#i love that expression great stuff op

[portgasdwrld]

📂 Op men + them being jealous

part 1

Featuring: Monster trio (Luffy, Sanji, Zoro)

Warning: fluffy fluff, ended up being the monster trio being subtly jealous lol Ik I was going to make it suggestive but I like it better that way, might change it for the others

Note : After 200 weeks, 1500 minutes and 25 years, I’m finally posting this serie after thousands of drafts 👩🏻‍💻 y’all don’t know how many times I wrote and erased stuff 😭

Luffy

The crew just landed on a new island, it was a huge forest, not a person in sight. You weren’t particularly a big fan of walking around in an unknown deserted place, especially in the New World where you never knew on what or who you could fall.

On the other side, Luffy was absolutely fearless and enjoyed the thrill of exploring the unknown and seeing unusual creatures; Sailing was all about that for him. An adventure wasn’t an adventure if he didn’t feel that rush of adrenaline faced to a strange situation. He had insisted you come with the exploring team while you pleaded to stay behind with Robin and Usopp.

But here you were walking glued to Sanji as your boyfriend lead the way somewhere in this lost territory filled with trees and the noises of wild animals. He was screaming in excitement when he came across weird insects or odd looking vegetables. You sighed heavily as the anxiety was still heavily present in your system.

The cook adjusted his pace to match yours sensing your uneasiness about the situation. He knew you only came for Luffy, so he made sure to help you feel more comfortable in his own way.

Luffy ran forward as he noticed a beautiful blue flower tinted with yellow strokes that looked like gentle waves. He took it and searched for you with his eyes.

-This would look so pretty on your hair!

He exclaimed as he walked over to you and Sanji while waving the flower in his tan hand. You smiled as you thought it was adorable, but Luffy’s eyes quickly glared at your arms wrapped around Sanjis. He didn’t say anything and simply fixed the flower behind your ear, complimenting you with loving eyes and his cute grin.

-You look perfect!

He announced as he put his arm around your neck, naturally removing you from Sanji. A giggle left your lips as you melt into his familiar warmth. His eyes looked down at you with so much love and care, he wouldn’t want nothing to happen to you. Sanji laughed as he noticed Luffy successful attempt to get you away from him.

Your boyfriend closed the distance between his face and yours. With slightly furrowed eyebrows and serious eyes, he wondered if you were fine.

-Yeah, I just feel uneasy about walking here if I’m being truly honest. I’m not a fearless warrior like you, let’s say~

You explained calmly as you stared back into his big brown eyes. His expression softened up and he moved his arm to be able to grab your hand instead.

-Alright, then stay close to me only. I’m the strongest, so I will protect you no matter what! I promise!

-You’re sweet, thank you Luffy.

He gave a squeeze to your hand as you two followed the group through the millions of trees. Luffy smiled to himself, knowing you were relying on him to protect you now~

Zoro

It was all going well, a great night where Zoro was simply enjoying his time drinking with the others. It was all going great until he noticed a man that kept staring at you. You didn’t notice as you were busy goofing around with Usopp, enjoying a fun conversation.

Zoro felt this feeling of frustration grow in him the more he glared at the person shamelessly eyeing you like he clearly couldn’t see you were taken. That’s when it snapped for him: maybe they couldn’t tell? And that angered him even more. How can this person stare at you like a candy while he was sitting just next to you.

The swordsman pulled you closer to him, making sure his arm around your waist is noticeable. He smirked relieved when he saw the man look away with an annoyed huff. He took a sip from his beer as his smile got bigger. Zoro took that opportunity to slip a quick peck on your jawline.

You stared at him weirdly, wondering what have gotten into him.

-Wassup with you?

-I cant kiss you or what?

-Yeah, but you don’t usually do that.

-You always complain

He whined as he rolled his eye, but still he was glad that no one was hungrily looking your way anymore. You were his and he would make the possible to make it known. Even if it needed him to be outside of his comfort zone, he was going to make sure you were safe from lingering unwanted eyes (maybe to also make himself feel better)

You gave him a funny look, confused about his unusual bright expression. You pecked his lips not giving too much thoughts about it, before going back to your conversation with Usopp. You leant your body on your boyfriends that surprisingly responded to it by holding your waist tighter and rubbing his thumb against your tummy.

-You’re really acting strange, but I ain’t complaining

You said under your breath so only he could hear. He chuckled as he drank some more. You looked over your shoulder with a smile.

-Great, because you’re not leaving my side tonight.

Sanji

Hand in hand, you two walked through the village in the middle of all the varieties of shops surrounding y’all. You wanted to buy a necklace so you were hopeful to find something of your taste and Sanji was more than willing to help you.

He had already made his grocery shopping with you yesterday and organized everything late in the evening, so it was his rest day. He wanted to enjoy the sunny weather with his awesome lover on this pretty day.

It all started when the seller was proposing you multiple options at the table and he invited you to come in the store for something more refined for a beautiful person like you. Sanji didn't care, because of course you are beautiful, so it was only natural that other people would notice. He nodded excited to see what other options the man had that could fit you even better.

Sanji cocked an eyebrow when the seller pushed your hair behind your shoulders and got close to your face as he commented about you smelling good. You laughed as you thanked him, mentioning how your boyfriend bought the scent for you as you pointed at the cook. He put a gorgeous silver piece around your neck and handed you a mirror.

-What do we think?

He asked with a content expression, you stared at the mirror with a floating smile as you nodded, approving the jewelry.

-It's so gorgeous! Oh! What about this one?

You asked as your eyes flew to a more elegant necklace. You walked away from Sanji quickly as you engaged in a great conversation with the seller about the jewelries and some specific information, that your lover was honestly unfamiliar with. Sanji felt like you kind of forgot about him and started to wander around the store on his own as he kept an eye on you, still.

"...should I get into jewelries.."

It was those type of thoughts that occupied his mind as he sulked in his corner. Though, Sanji is a gentleman and he loved more than anything to see you happy and passionate, so he put his jealousy aside to let you enjoy your moment. So, he put his ego aside and started to think about which one would look hotter on you-

-Chérie, have you find something you liked?

He asked you as he wrapped an arm around your waist and pulled you into him. You hummed as you looked at the other man and you both nodded, agreeing on something the cook had no clue about.

-I'm going to take this one, what do you think babe?

Sanji kissed your cheeks and whispered in your ears with a smirk.

-They all look beautiful to me, because you are stunning. I don't think I will be of a great help, my love.

You smiled to yourself, because Sanji likes whatever you wear or not. On his end, he just wanted to leave already and pamper you with kisses & hickeys all over your neck to celebrate your new necklace and maybe to let people know you were his..

[hyunnie04]

tender

lee know x reader, hurt/comfort | m.list

wc: 1.4k | warnings: themes of depression and struggling with mental health

a/n: this fic is a little self indulgent as i haven't been feeling great lately. so i hope this brings comfort to anyone who needs it ♡

you don’t remember how long you’ve been sitting in the tub. you’re sure your hands have pruned and wrinkled due to the prolonged time you have been in here, but you can’t seem to bring yourself to care.

the sides of your head pulses as a migraine at the forefront of your temple starts to fully form. you had hoped a moment of reprieve in the bath would calm your nerves and ease your headache, but it had yet to do so.

the droplets fall slowly against your furrowed eyebrows and taut expression, dripping freely down on your chin and on the dewy expanse of your chest. both arms are splayed limply across the sides of the tub, staring blankly ahead at the white tiled walls above, unmoving. 

the temperature was warm, too warm for your usual liking but you didn’t seem to mind today, welcoming the dull pain it brought. the white tiles that you’ve been staring at for what seemed like forever stared back at you.

the silence was deafening.

a lot has been on your mind lately. the restless and constant feeling of not being good enough and comparing yourself to others caused you to no longer find enjoyment in the things you used to love doing.

words that usually meant nothing had stuck themselves inside your head as well, dissecting every meaning when they had none. sleep did not come easily to you these nights, tossing and turning, failing to succumb into the comforting arms of sleep.

isolation became your company in these moments, withdrawing yourself from everything. missing out on a lot of stuff, in turn, made you feel worse than you already did.

you knew you should probably tell someone about your problems but you just couldn't find it in yourself to do it. the last thing you wanted to be was a bother.

some days are admittedly better than others, where you’re able to get things done, to do your obligations and continue on with life like normal. but when you least expect it, it creeps up on you, pulling you back into that unhealthy head space.

you tried to force these thoughts and feelings down for a long time, pretending that everything was fine. today was apparently the day it all came rising up, unable to keep a lid on your bubbling emotions.

a sense of dread hung over your head, eyes aching from all the crying you did. wet strands of hair had clumped together, obscuring your view, perturbed by how sometimes your skin doesn't feel like yours.

“y/n?”

the bathroom starts to fog with mist, clouding the glass and mirrors, the water slowly scalding your skin. the call to sink down into the water and never come up are louder than ever.

“-y/n? are you in there?” a voice makes itself known. lifting yourself up a little bit, startled at the faintest sound of knocks.

you forget that minho would be home around this time. a hand flies towards your forehead to ease the pounding pain. shit, you haven't started making dinner. 

it takes a while before you answer, collecting yourself as to not sound as shaky. “yeah! just finishing up, i'll be out in a sec.”

“don’t get out, i'll join you.” he yells back, the sound of padding feet against the wooden floors reverb through out the apartment. your eyes flicker at his sudden decision, causing you to sigh and sink down into the water once more.

as much as you adored and love him and how most days would let him join you with no hesitation, you silently hoped that he wouldn't today. you couldn't bear to let him see you in this state, all disheveled and puffy eyed. but it was rare when he was even home, given his grueling schedule.

so you wait for him patiently to come over to your shared bathroom, hugging your legs tightly. you remember to turn the cold tap on and off before he enters, water droplets filling in the silence.

when he finally creaks open the door with nothing on but a bathrobe and a silly cat headband that kept his hair away from his forehead on, you can't help but smile even if it doesn't quite reach your eyes.

you inch farther into the corner, making space for him quietly as he gets in. if he had noticed the temperature of the water that had yet to cool down, he made no attempt to comment.

the two of you don't say anything for the time being, just in each other's corner, relaxing and leaning your arms on the cool edge of the tub.

“you’re quiet.” his voice echoes. minho’s voice cuts through the silence, a stark contrast to the quietness of the bathroom just moments ago.

“i’m sorry.”

feeling minho’s heavy unwavering gaze into the side of your head, you can’t help but feel awful. you don’t mean to be so curt with him, but any more words from your mouth frightens you, afraid that the underlying shakiness of your voice will give you away.

your eyes still keep averting his, afraid of what expression he might bore. will he look at you with pity? with a tired gaze of disappointment?

he does not. instead, minho grabs one of the lavender scented shampoo bottles placed neatly on the shelf and gestures for you to turn around. you follow his request, albeit apprehensively, turning around.

“there we go.” he says. even if you refuse to meet his eyes, you could tell he was smiling as he said it.

minho takes great care to shampoo your hair, his blunt nails gently raking over your scalp, unknowingly soothing your dreadful headache. minho is observant, very much so. it doesn’t surprise you at all anymore when he suddenly asks.

