#elaine don’t deserve him 🙄

[spaceydoo]

Blurred visions

drunk!ban who always has to be the loudest in the club and just says nonsense to anybody who’s willing to listen.

drunk!ban who picked a fight with some rando who he thought was trying to take a peek under your dress when he just so happened to drop his wallet right beside you. luckily, you broke the fight before anything got serious.

drunk!ban who brings you on the dance floor which you agreed to while he just grabbed your ass the whole time swaying left and right while he kept his head buried in your neck even though you were supposed to be “dancing”

drunk!ban who suggested that you take more than one shot so when y’all went home things would be “spiced up” but one of you had to be the sober one to drive so you declined.

drunk!ban who does dumb shit like saying everyone’s drinks were on him which you had to turn down cuz he wasn’t gonna spend all that money on something like that.

drunk!ban who makes you sit on his lap, back facing him whispering how much he loves you and placing kisses all on your neck letting soft moans out since the music covered them.

drunk!ban who knows what he’s doing to you from his intoxicating smell, his drunken eyes, the taste of alcohol in his mouth after a passionate kiss and his growing member.

drunk!ban who decides to ditch the club and do a little something in the car with you.

drunk!ban who brings you to the backseat, and strips you down to your underwear and lays you on your back, licking his lips at the meal in front of him.

drunk!ban who licks your soaking pussy while your panties were still on making you frustrated from the lack of contact.

drunk!ban who gets tired of this quick and rips your panties off you and eats you out as if he had been starved for days (he ate you out yesterday)

drunk!ban who is immediately pussy drunk and moans into your pussy, the vibrations sending you off the edge.

drunk!ban who adds one finger then two to your pretty pussy and curls it in just the right places.

drunk!ban who picks up the pace of his fingers and mouth when he knows you’re close and uses his other hand to massage your breast which made you grip his hair desperately needing more of him.

drunk!ban who gets squirted all over and laps it up while you ride out your high, bucking you hips against his tongue, shaking from how intense your orgasm was.

drunk!ban who never seen you shaking so much after being ate out which he took as an accomplishment.

drunk!ban who gives you a look that say “we bouta be here all night”

drunk!ban who begins to line himself up to your hole before crashing into with such force that you were already loosing your vision.

drunk!ban who fucks you fast and gives you kisses while you moan into his mouth unable to kiss him back.

drunk!ban who gets scratches from you on his back which he loves to admire in the mirror.

drunk!ban who sits up to admire your figure under the street light, still keeping his same pace when you pull him back with your legs wrapped around him to feel him at a whole different level.

drunk!ban who is grunting and moaning just as loud as you were when you both were getting so close.

drunk!ban who is slurring praises in your ear and how y’all should cum at the same time <33

drunk!ban who has never been this vocal in bed which surprised yo since you almost never hear him moan like this

drunk!ban who only had to fuck you a little more until you squirted on his cock, soaking the car seats while he came inside you.

drunk!ban who rested on top of you fucking you slowly as he spilled his seed into you

drunk!ban who gives you about a minute to rest until he began fucking you without mercy while tears were forming from overstimulation and your moans gradually became louder which he hid with sloppy kisses

gotta love drunk ban <3

[nobibiname]

Ever wondered why the Elucien arguments pulling out Sarah’s 2016 interview and Facebook comment (yeah that one after ACOMAF came out) are SO annoying? 🙄

Ok so I ended up in a TikTok comment section today (yes I know that was my first mistake) and it occurred to me, we are once again not on the same page about some fundamental ideas on writing. The OP argued Sarah hasn’t changed her mind on the next books &elucien and that she said so in an interview after ACOSF.

Ok, but there’s a huge GLARING problem with that.

Basically, a writer makes promises in the text. I’m paraphrasing Sanderson here (I watch his lectures for fun, even tho I don’t write cuz I’m a dork) so he was talking about the first chapter and prologue of a book, or movie… but if you’re writing a multi-book epic, then you’re probably going to make promises about plots and characters of your future books, right?

So what are these promises? Basically what kind of book it is, plot&trope hints, the tone, goals, journeys and obstacles.

Ok back to SJM: why is the argument that “she said Elucien and hasn’t changed her mind infuriating? Because she made different promises in the books. And that is what Elriels mean when we say “set up”.

