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rainydayhogwartsimagines · 4 years ago

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I just found your blog and I was wondering if could you do a James potter fic where him and the reader (hufflepuff) are in a prank war and their friends are all laughing at them cuz they so obviously like each other but they don't realize until the end and it just gets all fluffy when they finally realize? please and thank you, I love your writing!!

JAMES GOD DAMN POTTER

This damn bastard was known as a pranking king to the Slytherins. And the poor Hufflepuffs (much like yourself) that got caught in the middle. There was the explosion in the potions classroom, the paint bomb, the hair dye incident, letting a troll loose in the dungeon and the one that pissed you off the most: The Bathroom flooding (assistance of Peeves included). That was the final straw with him that day.

You walked into Potions, soaked. Slughorn looked up from his desk as you marched over to James with a book and clocked him with it. “Ow-- Slughorn she just hit me!” James winced. “Your stupid pranks don’t just affect Slytherin!” You shouted. “MAYBE YOU SHOULD TELL ME THAT BEFORE YOU INFLICT PAIN!” James said. “Watch yourself Potter. You fucked up.” You said walking towards the door. “Should I be scared or something?” James asked as you gripped the door handle. You glared at him, it being so threatening he actually jumped back a little. “You should be terrified.” You growled before leaving. “Sounds like you really messed up James.” Sirius said to him.

Oh he did. Oh he REALLY messed up. This boy had many pranks pulled on him, all of them only hitting him. There was the howler, the notebook fire, the laxatives, and the best one that Sirius nearly died at: The literal exploding pen. James knew exactly who was doing this. It was you, of course it was you. After all you were making a point by strictly keeping the pranks focus on James and not the entire house of Gryffindor.

You sat in the library, your hair pulled back when someone sat down in front of you. “You.” James huffed. You didn’t bother to look up. “Yes Potter?” You asked, turning the page. “You’ve made your fucking point.” James huffed. “Did I now?” You asked, still not looking up. “I’ll admit, the exploding pen was clever, so was the howler.” James began. You smiled, hearing his frustration. “But releasing a God damn flock of pixies is extreme!” James huffed. You looked up confused. “I didn’t--” “Don’t play koi with me. I know that was you.” James halted. “James, I really didn’t do that.” you said. “Sure. Okay.” He said sarcastically. “All of my pranks are directed strictly at you, that’s directed at all of Gryffindor, I didn’t do it.” You explained. James blinked. “Wait then who did it?” “Probably one of the many Slytherins you pissed off.” You sighed putting your book in your bag. “Well now I need your help!” James said, earning a snort from you as you got up. He rose as well, following you as you walked. “You want me to help you?” You asked him, walking down one of the many corridors within the school.

James huffed, walking next to you. “Yes! I need to find the culprit, the others are pissed!” James said. “That’s not enough for me to help you when you have made my life a living hell Potter.” You sighed, walking down the stairs. James groaned. “I may have already openly accused you to Gryffindor.” He said making you stop dead in your tracks. “What?” You asked. “Well it seemed like a logical thing to say since you’ve been pranking me and a lot of them agreed with it!” James said. “Oh my GOD JAMES!” You yelled, smacking his arm. “Sorry-- Wait did you call me by my name!?” “I cannot believe you, first the endless pranks that got Hufflepuff involved and now Gryffindors pissed off at me because you made the worst educated guess of your lifetime!” you yelled. James sighed. “Y/n, I’m sorry. But if you help me find the idiot Slytherin that did this then we can clear your name and all will be right with the world!” James said. “You’re lucky I don’t shove you down the God damn stairs right this instant!” You snapped. “Y/n... Please.” James sighed. You shook your head.

“It’s probably a student in Care of Magical Creatures.” You finally sighed. “What?” James asked. “They’d have to know what keeps pixies at bay in order to get them in the common room or else they’d be flying around us right now.” You explained. “What Slytherins are in that class with me?” James asked. You scoffed. “You never learned their names?” You asked, walking again. “See that would require talking to them, I don’t talk to Slytherins--” “Shut up.” You snapped. He blinked. “Has it occurred to you how fucking stupid the house wars actually are James!? How destructive they are or who they even affect!?” You asked. “I--” “There is not God damn point in being so elitist over a house that isn’t going to help you after you graduate, unless you’re a teacher here! You are absolutely insufferable and I just want your voice to STOP. TALKING.” You said making him blink. He took a sarcastic bow, walking away from you as you walked into the Hufflepuff common room.

“I cannot believe her. Calling me Elitist.” James huffed to Sirius who was sitting on the floor in front of him. “She does make a valid point though, houses are pretty useless outside of school.” Remus said. “Mooney, I don’t give a flying fuck about that. She said my name.” James said, running a hand over his face. “As opposed to...?” Sirius asked confused. “She calls me by my last name-- She always calls me by my last name. But today...” James sighed and Remus rose a brow. “She called you ‘James’?” Sirius asked. “Yes and it..” James noticed the boys smiling at him. “You like her.” Peter declared. “Oh no Wormtail. He loves her.” Sirius corrected. James snorted. “She is the same girl that managed to dye my hair in my sleep and you think I’m in love with her?” James asked. “Yes.” The group answered in unison. “How in God’s name do you figure that?” He asked. “In the midst of all the insane stunts this girl has pulled, everytime you encountered her traps you smiled. You never once fought her on it unless it was teasingly. I think you’re upset because for the first time she’s actually pissed with you.” Remus said, the boys nodding in agreement. “Face it Prongs.” Sirius said getting up. “You like her.” He said before walking out.

That was an absolutely ridiculous theory. Right?

Wrong. James didn’t sleep for the next three days. He was watching you and everytime you looked at him you were glaring or shaking your head. There was this expression you had though, that James couldn’t describe. It was almost... Sad. James couldn’t get you out of his head though and he was slowly beginning to break down. “James. I said pass me the eye of newt.” Lily sighed. James blinked a few times. “Sorry.” James murmured, watching you work with your friend. Lily rose a brow, noticing the dark bags under his eyes and the fixation on you. “You should talk to her.” Lily said, dropping the eye of newt into the cauldron. “Talk to who?” James asked. “The girl you’re obviously into that is known as Y/n.” Lily said sarcastically. “Alright class, by now your potions should be complete.” Slughorn announced. You sighed, noticing James’ reflection on an empty glass bottle. You hated being mad at him.