“what’s wrong, hmm?” he finally says amidst the stillness of the atmosphere, tone dripping of comfort as his hands continue to lightly massage through your soapy tresses. you lean into it like a desperate cat, melting at his simple touch. oh how you've yearned for his touch.

although you don’t answer, his intuitive nature already knows that something was amiss.

“you know i’m always here for you.” minho says, pressing a delicate kiss on your shoulder. his sweet words and murmurs of comfort act like a salve to your aching heart as tears start to gather at your lash line once again.

you always hated making him worry.

the overwhelming emotion brings you to tears, immense guilt ebbing at your seams. minho places his head on your shoulder as you cry, hands running up and down your sides in an attempt to soothe you.

he doesn't deserve this, to be left out, to not know the reason you're so distant lately. he trusted you and you trusted him. so you spill every little thing to him.

voice starting to rasp, your stuttering cries now unrestraint without fear of judgement and just allowing yourself to be vulnerable. salty tears start to meld together with the water in the tub, rippling as they fall. at last, you feel lighter. the weight that you carried for so long in your heart doesn't have to be carried alone.

after a while, the hiccupping in your throat and the tears start to subside, leaving you a sniffling mess. turning around to finally face him, you fought the urge to hide in your hands.

"feel a little better now?" minho looks at you with nothing but a loving smile, no underlying judgement, just adoration, and one that makes you dive into him. you feel so utterly loved, what did you do to deserve him?

your arms wrap around his neck, placing apologetic kisses on his lips. he reciprocates, hands going around your back to steady your form. your mouth tumbles out watery apologies as he caresses the skin of your nape, gentle as he can.

you release him, arms still hooked around his neck, looking deeply into his eyes as if he's the center of the universe, and to you, he is. "i love you." the edges of your vision cloud with the tell tale signs of drowsiness, finally finding it in yourself to relax in his hold.

and he lets you, guiding your head to rest on his broad chest, the steady beats of his heart thumping against your temple, grounding you, his feathery light touches lingering.

feelings like these come and go, but minho is a constant that you keep close to your heart.

“thank you for putting up with me.”

"of course, i love you too."

[tevanbegins]

When we find out Lucy has joined Air Ops in the last few episodes of season 6, Buck is all "yeah that's cool, great for you" and all but not once does he express any curiousity or thrill at the prospect of pursuing a career as a pilot himself.

It's only because of his huge crush on Tommy that he asked for the tour of Harbor station in 7x04. He wouldn't have cared if he didn't get to see the choppers or the offer for flying lessons, he just wanted to spend time with Tommy in any capacity. At the time he only resorted to showing interest in Tommy's work specialty because he didn't exactly understand the nature of his feelings for Tommy and didn't know how else to get his attention. He would have gone and stared at rocks for hours if Tommy had invited him to do something as mundane as that, the boy was smitten so bad. That's why he came for the basketball game despite hating the sport so much because he knew Tommy would be there.

That's why he stared at Eddie in the firehouse because he was trying to think of ways to get himself invited to the game. All to see Tommy again. If his face fell when Eddie ignored him, he smiled again when he realised he could go to the game with Chimney instead. If Eddie was the one Buck wanted, he would have probably shoved Tommy on the court instead of Eddie. If Eddie was the one he loved, he would have not only been ashamed but horrified about what he did, not leaving Eddie's side even once until his ankle sprain got better even if the injury was minor. Instead the boy was busy having a meal with his sister at her workplace, adulting at home doing boring paperwork, and later reveling in the surprise kiss from Tommy in his kitchen and the date he just got. Not that he didn't care about his best friend but he was also maybe a bit pissed that he was becoming a major cockblock over the past several days, never leaving room or time for him to hangout with Tommy. But he called Eddie after being urged to do so by Maddie and Tommy, once his insecurities were addressed.

If Tommy was an unnecessary part of the equation, why would Buck ask Eddie when he was going to see Tommy again and hoping to be invited to the karaoke bar trivia night? Shouldn't he have devised some other plan that he and Eddie could do without Tommy? Eddie hanging out with Tommy was not really a problem for Buck. It was them doing it without him, his best friend excluding him in all of their plans and Buck missing out on all those chances to spend time with Tommy and get to know him better was what drove him nuts.

It's all so obvious and Buck says as much! Nobody asked him to tell Tommy that trying to get his attention was exhausting. It was completely unprompted and came from a place of genuine realisation. He was the one who started flirting with the head tilt and asking if the Muay Thai lessons would be right after the flying lessons. He is not a teenager to be so confused. In that moment he knew what he wanted and got it too!

Idek why I am writing all of this at this point but let it be known that we're not going to let some people's delusional misinterpretations change our understanding of the canon that's so crystal clear. We have the showrunner's interviews backing up our interpretation as well.

I seriously can't wait for the new season to start and see further development for Tevan so that we have something new to gush about (and the antis have something new to misconstrue) instead of going over the same stuff over and over!

___

[brucebocchi]

Spring 2024 anime, Pt. 2: Mixed bags and the gems

hey! i also post this on my ko-fi! this is very much a labor of love, so if you liked what i wrote consider throwing a few bucks my way! also you can find part 1 right here! thanks!

Yes, hello, I'm still here. Between work and AI: The Somnium Files -nirvanA Initiative-, I was struggling to find the time to get this out, but here we are! Now if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna go actually watch some anime again.

As always, the OP for each show is linked in the title. Watch them! There were some damn good ones this season.

Let's-a go:

Mixed Bags

Astro Note

I’m going to kick off this section by first stating that on the whole, I’m much higher on the anime in this section this season than I was last time: Nothing that I watched this season disappointed me nearly as much as Metallic Rouge or The Witch and the Beast, nor bored me to tears like The Unwanted Undead Adventurer. This truly is a collection of mixed bags; anime that I found enjoyable or interesting but still left me wanting in one way or another. “Good But Could Have Been Great” is too unwieldy anyway.

Astro Note was eye-catching from the jump: This is very clearly an homage to Rumiko Takahashi’s beloved romcom Maison Ikkoku, with character designs by Carole & Tuesday’s Eisaku Kubonouchi. The colors are soft and bright, everyone looks unique and has a wide variety of hilarious facial expressions, and the OP is a fun time right out of the gate. You come for the lovely visuals and Takahashi homage, and you stay for, uh, not much else.

Takumi, a down-on-his-luck young chef, answers a job posting at a boarding house that promises its residents breakfast every day. It turns out that Mira, the odd but beautiful new landlady, is a dogshit cook and tried to attract a new one with a plagiarized job posting. Takumi doesn’t really care because she’s, like, really pretty, so he takes the job and moves in. He’s soon beset by a cast of wacky characters that includes an enigmatic unemployed salaryman and his precocious son, an indie idol who looks like a hard-drinking Futaba Sakura in her downtime, a nosy neighbor, and a rich, handsome romantic rival. We’re already approaching Maison Ikkoku territory. 

Shortly after moving in, Takumi believes he overhears Mira saying that she’s a widow, which would firmly plant Astro Note’s flag right in Ikkoku’s turf, but it turns out that Mira is in fact an alien from the planet Wid, meaning she is of the Wido race (this is as good of a localization as you can ask for; in the original Japanese he heard “miboujin,” not knowing that she’s from the planet Mibou). So we’ve got some Urusei Yasura sprinkled in for good measure. Her adorable poodle, voiced by Junichi Suwabe (Sukuna himself!) is from the same planet and helping her find a MacGuffin, hidden by the previous owner, that would help her take over as queen. There’s also some blossoming romance!

The alien stuff made for an interesting wrinkle, and it went a long way toward characterizing Mira as an endearingly odd but curious woman, but it often played out in wacky hijinks caused by alien spies, which felt like a designated make-the-plot-happen button more often than not. It paid off splendidly in the last couple of episodes, and I loved how all of the flashbacks of Mira’s mother looked like grainy Showa-era space operas, but getting there took a lot of “oh no, chase that Thing!” sequences. I found myself tuning out on those until they finally became plot relevant.

The central romance was fine, if a little underbaked, but what kept me watching Astro Note was the smaller moments with the ensemble characters. There were moments with both Wakabayashi the salaryman and his son Ren that slapped the apathy right off my face, and a side plot with Takumi and a person from his past was incredibly sweet. I did also love the massive turn the plot took in the last couple episodes, to the point where I found myself almost wishing that the show up to that point was different.

And that’s Astro Note in a nutshell: A lot of good pieces mixed with some filler, weird pacing, and an overall uneven experience in a nice-looking package. A fun little distraction but nothing entirely memorable. If I can give this show one major positive, it’s that watching it finally convinced me to read Maison Ikkoku, and for that I will forever be grateful. Read Maison Ikkoku.

Go! Go! Loser Ranger

I keep running notes for everything I’m watching as the season rolls on, and sometimes I’ll indulge in other reviewers’ early takes and jot down some insights that might spark from hearing outside perspectives. During Gigguk’s opening remarks on Go! Go! Loser Ranger in his early Spring season roundup, I made a note that the easiest way to summarize this show for a western audience is “basically The Boys but with the Power Rangers instead of The Seven.” And then he said pretty much the exact same thing five seconds later. I just want the record to show that.

Indeed, this is a sentai series with some spice. 13 years ago, the invading forces of evil were soundly defeated by the Dragon Keepers, a real-life sentai squad. In the present day, the Dragon Keepers now sit atop a massive organization protecting earth, and also dominating the entertainment industry: Every week, they hold an exhibition match against the remaining rank-and-file footsoldiers, skull-faced shapeshifters known as Dusters. In order to keep their lives, the Dusters were forced to give up their freedom and serve as the farcical Putty Patrol for what is ultimately a pro wrestling show. Sick of being a jobber and effectively a slave, one of the Dusters, known simply as Fighter D, decides the best way to destroy the Dragon Keepers and free his brethren is to do so from within: He’ll morph into a human shape, join their Rangers program as a cadet, and personally slay each of the five Keepers.

Fighter D is quickly found out, though. One of the recruiters, the lovely but mercurial Yumeko, isn’t nearly as dumb as he thought, but she fortunately has the same aim and quickly puts him to work trying to steal the Keepers’ insanely powerful weapons, the Divine Artifacts. He’s also found by the Dragon Keepers and manages to escape, though badly wounded. He’s found in a cave by Yumeko’s hanger-on, the upstart Ranger cadet Hibiki, whose family was badly fragmented by an unknown monster. While he still believes in the Keepers and shares their ostensible goal of protecting humanity, he believes that there needs to be major changes and agrees to let D impersonate him to infiltrate the Rangers. He’s soon embroiled in a prolonged examination trial against higher-ranked Rangers that soon turns into a fight to the death, made only more deadly by the inclusion of a female Duster and the same monster that killed Hibiki’s parents and paralyzed his sister.

Yes, that’s a lot, and everything up until that last sentence was just in the first four episodes. I’ve said repeatedly that I’m willing to be patient with introductory seasons for action-oriented shonen series, because those do usually take a minute to start cooking, but the first season of Loser Ranger is bizarrely paced. The first four episodes were an intriguing introduction, but they might have served better as a movie to kick off the season, because the overwhelming majority of the remaining eight episodes were pretty much just a bunch of people fighting in a fucking parking garage. I was under the impression that the first season was going to be 24 or so episodes, for some reason, so I was willing to be patient with it.