I mean just from the amount of interactions, Elriel have more than Elucien.. not to mention the warmth, positivity and thoughtfulness she put into their interactions over seriously 4 books. The promises are crystal clear: there is a romance that started as friendship==plot, but she has a bond w/someone else==obstacle, and Rhys forbade it in a moment resulting in her thinking he rejected her, but he didn’t == twist.

These promises need to be addressed, resolved, fulfilled. Is there something even CLOSE to this kind of story promise existing for Elucien?

I have seriously seen people claim that Elucien are both “friends to lovers” AND “enemies to lovers”…. These cannot both be true, like come on… you’re not even sure what kind of story they promise to be? You’re not sure what kinds of promises Sarah made about Elucien?

Why are you not sure? Because it’s not in the text. My personal view is that Elucien is neither… if they happen it’s kind of worse than either trope, they’re certainly not friends, they are at best indifferent to each other and at worst resentful. Mmmm … delicious “indifferent to lovers” 🫠

On a serious note, I don’t “hate” Elucien, but SJM hasn’t made a single promise in the text that I can quote in here that would make me excited about them. He gave her gifts that she didn’t throw away…. ?? Really?… she made a half step toward him… once… no, just no! And that’s how I feel, regardless if “Lulu deserves love”… sure he does, then write a love interest that brings out flirty firey fox boy from book1 and I’m on board 🫡 ….and don’t try to convince me after 4 books of a tepid nothing that all along it was Elain. Because. I. Don’t. Buy. It.

And my last point (I swear!) why did I get my panties all up in a twist… basically this: a writer makes promises IN THE TEXT, and if what you are saying in interviews directly CONTRADICTS your actual text, then you kinda have a problem. … at that point either you’re a bad writer, or you can’t blindly trust an interview from 7 years ago, it’s outdated!

The great GRRM himself said how often his “gardening style” of writing led to character arcs and romantic pairings changing… so why don’t we start treating Sarah as an adult author, and trust the text, and not an old interview?

It also comes down to trust. You don’t wanna be left feeling like “hmmm this doesn’t feel real, I don’t buy it” it takes you out of the text, and it happens when an author messes up promise-delivery . When an author foreshadows well, and sets up the story with their promises, still manages to surprise us while keeping the promises… well I trust THAT PERSON to tell me the most satisfying story.

[wolfnesta]

It’s just irksome when I see some takes get completely misunderstood

• ‘the IC is 500 so? nesta is 25 she’s an adult’- the point is that the 500 year olds are living and have lived with their trauma for much longer and should have more knowledge on these things. Not only because of that but because as leaders I would think they would know how to handle these things in regards to people living in their court but as the CoN members indicate, they don’t. But Mor said Nesta would ‘thrive’ so that makes it totally okay. Wtf??

• ‘Pointing fingers at Rhys every time Nesta does something bad is all they do’- acting like stanning Feyr.e and tolerate Rhys by extension is fine but proceeding to dedicate almost every other post to go on and on dissing Nesta is just plain shallow and hypocritical. They can dislike Nesta all they want but if they can’t keep the same energy towards other characters in the name of Fey.re mistreatment then I 🙃 can’t take them seriously. But it’s okay I get theyre just a victims of the narrative

• ‘Rhys doesn’t even want to be high king how is everyone so mad at him’- what Rhys wants or not isn’t the problem it’s this agenda that keeps getting shoved about how Rhys is so good. Which might well end up happening because of it. And that’s the problem. Because why try to make him morally grey then go on and on about how amazing and kind and ✨hurt✨ and ✨misunderstood✨ he is.