Yeah, the bastard was annoying but most of the time he was actually making you smile in some kind of way. His pranks weren’t.... unfunny. They actually made you laugh before they pulled you into them. James knew that too. He always watched you when he pulled off a prank. Seeing that smile is what made him want to see it all the damn time, even if he used unethical methods to see it. “Miss Y/n, what do you smell?” Slughorn asked. You sniffed the potion. “Morning dew, the forest and coffee.” You answered, halfway paying attention before you realized who you described. Oh no. No no no no no--

Remus rose a brow and looked at Sirius. You slowly lowered your head, praying that James was not paying attention. Oh but he was though. You saying that you smelled him definitely got James’ attention. “And Miss McKinnon?” Slughorn asked your partner. “Leather, cigarettes and wet dog.” Marlene said looking at Sirius with a smirk. Sirius smiled back, winking at her and earning a light smack from Remus. “And you Mister Potter?” Slughorn asked. “Roses, rain and honey.” He said looking at you. You lowered your head more, more whispers erupting from the class.

When class finally did end, you slipped out before James could catch up, going to the common room. However the fun thing about the Marauders is they knew all of the passwords to every common room and they certainly could sweet talk those damn portraits into letting them in places they shouldn’t have been in. James grabbed your hand and you gasped. “James--” “I have not slept in three days.” He said. You swallowed. “I have stayed up for seventy two hours with you in my head. I don’t care if you smelled me in that damn Amortentia but I don’t want you to call me James.” He said. You swallowed looking into those hazel eyes. “What do you want me to call you then?” You asked. “What you always do when you’re not angry.” James said. “Potter?” You asked. “That’s it.” James said. “...James I’m still very much angry with you--” “Then tell me how to fix it. Please.” James pleaded. You eyed him up and down, pulling your hand out of his. “Fix your relationship with the Slytherins.” You said. “Oh Christ--” “Do it.” You said sternly. He nodded and walked out.

What the hell was he about to do?

Well the answer was simple. He sat in the Slytherin common room at a desk and literally asked them to write him all of their complaints about him so he could fix it. He got a couple of “You are a piece of shit” responses along with a few serious requests of “Don’t mess with Rachel Newburry again” or “Could you prank Ravenclaw like once? They need a good laugh now and again too.”

He came back to you in the library, showing you everything he did and you sighed. “Alright Potter. Did you ever find out who pranked Gryffindor?” you asked. “No.” “I know who it is.” You sighed. “Who?” “Rachel Newburry’s boyfriend Jacob Canterville.” You answered. “How do you figure?” James asked. “Because he told me.” You admitted. “Oh.” James nodded. You sighed and went back to your reading. “I’ll stop with the pranks.” James said making you look up. “Hmm?” You asked. “The pranks. I’ll stop--” “I never said to stop James I said to stop roping outsiders into it.” You said. He rose a brow. “So... You liked the pranks?” James asked, a smile tugging at the boy’s lips. You chuckled “You’ve got to tell me how you got Peeves to help you.” You laughed. “I honestly don’t know, he just took a liking to me.” James admitted. You smiled at James and he smiled back. “Oh and uhm.. You might want to throw out your quill.” You admitted. “Why?” James asked. “Might’ve.. used something that makes it catch fire when you try to write with it?” you admitted making him snort. “I’ll throw it out later.” He chuckled. “You also might want to throw out your shampoo.” you added. “That’s where you put the hair dye!” He realized. “Yeaaahh.” you nodded. “Is there anything else?” James asked. “uh... Don’t try to open your potions textbook for the next two hours because it will most definitely attack you.” you noted. “Wait how--” “I made it sentient temporarily” you said making him gape. “Oh don’t give me that look! You’re the one that rigged six paint bombs in the dungeon last month!” You said. “Oh yeah, that was me.” he remembered. “You forgot you had done that!?” You asked. “Yeah, that one was me testing out if the paint bombs actually worked.” he answered making you facepalm.

“You’re an absolute mess Potter.” you laughed. “You know you wouldn’t have it any other way Y/n.” He said making you smile. You shook your head looking at the boy in front of you. He smiled at you, moving strands of your hair out of the way. He pressed a kiss to your forehead before getting up and walking towards the door. “You’re right.” You said making him turn around. “About what?” He asked.

“I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Taglist: @amhyeah @newtaholic-staygold @bbeauttyybbx @fleurho @yodeadxss @secretaccshh

#james potter x you #james potter x y/n #james potter x reader #james potter

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celiacandsalty · 5 years ago

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Kal Penn’s Nuts

Warning: the following blog includes strong language, references to gluten, and excessive whining.

When my brother Jeff got diagnosed with Celiac disease in 2014 (at age 34) I distinctly remember my first thought being something along the lines of, “oh god, that poor bastard.” Not only because many most of the best foods contain gluten, but because I was already imagining the inevitable day when he goes to some business dinner or something and the server mistakes him for one of THOSE people. You know, the people we all roll our eyes at because they claim to have a gluten “sensitivity” or “intolerance,” but we suspect they’re full of shit and make a mental note to mock them at a later date. It’s hard to say why I cared so much about what hypothetical Cheesecake Factory employees in Ohio might think about my brother’s diet but I DID.

(I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but on TV shows now if they want to quickly convey that a character is an annoying douchebag, usually all they have to do is throw in a line where that person orders a gluten free whatever and a vegan something or other. It’s been a “joke” (for lack of a better word) for at least a decade now and for some reason shows no signs of stopping, despite the fact that it is completely unoriginal, unfunny, and hacky. What I’m saying is, gluten free is the new Nickleback.)

Okay, now cut to 2018 when I, following in my brother’s stupid footsteps, also get diagnosed with Celiac disease1 and all those pitying thoughts I never would have verbalized to my poor bastard brother come flooding back, only now they apply to me too and I can hear them all because they’re in my head. I did not take the news well.

Now, it almost goes without saying that it is easier now than ever before to find decent gluten-free food, especially in Portland, Oregon (where I fortunately already happened to live), but I gotta say, it’s a colossal pain in the ass and it still sucks. It sucks that I have to spend so much of my free-time moonlighting as a gluten detective, looking at menus for places I might possibly be invited to eat at someday and reading every word on every food label and trying to get to the bottom of whether miso paste or Werther’s Originals are safe for me to eat.2 It sucks that I don’t even really WANT to go out to eat much anymore because it’s such a stressful experience that I barely enjoy it anways. It sucks that I once enjoyed traveling and now I’ve pretty much written off at least a couple of entire continents (and they were good ones too.) It sucks that I have frequent anxiety dreams about accidentally poisoning myself. It sucks that I only just discovered Shake Shack 6 months before getting diagnosed and now I’ll never again know the joy of a squishy hamburger bun. It sucks that I no longer get to be the easygoing person in a group or at the office who, when asked about dietary restrictions, could proudly say “Nope! I’m fine with whatever (aka I am a very cool and chill person).” I could go on and on, but I’d have to say the thing that actually sucks the most is the whole gluten-as-a-punchline thing because for me it is so terribly unfunny.

