#but then why haven't i seen that literally at all in five goddamn seasons?

[hiddenramen]

like. i think the metahuman liberation army basically just wants quirks deregulated? which. honestly? i literally do not have enough information about the world to even begin to parse that. are people not allowed to use their quirks without licenses, or is the licensure stuff just for heroes specifically? i had assumed the latter, but do you have to get a permit to be able to use your quirk at all?

if so, i immediately have about ten million questions, but the first that pops to mind is: how would that even work for heteromorphs? like. at that point you literally just are your quirk. is tsuyu using her tongue to grab something technically illegal because it's a facet of her quirk? would hawks not be able to fly without his license? also, was bakugou technically illegally using his quirk when he'd fire off little sparks as a kid to show off?

and if that's not what they're talking about, and people can just use their quirks normally so long as they're not doing anything illegal with them (which is what i'd assumed), then what the hell is the MLA even for?

[loveofcharacters]

Y'all. I'm fuming. (I'm being dramatic, but I'm hella annoyed)

Love is Blind Season 4 is trash. The couples are trash. My opinions my also be trash, but throwing it under the cut for those who haven't seen the first 3 episodes that were released 2 days ago.

It was so obvious from the first episode that the producers chose who would continue on from the first episode and I'm hella aggravated about it. We barely saw the conversations from any other cast member.

They promoted the two meanest, cruellest and ugliest souls I have ever seen. It actually is so sad that Micah & Irina were let onto the show over Bliss or Rachel. Everyone knows reality TV has some aspects of fakeness, but really? Do producers think we're that stupid? That we can't see from a mile away, the only reason they are moving forward is because they're really mean and will cause drama? Like?? Where's the care for the art of film making? Even it's reality? You're telling me, you couldn't edit the footage to create suspense with the drama? Bullshit. Audience prefer the unexpected then knowing immediately who the shit disturbers are. Each episode felt more like the Micah & Irina show than a modern concept dating show. Even while Amber was crying and putting her heart out to her girls, the camera was on Irina spying? Which was fucked all on its own, but we didn't get to hear any of what Amber was saying, because it kept going back and forth in such a careless manor.

Also there were so many other beautiful and smart people from the cast that literally only said 2 words. Like look at this video: https://www.tiktok.com/@realityashley/video/7207864427138321670?_r=1&_t=8aSy66regZK

and this article: https://www.menshealth.com/entertainment/a43324960/love-is-blind-season-4-cast-instagrams/

I wanna know about so many other cast members!!! Like goddamn, you're telling me eye candy like Jack and Ryland didn't meet your drama scale? Like... they're hot!! Put them on the freaking show! But again, there were way more beautiful & smart women than men this season. Like come on!! We couldn't see April? Brandie? Molly? Monica? Like in part, I understand. The show is Love is Blind. BUT IT'S BLIND TO THEM NOT US!

It is so obvious the producers are forcing the current 5 couples? There wasn't any chemistry between Irina & Zack, she's so obviously still on the show because her mean girl personality will get the show ratings, but I think we're in a world where mean girls aren't cool anymore. I truthfully don't even know if I want to continue watching the show. The lack of care in the editing process is so poorly done that it's not hiding the knowledge that these shows are for the drama. Which we all know in the back of our mind, that's why these shows get made. The drama gets the ratings, the ridiculous reactions get views. We all know this, it's not like this is secret knowledge. But in my opinion the point of these shows it to edit the footage of said drama in a way that is unexpected, with levels of suspense and chaos to create entertaining television. The start of this season has lost all entertainment value. We already know who the bad girls are. We've already seen their ugly personalities, and anything these two do in the future isn't going to be surprising in anyway. There's some potential with two of the five couples, but jesus christ. This show is on its last legs if they keep this up.

[dicecast]

How're you finding The Dragon Prince? I saw you mentioned that you find it frustrating. I've watched some of it, but I haven't had time to get very far.