• ‘People believe head canons are canon/Interpretation aren’t canon’- as maybe it’s been noted by now in this rant canon is the problem. If someone has emotions for certain characters wether good or bad all of them are valid because like it’s literally a human right to express yourself. The unpopular part of our interpretation is that it seems sjm specifically fashioned her work so specific characters can be hated then ‘redeemed’ and because of this ended up having half of us see her mcs are actually quite crappy and her side ones don’t align with half the punishments they keep getting, which I mean— if seeing those interpretations bothers someone I recommend just blocking or filtering a tag it’s actually quite simple. Which takes me to my next point though

• ‘Just because Nesta has a reason to be bitchy doesn’t make it right/Nesta’s wrongs keep getting compared to others’- it’s ironic to hear this because this logic is exactly why I dislike the IC. The ‘comparisons’ are moments of examples. Take the HoW Elain visit scene. She happily comes by to see Nesta to explain things which is really nice of her right? despite not being present to show this support during Nesta’s intervention, but wait, Nesta walked by her once in the street without acknowledging her while she was going through depression but remember thats no excuse for Nesta to do this, which right, but So Why doesn’t the same logic apply here to Elain though? The intervention was done abrasively as it was but because they love her despite her being a bitch and so Nesta deserves this mistreatment in the name of tough love! What happened to the reason isn’t excuse logic? Then word for word proceeds to tell her not to act so miserable. People are set up to believe this idea through the entire series that Nesta is cruel and more so in acosf because Nesta says this herself and oh good lord 🙄 let’s only remember the parts where it was super evil of Nesta to blame Elain about their dead father let’s completely forget the completely offhand comment Elain had just made and not just in the visit but the complete disregard of her during the intervention. And remember reason doesn’t equal excuse. But apparently that logic only applies to Nesta. Then to proceed to say Nesta isnt even ‘trying’ and still see Nesta as the only mean one here blows my mind. Let me make sure it’s understood— this is not a comparison about Elain vs Nesta it’s the fact Nesta is portrayed as cruel and any trauma or reason behind her actions are still inexcusable and also proceed to make any mistreatment of her warranted. Where is the reason isn’t excuse logic for her?! Yet she keeps getting this trauma invalidation by the fandom left and right?? And it’s justified to mistreat her?? How this narrative can go on and on for the whole book and readers actually believe it is beyond me.

Just to name a few.

Nesta’s story was falsely advertised as a healing journey when really what we kept getting was a character that kept getting exploited over and over. The character trait that set her aside and made her so beloved to us fans was handled awfully and perhaps readers that don’t understand Nesta will never understand.

And I’m tagging every anti tag so if you come across this and feel offended then maybe you should learn to filter

[angelshadowsinger]

Ima be honest.. I’m anti Elain and Az, but not anti Elain. We don’t know much about her yet, but his shadows hide from her. His shadows which are an extension of himself hide from her-

Also, based off the canon Az bonus chapter, Az and Elain are the forbidden love trope and Az has never felt deserving of love. He needs someone that can openly and proudly choose him. Not someone that he would have to hide his love for because his brother and High Lord forbid it-

Also, after reading all five books more than once, I never noticed anything romantic or flirty between them aside from the almost kiss and necklace situation where Az admitted he hadn’t planned on a future with Elain, boy just wanted to get his dick wet 🙄

mic drop 🎤

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[tadpolesonalgae]

forget club rat az, mcr hot topic az is what we need. anyway hello????!!!!!!! it's time for my cbmthy thoughts baz was LITERALLY the mvp there. The way this man stood his ground to one of the most feared warriors of Night Court, that was so fun to read. Reader has to bring him a breakfast gift basket or something when she's back! He deserves it. ~very well acquainted

Also, Azriel is the king of Being In Denial. You know she's not in that goddamn room. And I agree with Yarnball (Wool?) 🧶 that it irks me that suddenly he's only giving her a second thought now because there's a vision where he dies? Please. He has so much yearning and redemption to do. (and I can't wait to see it happen hehe! suffer, az) (but I do remember him thinking that he's scared her off too... like the others have before and she was outlasting them... hmmm... I'll love to have him elaborate on that thought)

Her trading the earrings for the ring was EVERYTHING I got an inkling she might do that while I was reading and it was amazing when it actually happened. You said that even Az would be relieved she got rid of it, but I kinda wanted him to be a little offended fdbfhdfjfbd like why was he obsessively looking for them in her room? Hmph. I hope he does clutch his pearls a little when he sees she chose a fox ring as the trade!