Maybe I should've been patient enough to wait until the second season, because I found myself getting whiplash between fascination and utter boredom. I still don’t know if I even like this show. There are so many moving parts, and many of them are fascinating, but to get bombarded with them so early and so often, only to then keep most of them in the background in favor of way too many new characters fighting in, again, a goddamned parking garage, frustrates me in increasing measure the more I write about it. I really wanted to like this show more than I did.

The production values are seemingly all over the place too. The OP is another Tatsuya Kitani banger, the voice cast is deep and talented (especially for the English dub, holy hell), the puppet outros are a hoot, and the animation is mostly fine. I’m rarely one to complain about CGI in anime (the ED for this show is entirely 3DCG and it fucks), but a lot of it in Loser Ranger, especially as an obvious means of cheaping out on having to hand-draw and -animate the Dragon Keepers’ slightly-elaborate costumes, is baffling. You could make a generous case for it representing them as larger-than-life personalities, but in execution it’s just kind of uncanny. The show looks and sounds fine overall, but little things like that just take me out of it.

I’m going to withhold judgment until the second season, but for now I can’t say I’m too impressed by the debut. Maybe just watch the first four episodes and put a pin in it until season 2 drops.

Jellyfish Can’t Swim in the Night

I’m beginning to worry that Metallic Rouge’s catastrophic narrative failure may have permanently made me nervous about any original anime to follow. It’s an unfair comparison to make, especially considering it aired at the same time as the bombastically audacious Bang Brave Bang Bravern, which I consider one of the best of the year so far and even one of the better anime to air so far this decade. At the same time, though, the millisecond I start to suspect that an original anime is losing its footing, as soon as the one synapse fires that tells me that this show may not be able to stick the landing, I start to get cynical. The good news is that Jellyfish Can’t Swim in the Night isn’t even in the same time zone as Rouge’s disappointment. The bad news is that it still never fully lived up to what it could have been.

Right from the jump, this felt like Doga Kobo flexing in between seasons of Oshi no Ko with yet another gorgeous showbiz anime. The debut episode is one of the best I’ve seen in some time; an immaculately animated and brilliantly storyboarded mission statement showcasing the self-doubting illustrator Mahiru and the disgraced ex-idol Kano meeting and finding new inspiration in one another’s work (if you’ve been reading Beat & Motion, this may sound familiar, except they’re both high school girls). It was a masterclass in depicting powerful self-expression and the spark of a truly fateful encounter. What followed was also pretty good, but...

Mahiru and Kano band together (pun intended) to form the multimedia collective JELEE, also enlisting social-outcast musical prodigy (and Kano stan) Mei, and NEET VTuber Kiui along the way. We see a lot of the nitty-gritty of trying to get a new act off the ground, as well as the reality that any new artist or creator nowadays is, ultimately, at the mercy of the internet. It was a treat to watch these four all come together, as was seeing the emotional bonds they forge with one another while also navigating their own personal issues, but it frequently came at the expense of an actual plot. That sort of thing is fine, I do love me some good slice-of-life, but I feel like the show planned on something a bit grander. While we’re focused on so many of these really lovely moments of character growth and interpersonal drama, everything about JELEE’s ascent, y’know, the main plot, just kind of happens, and before you know it everything turns out okay and the season’s over. It really felt like the writers had a big plan but ended up just laying down the tracks while the train was already in motion.

As mentioned, I’m not nearly as down on the anime in the “Mixed Bags” section this season as I was three months ago, but just thinking about how the plot sagged around the middle and rushed towards its ending leaves me frustrated. Unlike JELEE itself, Jellyfish Can’t Swim in the Night feels like less than the sum of its parts. This show feels like an unfinished jigsaw puzzle; what you can make out of the image is gorgeous, yet not only was it never completed, but someone clearly put a few of the pieces together wrong as well. There are plenty of themes in the story and character writing that could have blossomed into something amazing, like impostor syndrome, finding community and identity through fandom, young sapphic love, gender identity, and so many more, and it may have been possible to resolve at least a couple of these in 12 episodes, but Jellyfish seemed either incapable of or uninterested in actually getting there beyond a few vague overtures.

I know I sound harsh here and I didn’t mean for this review to be mostly complaints; I did very much like this show, but I wanted so badly to love it. And it probably isn’t entirely fair of me to grade this show based on what it could have been instead of what it is, but so much was plainly left on the table that I’m not really left with another choice. I still recommend it much more strongly than anything else I've put in the Mixed Bags section so far this year, but be forewarned that you may be let down. This is a pretty goddamn good anime that could’ve been pretty goddamn incredible, but it just couldn’t get there.

Mysterious Disappearances

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I know what I’m about. If a new series rotates around a protagonist who looks like that, I’ll at least give it an episode or two.

Sumireko is a former child-prodigy novelist, now in her late 20s working at a bookstore with the sharp-tongued Ren, as she continues to fail at getting published again. On the eve of her 28th birthday, Sumireko accidentally takes home a book that was droplifted in the store, and shortly after reading it aloud she finds herself reverted into the body of a child. Suddenly struck by inspiration once again, she disappears from work for the next week, furiously typing away at her next novel. Ren manages to find her and tells her that she’s under a curse: The book is an otherworldly object known as a Curiosity, and its power can be deadly to those who use it. Though Sumireko is desperate to hang on to her newly-regained youth, Ren manages to smooth-talk her into changing back and handing over the book. Now aware of an extradimensional threat to daily life, Sumireko teams up with Ren and his little sister Oto to track down and neutralize more Curiosities before they cause widespread havoc.

This series is alright, if questionable in a lot of areas. I recognize that I’m not entirely the target audience; while I love a good supernatural mystery, each of these Curiosities is rooted in East Asian mythology and contemporary urban legends, very few of which I was familiar with going in. To those on that side of the world (or to Westerners with that specific special interest), I’m sure it hits different, but I got lost on a couple of occasions. Mysterious Disappearances also runs into the same pacing issues that I found with The Witch and the Beast last season, where the plot structure is effectively episodic, but each mystery can last a few episodes at a time, so if you’re not particularly invested in the subject at hand, you’re SOL for another week or two.

This show also just plain doesn’t look very good. The animation is nothing impressive and there’s something off-putting about the overall look that I can’t quite put my finger on. It looks retro in ways that probably weren’t intentional, like a 20-year-old digipaint anime that was upscaled from 480p. The audio element is great, at least; the music, sound design, and cast are all fantastic (between her turn as Sumireko in this one and her supporting roles in Reincarnated as the 7th Prince and Kaiju No. 8, Fairouz Ai has put in great work this season), and that’s a good thing because this one isn’t a looker.

If you couldn’t already tell from how the main character looks, Mysterious Disappearances is undoubtedly horny as hell, but often distractingly so. I do have to praise Sumireko’s design to an extent; for a large-chested anime lady, she at least hews closer to how a tall woman with somewhat appropriately large breasts would actually be built and how her clothes would actually fit. She looks like a more realistically-proportioned Nami. There’s no shortage of anime characters with gigantic boobs, but few that make me actually go “oh, this woman definitely has back problems.” There are a lot of slow-tilting shots up female characters’ legs towards their chests to the point where I tuned the dialogue out because I couldn’t believe they just kept on doing it. I skimmed through the manga, and though there is far more semi-gratuitous nudity as compared to the anime, I still somehow found the latter much more distracting with its attempts at fanservice. I also don’t really care for how the “camera” looks at Oto and her middle school classmates either; I found myself just getting nervous whenever a scene focused on them.

For its problems, there’s at least a series of solid emotional cores here. Similar to Sumireko’s desire to regain her youthful creativity, the wielders-slash-victims of these Curiosities are largely vulnerable individuals who are trying to make the best of their lives in spite of past traumas like bullying, neglect, and disability. All serious issues, no doubt, and the story tries to handle them as well as possible, but once you see through the pattern of “awful thing is happening, we get to know the character, then we learn their tragic backstory and there’s a tearful resolution while we move closer to advancing the overall plot,” it can feel a little cloying in the long run. Not that those resolutions can’t be potent; I really liked the endings of the stories of the missing hairdresser and the rogue VTuber, but as a plot formula it can ring hollow.

Mysterious Disappearances is a fine if unspectacular series of supernatural mysteries with an okay overarching plot, and your mileage may vary depending on your existing knowledge of East Asian occult and superstition. It’s also not that fun to actually look at, even if you happen to be into tall redheads with huge racks. Uh, not that I would know.

The Gems

Girls Band Cry

When Bocchi the Rock! made its unexpectedly earth-shattering landfall a couple years ago, it was inundated with a deluge of comparisons to the previous landmark girls-in-a-band anime, K-On!. It felt a bit trite at the time, and feels even more so in retrospect; each show is its own thing and they both stand on their own merits. And now here’s my dumb ass, reviewing a new girls-in-a-band anime, desperately trying not to compare it to Bocchi.

It’s really not a fair comparison either way; the focus being on an all-girls rock band is really the only thing they have in common. Rather than Hitori “Bocchi” Gotoh, a perpetually-anxious recluse looking to join a band so she won’t have to get a real job after high school, we have Nina Iseri, who is… difficult. Nina has just moved to Tokyo after running away from home, but her train arrived too late for her to get her apartment key, and to make matters worse, her phone’s dead. While charging at a local coffee shop, she finds out that Momoka, the now-former frontwoman of her favorite band, is playing on a nearby street. After some ups and downs, they decide to form a band together, and butt heads more than a couple times.

Along the way, they recruit more members, each with their own issues: Subaru, the drummer, is struggling with the expectations placed on her by her grandmother to become an actress, Tomo, the keyboardist, is exacting and a little too opinionated to keep a steady role in a band, and Rupa, the bassist, is a soft-spoken foreigner who remains a cheerful enigma despite losing her parents. And Nina and Momoka are both flat-out stubborn in ways that do not mesh well with one another. There are a lot of yelling matches and many angry tears shed as the band Togenashi Togeari comes together: yes, the “Cry” in the title isn’t just for style points.

I will say that it’s refreshing that Girls Band Cry does not sugarcoat what an absolute pain in the ass Nina can be when she’s dug in: She ran away from home because she’s utterly convinced of her own righteousness, and it’s your damn problem if you think otherwise. She is avoidant and oppositional-defiant, and everyone else just has to deal with it. She may not pick her hills well, but by God will she die on them. Props for having a protagonist this openly messy and unpleasant. Plenty of musicians, or really anyone working in a group for that matter, can be abrasive and stubborn, and TogeToge’s growing pains are a necessary element of their development as a band. 