Hey thanks a lot.  Yeah mean and @afriendtokilltime are watching it while in quarantine and....it is kind of a mess.  As of this writing I am 2 episodes away from finishing season 3 and its kind has been a whole mess of complaining around the apartment for the last few days.  This show fails in so many different ways but its like...really close to being absolutely amazing.   I have complicated feels

First off a Disclaimer 

 I thought Avatar was mostly great, though it had a lot of problems which I think its overall success and enthusiastic fan base kinda clouded, which are mostly found in the first half of season 1 and the last half of Season 3.  Mostly that any time the show attempts simplicity, it does it badly.  I thought Legend of Korra had some of the best moments in both shows, but also some of the worse, often seconds away from each other, but it at least tried some new things.  WE talk about the problems with Avatar here 

https://www.patreon.com/posts/11553648 

And Legend of Korra here 

https://soundcloud.com/randomshoes/fatal-flaw-legend-of-korra

So Dragon Prince has the components to be in my mind, even better than Avatar and there is a ton of stuff i like.  

The Animation is amazing and unique

Some really cool fantasy vistas and locations 

Cool distinct types of elves with cool unique magic and powers and cultures 

Some great efforts towards increasing diversity in terms of race, and sexuality.  Ironically it is actually less diverse in some ways than Avatar/Korra 100% non white cast, but it is very nice to have a fantasy world that is inclusive in regards to race and sexuality.  Sadly it actually has a lot of problem with gender which i could talk about in a whole post another time if you are interested. (Dead Moms, so many dead moms)

I like both of the main characters, which is unusual for a fantasy series.  Callum is fantastic, Rayla is great, and of course Claudia is by far the best character in the series.  All of them have interesting motives, characterizations, dynamics and I enjoy seeing them on screen.  The problem is that the show rarely uses them well 

Magic looks awesome in this series, especially Dark Magic 

The Show wants to delve into more complicated themes than most fantasy, and attempts to get at moral ambiguity, pacifism, questions of monarchy, the nature of villainy, racism, and pulling away from fantasy cliches, and it is really admirable.  Unfortunately the show is really bad at actually delivering on any of these interesting themes, which makes the show a colossal mess 

This show has a lot going for it.  Except it...kinda fails on so many different levels.  Each one of these could be a whole detailed post, so if you are interested let me know, but i’ll try to be brief on what doesn't work 

The Role of Dark Magic.

  Dark Magic is the core of the show’s plot and conflict.  So its pretty frustrating about how the show completely fails to actually use this plot element correctly, because in contrast to like Maho from Legend of the Five Rings, or Mages from Dragon Age, its never really established why Dark Magic is evil.  Like Claudia kills a deer in order to cure her brother of total paralysis, which...yeah that sounds like a good deal to me.  Some of the characters get angry at Claudia for killing butterflies to make really good pancakes but like...pancakes are made with eggs.   Which I suppose could be acceptable if the show as embracing a Jainism style world view, but it never bothers to deliver on that perspective or makes an argument for it, it just expects you to accept Dark Magic is wrong because Viren is a bit of a dick.  And honestly, since humans are born without magic and Dark magic is a way for them to have a home, the opposition to Dark Magic frankly just feels...conservative.  Like for all its inclusive casting the show really has an anti progress traditional feel to it which rubs me the wrong way.  Which directly leads into

Problems with Themes.  Fantasy stories usually are about moral themes, and Dragon Prince is no exception, a lot of scenes are delivered with a strong moral overtone.  The problem is that it is utterly confused and inconsistent, usually approach the topic of Dark Magic.  In the first 2 seasons, Viren is chided for “doing things the easy way” and even if ignore the libertarian undertones of that, most of the time, there isn’t really a hard way solution, and a ton of situations have Viren just being correct and characters ignoring him, or treating him like his ideas are far more nasty than they really are.  This gets even more confusing when it comes to the shows attempts to address racism, because it keeps treating humans like they are the group with privilege, but according to the opening narration, the entire human population were basically forcibly located to the Western continent, which is often considered a genocide) and Rayla is casually racist to Callum regularly.  More importantly, the show seems to want to do a Princess Mononoke pacifist argument, but keeps messing it up by its desire to simplify the conflicts it sets up. This gets worse when the show doubles down on the pro monarchist sentiments that underlie almost all fantasy. Which leads to