A couple of months ago3 I was at the gym, listening to one of my podcasts in which the guests, usually comedians, get a chance to rant for a few minutes on any topic of their choosing. That week, Kal Penn (of Harold & Kumar fame4) was one of the guests and he made the bold choice to rant about GLUTEN. My blood went straight to a solid simmer before he said another word. I considered shutting it off, but I thought to myself, “Easy does it, Jeanne! Maybe it’s not going to be what you think it is.”

Narrator: It was.

Kal Penn went on to say that as a person living with a severe allergy to tree nuts, it makes him very angry that people who claim to have GLUTEN allergies or intolerances are diluting the seriousness of his legitimate food allergy. The main takeaway being that GLUTEN allergies are FAKE and a FAD and they’re a PREFERENCE, unlike Kal Penn’s very real allergy to nuts.

Of course, Kal Penn included the caveat that there is a VERY small percentage of people for whom gluten issues are real, but I feel like that finer point may have been lost in the message of screaming FAKE FAKE FAKE for 3 minutes.5

The annoying thing though, is that Kal Penn is right. It IS a fad. (Especially in LA.) And I HATE that it is. One particularly annoying thing about this is that restaurants are catching on and more and more GF items items are popping up on menus everywhere. Unfortunately, they are often actually GF, unless you have Celiac disease, which makes my gluten detective job much harder.6

Now I don’t doubt that living with a nut allergy is hard. And I imagine that Kal Penn and I actually have a lot in common when it comes to anxieties and frustrations around food and eating out. I know that I shouldn’t say that I’m jealous of Kal Penn and his nut allergy, but in a way I am. Yes, I’m sure it is terrifying to go into anaphylactic shock and have to be rushed to the hospital, but on the bright side, at least people don’t think you’re a douchebag liar!

Speaking of being rushed to the hospital, here’s the funny story about how I found out that I can’t eat gluten. A little over a year ago, I ended up in the emergency room after dramatically collapsing in my apartment and completely losing all feeling in the entire left side of my body. After getting an MRI (and some other very expensive tests), I was informed that there were several areas of stroke in my 34-year-old brain.7

I spent 3 days in the neurology unit with puzzled doctors coming in every hour to scratch their heads and look at me with great concern. I didn’t find out for another full week that all of this was a result of undiagnosed Celiac disease. Apparently though I was asymptomatic in terms of gastrointestinal issues (very common in adults), I had become so severely anemic8 that I literally almost died. Malnutrition and malabsorption are common symptoms of Celiac, and at this point my hemoglobin was so critically low that I required a blood transfusion and 2 IV iron infusions.

Ok, so cool story, I know, but is stroke and near-death a common effect of eating gluten? Nope! I don’t think so!

So what’s my point? Fuck, I don’t even remember now. But I guess what I’m saying is...we all know the people Kal Penn is talking about. And I spend way too much of my mental energy worrying that when I tell someone I can’t have gluten9, they might, for example, still serve me a salad that they accidentally put the croutons on and then tried to pick them off but missed a few because they probably assume I’m just another asshole doing the Whole 30.10

So, Kal Penn, believe me when I say that I am with you on the issue of THOSE people. But continuing to rail against them and their possibly exaggerated gluten sensitivities does nothing to stop them. (I suspect it might even make them stronger and more annoying.) It does however, continue to reinforce the already widespread belief that gluten is a made-up problem invented in the 2000s, by I don’t know, naturopaths and George Soros probably? And it’s this belief that is actually very dangerous to people like myself and my brother and the millions of other poor bastards with REAL incurable conditions, and, for what it’s worth, one that seems unlikely to change the way we treat someone with a nut allergy. And, last but not least, it is also a belief that occasionally ruins my workout/enjoyment of podcasts.

Anyways, thanks for letting me vent.

Oh, but sorry about your nuts, Kal Penn.

----

Cool family, right?? (Also my maternal grandmother had it too and was diagnosed in the 1980s.)

Still unclear

I meant to write this sooner. Fortunately, my New Year’s Resolution was to hold on longer to more grudges.

Among other things, like Obama’s White House?

I was also going to go back and listen to the podcast again to more accurately transcribe his rant, but just thinking about it made my heart hurt. If you want to hear for yourself, it was the November 9, 2019 episode of Lovett Or Leave It.)

Plus the pay sucks.

I think it could still pass for 28.

My blood’s solution to this problem was to produce WAY too many platelets, which I didn’t know and perhaps my blood didn’t know, are what make blood clot.

“Just tell them you have CELIAC.” Well guess what–some of THOSE people are co-opting our magic word too now!

Sorry if you’re doing the Whole 30 and not an asshole.

#celiac disease #kal penn #jon lovett

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gt-ridel · 5 years ago

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Apropos of nothing, I've never really liked Family Guy. I've seen a bit of it, but it just never struck me as very funny. It kind of just made me feel tired and miserable.

My best friend once tried to explain why it's so good by claiming that the horrible things are happening to horrible people who deserve it. And I can understand that. But like...

I'm kind of sick of shows that feature rotten characters, you know? I'm sick of negativity in my comedy. Tired of being expected to laugh at bad things happening to anyone.

Whether it's a vine compilation video on YouTube that shows people getting really hurt (so like, 99.9% of all "funny videos" since the dawn of time), or animated adult shows like Family Guy or South Park.

I hate following the lives of people who are abusive and awful and just don't care about anyone else.

That's why I much prefer shows like Bob's Burgers or The Adventure Zone (okay that one's a podcast, but still)

In BB (I’ve only seen the first seven seasons, because that was all that was on Netflix) the main family is weird, but they love and support each other. Tina writes erotic fanfiction (if you call touching someone's butt erotic I guess) and her parents are happy to let her pursue her creativity.

Bob and Linda don't snipe at each other constantly like every other married couple in television history. Even when they do get into fights, if there are insults they're pretty mild, and they always make up properly.

And I just love the way the family has kind of adopted Regular sized Rudy? The asthmatic social outcast kid with a neglectful single father who in any other show would be nothing but a background punchline.

Also (and I’m going to go on an uncomfortably personal tangent here, so you might want to skip ahead) they use proper pronouns for an obviously trans side character as if it's the most natural thing in the world. Like, I grew up in a very religious home, and despite the fact that the whole issue of gender and sexuality was always a touchy one, especially in the 90's, I was always taught that we do not laugh at people even if we don't agree with their lifestyle choices. Their lives are their own and are not a joke.

When he was a teenager my older brother would always make gay jokes, and it was yet another reason why we never got along. It was disrespectful and unfunny and just an all around nasty thing to do. But those were the kinds of jokes you saw a lot on TV at the time. Gay people are funny. Look how weird they are. Ha ha ha.

Later it would turn out that he was pansexual.

I have a LOT of beef with my older brother, who put me through a LOT of shit when we were growing up and contributed a LOT to the feelings of worthlessness that I still struggle with today (He has also dated and emotionally abused many of my friends, who I tried to warn off but who thought I was exaggerating, leading some of them to actually require therapy. But that's a completely different story. all of this to say, we are not friends)

But on the matter of the jokes I have a little sympathy.