Now for the main, most important part: Death Surge? As in the burst of energy and vitality one gets when they're about to die? Tabby, you evil genius. I'm so excited to see the extent of her powers and what she can do with them, and why the Cauldron would give her that. Nesta took something, Elain was given... could reader have been dying when she was dumped into the magic bathtub and her powers happened as a response to this second life? Very, very interesting. I'm at the edge of my seat. the writing is beautiful as always! you're a source of inspiration for me at this point, it makes me want to experiment with my wording and sentence building. <3

(also, I think it's great that we are forming a group of besties through these anon asks, I love interacting with you all!!) love, 🥐

‘forget club rat az, mor hot topic az is what we need. anyway’

Wait hold on!! I have evidence to support this 🥹🧡💛

‘hello????!!!!!!! it's time for my cbmthy thoughts’

Let’s gooooo 🥳🔊

‘baz was LITERALLY the mvp there. The way this man stood his ground to one of the most feared warriors of Night Court, that was so fun to read.’

He’s so provocative it’s worrying 😭 like I know he had a tendency toward violence (in the casual-brawl-at-the-pub kind of way, not anything potentially dangerous to reader) but an Illyrian warrior Bas?? Please be more careful next time 😭

‘Reader has to bring him a breakfast gift basket or something when she's back! He deserves it. ~very well acquainted’

🤭🤭🤭

‘And I agree with Yarnball (Wool?) 🧶’

I love it so much when you interact with one another 🥹 it’s so sweet to see 😭

‘He has so much yearning and redemption to do. (and I can't wait to see it happen hehe! suffer, az)’

I’ve been thinking about how exactly Az’s redemption is going to go, because while I don’t think he’s done anything bad bad, I don’t think reader will be able to trust him entirely as is, even if she wants to.

Trust building exercises!!! 🔊🔊🔊

‘suffer, az’

👀🤭🤭🤭

‘(but I do remember him thinking that he's scared her off too... like the others have before and she was outlasting them... hmmm... I'll love to have him elaborate on that thought)’

Oh my gosh, that was meant to be him thinking “first I was kind of a dick to her in library, then I was more of a dick after, then I read through the volume, then I got her a bland present, then I left her unchecked when I should have spoken to her instead of giving her time and space🙄”

Sorry, I can see how that could be misinterpreted 🫣😅

‘Her trading the earrings for the ring was EVERYTHING I got an inkling she might do that while I was reading and it was amazing when it actually happened.’

I’m so happy you enjoyed it 👹

I remeber thinking so many times when I was writing part 12 “okay, you have to remember to mention that she takes the earrings with her or else what’s even the point” 😭🤦

‘I hope he does clutch his pearls a little when he sees she chose a fox ring as the trade!’

“I’m happy you got rid of them, but a fox ring? Really?” Yes, Az. Really 🤭 I think his feathers will get at least a little ruffled when he sees that finds out about it :)

‘I'm so excited to see the extent of her powers and what she can do with them, and why the Cauldron would give her that.’

I’m glad you’re excited because I’m scared—I don’t want to mess anything up from how I’ve imagined it 🫣😭

‘the writing is beautiful as always! you're a source of inspiration for me at this point, it makes me want to experiment with my wording and sentence building. <3’

😳😳😳 I’m so flattered, thank you 😭🫂

Writing is so fun for me and such a nice way to relax (most of the time) so I hope you get a similar thing out of it! 🧡💛🫂

‘(also, I think it's great that we are forming a group of besties through these anon asks, I love interacting with you all!!)’

Right? It’s so lovely to see you speaking with one another ☹️☹️🧡💛

[canmom]

Animation Night 61: One Piece

So first up... ty everyone who tuned in for Heaven’s Feel last week! That was a blast: the fights were everything I hoped for and the whole chuuni traumagirl story arc was genuinely moving and compelling. Can’t really recommend it as a first Fate necessarily, since it skims over the early parts of the story portrayed already in Unlimited Blade Works, but I reckon those movies deserve all their esteem.

(Also, apologies for lack of Toku Tuesday this week. Plans fell apart and I wasn’t up to running one. We’ll be back next week.)

This week on Animation Night, I’m going to take up a long standing request from my friend Elaine [scattermoon], who is a big fan of a certain very long running manga series called One Piece. (I realise that among my friends that is a rather divisive choice! But hey, let’s give it a shot.)