Being unwilling to commit to flawed characters.  Dragon Prince seems to not want to just be another cliche fantasy story and keeps trying to add details to prevent the characters from just being cliches.  however it doesn’t seem to want to commit to this, and keeps reverting to simplistic morality.  Again going off the racism angle, Callum has comments which imply Elves are seen as like Demons to the humans, and its implied that propaganda is regularly spread concerning them.  And it seems like Dark Magic is just normal in the human kingdoms, that is why they were kicked out after all.  But any time we have a “good” character, they just...don’t have that Bias.  King Harrow is just inexplicably good when it comes to certain issues, which basically means in a story about racism and people learning to look past stereotypes, all of the good guys are already doing that from the start.  This is at its most frustrating with the 5 kings council scene, where despite the fact that it is 100% true that moonshadow elves did in fact assassinate a monarch, the most annoying character in the series is like “Well I read the script and I know this is a wrong action so screw you”.  In a story about overcoming racism and nationalism, there is a is a total unwillingness to have characters have real flaws in that direciton, Verin starts out as a sympathetic villain but then basically turns into Jafar in the 4th episode and it just goes down hill from there 

There are some really bad characters in this, Ezran is intolerable, Bate just wastes screen time, Queen Aanya is the worse thing in the show, and i’m not even getting into the minor characters.  the show also really has some problems with certain female tropes, I don’t think it passes the Bechtel test until season 3 and the writers continue their “Saintly missing mom trope” from season 1 even more so here.  

(remove these two and the show is just massively improved) 

The human kingdoms are boring and we spend 2 whole seasons there.  The appeal of this show is Xadia and the elves, having to deal with discount children’s version of Game of Thrones is just frustrating.  

But everything above are problems with the story and the characters, and that isn’t actually what makes this show so goddamn frustrating.  This show has some of the worse examples of storyboarding, editing, pacing, and just basic narrative structure I’ve seen from actually competent people.  LIke its on Netflix, a company that doesn’t seem to understand what pacing is, and these are the guys who made legend of Korra which was more montage than show at times, but nothing prepared me for this nightmare.  A lot of it comes down to it being 9 episodes per season, which is even worse than Korra, which was rushed at 12 episodes per season, but even within that, every single episode is just a glut of content jumping from story beat to story beat without taking a breath.  Most of the story elements have no set up, let alone build up, the editing constantly takes you out of emotional moments to deal with a totally different subplot, sometimes entire necessary scenes are literally just...not there and we keep missing establishment shots. 

This show is just screaming for self contained one shot episodes, where the characters can have mini arch within the episode and just kinda chill out.  Despite the fact that I like Rayla and Callum, I actually don’t know them all that well because most of their screen time is running from one plot event to the next, rather than the smaller moments between scenes that really grow the character.  Just some episodes to breath, watching this show is exhausting because you spend most of it utterly overwhelmed by the sheer amount of plot happening.  Maybe season 3 will surprise me, but each one of the seasons thus far have ended on a narrative dissonant note and I’m sure this one will follow suit.  I think the reason why this show is weirdly addcitive is the same reason why Baby shark gets stuck in your head so easily, its a bunch of leading tones.  Like the editor in my just wants to hack this show to pieces and recreate it where characters, themes and tones can evolve organically.  

In short, a show with a lot of good in it, but I kinda of hate it, but I can’t stop watching it.  

[thatlittledandere]

Ibushi for character ask thing, because I haven't seen you answer it for him (and fully can't believe that nobody has asked you, so maybe I just missed it...). PLS TELL ME ABOUT BEST BOY IBUSHI.

WITH PLEASURE

First impression

tbh I didn’t pay him any attention before episode 9, but then he HAD LINES and SHOWED EMOTIONS and I FELL IN LOVE JUST LIKE THAT and it took me a couple more weeks to learn his name. 