Because everywhere you looked popular media told us that gay people were a joke, and he couldn't stand the idea of being one too.

This stuff matters.

(Okay, the tangent is over)

In TAZ, you have either a big D&D setting with three lovable dingusses trying to save the world, or a modern day monster of the week style adventure with three lovable dingusses trying to save the world. (Two worlds, but who's counting)

Yes, they will rag on each other, but it's done in such a way that you never really get the feeling that they don't care. I mean, let's be clear, the characters are not paragons of virtue in either season, but they do grow and learn and try to be better. My favorite example of this being Ned Chicane (but this post is already long enough without going into his story and I need to start wrapping up here).

That's probably because the whole podcast is basically played out live between three brothers and their father, who all obviously love each other very much.

So I guess what I'm trying to say is, can we start moving away from the relentlessly unpleasant in our comedy media?

I think that being taught to laugh at racism and abuse and physical pain does us a huge disservice as a people. Especially if the people consuming said media are younger and still easily influenced.

I'm not saying hey if you watch family guy you are a bad person! That's clearly ridiculous. But I do think that media like it in general, on YouTube or TV or in podcasts or books, effects the way we think about other people in a very negative way.

Standard disclaimer applies. If you feel differently about this subject, that's fine. Like I said at the start, my best friend still loves this kind of stuff. But I think it tends to do more harm than good, and It's just not for me. :/

#this is a rant I guess?#or maybe not #I'm not particularly angry about any of this #just tired #very very tired

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benjaminikuta · 7 years ago

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Sexual Paranoia Strikes Academe

Sexual Paranoia Strikes Academe Matt Roth for The Chronicle Review By Laura Kipnis FEBRUARY 27, 2015

