to Fiona, his mode of address for her is and has always been telling.

It’s actually interesting to think that perhaps it’s when he’s calling her ‘Yor-san’ that he’s most like himself - like Loid, Twilight and the boy before there was Twilight all at once - with her.

[meziniart]

Trust

[rainpunk07]

dc x dp prompt inspired by this tiktok

if you don’t wanna click the link, in summary it’s a hyper-realistic animation commenting on American overconsumption and capitalism through the metaphor of jeff bezos owning a bakery and using his sugary workers as ingredients once he realizes it makes his pastries more delicious. (it’s permanently altered my brain chemistry, i recommend that you watch it it’s so good.)

anyways, i’m aiming for “they’re in the same universe already” type angle, but you can do whatever you want. so let’s say a former GIW dude gets laid off and ends up in gotham. through whatever hijinks you choose, the guy discovers that shades are DELICIOUS in your average pastry and decides to open a bakery with this knowledge. (the only reason this dude and gotham citizens can consume these is cuz they’re liminal contaminated or something, you decide.)

now also for whatever reason, we find danny in gotham (with or without his companions) and by some magic of fate (clockwork probably) he stumbles on the bakery. he’s maybe heard how good it is and they’re just so yummy or something or other. upon trying it, he immediately wants to puke because he knows that there are shades in it and it feels like full on cannibalism. what he does about it is up to you.

on the bats end, they’re all enjoying these pastries as much as any other person in gotham. some bat manages to coax jason into trying one and when he tastes, he has a similar reaction to danny. he doesn’t recognize the secret ingredient as shades or inherently cannibalism, but he just feels down in his being that there’s something fucked up about it. (lazarus pits obviously tip one further towards liminal than not.)

side note on that, considering damien was raised nearby the lazarus pits for a majority of his childhood, i say that he’s neutral on the taste. like, it isn’t delicious or anything but it’s not the worst thing he’s tasted. and he’s definitely not gonna search out the sweet treats. (maybe he connects the dots between his and jason’s liminal-bility? does he follow jason around as he investigates the bakery? it’s up to you ;) )

on the other hand, the other bats don’t understand their distaste/neutrality and think jason’s tweaking, but jason knows what he knows. (cass believes him obvi. they probably investigate the bakery together)

so this is probably where the duo meets danny, and they figure out the stuff together and now you add whatever angst you want that comes with the combined worlds of danny phantom and detective comics. is danny the ghost king? demon twin au? is jason a baby halfa? it’s all up to y’all ig

NOW BE FREE *drops the idea at fanfic writer’s feet and skedaddles away*

[cherrycro]

Dumping all the rest of my saiki k artwork so I can breathe

[kaiiscottage]

꒰ Yuuri’s blue prince ♡ ꒱

[yellowocaballero]

so! saw you mentioned jjk, so if you wanna talk about it, whats your thoughts been on it so far?

Was waiting to answer this until I finished S2, which I just did.

It's incredible. It's an amazing work of art. Some of the best fighting animation I've ever seen in an anime, some of the best fight scenes period, non-stop gripping and thrilling and incredibly exciting. Gorgeous, cool as fuck, a lot of fun. Binged it and was extremely unwilling to do anything other than watch it. Real 'wander out of my room, rant to my roommates about how good it is, ignore their confused looks and wander back in my room to continue binging' energy.

Beyond that, my thoughts are a bit complex and difficult to put into words. It's great at a lot of things besides action - it has great characters, humor, world-building, everything. I would like to see more of the other things it's good at, and I think that would elevate the fight scenes a lot. I won't go into a tangent about what makes "a good action movie", but basically in good action work the action scenes need to have a lot of weight. S2 was basically 15 episodes of the climax of an incredible action movie, and a lot of the fight scenes would have been stronger if there was greater buildup or a more coherent escalation (Mahito loses every fight, which makes it hard to take his very lengthy subsequent fights seriously)(Gojo himself is a mystifying choice)(My only coherent thought for two episodes straight was 'Mahito just fucking die already'). My personal belief about arcs in serialized works is that they should work as full stories in isolation and have a coherent beginning, middle, climax, and end; one that still slots into the greater narrative of the serialized work and meaningfully develops the characters, world, and overarching plotline. S2 was, again, 15 episodes of climactic fight scene. But the climactic fight scenes were so fucking good.

It's a lot of things that I normally like in theory and are extremely bored of in practice. JJK really lived up to the theory of "what if a shonen action anime was only action and it was so so so so so good". If you do want an example of mangakas who do work that's 95% action that's skimpy on characters/plot/etc but still feel like an extremely complete experience, I recommend Nightow's Blood Blockade Battlefront.

Lots of criticism on a show I fucking loved, but you are talking to someone for whom "they punched so good and then the explosions were so pretty and I pumped the air and was satiated by the violence" is a 5/5 glowing four thumbs up review. The characters themselves were so endearing and fascinating and charismatic, which is an understated but important aspect of an action work. They don't have to be deep or complex, but you do have to get me invested in them and make them fun to watch. It also has incredible and well-utilized women, which esp in male oriented work I do genuinely consider a barometer of quality - not 'badass women automatically makes something good', but 'a creator who can write every character well is good at creating characters and if you can't create all your characters well or feel uncomfortable with portraying half the population then you aren't good at creating characters'.

Geto/Gojo will never be KakaObi and you are all lying to yourselves.

[fever-dreamer97]

Bro im watching the last season of aggretsuko and just realized

So Haida has a brother named Jiro Haida…so does that mean that Haida’s name is his last name or not.

I’m so confused to be honest

[normystical]

Just clarifying that even though some of my top posts encourage shipping Alastor, I am very much so a hater in regards to that. Fuck RadioApple. All my homies hate RadioApple. Lucifer already has Lilith and Mr. Beast shut up. You already have enemies to lovers, you have CherriSnake, give that damn ship some more love, it surprisingly doesn't get much fanart, at least here, at least compared to other ships. God damn brother

P.S. shoutout to romance repulsed aromantics

[kstarlitchaotics]

That's real low Scott and you wonder(if any) why he hates you

[soullessjack]

if you guys are excited or interested in the whole evil Superman thing after ep7 you absolutely have to watch STAS Brave New Metropolis and look at the most pathetic sad wet bee / cardboard box cat version of Clark that ever existed. He is absolutely crucial to the entire archetype of rogue evil Superman he is the blueprint

[uh-oh-its-bird]

Watched the new spy x family movie. So like. To be clear someone on the writers team absoloutley had a poop fetish right. Like. We all noticed that right.