So not even a bad first impression, more like… no impression at all for two months. How did the staff fuck up this bad

Impression now

Boi… you all know I could write an essay. But I’m gonna gush in the other questions so let’s just say I love him he’s my husband we raise our kids together (with Yoosung of course) and I love him lots and am glad the fandom acknowledges him when the staff doesn’t lmao why do they hate Ibushi so much I just want to know 

If there’s a downside it’s how fucking secretive he is like goddamn he won’t fucking say anything 

(when you get his block on level fifty in the puzzle game there’s this story where he takes the puzzle protag-chan to a mountain and says he wants to learn more about her “even embarrassing things” stop this man and the protag-chan returns the statement and he literally just laughs and the story ends there and I’m fucking pissed (sorry for all the fucking))

Favorite moment

Ok so. I hope I’ve made it clear that ゲームいぶしベストボイ (game Ibushi best boy) so um am I allowed to name scenes from the game?? If so it’s the part in his love end (spoiler warning?) when he notices Protag-chan has some jam on her lips and fUCking BRUsheS It oFf and lICKS HIsGotdAMN fiNGErS LIke thaT TEASY SEDUCTIVE MOTHERFUKER–

And if going by the anime aka the canon everyone is familiar with I guess “maybe it’s mating season”. It came completely out of the blue. I paused the episode to process. One of my friends wants to be a tattoo artist in the future and I told her two years ago I want her to tattoo that line on my ass

Idea for a story

I marry Ibushi and we live happily ever after the end

Ibushi’s dad is a high-up in the yakuza but Ibushi just wants to garden and his mom tries to keep the peace like ffs

Unpopular opinion

Ibushi isn’t really a perfect, innocent cinnamon roll. Of course he is kind and he is good-natured and nurturing and loyal and patient to a degree and all but there’s much more?? Like, Ibushi is a ruthless sass master, he’s cold and passive-aggressive as heck when mad, he’s a flirt, he’s a tease and a bit possessive and I know these attributes are mainly visible in, you guessed it, THE GAME (there’s no time to play it but pls read the translations available), but anyway I want them addressed more please don’t ignore my husband’s other sides in favor of one

Another one: there needs to be more x readers. When you type his name into google search, “[name] x reader” is the second or third recommended option but there are only four or five pages of results depending on whether you wrote Ibushi Arima or Arima Ibushi and most of those are about another character x reader or Arima from Tokyo Ghoul or just results with his name and there aren’t a lot on the sites I’ve checked either (ao3, Quotev, Wattpad, deviantART (a mistake), even FFnet, tho I think it officially forbids reader-inserts) and this needs to change do I need to do everything myself gdi in case you didn’t already notice, I’m kind of desperate

Favorite relationship

He hasn’t properly interacted with people other than student council in the canons I’m properly familiar with I need to fuckign RREAD THE MANGA ffs so I guess I’m gonna go with, um, Protag-chan. Honestly I am In Love with all their interactions, she’s so sweet and genuinely interested in him and what he has to offer and he can be fucking merciless (“she knows too much we have to kill her”) but also really considerate and flirty and. Man. Also very observant like he noticed Protag-chan was a girl immediately? When nobody else could?? That’s probably the reason he acted the way he did from the start. (Ibushi doesn’t talk about himself much in the anime but he refers to himself as “ore” iirc while in the game it’s always “boku” I think he softens his speech when talking to a girl how sweet (I’m passionate about the pronoun “boku” ok I notice these things)) (were Kinshiro and Akoya even present in the SC route?? because I really felt like I was playing Ibushi Arima route the entire time)

Favorite headcanon

I’m. Fucking trash. But I’ve gotten really attached to my “Ibushi is a hardcore Batman fan” headcanon. You knows all those “is your Batman even relatively Batman” posts? He wrote them all. He owns a high-quality Batman cosplay or thirty. do you know how many variations there are?? and figurines and DVDs and comics and and conspires with the maids to smuggle all the stuff in his room without his strict father noticing