One Piece began serialisation in Weekly Shōnen Jump in 1997, the creation of a young assistant mangaka called Eiichiro Oda. About the young Oda I can mostly find production info: he joined the company in 1992 on the strength of his manga Wanted!, then developed his drawing skills working under mangakas like Shinobu Kaitani on Suizan Police Gang and Masaya Tokuhiro on Jungle King Tar-chan and Mizu no Tomodachi Kappaman. In 1996 he wrote two piratical one-shot stories called Romance Dawn, the prototype for One Piece; then after three rejections, Jump agreed to run his series One Piece.

And One Piece got big. I don’t know exactly when it became a hit, but it soon became recognised as one of Jump’s “Big Three” series alongside Naruto and Bleach... and then outgrew even them to set the record for best-selling manga, overtaking even industry-defining series like Dragon Ball. Unusually for mangaka, Oda became extremely rich - yet he has continued to work singlemindedly on One Piece, taking almost no breaks outside of a number of health scares.

So what’s the formula that made it so beloved to its many many, fans?

Overall the structure for One Piece is a travel story. The broad-scale framing plot is that our MC, Monkey D. Luffy, and the “Straw Hat Pirates” (麦わらの一味, Mugiwara no Ichimi) who sail with him, are hoping to find a treasure called the “One Piece”, which would make Luffy the “King of the Pirates”. Along the way, they get caught up in the conflicts of a long series of islands, each one relatively self-contained as an arc. In the meantime, the metaplot concerns an unfolding pirate war between the four most powerful pirates (the Four Emperors 四皇 yonkō), opposed to the authority of the World Government.

So if at first glance it may sound like standard shōnen stuff - individuals with different superpowers, contesting to become the strongest. But it’s clearly finding much broader appeal than that. I asked Elaine a bit about this, and she reckoned its main strength is the variety: like many successful, long-running TV series (for example, Star Trek), the premise is so flexible that it allows Oda to explore an enormous variety of affects and registers, all anchored in familiarity with the core cast. Some examples are an underwater arc exploring xenophobia and generational prejudice among fish people, a thriller arc where the characters flee poison clouds in a sinister human experimentation lab, and a political intrigue arc about a rich man attempting to stage a coup in a desert kingdom.

Beyond that, it distinguishes itself mostly in execution: a big part of the appeal is the implication of a vast, fleshed-out world painted across thousands of issues. This is built on a distinctive visual foundation: Oda can design a wildly varied cast and give them all distinctive characterisation. (Even if he is, apparently not nearly so good at designing women... 🙄)

One other small tidbit Elaine gave me was that, contra the shōnen designation and Jump’s usual audience, by far the biggest demographic of One Piece readers is women aged 30-40.

Inevitably a series as big as One Piece would see a high-profile anime adaptation, and that landed in the hands of the venerable Toei Animation, one of the oldest anime companies. They picked up the series in 1999, and it has run in a variety of timeslots - shifting from Wednesday to the prime Saturday Evening slot before narrowly avoiding cancellation to settle in the Sunday Morning slot with other long-running shows like Dragon Ball Super. This is relevant insofar as, well...

Let’s talk a little about anime production! A subject I know a lot more about than the plot of One Piece...

Most anime nowadays are produced according to a model called the Production Committee, originating in high-profile films like Akira. In this system, various capital blocs - toy companies, music companies, broadcasters etc. - pool funds in return for a comparable stake in the profit or loss made by the series, mitigating risks but also reducing the potential for profit. The studio producing the actual animation (the primary contractor) may have a stake in the committee, but often they are only paid a single, fixed fee.

The production committee system has come under a lot of fire lately as one of the barriers in the way of livable wages for animators (e.g. this rather disjointed video by the Animator Dormitory charity): a successful series may not profit the animators at all since the fixed fee is very low and, if the studio’s not on the production committee, they don’t even have the opportunity to give the animators residuals (like in Hollywood) and often face severe budget shortfalls despite often paying sub-poverty piece rates.

Per this video, One Piece is run on a somewhat older sponsorship model with three sponsors making joint decisions: Toei themselves, the manga publisher Shueisha, and the broadcasting network Fuji TV. (I’m not exactly sure how this differs from the more standard production committee, but I guess I just gotta take the guy’s word for it...)