You have to feel a little sorry these days for professors married to their former students. They used to be respectable citizens—leaders in their fields, department chairs, maybe even a dean or two—and now they’re abusers of power avant la lettre. I suspect you can barely throw a stone on most campuses around the country without hitting a few of these neo-miscreants. Who knows what coercions they deployed back in the day to corral those students into submission; at least that’s the fear evinced by today’s new campus dating policies. And think how their kids must feel! A friend of mine is the offspring of such a coupling—does she look at her father a little differently now, I wonder. It’s been barely a year since the Great Prohibition took effect in my own workplace. Before that, students and professors could date whomever we wanted; the next day we were off-limits to one another—verboten, traife, dangerous (and perhaps, therefore, all the more alluring). My Title IX InquisitionWhat’s the good of having a freedom you’re afraid to use? Of course, the residues of the wild old days are everywhere. On my campus, several such "mixed" couples leap to mind, including female professors wed to former students. Not to mention the legions who’ve dated a graduate student or two in their day—plenty of female professors in that category, too—in fact, I’m one of them. Don’t ask for details. It’s one of those things it now behooves one to be reticent about, lest you be branded a predator. Forgive my slightly mocking tone. I suppose I’m out of step with the new realities because I came of age in a different time, and under a different version of feminism, minus the layers of prohibition and sexual terror surrounding the unequal-power dilemmas of today. The fiction of the all-powerful professor that’s embedded in the new campus codes appalls me. When I was in college, hooking up with professors was more or less part of the curriculum. Admittedly, I went to an art school, and mine was the lucky generation that came of age in that too-brief interregnum after the sexual revolution and before AIDS turned sex into a crime scene replete with perpetrators and victims—back when sex, even when not so great or when people got their feelings hurt, fell under the category of life experience. It’s not that I didn’t make my share of mistakes, or act stupidly and inchoately, but it was embarrassing, not traumatizing. As Jane Gallop recalls in Feminist Accused of Sexual Harassment (1997), her own generational cri de coeur, sleeping with professors made her feel cocky, not taken advantage of. She admits to seducing more than one of them as a grad student—she wanted to see them naked, she says, as like other men. Lots of smart, ambitious women were doing the same thing, according to her, because it was a way to experience your own power. But somehow power seemed a lot less powerful back then. The gulf between students and faculty wasn’t a shark-filled moat; a misstep wasn’t fatal. We partied together, drank and got high together, slept together. The teachers may have been older and more accomplished, but you didn’t feel they could take advantage of you because of it. How would they? Which isn’t to say that teacher-student relations were guaranteed to turn out well, but then what percentage of romances do? No doubt there were jealousies, sometimes things didn’t go the way you wanted—which was probably good training for the rest of life. It was also an excellent education in not taking power too seriously, and I suspect the less seriously you take it, the more strategies you have for contending with it. It’s the fiction of the all-powerful professor embedded in the new campus codes that appalls me. And the kowtowing to the fiction—kowtowing wrapped in a vaguely feminist air of rectitude. If this is feminism, it’s feminism hijacked by melodrama. The melodramatic imagination’s obsession with helpless victims and powerful predators is what’s shaping the conversation of the moment, to the detriment of those whose interests are supposedly being protected, namely students. The result? Students’ sense of vulnerability is skyrocketing. I’ve done what I can to adapt myself to the new paradigm. Around a decade ago, as colleges began instituting new "offensive environment" guidelines, I appointed myself the task of actually reading my university’s sexual-harassment handbook, which I’d thus far avoided doing. I was pleased to learn that our guidelines were less prohibitive than those of the more draconian new codes. You were permitted to date students; you just weren’t supposed to harass them into it. I could live with that. However, we were warned in two separate places that inappropriate humor violates university policy. I’d always thought inappropriateness was pretty much the definition of humor—I believe Freud would agree. Why all this delicacy? Students were being encouraged to regard themselves as such exquisitely sensitive creatures that an errant classroom remark could impede their education, as such hothouse flowers that an unfunny joke was likely to create lasting trauma. Knowing my own propensity for unfunny jokes, and given that telling one could now land you, the unfunny prof, on the carpet or even the national news, I decided to put my name down for one of the voluntary harassment workshops on my campus, hoping that my good citizenship might be noticed and applauded by the relevant university powers. At the appointed hour, things kicked off with a "sexual-harassment pretest." This was administered by an earnest mid-50s psychologist I’ll call David, and an earnest young woman with a master’s in social work I’ll call Beth. The pretest consisted of a long list of true-false questions such as: "If I make sexual comments to someone and that person doesn’t ask me to stop, then I guess that my behavior is probably welcome." Despite the painful dumbness of these questions and the fading of afternoon into evening, a roomful of people with advanced degrees seemed grimly determined to shut up and play along, probably aided by a collective wish to be sprung by cocktail hour. That is, until we were handed a printed list of "guidelines." No. 1 on the list was: "Do not make unwanted sexual advances." Someone demanded querulously from the back, "But how do you know they’re unwanted until you try?" (OK, it was me.) David seemed oddly flustered by the question and began frantically jangling the change in his pants pocket. "Do you really want me to answer that?" he finally responded, trying to make a joke out of it. I did want him to answer, because it’s something I’d been wondering—how are you supposed to know in advance? Do people wear their desires emblazoned on their foreheads?—but I didn’t want to be seen by my colleagues as a troublemaker. There was an awkward pause while David stared me down. Another person piped up helpfully, "What about smoldering glances?" Everyone laughed, but David’s coin-jangling was becoming more pronounced. A theater professor spoke up, guiltily admitting to having complimented a student on her hairstyle that very afternoon (one of the "Do Nots" involved not commenting on students’ appearance) but, as a gay male, wondered whether not to have complimented her would have been grounds for offense. He mimicked the female student, tossing her mane around in a "Notice my hair" manner, and people began shouting suggestions about other dumb pretest scenarios for him to perform, like sexual-harassment charades. Rebellion was in the air. The man sitting next to me, an ethnographer who studied street gangs, whispered, "They’ve lost control of the room." David was jangling his change so frantically that it was hard to keep your eyes off his groin. I recalled a long-forgotten pop-psychology guide to body language that identified change-jangling as an unconscious masturbation substitute. If the leader of our sexual-harassment workshop was engaging in public masturbatory-like behavior, seizing his private pleasure in the midst of the very institutional mechanism designed to clamp such delinquent urges, what hope for the rest of us? Let’s face it: Other people’s sexuality is often just weird and creepy. Sex is leaky and anxiety-ridden; intelligent people can be oblivious about it. Of course the gulf between desire and knowledge has long been a tragicomic staple. Consider some notable treatments of the student-professor hookup theme—J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace; Francine Prose’s Blue Angel; Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections—in which learning has an inverse relation to self-knowledge, professors are emblems of sexual stupidity, and such disasters ensue that it’s hard not to read them as cautionary tales about the disastrous effects of intellect on practical intelligence. The implementers of the new campus codes seemed awfully optimistic about rectifying the condition, I thought to myself. The optimism continues, outpaced only by all the new prohibitions and behavior codes required to sustain it. According to the latest version of our campus policy, "differences in institutional power and the inherent risk of coercion are so great" between teachers and students that no romance, dating, or sexual relationships will be permitted, even between students and professors from different departments. (Relations between graduate students and professors aren’t outright banned, but are "problematic" and must be reported if you’re in the same department.) Yale and other places had already instituted similar policies; Harvard jumped on board last month, though it’s a sign of the incoherence surrounding these issues that the second sentence of The New York Times story on Harvard reads: "The move comes as the Obama administration investigates the handling of accusations of sexual assault at dozens of colleges, including Harvard." As everyone knows, the accusations in the news have been about students assaulting other students, not students dating professors. The climate of sanctimony about student vulnerability has grown impenetrable. No one dares question it lest you’re labeled antifeminist, or worse, a sex criminal. Of course, the codes themselves also shape the narratives and emotional climate of professor-student interactions. An undergraduate sued my own university, alleging that a philosophy professor had engaged in "unwelcome and inappropriate sexual advances" and that the university punished him insufficiently for it. The details that emerged in news reports and legal papers were murky and contested, and the suit was eventually thrown out of court. In brief: The two had gone to an art exhibit together—an outing initiated by the student—and then to some other exhibits and bars. She says he bought her alcohol and forced her to drink, so much that by the end of the evening she was going in and out of consciousness. He says she drank