I know the bar isn’t very high for 3D computer-generated anime when it doesn’t come from Studio Orange, but this is easily one of the best-looking 3DCG anime I’ve ever seen. Between this and Trigun Stampede, I’m blown away at how expressive characters can be in CG, and how they react to what’s around them in real-time more consistently than you’d see in most 2D animation. Speaking of which, Girls Band Cry isn’t entirely in 3D; much of the OP as well as several flashbacks and background characters are hand-drawn, and they look so goddamn good that I’m almost left wondering what could’ve been. Not that I’m disappointed in the slightest; when the 3D animation hits, it REALLY hits in gorgeous synaesthetic waves that so perfectly depict an intersection of sound, light, and emotion. Hell, even the transition cards are huge eye catchers. Not everything looks brilliant all the time; the pets in particular are uncannily low-res and almost look like they got plucked out of KamiKatsu.

Of course, this is a band show, so the audio element has to be on point as well, and I’d say Girls Band Cry is up to snuff. The anime is part of a larger multimedia project, and the entire main cast consists of audition winners performing under mononyms, and they knock it out of the damn park; they’re pretty goddamn great for supposed newcomers. The music is a blast as well, not just in performance scenes but in the background as well. Togenashi Togeari already existed in the zeitgeist as a virtual band before this show went to air, so they already had a small discography out there before the show went to air and I’m looking forward to digging into it.

Infamously, this show isn’t particularly easy to watch. Not in the thematic sense, but literally: You cannot legally watch it in English anywhere in the West. Despite its popularity, Girls Band Cry was never picked up by any Anglosphere-based streaming platforms, for whatever reason, and the only official English subtitles out there are from an Indonesian streamer. So, much like the days of VHS trading and the early internet, we’re forced to rely on community translations. Far be it from me to encourage piracy (lol), but if you can find a good fansub, Girls Band Cry is very much worth your while. Pinkies up, motherfuckers.

Kaiju No. 8

I don’t watch Demon Slayer or My Hero Academia, so this was my designated Shonen Jump action show of the season, and it came with a ton of buzz: The way I see it, if I can pick up a volume of the manga at Target, the inevitable anime adaptation is gonna be a big deal. I’ve not read Kaiju No. 8 yet, but I’d say the anime lives up to a good amount of the hype.

Japan has had to handle a constant threat of kaiju for many decades now, and as a child the way-too-aptly-named Kafka Hibino made a promise to his best friend Mina that they would both grow up to lead the Japan Anti-Kaiju Defense Force in charge of eliminating the threat. A couple decades later, she’s a national hero as a captain in the Force, while Kafka is in the private sector at age 32, cleaning up the enormous corpses and viscera Mina and her division leave behind. He hasn’t given up on his dreams, by any stretch; Kafka has failed every single enlistment application he’s submitted since he came of age, but he just keeps on trying.

Kafka and his work kohai, the upstart JAKDF hopeful Reno, manage to survive a kaiju attack at the end of a shift with minor injuries, but when they’re in the hospital, a potato-sized flying kaiju shoves itself down Kafka’s throat, causing him to transform into a kaiju. Fortunately, he’s able to change back to his human form just in time to pass the first round of Defense Force exams, with Reno warning him not to let anyone in on his secret during practical exams.

Kafka is pathetically weak in his human form and is repeatedly shown up by the daughter of the Defense Force’s director general, the young hotshot Kikoru (Fairouz Ai once again), but he manages to save her life when a training exercise goes haywire and forces him to transform and share his secret with her. Reno and Kikoru get in, no problem, while Kafka manages to squeak in as a cadet. Of course, without exposing his little-big kaiju secret, Kafka can’t do much to help in terms of actual combat, but he does frequently act as an unofficial tactician in directing his squadmates on the battlefield and, in a very smart writing decision, applying his professional knowledge of kaiju anatomy to help them identify and target weaknesses. 

And from there we get a whole lot of early military training and bonding, and not just with Kafka, Reno, Kikoru, and their division’s vice-commander, the giggly Hoshina: There’s also, uh, Man-Bun! And Muscles! And Shark Teeth! And the Token Women! You know, those guys. Yeah, this is ostensibly an ensemble cast, as any good battle shonen should be, but I really didn’t get much from anyone outside the main few characters other than identifying features. I’m sure we’ll get more out of them in subsequent seasons but I have little to work off of right now.

The main three are great, though: Kafka definitely has shonen protag brain even at his age, but he’s still necessary representation for schlubby guys in their 30s who still have hopes and dreams (we exist and our stories matter), and for as serious and focused as Reno likes to think he is, he makes a great tsukkomi whenever Kafka starts acting up. Kikoru is already an icon as well; she’s basically Asuka Langley Sohryu for the zoomer generation. I feel a little weird about the fact that she’s literally half Kafka’s age and still acts kinda tsundere around him, but this is a shonen at the end of the day.

I have some small nagging issues with the story here and there, but nothing that outright ruins the show for me. Like plenty of others, I’m far more fascinated with the ins and outs of how Japanese society adapted to living with kaiju threats outside of just military preparation and response; Kafka’s initial job in kaiju cleanup was actually really neat and I’d have loved it just as much (and possibly more) if the series had just focused on that. I want some damn world building! I also am not crazy about the focus on the Defense Force’s powerscaling in the form of “Unleashed Combat Power,” but I also just plain don’t care about powerscaling to begin with. Wasn’t the entire point of power levels in Dragon Ball Z that it’s pointless to define someone’s fighting spirit by a number? Maybe they drop it later.

This show looks pretty darn good! Production IG clearly put its A-team on this one; the character animation is cartoonishly bouncy and expressive in ways we rarely see outside of Trigger productions, and the big-ass kaiju are all mercifully in outstanding 2D (though I wouldn’t complain about CG; the OP is entirely in 3D and looks exceptional). The silliness of the animation really came through in one of the funniest scenes in any anime I watched this season. Some of the textures can look a little distractingly muddy at times, but hey, these are big ugly monsters we’re looking at. Make those bastards ugly.

On a certain level, I can appreciate the effort put into this show to try to make it a crossover success; the manga is popular and kaiju films remain one of Japan’s greatest cultural exports. Streaming new episodes on the fetid corpse of Twitter was certainly a decision. I can also appreciate wanting to load up the soundtrack with popular Western artists; my problem is that they went with acts I actively avoid like YUNGBLUD (with writing by Imagine Dragons!) and OneRepublic. Suffice to say, I don’t care for the OP and ED on a musical level, but I know that I’m coming at this with a conscious bias. I’m sure they’re hits over in Japan, and for all I know there are music fans over there with the same tastes and disposition as me who think that some Japanese acts I learned about through anime like, say, Bump of Chicken or Queen Bee, are “coworker music” or whatever. I’ll live.

Kaiju No. 8, at the end of the day, is another battle shonen with guns and big monsters, but sometimes that’s all you need. I’ll be coming back for the next season.

Train to the End of the World

Spring 2024 was a banner season for girls anime. From the veteran director/writer duo that gave us cult hits like Squid Girl, Shirobako, and Prison School (and individual credits on a laundry list of classic and cult-favorite anime across the board) comes an original anime that’s not quite Cute Girls Doing Cute Things, nor Cute Girls Doing Amazing Things, but Cute Girls Being Fucking Weirdos in a Weird World.

7G technology has arrived in Japan and immediately wreaked unknowable chaos. Geography, flora, and fauna have all warped beyond recognition, and in the town of Agano, every human above a certain age has become a talking animal. Shizuru, a still-human high school girl, has been looking for her best friend Youka ever since they got in a fight two years ago and the latter ran off, just before the 7G cataclysm. She finds out that Youka has been spotted in Ikebukuro, and with the help of a babbling train conductor who managed to briefly turn lucid, learns to operate a two-car commuter train to get the hell out of dodge. Just before Shizuru leaves, train stocked with Agano’s famous goya melons, she’s joined by her classmates: The soft-spoken Nadeko, the temperamental bookworm Akira, and the rambunctious gyaru Reimi. Youka’s dog, Pochi, also joins for morale purposes. Along the way, they see just how warped Japan has become, with locals in the various towns ranging from mushroom people to zombies to Lilliputians to characters from their favorite anime, and more.

Try as I might, a summary does not do Train to the End of the World justice; this show is as offbeat as offbeat gets. It makes no bones about how flat-out weird it wants to get and actively revels in it. It’s not really interested in making the girls into a new generation of moe icons either; they are unabashed weirdos, in the ways that really only high school girls can be, and they handle the bizarre situations foisted upon them in similar fashion. They get into arguments about dumb shit, hurl insults at strangers, and occasionally just talk about poop. The writing in this series is fascinating, and it really shouldn’t come as a surprise coming from someone who also has script-writing credits for classics like Cowboy Bebop and Ranma ½ on her resume. The dialogue is punchy and comes at a breakneck pace in ways that you really only get in original anime like ODDTAXI.

Train to the End of the World is an incredible dichotomy unto itself because it clearly comes from a very literate way of thinking but has a blast being really goddamn stupid sometimes, in the best ways. It draws on a lot of inspirations of the epics of yore, gleefully cites the western literary canon, and ponders the future of the human race, and then has the girls negotiate their release from a Gulliver’s Travels situation by threatening to flood a park with urine. It is at once Homer and Homer Simpson. This show is funny in ways that are hard to articulate; comedy is so intrinsic to the show that it only has so many laugh-out-loud moments, but much more often I found myself shaking my head and remarking “this show is fucking hilarious.”

As a complete story, Train to the End of the World isn’t exactly generation-defining, but that’s perfectly fine. It’s an experience more than anything. It has really nice character moments and some heartwarming stuff in there, but I was mostly there for the weird shit. The ending was just okay, but I didn’t feel any poorer for having seen it; I’ll dive right into the cliche and say that it wasn’t about the destination but rather the journey. I had an absolute blast for the whole ride.

Now that I’ve made you read all of this, I’m going to go ahead and admit that I haven’t seen Squid Girl, Shirobako, or Prison School, but I kind of have to now, because I was bowled over by this show. This series revels in surrealism, so your mileage may vary, but it’s at the very least worth checking out. It may not have a lasting impact outside of some similar cult favoritism, but this was still my personal favorite new anime of the season.

Wind Breaker

A few weeks into the Spring season I felt like I was missing something. I gave Wind Breaker a shot and I realized about halfway into the first episode that what I was missing was just some dope-ass fisticuffs.

Haruka is a bit of a delinquent. His hair and eyes are heterochromic, and because he’s judged so harshly for his looks, he decided to lean into it and become the nogoodnik everyone thinks he is. He’s moved to a new town to join the local high school Furin, where he hears he’ll have to fight his way to the top, but as soon as he arrives in town he sees a young woman being harassed by a group of creeps. He takes them out on his own and in return receives a free lunch from the cafe she runs despite his protestations. After she teases him more than a little (his ass is NOT used to positive attention), the creeps return with more goons in tow, and Haruka is backed up by his new classmates. To his surprise, the locals shower the Furin boys with praise, and he then learns that Furin’s gang, Bofurin, exists solely to protect the town from outside threats. And Haruka thinks that is the coolest shit ever.

From there, Haruka gets to meet more of the Bofurin boys, and because of his standoffish personality, rebuffs their praises from the fight. Again, his ass is NOT used to positive attention. We get to learn the hierarchy of Bofurin, and it’s not exactly as Haruka expected: This is not a might-makes-right dogpile at all; it is a structured organization that protects its own and puts its community first. Soon enough, though, they happen upon one of their middle schoolers being hassled by a neighboring gang, and they organize a tournament on hostile ground to resolve their differences.