In some ways this is good: One Piece is pretty much guaranteed a large audience share just because of the license so the risk is minimal, and thanks to such productions, Toei is able to pay its animators some of the best monthly salaries in the industry. (The fact that they do is thanks to the union which struggled into existence in the early days of the studio, back when it was Toei Dōga.) But this arrangement comes with some restrictions: the Saturday morning timeslot comes with a very high pace of production of 48 episodes per year, drawing a lot of complaints of extremely slow pacing. Toei are not free to ‘go seasonal’ to spend more time per episode, because the other sponsors are making a tidy profit and see no reason to change for artistic reasons.

The exact history of the anime seems to have gone through a few eras. As Elaine described it, the first 80 episodes (1999-2001) adapt the first major arc of the manga at a reasonal pace; from that point until about 2008, the series interspersed ‘filler’ arcs between manga adaptations. From that point, they adopted a slower-paced model where, rather than write filler, they would adopt only one chapter of the manga per episode. Fans were not especially happy at the slow pace, or a widely perceived drop in animation quality.

These criticisms were apparently answered with a change in direction for the most recent “Wano” arc, which is where One Piece clips started appearing on the radar of sakuga fans - such as this cut by Katsumi Ishizuka which currently stands as the top rated from One Piece on the booru, or this one by webgen star Bahi JD. These have all the hallmarks of modern fight sakuga: heavy Yutapon influence, lots of flashy impact frames, lines dissolving, the camera and characters flying about. You can check out more of this Wano thing here on the booru. (I get the impression something quite similar has happened to the Naruto sequels.)

Meanwhile, on the manga side, Oda has apparently been attempting to condense more events into each chapter of the manga to better suit the pace of the adaptation - alluding to a fight which the animators can then elaborate on. So perhaps the pacing troubles are coming to an end... the manga, in any case, remains astoundingly popular, untouchable by anything in Jump.

Anyway! That is, as best as I understand it, the history of the One Piece TV show. However... we’re not watching that tonight. Instead, Elaine has picked out a handful of One Piece films...

Much like the TV series, the One Piece films have gone through various eras. The earliest films tended to be purely original stories, often diverging significantly from the source material; a second era saw higher-budget, condensed retellings of arcs already covered by the TV series; the third, current era of films consists of side stories overseen (and one time written) by Oda, but not directly part of the main story. Elaine’s given me one film rec from each era to give us a little historical core of the series

From the first era, we have Baron Omatsuri and the Secret Island (2005), which is notably the second film directed by Mamoru Hosoda [previously on Animation Night #15 and #47] after Digimon: The Movie. We can already see some elements of his style, like the kagenashii (unshaded) animation. The film sees the Straw Hat Pirates drawn into a series of trials on an unfamiliar resort island, but inevitably more sinister things are afoot - hinging on a flower that resurrects facsimiles of the dead.

The second era brings us the Fate-worthy title Episode of Chopper Plus: Bloom in the Winter, Miracle Sakura (2008), a retelling of the ‘Drum’ arc focusing on the character Tony Tony Chopper who is a kind of anthro reindeer?? The Straw Hats show up on a winter island, seeking medical treatment, and seem to get drawn into some kind of furry banditry situation where they’re attacked by big rabbits. It sounds wild and I’m very curious to see how that all comes together.

Last, we have One Piece Film: Gold (2016), from the current side-story-oriented era. In this one, the Straw hats find themselves on a kind of giant casino ship, where a conflict over cheating at dice draws them into a battle for control over the whole ship.

So. One Piece! I’ve never really dipped my toe in, just aware it’s a thing people love - but I’m absolutely curious to peer into this whole enormous psychic whirlpool that has been churning at the centre of the manga/anime industry for most of my lifetime. Fingers crossed we’ll find something delightful in here that appeals even to the One Piece skeptic. And time permitting, I’ll also throw in an episode from that Wano arc for the sakubutas among us to roll around in.

Animation Night 61 is intended to start at about 7PM UK time, 1h40m from this post, over at twitch.tv/canmom. In the meantime, I’m going to be challenging myself to animate a flashy punch in about an hour, so drop by Twitch if that sounds fun! See you there, either way~