of her own volition. (She was under legal drinking age; he says he thought she was 22.) She says he made various sexual insinuations, and that she wanted him to drive her home (they’d driven in his car); he says she insisted on sleeping over at his place. She says she woke up in his bed with his arms around her, and that he groped her. He denies making advances and says she made advances, which he deflected. He says they slept on top of the covers, clothed. Neither says they had sex. He says she sent friendly texts in the days after and wanted to meet. She says she attempted suicide two days later, now has PTSD, and has had to take medical leave. The aftermath has been a score of back-and-forth lawsuits. After trying to get a financial settlement from the professor, the student filed a Title IX suit against the university: She wants her tuition reimbursed, compensation for emotional distress, and other damages. Because the professor wasn’t terminated, when she runs into him it triggers her PTSD, she says. (The university claims that it appropriately sanctioned the professor, denying him a raise and a named chair.) She’s also suing the professor for gender violence. He sued the university for gender discrimination (he says he wasn’t allowed to present evidence disproving the student’s allegations)—this suit was thrown out; so was the student's lawsuit against the university. The professor sued for defamation various colleagues, administrators, and a former grad student whom, according to his complaint, he had previously dated; a judge dismissed those suits this month. He sued local media outlets for using the word "rape" as a synonym for sexual assault—a complaint thrown out by a different judge who said rape was an accurate enough summary of the charges, even though the assault was confined to fondling, which the professor denies occurred. (This professor isn’t someone I know or have met, by the way.) What a mess. And what a slippery slope, from alleged fondler to rapist. But here’s the real problem with these charges: This is melodrama. I’m quite sure that professors can be sleazebags. I’m less sure that any professor can force an unwilling student to drink, especially to the point of passing out. With what power? What sorts of repercussions can there possibly be if the student refuses? Indeed, these are precisely the sorts of situations already covered by existing sexual-harassment codes, so if students think that professors have such unlimited powers that they can compel someone to drink or retaliate if she doesn’t, then these students have been very badly educated about the nature and limits of institutional power. In fact, it’s just as likely that a student can derail a professor’s career these days as the other way around, which is pretty much what happened in the case of the accused philosophy professor. To a cultural critic, the representation of emotion in all these documents plays to the gallery. The student charges that she "suffered and will continue to suffer humiliation, mental and emotional anguish, anxiety, and distress." As I read through the complaint, it struck me that the lawsuit and our new consensual-relations code share a common set of tropes, and a certain narrative inevitability. In both, students and professors are stock characters in a predetermined story. According to the code, students are putty in the hands of all-powerful professors. According to the lawsuit, the student was virtually a rag doll, taken advantage of by a skillful predator who scripted a drunken evening of galleries and bars, all for the opportunity of some groping. Everywhere on campuses today you find scholars whose work elaborates sophisticated models of power and agency. It would be hard to overstate the influence, across disciplines, of Michel Foucault, whose signature idea was that power has no permanent address or valence. Yet our workplaces themselves are promulgating the crudest version of top-down power imaginable, recasting the professoriate as Snidely Whiplashes twirling our mustaches and students as helpless damsels tied to railroad tracks. Students lack volition and independent desires of their own; professors are would-be coercers with dastardly plans to corrupt the innocent. Even the language these policies come packaged in seems designed for maximum stupefaction, with students eager to add their voices to the din. Shortly after the new policy went into effect on my campus, we all received a long email from the Title IX Coordinating Committee. This was in the midst of student protests about the continued employment of the accused philosophy professor: 100 or so students, mouths taped shut (by themselves), had marched on the dean’s office (a planned sit-in of the professor’s class went awry when he pre-emptively canceled it). The committee was responding to a student-government petition demanding that "survivors" be informed about the outcomes of sexual-harassment investigations. The petition also demanded that the new policies be amended to include possible termination of faculty members who violate its provisions. There was more, but my eye was struck by the word "survivor," which was repeated several times. Wouldn’t the proper term be "accuser"? How can someone be referred to as a survivor before a finding on the accusation—assuming we don’t want to predetermine the guilt of the accused, that is. At the risk of sounding like some bow-tied neocon columnist, this is also a horrifying perversion of the language by people who should know better. Are you seriously telling me, I wanted to ask the Title IX Committee, that the same term now encompasses both someone allegedly groped by a professor and my great-aunt, who lived through the Nazi death camps? I emailed an inquiry to this effect to the university’s general counsel, one of the email’s signatories, but got no reply. For the record, I strongly believe that bona fide harassers should be chemically castrated, stripped of their property, and hung up by their thumbs in the nearest public square. Let no one think I’m soft on harassment. But I also believe that the myths and fantasies about power perpetuated in these new codes are leaving our students disabled when it comes to the ordinary interpersonal tangles and erotic confusions that pretty much everyone has to deal with at some point in life, because that’s simply part of the human condition. In the post-Title IX landscape, sexual panic rules. Slippery slopes abound. Gropers become rapists and accusers become survivors, opening the door for another panicky conflation: teacher-student sex and incest. Recall that it was incest victims who earlier popularized the use of the term "survivor," previously reserved for those who’d survived the Holocaust. The migration of the term itself is telling, exposing the core anxiety about teacher-student romances: that there’s a whiff of perversity about such couples, notwithstanding all the venerable married ones. These are anxious times for officialdom, and students, too, are increasingly afflicted with the condition—after all, anxiety is contagious. Around the time the "survivor" email arrived, something happened that I’d never experienced in many decades of teaching, which was that two students—one male, one female—in two classes informed me, separately, that they were unable to watch assigned films because they "triggered" something for them. I was baffled by the congruence until the following week, when the Times ran a story titled "Trauma Warnings Move From the Internet to the Ivory Tower," and the word "trigger" was suddenly all over the news. I didn’t press the two students on the nature of these triggers. I knew them both pretty well from previous classes, and they’d always seemed well-adjusted enough, so I couldn’t help wondering. One of the films dealt with fascism and bigotry: The triggeree was a minority student, though not the minority targeted in the film. Still, I could see what might be upsetting. In the other case, the connection between the student and the film was obscure: no overlapping identity categories, and though there was some sexual content in the film, it wasn’t particularly explicit. We exchanged emails about whether she should sit out the discussion, too; I proposed that she attend and leave if it got uncomfortable. I was trying to be empathetic, though I was also convinced that I was impeding her education rather than contributing to it. I teach in a film program. We’re supposed to be instilling critical skills in our students (at least that’s how I see it), even those who aspire to churn out formulaic dreck for Hollywood. Which is how I framed it to my student: If she hoped for a career in the industry, getting more critical distance on material she found upsetting would seem advisable, given the nature of even mainstream media. I had an image of her in a meeting with a bunch of execs, telling them that she couldn’t watch one of the company’s films because it was a trigger for her. She agreed this could be a problem, and sat in on the discussion with no discernable ill effects. But what do we expect will become of students, successfully cocooned from uncomfortable feelings, once they leave the sanctuary of academe for the boorish badlands of real life? What becomes of students so committed to their own vulnerability, conditioned to imagine they have no agency, and protected from unequal power arrangements in romantic life? I can’t help asking, because there’s a distressing little fact about the discomfort of vulnerability, which is that it’s pretty much a daily experience in the world, and every sentient being has to learn how to somehow negotiate the consequences and fallout, or go through life flummoxed at every turn. Here’s a story that brought the point home for me. I was talking to a woman who’d just published her first book. She was around 30, a friend of a friend. The book had started at a major trade press, then ended up published by a different press, and I was curious why. She alluded to problems with her first editor. I pressed for details, and out they came in a rush. Her editor had developed a sort of obsession with her, constantly calling, taking her out for fancy meals, and eventually confessing his love. Meanwhile, he wasn’t reading the chapters she gave him; in fact, he was doing barely any work on the manuscript at all. She wasn’t really into him, though she admitted that if she’d been more attracted to him, it might have been another story. But for him, it was escalating. He wanted to leave his wife for her! There were kids, too, a bunch of them. Still no feedback on the chapters. Meanwhile he was Skyping her in his underwear from hotel rooms and complaining about his marriage, and she was letting it go on because she felt that her fate was in his hands. Nothing really happened between them—well, maybe a bit of fumbling, but she kept