I am an absolute goddamn sucker for the “delinquent with a heart of gold” archetype, and Haruka is just a big ol’ tsundere from the opening minutes, so Wind Breaker hit like fucking catnip for me. For a show about gangs of delinquents, this could actually be a good example of positive masculinity if you look at it in a certain light. It’s very heavy-handed with the message that nobody can achieve greatness on their own and that surrounding yourself with the right people can change your life for the better. It’s not a rare theme in Japanese media by any means (it’s a central theme of the Persona series as well as another ultra-popular shonen series I’ve been reading in secret), but I really appreciate it being delivered through the lens of channeling brute strength and fighting prowess specifically to protect the vulnerable.  

At the end of the day, though, it’s really just about guys bein’ dudes.

The production values on this are phenomenal and I have to commend CloverWorks for turning in yet another banger. The cast is deep and plenty talented (there’s a lot of Jujutsu Kaisen in there, and it should surprise nobody that the goofy, silver-haired leader of Bofurin is voiced by Yuichi Nakamura). The animation, shot composition, fight choreography, and lighting effects are all absolutely gorgeous, and it’s clear that they see this as a potential franchise. At least, I would certainly hope so, because what we actually got from the first season left me a little hungry. The tournament arc was juicy, and it went a lot longer toward introducing the ensemble cast than the two other action shows I just talked about, but it lasted about an episode too long for a 13-episode season, and the ending came at an awkward time. I was left wanting, but what I want is a second season, so I guess it did its job.

The issues with pacing and the weirdly-timed ending meant that Wind Breaker was a bit of a fence case for me between this section and the last, but my memories of watching it are almost uniformly positive, so into The Gems it goes. This show rocks. Dudes rock.

[nothing-ramblings]

i DO think laios is "autism creature" autistic. I think he's actually a great example of that. Most of the time i see the autism creature associated with special interests and hyperfixations and there's no way you could argue that's not a trait he has, it's a major plotnpoint that drives the story forward along with his other motivation. Something I also see a lot is the austism creature being used as an example of cluelessness, because of its expression. How are you gonna point to his social awkwardness, the fact that he's literally completely clueless about making people uncomfortable unless it's explicitly stated to him, and say he doesn't fit that description. I'n not sure what "tumblr" autism is supposed to mean, the person was probably talking about the more palatable traits people discuss more openly, but do you really think people aren't socially awkward in this webbed site?

i saw a rlly good post reacting to someone else's rotten take, unfortunately at the time i was too tired to read the full post and i ended up losing it, so i don't remember what all it said but basically the rotten take was calling laios creepy (in a "funny haha way" to disguise it) due to his traits, and op of the post i saw was explaining how that's fucked up. I think from what I skimmed it was very personal, comparing their own experiences to laios and honestly that might be my favorite thing about him. He doesn't just have the "palatable" traits that people are comfortable seeing. He is clueless, he had no idea someone disliked him, he even thought they were close friends, because that person never let him know when he was crossing a boundary until it was too much. Soon after this almost the opposite happens, where he doesn't believe someone else wants to be his friend, because now he's aware that he can't pick up on social cues, and he also knows he caused this person discomfort before, so why would they want to be his friend? He's "messy" in that he has a lot of traits people like to avoid when talking about autism, because it's stuff neurotypicals don't like.

He's literally that kid who people would be like "oh well if i knew he was autistic i wouldn't have treated him badly" (which is stupid, you should treat people well in general and not be an asshole then apologize because someone is actually neurodivergent or mentally ill). And guess what? He has friends who love him. They know he's awkward and clueless and has "weird" interests and they still love him. He has people who will stand up for him even after coming to the conclusion that he's "a little creepy" because they know he's a good person, and they like his honesty. Someone explicitly admits they envy his ability to be so openly himself, even after that same person tried to frame that trait as a bad thing, because they realized what they hated wasn't laios honesty but the fact that laios is able to act that way, while most people feel trapped by social rules and don't have that same freedom to be themselves. Laios can be himself not because society accepts him, in fact the first assumption when the elves learn he likes monsters is that he must be prone to evil. Because that's weird and creepy. Society does not accept him. His friends do. His sister does, she loves him and looks up to him as an adult as much as she did as a child. He has a support system. He is loved. Even people who don't necssarily love him know he could never become evil, even if they also think his special interest is a bit creepy. Because they know laios, actually know him, and they know that in his awkwardness he's still a kind person. He misses a lot of social cues, sometimes he says things that are tone deaf without realizing at all, and his friends know he means no harm. He just struggles with these things.

I think laios is a very good example of how nobody is unlovable, regardless of how awkward or clueless you might be, even if your special interest is something perceived as creepy. To me Laios is a reminder for anyone who needs to hear it that you are deserving of love too. Maybe you just beed to find a better support system, and that might take a while, but there's people who will love you the way you are, and accept you the way you are

[nataliescatorccioapologist]

Shat has been my dark horse ship, and the only Nat dynamic to really deliver for me this season (Lottienat was gone, Travnat gone, Mistynat I unfortunately dgaf about, Marinat was a revelation but then gone too soon) but Shat was so meaty! I don't know how legit this is but I saw someone post a link to a podcast ep on reddit where I think they had a source on the show or something, and they were talking about some bts stuff regarding cast and plot. I didn't watch it, but I read the summary the OP made, and one of the things they mentioned was (as many suspected) that Shauna/Nat was suppose to be the endgame showdown in both the past and the present, but then they had to pivot to Shauna/Tai due to Lewis' exit. I had a feeling (I never bought into Nat's premature death being planned), but damn is it frustrating if it's true. On the one hand, it's great for Tai given the writers have completely sidelined her and floundered around with her story after season 1, on the other hand, a final showdown between Shauna/Nat would've just been more satisfying after the teen timeline this last season, and I feel it would've been a way more satisfying arc for Nat all around than her adult storyline ended up being. It also would've nicely rounded out her intro where you get the impression she's gonna hunt down the girls in the present for a sec and she's talking about getting her purpose back, idk.. I think Lottie was supposed to die in the s2 finale instead of Nat. Shauna survives despite pulling the queen, implying she's now AQ. Shit still hits the fan, Shauna goes on a power trip, Nat leads the brigade against her. Ultimately they all die, except possibly Misty (Nat still dies at the hands of Misty in some accidental way).

I do also see an alternative of the s3 teen timeline where Nat never lost the role of AQ. Instead she was forced to get darker to keep power away from Shauna (they still have a power struggle) and satiate the groups darker tendencies, and she's miserable all the while, but does it anyway. In this scenario the final hunt is actually a group effort, I love to reimagine the AQ feast scene with Nat behind the mask, silently crying for what she's essentially stood behind.  I saw someone made a Shat edit with the quote "The dog that weeps after it kills is no better than the dog that doesn’t." and I love that, they're dynamic is so good. Anyway, in this scenario, adult Nat doesn't feel extra guilty just because of her morals, but because she was made ruler during all the awful stuff and couldn't/didn't prevent it. Shauna also never got to satiate the need for power in the earlier timeline and instead goes on a power trip in the present. Also, the idea of them all being cool with Shauna in the present after everything she does in the past is no longer an issue. 

I wonder if for s4 they're gonna set up something with Tai/Shauna in the past to parallel the present. Will Nat still be Shauna's main adversary in the past?

Completely agree that shat/shaunanat rose significantly in my ship rankings after Season 3. The writers inexplicably dumped my other favorite Nat ships (Lottienat and Travnat) in Season 3 but her dynamic with Shauna was more interesting and complex than ever.

I did watch that video as well. I really don’t know what to think about it. I’m obviously not taking anything she says as fact because we really have no way of knowing how legitimate her “sources” are, but I must say I’m inclined to believe at least some of what she’s saying. I definitely think it was Juliette’s choice to leave the show. Nat’s death was far too abrupt and just doesn’t make sense given how central she is to the story and how lost the adult timeline is without her now. And I’ve seen Juliette’s Season 1 and 2 interviews, she was pissed with the direction Nat’s character took. She wanted off that show.

I can totally see how the writers were originally building up to a huge Shauna vs Nat battle in the adult timeline, and I cannot express enough how disappointed I am that we will never get to see that. I have been mourning the version of Yellowjackets that could have been for a while now, but I recognize that thinking that way is useless and will only decrease my enjoyment of the still very good version of the show that we did get. On the bright side, as you said, hopefully changing the big Shauna vs Nat plot line to Shauna vs Tai will give Taissa more interesting plot lines going forward.

I loooove your idea about Nat maintaining her role as the AQ and satiating the group’s darkness despite her moral compass. I’m honestly always so fascinated by those darker moments for Nat where you can tell her survival instincts are outweighing her morality, and she suffers the most out of all of them because of it. I would love to see her get darker in service of stopping Shauna. And ooooh that quote you brought up is sooo good for Shaunanat. It really does tie into the greater themes of the show. They all did terrible things out there, they were all complicit in it, so does it really matter who feels the most/least remorse?

So excited to see how S4 is going to pan out. I think we’re definitely going to see more hostility between Shauna and Tai in both timelines, which will be interesting given their past closeness/trust in each other.

Thank you for such an interesting ask!!! I loved reading this.

[nalyra-dreaming]

I don't think Louis and Armand's dynamic is kinky either. I guess on paper it would seem that way, but then we hear their voice tone, see their facial expressions and it's never completely passionate, flirty, sensual or delicate either. Sometimes it's not at all. The "I want you more than anything in the world" feels somewhat sweet from Armand's part, but Louis doesn't seem into that. The "are you asking or making me?" scene is just weird. I believe Louis is trying to feel tough and in control again after everything that happened with Lestat, I also think there's some level of dissociation and/or not wanting to fully let Armand in and be vulnerable with him. And I don't blame him, I get where he is coming from. Not to mention how (black) boys are taught by the world to be cold, an Alpha macho man and all that. I guess there might also be some kind of sixth sense in him that knows Armand specifically can't be trusted, even if he's consciousness hasn't fully caught up yet. Like, how sometimes we feel uncomfortable with people/situations and can't figure out why, and then something happens and you realize you instinctively noticed the danger even before your mind was aware, you know? Brain and instinct are funny and who knows how they work when you're a vampire lol. On Armand's side, at least from Assad's acting and interviews I've seen, I get the feeling the sexual abuse he endured is so profound that made him live his life in a dysfunctional way? He can love and be loved, but I don't believe he knows how give and receive it. So he brings back that kind of vocabulary and roles, because it's the reference he has? I know Armand is a hell of manipulator, but I think on those moments he isn't weaponizing it or anything, I just see being vulnerable and working on automatic. And that's not to say Louis is taking advantage of it either, but, like, they're a product of their time, experiences, it's not like vampires have the luxury of therapy and this is just a dysfunctional dynamic of two people with different traumas that never fully healed and don't know how to help each other and their relationship with those stuff (not to mention the manipulation and all their other problems and imminent divorce et all). Not a great comparison, but feels like a parent that knows when their child needs therapy for whatever reason and refuses because they're like "my child is perfect and happy and this is just an inconvenience that will be over soon". Like, even if there wasn't all that other stuff going on, they don't know what the other and that relationship needs. They probably don't even know what they need as individuals. I guess the closest to a D/S dynamic where both people enjoyed was 1x06.