him at a distance. The thing was that she didn’t want to rebuff him too bluntly because she was worried about the fate of her book—worried he’d reject the manuscript, she’d have to pay back the advance, and she’d never get it published anywhere else. I’d actually once met this guy—he’d edited a friend’s book (badly). He was sort of a nebbish, hard to see as threatening. "Did you talk to your agent?" I asked the woman. I was playing the situation out in my mind, wondering what I’d do. No, she hadn’t talked to her agent, for various reasons, including fears that she’d led the would-be paramour on and that her book wasn’t any good. Suddenly the editor left for a job at another press, and the publisher called the contract, demanding a final manuscript, which was overdue and nowhere near finished. In despair, the author finally confessed the situation to our mutual friend, another writer, who employed the backbone-stiffening phrase "sexual harassment" and insisted that the woman get her agent involved. Which she did, and the agent negotiated an exit deal with the publisher by explaining what had taken place. The author was let out of the contract and got to take the book to another press. What struck me most, hearing the story, was how incapacitated this woman had felt, despite her advanced degree and accomplishments. The reason, I think, was that she imagined she was the only vulnerable one in the situation. But look at the editor: He was married, with a midlevel job in the scandal-averse world of corporate publishing. It simply wasn’t the case that he had all the power in the situation or nothing to lose. He may have been an occluded jerk, but he was also a fairly human-sized one. So that’s an example of a real-world situation, postgraduation. Somehow I don’t see the publishing industry instituting codes banning unhappily married editors from going goopy over authors, though even with such a ban, will any set of regulations ever prevent affective misunderstandings and erotic crossed signals, compounded by power differentials, compounded further by subjective levels of vulnerability? The question, then, is what kind of education prepares people to deal with the inevitably messy gray areas of life? Personally I’d start by promoting a less vulnerable sense of self than the one our new campus codes are peddling. Maybe I see it this way because I wasn’t educated to think that holders of institutional power were quite so fearsome, nor did the institutions themselves seem so mighty. Of course, they didn’t aspire to reach quite as deeply into our lives back then. What no one’s much saying about the efflorescence of these new policies is the degree to which they expand the power of the institutions themselves. As for those of us employed by them, what power we have is fairly contingent, especially lately. Get real: What’s more powerful—a professor who crosses the line, or the shaming capabilities of social media? For myself, I don’t much want to date students these days, but it’s not like I don’t understand the appeal. Recently I was at a book party, and a much younger man, an assistant professor, started a conversation. He reminded me that we’d met a decade or so ago, when he was a grad student—we’d been at some sort of event and sat next to each other. He said he thought we’d been flirting. In fact, he was sure we’d been flirting. I searched my memory. He wasn’t in it, though I didn’t doubt his recollection; I’ve been known to flirt. He couldn’t believe I didn’t remember him. I apologized. He pretended to be miffed. I pretended to be regretful. I asked him about his work. He told me about it, in a charming way. Wait a second, I thought, was he flirting with me now? As an aging biological female, and all too aware of what that means in our culture, I was skeptical. On the heels of doubt came a surge of joy: "Still got it," crowed some perverse inner imp in silent congratulation, jackbooting the reality principle into assent. My psyche broke out the champagne, and all of us were in a far better mood for the rest of the evening. Intergenerational desire has always been a dilemma as well as an occasion for mutual fascination. Whether or not it’s a brilliant move, plenty of professors I know, male and female, have hooked up with students, though informal evidence suggests that female professors do it less, and rarely with undergraduates. (The gender asymmetries here would require a dozen more articles to explicate.) Some of these professors act well, some are jerks, and it would benefit students to learn the identifying marks of the latter breed early on, because postcollegiate life is full of them. I propose a round of mandatory workshops on this useful topic for all students, beginning immediately. But here’s another way to look at it: the longue durée. Societies keep reformulating the kinds of cautionary stories they tell about intergenerational erotics and the catastrophes that result, starting with Oedipus. The details vary; so do the kinds of catastrophes prophesied—once it was plagues and crop failure, these days it’s psychological trauma. Even over the past half-century, the story keeps getting reconfigured. In the preceding era, the Freudian version reigned: Children universally desire their parents, such desires meet up with social prohibitions—the incest taboo—and become repressed. Neurosis ensues. These days the desire persists, but what’s shifted is the direction of the arrows. Now it’s parents—or their surrogates, teachers—who do all the desiring; children are conveniently returned to innocence. So long to childhood sexuality, the most irksome part of the Freudian story. So too with the new campus dating codes, which also excise student desire from the story, extending the presumption of the innocent child well into his or her collegiate career. Except that students aren’t children. Among the problems with treating students like children is that they become increasingly childlike in response. The New York Times Magazine recently reported on the tangled story of a 21-year-old former Stanford undergraduate suing a 29-year-old tech entrepreneur she’d dated for a year. He’d been a mentor in a business class she was enrolled in, though they’d met long before. They traveled together and spent time with each other’s families. Marriage was discussed. After they broke up, she charged that their consensual relationship had actually been psychological kidnapping, and that she’d been raped every time they’d had sex. She seems to regard herself as a helpless child in a woman’s body. She demanded that Stanford investigate and is bringing a civil suit against the guy—this despite the fact that her own mother had introduced the couple, approved the relationship every step of the way, and been in more or less constant contact with the suitor. No doubt some 21-year-olds are fragile and emotionally immature (helicopter parenting probably plays a role), but is this now to be our normative conception of personhood? A 21-year-old incapable of consent? A certain brand of radical feminist—the late Andrea Dworkin, for one—held that women’s consent was meaningless in the context of patriarchy, but Dworkin was generally considered an extremist. She’d have been gratified to hear that her convictions had finally gone mainstream, not merely driving campus policy but also shaping the basic social narratives of love and romance in our time. It used to be said of many enclaves in academe that they were old-boys clubs and testosterone-fueled, no doubt still true of certain disciplines. Thanks to institutional feminism’s successes, some tides have turned, meaning that menopausal women now occupy more positions of administrative power, edging out at least some of the old boys and bringing a different hormonal style—a more delibidinalized one, perhaps—to bear on policy decisions. And so the pendulum swings, overshooting the middle ground by a hundred miles or so. The feminism I identified with as a student stressed independence and resilience. In the intervening years, the climate of sanctimony about student vulnerability has grown too thick to penetrate; no one dares question it lest you’re labeled antifeminist. Or worse, a sex criminal. I asked someone on our Faculty Senate if there’d been any pushback when the administration presented the new consensual-relations policy (though by then it was a fait accompli—the senate’s role was "advisory"). "I don’t quite know how to characterize the willingness of my supposed feminist colleagues to hand over the rights of faculty—women as well as men—to administrators and attorneys in the name of protection from unwanted sexual advances," he said. "I suppose the word would be ‘zeal.’" His own view was that the existing sexual-harassment policy already protected students from coercion and a hostile environment; the new rules infantilized students and presumed the guilt of professors. When I asked if I could quote him, he begged for anonymity, fearing vilification from his colleagues. These are things you’re not supposed to say on campuses now. But let’s be frank. To begin with, if colleges and universities around the country were in any way serious about policies to prevent sexual assaults, the path is obvious: Don’t ban teacher-student romance, ban fraternities. And if we want to limit the potential for sexual favoritism—another rationale often proffered for the new policies—then let’s include the institutionalized sexual favoritism of spousal hiring, with trailing spouses getting ranks and perks based on whom they’re sleeping with rather than CVs alone, and brought in at salaries often dwarfing those of senior and more accomplished colleagues who didn’t have the foresight to couple more advantageously. Lastly: The new codes sweeping American campuses aren’t just a striking abridgment of everyone’s freedom, they’re also intellectually embarrassing. Sexual paranoia reigns; students are trauma cases waiting to happen. If you wanted to produce a pacified, cowering citizenry, this would be the method. And in that sense, we’re all the victims. Laura Kipnis is a professor in the department of radio, television, and film at Northwestern University and the author, most recently, of Men: Notes From an Ongoing Investigation (Metropolitan Books). Correction (3/3/2015, 2:40 p.m.): This article originally stated that several lawsuits brought by a student at Northwestern University had been thrown out of court. Only one such suit was thrown out. The article has been updated to reflect this correction. Clarification (3/30/2015, 10:45 a.m.): This article originally stated that a philosophy professor at Northwestern University sued, among others, a former graduate student of his whom he had previously dated. It would be more accurate to say that he had dated her according to his complaint. The article has been updated to reflect this clarification.