Possibly (and the ask was sent^^).

I think it is a very complicated beast, and instead of trying to formulate it on my own, let me redirect you here, where it was put quite precisely, imho:

Louis was distrustful of Armand, his "inner Lestat" showed that quite plainly. And as such I think the OP of the post hit the nail on the head, neither Louis nor Armand could get what they wanted from the other, and it then shifted into this messy echo of what it could - and maybe should - have been.

[askastillyquestion]

Any and all headcanons of Adrien😫

I'm all ears 👁👂🏾

The way I like writing Adrien is blending his Chat Noir self with the canon parts of himself that he tries to show.

As for Maribat Adrien, give his man some love even if it is in the form of angst. He should be more of a 'main character' in fics.

Okay, mini rant aside. Here are some attempts at headcanons.

The Bio-Parent for Adrien should be Oliver Queen, Barry Allen, or a random af rogue that Emilie marries (or a mix of these)

The reason I see Oliver Queen is because he could keep that 'high class' type of thing with Oliver while dropping the crappy parent. This would also open up fun stuff like Adrien and Roy brotherhood or even romance so Roy truly becomes part of the family.

Barry Allen is because Adrien Allen. Okay for real though. Speedster Adrien just sits right in mind alongside Bat/Super Mari and Lantern Alya. He feels like a speedster. Also, think of the possible angst of Barry losing Iris and Adrien getting a positive experience of no longer having his mother.

As for the rogue thing, I just love the idea of Emilie sticking it to Gabriel and escaping. Adrien getting his quirkiness from Riddler or having a weird trait from Penguin would be so interesting to see.

Adrien makes more sense to be Adopted by Bruce than Marinette does

Okay, okay, put the pitchforks and torches down.

If you are taking the direction of Adrien's parents staying the same and Gabriel being revealed, no one can tell me that Adrien doesn't deserve to be adopted more than Marinette.

I understand that guardianship is super hard on Marinette but letting her parents stay alive instead of murdering them or turning them bad feels like it would give such a great connection moment. Let her grieve all of the time she has lost to fighting Hawkmoth by confiding into her parents. They're so accepting that I just wish they got more love (yes the Lila convincing them easily isn't good but the show makes her op at times with that).

Adrien might not fit the appearance quota of Black-hair, Blue-eyes but he fits that tragic tale. Why take Marinette and put her through everything to seem 'worthy of adoption' by Bruce when Adrien is living that life already? Usually, it is because writers feel more comfortable with Mari and the show does Adrien dirty.

The last bit on this one is I can see Adrien and Bruce having this awkwardness that they have to work through in order to connect. Adrien is thrilled to have someone who cares for him again, but needs to learn to work through the thoughts of 'am I just going to lose a parent again?' It just screams potential!

Adrien enjoys playing piano when he's not forced to

This one is relatively 'simple' compared to the others, but I feel like Adrien would use music as a way to express his feelings.

In the show, we see him play with Kitty Section and it feels like he enjoys it. That is something that Gabriel isn't forcing him to learn and he's enjoying it. Could that be from a general enjoyment of not having to do something purely because Gabriel says so? Yes.

Adrien continuing to play would be nice to see. Let him take one thing out of the experiences that Gabriel forces him into. The modeling being a thing he continues has always felt weird to me unless it is to help Marinette and she appreciates it. Otherwise, it just feels off to me.

That took so long to answer because I got stolen away halfway through but hopefully those scratch some itches! Adrien deserves more love in the fandom so I will always try to come up with ways to appreciate it.

Thanks for the ask!

[luffyvace]

Luffy x male reader hcs ☆

Cuz yeaaaaa I never see this?? I’m sure there’s some male luffy simps out there somewhere !!

come get your food I know you exist!! <3

Now luffy’s not gentle with anyone

but if your a guy he assumes you can handle yourself, weak or not

Why? Because your a man! And men have to do what a man has to do

Luffy has mentioned multiple times to protect nami

because she’s a young girl! (Not a grown woman—she’s eight-TEEN)

robin is strong and has a devil fruit so she’s different!

nami has average feats besides some decent durability

but yeah so he’s not gentle at all

you may get treated like zoro and usopp

you two probably seem more like best friends than a couple

luffy drags you EVERYWHERE on your adventures!

like literally you don’t remember a time where you two are separated

which leads me to believe one of his love languages are quality time

playing together, fishing together, fighting side by side, exploring together

did you notice how many times I said together??

yes!! Because your never apart!!!

so, what’s the other love language??

why physical touch of course!

luffy has no concept of personal space

as we know

so he’s always slingshotting onto you, hopping on you back (even if your smaller), dragging you around, whatever!

he does this subconsciously of course

The crew gets this as well but with as touchy as he is with you, you can tell you two are the couple of the group

don’t bother with dates unless you want to have a eating competition

that’s a date he’ll gladly take on without RUINING

In fact he wins!

every time-

no matter what type of competition it is luffy will never hold back

not even to make you feel better 🤷‍♀️

if you’re just as hyper as him you two are the chaotic duo

nami is always scolding and punching you both

not that you learn your lesson or anything

you guys are always doing stupid stuff like challenges and pranks

and bothering your fellow straw hats when you get bored

🤪

With a more rational boyfriend

luffy doesn’t calm down at all

nor does he listen to you any better than nami

he drags you around on his silly adventures whether you want to or not

in fact that may be how you joined in the first place!

(you remind me of law—platonically)

Luffy always laughs and says “come on m/n it’ll be fun!” Whenever you express you don’t wanna do something

yeah he’s not a great listener

but he is good at picking up on feelings!

so if your genuinely sad he can tell straight away you aren’t your normal self, even if your the world’s best actor

m/n being more sentimental/emotional actually kinda goes hand in hand with luffy since he can pick up on those if nothing else

although you’ll be going through a roller coaster of said emotions-

at least he listens to your demands a little more

Unlike zoro for example as to where he doesn’t get to finish his sentences 🤦‍♀️😬

if luffy ever gifts you something it’ll either be so perfectly accurate (you probably think someone helped him but he did it by himself and didn’t think much of it)

or 😬😬😟

“gee..thanks luffy..”

”no problem m/n!” 😊👍

LOL

if your weak luffy won’t train with you-

you either train with zoro or get stronger with time

it’s not that he doesn’t want to

it just doesn’t cross his mind

he spent 10 years training, he thinks he’s pretty good

All he needs now is experience and adventure!

but if you ask him? Sure!

(im warning you this is training and he doesn’t hold back, especially since your a guy)

idk why luffy thinks guys can handle everything??

like dang you could be a lil gentle..?

anyway yeah

if your strong? Great!

now you can fight along side him :)

random

luffy tells you about everything and anything

Even stuff you don’t wanna know..

”OIII M/N COME LOOK A FISH POOPED IN THE OCEAN!! USOPP WASN’T LYING!”

what??

YUP I’m ending it there 😜

Hopefully my male readers enjoyed this!~ more op content coming soon💗

[gaykey]

idk if you have the same impression, or if things have always been like this, but I feel like lately most taemmates (solos or self-proclaimed "OT5s") are highkey akgaes or in any case tend to regard taemin as someone "above" the other shinee members and themselves too, always saying stuff that boils down to "shawols don't know him/love him as much as us". it's a feeling I've had for a while and it kinda heightened when someone made that recent tweet saying "oh I would hate to share the stage with him, he eats up everyone else." on a shift fancam. honestly it's a non-issue, like whatever, I just block and ignore. but it kills me that people are saying "oh but it wasn't malicious, we were just saying that cause he's the main dancer blah blah.." like bffr now. there are ways to praise someone without putting down others, which was CLEARLY op's intention, whether they admit it or not.

like poet artist recordings came out and I haven't seen anybody say "oh I would hate to share the stage with kim jonghyun, he eats up everybody with his voice" instead people have been rightfully saying that yes, jjong IS a great singer, able to do things that other members struggled with BUT that they did an amazing job anyway.

see how praising someone can be done without shading on others? it's simple, really. it's all a matter of wording. but people will go above and beyond to deny what they have said. and I've seen this behavior from taemmates a lot.

mmmmmm, the taemin akgaes have definitely got worse in the last year.

i can for sure say the fandom has never EVER had this level of in-fighting in all the 17 years of shinee.

i think we managed a solid 3 days of peace? whilst the concerts were happening.

and that tweet oh mannn, that tweet! it caused SUCH a drama, and i'll be so real, i have absolutely no issue with that kind of post tbh.

taemin is the MAIN dancer. he absolutely eats up a choreo every time. like, best dancer in shinee, best in the industry ect.

i don't see a problem with it.

hoooowever....the tone was a bit....i dunno, you could just tell it was coming from an akgae and not just a taemin bias.

and if it was just the one tweet, i would have been like eh, whatever.

but, it was the aftermath.

it was like one person expressed that they didn't like the tone, and that was it! free reign to shit on shinee members, coming from all the subfandoms.

aaaand, i would like to say, taemin akgaes are a problem, but, more & more these days, i'm seeing lil freaks be real off, and outright anti-taemin.

like, they are for real just as toxic. i saw some gross stuff about taemin going to lsm's doc premiere, which really rubbed me the wrong way.

basically, i don't think it's all taemates, and i don't think it's just taemates - but they are the most vocal.

to say you're an ot5 feels like a crime these days lmaooooooo.

taemates will just write you off completely, and shawols will be sus if you praise taemin for his solo accomplishments in any capacity.

the fandom is done for.

[hellsite-detective]

*enters your PI office with my long legs that go all the way to the floor* hi Mr Eye could you perhaps find me the "breaks my fingers time to shit myself to sleep again" post please? the one with all the paniked reblogs from the op like "wait no meant crack. meant my knuckles. meant cry myself to sleep".

this here was gonna be a real simple post. see, i went down to the Search Bar and asked my ol' pal Google if they had anythin' on this particular post. pulled out a couple of photos involvin' this post. now, the address that the post was originally under was gonna be a deadend. luckily, they provided me a second picture. one that included a different address for the post. so, i skipped the middle man and went straight for that blog. from there, it didn't take much snoopin' to find what i was lookin' for.

here's this classic post! anyway, i gotta go shit myself to sleep. it's been a long day. have a great day!

Post Case: Closed

[13eyond13]

Hey Bloz! How r u? I cannot even begin to express how fun it’s been to see ur Beatles posts on my dash. the minute I saw the Real Love demo I was like ok… she’s fallen down the rabbit hole XD I was fixated on them last year for a good few months. It was a lot of fun reading about them, watching their movies, and reading fan analyses online. There’s so much out there! And Beatles rpf is a whole world unto itself lol at first I was skeptical of it but then… I was intrigued haha

Do u have any fave songs or albums? :)

Omg hello Jess!! I miss you and it's so nice to hear from you 🫂

Hahaha YES I'm pretty deep into The Beatles lore rabbit hole already, it's been my main fixation for entertainment for the past month or so. You're right, there's just so much to dig into. Caught me totally by surprise, I feel like I'm so late to the game to just be having a Beatles phase now... I never felt extremely interested in learning about them before, but a randomly recommended YouTube video (x) about how it's reductive to blame the band's breakup solely on Yoko Ono drew me into this whole fascination a few weeks back.

😆 And hah, you must have sent this ask to me right before I deleted that "Real Love" demo reblog, because I thought I'd better delete it after I looked in the notes of the post and saw the OP wasn't taking kindly to anybody questioning if John was actually giggling instead of sobbing there (which is what I think he was doing, personally... but it still sounded like he was writing something about Paul? 🤷‍♀️ idk, doesn't need to be crying for it to still be a bit of an eyebrow raiser, imo)

I haven't actually really looked into any rpf yet, just digesting the "canon" material and whatnot (listening chronologically to their discography and not completely finished with that yet, up to halfway through the White album rn). Been watching their movies and behind the scenes stuff and documentaries (the Get Back one by Peter Jackson was fascinating even for a relatively new fan to watch, imo), reading a bigass biography about them (Tune In by Mark Lewisohn, it's like this great slowburn real-time mosey through the band's childhoods and earliest days together), and watching the occasional YouTube video deep dives (this one series in particular is p beautifully made and impressively researched and really got me in the feels regarding the shippy theories about J&P: [x])

As for my faves of their music, I haven't finished listening to 100% of their albums yet, BUT right now I'm actually very partial to some of their earliest records. I feel like some of their more normie stuff from the early 60s is actually the most fantastic fun to listen to, and Please Please Me and A Hard Day's Night might be the two albums with the most bangers that I never want to skip so far. Their more experimental and psychedelic and surreal later stuff is also interesting and arguably more unique and groundbreaking or creative or whatever, but I'm not as familiar with them outside of the main extremely famous tracks on them yet, and I'll need to finish listening and let them grow on me a bit before I can probably say for sure. However I think so far my faves from their later stuff would probs be Magical Mystery Tour, Abbey Road, and possibly the White Album (once I actually finish listening to it).

John is definitely my favourite Beatle, which was actually a complete surprise to me, I thought he'd be my least fave. And there are so many good bops that it's hard to narrow it down, but some of my personal faves so far are I Saw Her Standing There, I Should Have Known Better, I Want to Hold Your Hand, It Won't be Long, A Hard Day's Night, Do You Want to Know a Secret, Oh! Darling, I Want You (She's So Heavy) and If I Fell... hmm, I think maybe I'm just kinda a sucker for their simple and enthusiastic and joyful love songs the most, usually?

Thank you for sending me this sweet ask! I'd love to hear what some of your faves are too 🧡

[dhs-in-distress]

Finally posting this damn OC-canon-interaction post (for Scatters and the main five bots currently)

(Don‘t wanna seem desperate or guilt people into doing it, just wanna say that if anyone wants to suggest characters (or situations) for the interaction thing I‘d love that cause I love thinking about how two characters would talk to/ feel about one another or how they‘d interact given a specific situation or how it would progress given enough time.)

Anyway, Team Prime under the cut,,

Optimus: Best way to describe it would probably be „exasperation“. OP already has a whole unruly team to deal with, and then this asshole stalks them for weeks, falls through the roof, on the brink of an exhaustion-induced „coma“. He can‘t not take him in, that would go against everything he personally stands for, but he sure doesn’t like the alternative either. Scatter disrupts the workflow, is hard to talk to and negotiate with, hardly takes orders; and if he does he almost never takes them seriously enough, harasses everyone and is more of a disturbance than any help if OP does try to take him on missions. He does however notice that he makes a great babysitter for Sari, and basically permanently assigns him as such whenever the others go anywhere even remotely dangerous. Additionally Scatters knows much more about Earth than all of the others combined and has a much deeper understanding than Sari (because she‘s like 8), so OP sometimes makes him do basic intel and scouting as well, but doesn‘t really trust him beyond that.

Going into Scatters‘ perspective on the whole thing (and ignoring the work stuff since that‘s largely the same), he mostly views OP as a complete pushover, but with potential. He very much avoids him, only talks to him if absolutely necessary and exclusively refers to him as „Prime“ in hopes of distancing himself from anyone by the Prime title out of sheer spite and principle. Deep down he does want OP to succeed though, can‘t help but feel sympathetic towards his whole… situation. He can somewhat relate, also having his life „screwed over“ by Sentinel, but thinks that OP‘s still „saveable“ from… everything pretty much. He can still turns this around, has the capacity to change something, maybe everything, for the better. For the most part though he‘s just a kid to Scatters, and a pushover, like wow.

Bumblebee: They don‘t have the greatest start, with Bee immediately assuming Scatters is a Decepticon and deeply offending him in the process, but quickly grows to view him as „Prowl if he was downright mean instead of just standoffish“. He doesn‘t really get Scatters‘ deal, but spends time with him by proxy because of Bulkhead, who Scatters typically hangs around if he‘s not off alone doing shady stuff. At some point Scatters let‘s it slip that he‘s not only privy to Earth knowledge in general, but also knows a fuck ton of media, including video games and action movies. This opens up their relationship a bit, because while Scatters still isn‘t too nice about it, he does share all the good websites to pirate stuff and even recommends a few things Bee ends up enjoying a considerable amount. In the end Bee doesn‘t find Scatters to be all too bad, he‘s easy to tick off and not too talkative, but is the one „older“ person on the team who gets and „supports“ his interests.

On the flip side, Scatters finds Bee to be incredibly grating. He‘s loud and bold and expressive and happy, and Scatters is a bit resentful about the free self expression and joy, since he himself is still on the „not allowed to feel happiness because the love of my life is dead and I shouldn‘t disgrace him like this“ train. And while it might come across as bonding or kind of him to take an interest in Bee‘s hobbies, Scatters mostly recommends these games and movies and sites because he knows it will annoy the rest of the team way more than him (because they live here and he does so only when necessary).

Ratchet: Being somewhat similar in both background and temper, these two do not like one another, and are often downright hostile if they‘re ever forced to talk, which is more often than one might think. Scatters downright refuses most medical treatment, especially if it‘s from Ratchet, and the whole „not taking orders seriously, if he doesn‘t refuse them altogether“ thing annoys Ratchet a lot more than it does OP (he‘s mostly just tired, and has more important shit to deal with anyway). And yeah, they‘re always at each others‘ throats, both figuratively and literally, arguing over every little thing even if it doesn’t matter at all, and by the time someone (Bulkhead usually, he‘s the only one both physically and emotionally capable to get them apart and to both calm down) ends the fight it‘s not even clear anymore why it started in the first place. Part of it is also that Scatters reminds Ratchet a little of himself (obviously), he sees all of his worst qualities in that guy, and wonders to himself „oh no am I this fragging irritating??!“ sometimes. The good side is that it makes him a LITTLE (a LITTLE ok, a tiny bit) more conscious about his way of dealing with these issues (that being… not dealing with the PTSD at all and just hoping it goes away) and that maybe there are ways to get them under control.

Same shit different diaper with Scatters‘ perspective. He sees himself in Ratchet, but in contrast to how Ratchet sees himself in him, Scatters almost feels like Ratchet is a better version of himself (gross oversimplification but if I got into all of that this post would need another month to be done and I want to get this out this week god damn it). Ratchet is great at his job, has people who care about him and who he (sometimes) openly cares about back, he pushes through his flashbacks and still manages to be relatively well adjusted and normal through all of it. Scatters could hardly function in his daily life ever since Trailbreaker died, had a terrible job, one friend who he refused to call such and continues to push people away even now, completely consumed by grief, guilt and anger. Deep down he admires Ratchet for still managing to be semi-personable with him in spite of all he‘s gone through, and he hates this whole situation and Ratchet all the more for it.

(There would definitely be some strong development in the relationship between these two, but that would, as we in Germany say, den Rahmen sprengen.)

Prowl: Scatters continuously and deliberately takes up the best spots for „lurking in the shadows unnoticed“ and Prowl is not a fan, but with how calm and collected he is there‘s hardly any real conflict between the two. All things considered, he‘s mildly irritated at times, throws in a sarcastic remark occasionally if he feels the offence is particularly noteworthy or bad, but largely stays out of the way and doesn‘t get bothered as a result. He even finds the similar fondness of dark and/or quiet places they have to be somewhat endearing. (I have a whole situation/scene for that dark/quiet places thing don‘t even get me started,,,, That (positive) interaction they have in my head is everything,,,,,,,,,,,,)

Scatters appreciates Prowl; for not constantly bothering him, for being the quietest of the bunch, for accidentally showing him all of the best places to quietly lurk in the shadows and spy on the team, all around really. Can‘t help but find his stoicism and coolheaded nature a little admirable, but he‘d probably never get to that point of self-restraint… He treats Earth, the flora and fauna alike kindly and with respect, and Scatters has been there for 50 years alright, he‘s gotten a little attached to the place, and seeing someone have this kind of deep love for, and fascination with it deeply moves something in him. Plus, his snide remarks can be very amusing, so amusing fact that even if Scatters takes deep offence to them at times he still can‘t be too mad.

Bulkhead: To him Scatters is simply… very odd. Not in a necessarily negative way, but not in a necessarily positive one either… He hates the constant disrespect towards OP and Ratchet, but is grateful for the contrasting support for Bee, (even though it doesn‘t feel 100% genuine for some reason…) the kindness towards Sari and the respect for Prowl. OP is his boss and he really does value him a lot, but Bee, Sari and Prowl are his besties damn it, the way they‘re treated has to count equally! And Scatters does act similarly around him. He appreciates the art, and the process often equally as much as the final product (if not more so), defends him (on occasion, and it usually results in a fight…) and encourages him to stand by both his creativity and intelligence. Though he is often aggressive and even mean about it, which shouldn’t even be possible, but Bulkhead finds that he appreciates the gesture for what it is and for what it‘s intended to be.

Scatters low key adores Bulkhead (can you tell I‘m protecting???). He‘s extremely kind and gentle, has the same love for Earth that Prowl (and in a way Bee) do, and is quite clever if the others let him. A part of him pushes back against Bulkhead’s welcoming nature, tries to deflect and tells himself that he isn’t allowed to have this and that he has other things to be focused on, but it‘s hard, and ultimately falls flat when he accepts that he desperately wants to see Bulkhead succeed, both at this mission and as a person. His creativity and general love of the arts only serves to endear Scatters more, because he too is very, very fond of these things and Earth‘s many cultures and ways to express oneself. He enjoys watching Bulkhead‘s process, at first from afar, but gradually just sits with or somewhere near him to bask in the… sauce, so to speak.

I do also have thoughts on how sparring between each of them would go, but I‘m tired ok. Not in this post.

Ok, that‘s enough for now, I hope I got the basics about how these guys feel about each other down well enough. Jailbreak‘s definitely getting her own version of this with the main 5 cons, but until then… this is what I have.

[angelphonia]

Okay, I've been binge watching the Stop!!Hibari-kun anime and I've got some thoughts I need to let out.