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sstilinskihale-blog · 7 years ago

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Girls Beyond the Wasteland, Another anime written by a visual novel writer

Oh yeah goody. Another Anime authored by a Visual Novel author. Or to are more accurate, it's adapted with a Visual Novel written by the Visual Novel writer (aware in the redundancy, thank you). And we know how much I want Visual Novel Anime, what with the cliched characters, disproportionate dialogue, blatant fanservice it does not necessarily further the story in any respect, and overall bland solutions to serious subject issue. Oh, and what is this? It's another Anime about several people making some sort of Visual Novel? Let people guess, it's visiting be completely self-aware approximately its cliches, complete nothing interesting using said awareness, employ a imbalanced gender percentage of females to help males, and have virtually no actual stakes or motivation for any character to get the Visual Novel beyond "I might like to do it". Boy, So i am loving this phenomena.

Well you'll be please to learn that not just did Girls Beyond the Wasteland confirm me completely correct, but it's a really step down with Welcome to the NHK - the only real good Anime approximately making Visual Novels together with NEETs and such - that this actually caused people physical pain. Wish to make the people short on cash and require squalor as motivation/contrast on their goal of which makes big with computer animated porn? You've got a few decently-off high higher education students who will not have parents and wish to make Visual Novels as they can. Want to get the characters explore substantial social issues as a result of their slice-of-life connections? You've got girls moping precisely how hot they are generally for Blandy McBlanderson even though noting how similar it can be to their Visual Novels. Wish to see an really experienced studio sport fishing tackle your serious material to make sure that even when that animation is poor, at least it's going to be expressive? You've gained Project No. 9 using a dump on ones eyeballs. If all that that suits you... get out of here today.

Girls Beyond the Wasteland, or Shoujo-tachi wa Kouya wo Mezasu review, since it's called with Japan, is an Anime influenced by a Visual Novel by way of the godly writer themself, Romeo Tanaka. Yes, that will Romeo - Jinrui : Rewrite - Cross Channel : Tanaka. A guy whose prose is related to as subtle for a Jackass stunt together with whose humor is related to as funny for a G-rated Rodney Dangerfield. I'm truly fan personally, even so again I do not get the appeal with Visual Novel writing in any respect, and that's among the list of least weird reasons for having what they like inside East.

Seiji Kishi's version of his Light Novel series, Humanity Has Declined aka Jinrui whatever, is remembered by people among the best surprises lately. Christ knows how come. It was fucking BAD! Set in any where everyone behaves to everything which includes a deadpan expression (which wasn't funny in the event the Avengers did the idea either), the satire amounted to only a bunch with ripoff scenarios from better post-apocalyptic products and then a bunch of Anime in-jokes that will made me wish to vomit out that window. It depended a significant amount of on its principle and setting and the wonderful freaky fairies without the need of actually making items happen, taking way too long so that the punchline and causing me to drop off watching it. Which is types of a miracle since I stayed awake the complete time watching Girls Beyond the Wasteland along with being a million circumstances worse than people dancing fairies may well ever be. Although I've arrived at say, pausing the movie and pacing in the room for five minutes to consider what you're doing with all your life isn't exactly a much better alternative. Especially as soon as you do it 3 x during one occurrence.

Seriously, the only way Girls Beyond the Wasteland might have been worse is in the event the cast from Little Busters was voicing that they whilst scratching chalkboards at the time of recording. Not only is there the same not enough stakes that Saekano comes with, the main dynamics literally asks the most crucial female why she wants to brew a Visual Novel in the main episode and she flat out replies that she can't simply tell him, but he'll practice it anyways. What types of person would possibly consider make fish an acceptable hook? And then there's the reality that if you don't tell me it was originally by Tanaka, I wouldn't have made the web link at all. As boring when I find his pretentious discussion is, at least it shows off when it shows up. This show nevertheless? I could generate the dialogue that arrived in the subs and everything I've written may be so awful I never meant it was public. Not quite possibly on fanfiction. world-wide-web.

Then there's a lot of these usual "spending ones first few assaults introducing the characters and installing the premise without the need of making some plot happen inside process" that always comes equipped with Visual Novel Anime, except whilst these types of show discover the drama kicking in in the halfway point, Girls Beyond the Wasteland waits 90 years fucking episodes for any characters to quite possibly push towards having the Visual Novel done before its due, and there's nevertheless nothing else to look closely at other than that will boring plot issue around then. One episode generally is just the principal character in their room struggling to obtain some writing executed and procrastinating the complete way through whilst girls put on house maid outfits to encourage him for enjoy two minutes in advance of they leave. I apologize, but who thought this can be exciting to watch in any respect? And whilst that show does make an attempt to throw a bit of personal drama inside mix, quite honestly it makes Comprehensive House look butch. Girls Beyond the Wasteland just doesn't make several personal struggles the characters examine dramatic enough, always involving bit of insecurities amounting to your modern equivalent with "that Shuffle occurrence where Sia's successful panties couldn't allow her in the woman's date with Rin" which were solved by the final of the episode as a result of an inspiring special message.

It doesn't have even the decency to help ramp things up appropriately due to the final act. Right after they finally tell people what the Visual Novel is usually for around that closing act, it's so universal and involves some sort of character who possessed no importance until such time as said reveal i couldn't bother spoiling it even though I wanted to help. And what comes after after, let by itself before, barely has any relevance to your reason in the beginning. It's just useful to cause some play that immediately obtains resolved in enjoy five minutes together with nothing changes story-wise in addition to the characters getting take care of that they've already gotten several episodes ago. We don't even find a fucking payoff to your Visual Novel's creation. It gets submitted within a competition that is usually immediately skipped despite enough buildup to the idea, and the email address particulars are brushed off which includes a few lines of dialogue and then a half-assed attempt with deciding what the future will likely be like. Throw in certain terrible title recommendations, and you may well tell the creators are merely stuck in that will terrible era with Anime where Visual Novel changes were getting churned available left and correct.

Not only is this an undesirable show. Not only is usually this another case of how bad Visual Novel Anime are generally. This is among the list of worst Anime May possibly ever seen inside my life. Yes, more painful than Myself; One self and Plastic Memory, this is Da Capo amounts of bad. I really can't believe precisely how empty and unfunny the following show is. The direction and energy place in this adaptation is among the most most lifeless items I've ever witnessed, and the story can be so fundamentally flawed that this resembles a bit of kid crying inside corner as he lets several 80s thugs kick him to your ground. Ignoring the reality that it has no aspirations to remain anything but an additional generic "follow your dreams and you should succeed" Anime, the characters have zero reason to enjoy the dreams they complete, they never undergo any problems when it comes to their goals besides mild inconveniences, and the humor comprises nothing higher as compared to leaving a video camera on and viewing actors shoot the shit concise that it essentially defines how to never do comedy. I bet you whatever if you were to look at a random sitcom with CBS, it is a million times even more entertaining than the following pile of tripe! Fuck. Everything. Approximately. This. Anime. Span.

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