Firstly, watching the anime makes me appreciate the Manga a hundred times more. Sure, the Manga had its problems, mostly the racism and the casual homophobia jokes and transphobia, but you could save stuff from it, like that even though there were homophobic jokes there was a gay woman who wasn't mocked because of her attraction to Hibari, or that despite the transphobia Hibari was never outright shown as being wrong by being herself.

Now, the anime does a lot of things I dislike. Firstly they make Kosaku's reactions be way more negative than in the Manga. While yes, he reacts negatively he is also seen blushing a lot when Hibari flirts with him. I may need to read the Manga for fourth time, but I also don't remember Kosaku constantly mentioning Hibari is a "guy" everytime she did anything.

There is a lot much more racism in the anime. There were problems with this in the Manga but it just feels way more present in the anime.

This one doesn't bother me too much, but I'm pretty sure the chapters do not align with the Manga, but again, this doesn't bother me.

I also noticed way more incest jokes, I don't care about them. Also the Seiji chapter where he falls in love with one of Hibari's bullies when she's 15 and Seiji is around 25/30 is very questionable. Again, this is a work of fiction so while I was like "why isn't this seen wrong?" I wasn't really uncomfortable. I do gotta say that in the Manga when the Japanese mob grown manchild son asked for Hibari's hand in marriage, it was inmediatly said he was 28 and Hibari was super taken aback. This doesn't happen in the anime, his age is NEVER mentioned. I can't quite remember, but I am sure Hibari also doesn't go on a date with him.

Oof, but here we go with the thing that has bothered me the most. The REALLY bad erasure of Jun's story. They absolutely took away her lesbianism, making it seem as if she was only interested in Hibari because of her volleyball abilities. They also totally changed the episode and made Jun be deeply ashamed of her family, that while in the Manga she was a bit embarassed it wasn't a main focus. In the Anime it was, even making her leave the volleyball club, which is crazy to me. Oh, and I'm NOT forgetting that they made Hibari enjoy getting gropped in the bus, when in the Manga she was clearly just disgusted by it.

I haven't finished it yet, may edit this post with more complains. Positive things? I'm sure Seiji and Sabu didn't have names in the Manga, so now they have identities. They try and give them more backstory, even adding an eye scar to Sabu, which was appreciated. Hibari's voice is absolutely the cutest. I liked the wrestling episode. Oh, the episode with Hibari's mother and her father was a delight, she didn't express this much emotion in the Manga, so actually seeing how she feels was great, and her end interaction with her father was adorable.

Can't remember anything more rn. As a side note, I've developed a little crush on Sabu and I'm gonna draw him. Hope you enjoyed my rambling!

EDIT:

Remembered the Honda thing. In the Anime he almost reaches his 1000 girls flirted with, but with one it is half a girl. In the Manga this was because he looked at a 5 year old by accident and she fell in love, while in the anime they made it so he flirted with a new half. For those who don't know, new half is an old Japanese term for transgender people, mostly trans women who were post op. In the subtitles this is translated as crossdresser, which I don't like. This isn't the first time this term is mentioned, in the spartan son episode, he calls Hibari a new half, which Kosaku tells him to not do. In another chapter there is a trans woman, and she refers to herself as New half, which again is incorrectly translated to crossdresser for some reason.

Even then there was some sort of minimal knowledge of trans people, not only with this, but in the Manga the addition of Genkijirou being a canonical trans man in hormones. Eguchi was aware and while his first idea was to make Hibari a feminine man, it obviously end up with her being a trans woman.

[alvie-pines]

Not sure if you still want headcanons or ideas for OpBee (and sorry about your father) but here are some stuff I guess?:

Let's assume those are like mix of continuities

•Since Bee is in special forces and well a spy I feel like he would be very good at hiding his emotions, at least more better then what people give him credit for. OP is also very good at it but he also has his tells that Bee probably noticed over the centuries. Probably like his movement of his OP dials or mini expressions around his eyes like when they widen in surprise or crease in amusement or worry.

• I feel like Bee would rather scrub the whole ark with human toothbrush rather then confess, like at all. He is good bad at hiding his emotions about Optimus and he feels comfortable he yearns to be in this limbo of not knowing. He tends to fall fast and usually it ends up in heartbreak or painful rejection and hey we speaking of Optimus prime here.

•Optimus would fall slower but harder. He is used to not showing his true feelings so maybe he mistakes the slowly growing romantic affection for something else? Depends if we wanna ANGSTY route or fun route so inma go for ambiguous one.

•The first time Bee gets injured (like extended med stay injured) under Optimus command, he thinks he made a mistake allowing Bee out in the battle BC (insert angsty reason) untill he finds out the only reason bee was injured was because his cover was blown as he rescued a comrade from certain doom.

•From that a lot of feelings started to grow, constant worry over Bee health in particular which makes Optimus feel guilty BC he has a whole army to think about, not just Bee. But there is also pride whenever Bee manages to accomplish something great like obtaining crucial information or managing to twart decepticon plans. There is also frustration whenever Bee gets Infront of unnecessary danger like taking a shot for him that he could have easily take on.

•Different love languages!!! I feel like whilst Optimus love language would be acts of service Bee would be verbal. Optimus can't just act like he blatantly favorites Bee so he finds different ways to show his love like spending his short free time with bee or even doing paperwork in the same room. Leaving small gifts that Bee offhandedly mentioned or doing what he can to make Bee happy.

Bee on the other hand would find words be just a tad more meaningful. For me it's like, he is a spy he needs to be showed he is loved through action but he feels that if he tried reciprocate it would came as less genuine. So he speaks and speaks and finds words to say Optimus about what he loves how he loves. He lets himself be himself in those moments.

If he looses his voice around this time it would be even more devastating as he lost his main way to show love. Sure he can give gifts and show his love in different ways but his main way was taken away from him. He still grieves it.

•They probably share quality time as shared loved language.

I'm not sure about character limit in asks so inma end it here and hope those helps in any way!!! I'm more then happy to send some more :D

sorry for spelling mistakes I tried to catch them but screen be blurry dbdhdh

-@);-- R anon

thank you so much!! its good to keep my mind off my family situation right now. and i loooove all these headcanons.

i love bee and optimus slowly learning to read each other better than most of their peers... slowly picking up on each others feelings.

i also think bee could really easily view himself as "not worthy" because, i mean, its a prime. he might view his crush on op as something that would be insulting or even blasphemous if optimus were to find out.

meanwhile, optimus thinks his feelings are wrong because of the power he holds as a prime--he thinks that if he confesses, bee will say yes just to please him. so he keeps those feelings very close to his spark. he also probably worries about responsibility and impartiality as a commanding officer. (irl, in the military, your commanding officer often cannot be your partner due to the bias it can cause in decision-making)

such good angst ideas in here, i am eating it up.

[howlingmoonrise]

tagged by the fantastic @sunriseverse! thanks sunny!! 💖

under the cut because this one is long

1. why did you choose your url?

i wanted a new fandom penname and at the time adjective + noun names were a thing. i fiddled with several different variations, tried and failed to acquire kaleidoscopicmoonrise at the time (it's mine now!!), and landed on this one. i wanted something a little spooky, especially since soul eater was my fandom at the time - though it doesn't feel like it now that my icon is a lot more sane-looking lmfao

2. any sideblogs? if you have them name them and why you have them.

uh. yeah. a stupid amount (like 30+?), so i'm definitely not naming them all. most active are obviously this howl blog, my main blog @commandersya, this one for danny phantom and gravity falls stuff, @howlingspacegoo gets some activity every now and then when venom stuff resurfaces, and some others i use for reblogging specific reference stuff. most of the rest are for fandom events i've run in the past.

3. how long have you been on tumblr?

since like 2011-2012. i've seen it all.

4. do you have a queue tag?

lmao absolutely not. i don't use the queue function, though on occasion i'll schedule posts to space them out when i'm going through a tag in order not to reblog all of it at once, or for specific dates like halloween

5. why did you start your blog in the first place?

this one was for soul eater writing purposes. tumblr in general was because my cousin dragged me into it and then i realized there was a lot of bandom stuff in here (i was really into black veil brides for my first year or two on tumblr)

6. why did you choose your icon/pfp?

i broke ties with the soul eater fandom in a not great way and wanted to change my icon. yoi provided the perfect yuri expression with the kind of benevolent dictator smile i really like, despite that not being the original intent for it when the animators drew it ✊😔

7. why did you choose your header?

i had to check my header real quick lmfao. jason todd is just an excellent blorbo and when a good artist draws him.... 👀👀👀

8. what’s your post with the most notes?

oh gods. probably my dracula/barbie fic at nearly 3.5k notes. where's that ben affleck cigarrette pic when you need it. alternatively some ancient black veil brides photo/gif on my main blog.

9. how many mutuals do you have?

idk but i cherish y'all 💖

10. how many followers do you have?

dunno 😭 they're split across dozens of blogs so i'm not counting them all

11. how many people do you follow?

1.8k+, though i should follow more. my dash has times when it's pretty dead.

12. have you ever made a shitpost?

probably? yes. just remembered the i bit the butte psoh post.

13. how often do you use tumblr each day?

however long i'm online on my laptop, more or less. so a sizeable amount of hours

14. did you have a fight/argument with another blog once?

LMAO. i was in both voltron and yoi fandoms, writing for and running events for "problematic" ships. take a wild wild guess.

15. how do you feel about ‘you need to reblog this’ posts?

hate them. 90% of the time it'll make me automatically skip it. for the other 10%, if it has relevant info on the op's original post and that little sentence is on the comments then i might go back and reblog from the op just to get rid of it

16. do you like tag games?

love them!

17. do you like ask games?

see above

18. which of your mutuals do you think is tumblr famous?

i have uhhh. some. olderthannetfic, nemainofthewater, i think also colubrina for a while there, off the top of my head.

19. do you have a crush on a mutual?

if friend crushes count then several ✊😔

20. what is the last song you listened to?

the cramps - goo goo muck

21. what are you currently watching?

i am. so bad at finishing things so like a bajillion shows. the double i might drop despite it having been very very good until like episode 30-something. meet you at the blossom i need to finish like the last two eps. wandee goodday i need to finish four episodes iirc. i was in like episode 5 of century of love. i was on episode... 17? of my journey to you, which if i power through shall be for the antagonist sidepair/trio rather than the main characters. i was also at episode 16 of new life begins, which was fairly good and i do want to continue though i keep forgetting i have that tab open somewhere.

22. sweet/ savoury/ spicy?

savoury!

23. what is your current relationship status?

single and ace so not planning on changing that!

24. what is your current obsession?

the spirealm/kaleidoscope of death, and mysterious lotus casebook

25. what are nine albums/ songs you've been listening to lately?

- La P'tite Fumée - Cypher - Brody Dale - Don't Mess With Me - Stiff Little Fingers - Alternative Ulster - Concrete Blonde - Bloodletting (The Vampire Song) - The Cramps - What's Inside a Girl - Linkin Park - Heavy is the Crown - Miyavi & PVRIS - Snakes - D-A-D - Sleeping My Day Away - Aerosmith - Dream On

no-pressure tagging! @junemermaid @a-memory-a-distant-echo @snorlaxlovesme @where-the-water-flows @nemainofthewater