#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

[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💗

[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

[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.

[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 🧡

[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.

[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!

[kitkatopinions]

Nitpick November Day Five! Let's talk about the Happy Huntress uniforms.

So, I don't remember exactly where I heard it, but I'm pretty confident it's true; The Happy Huntresses introduced in V7 were meant to parallel but be contrasts to the Ace Ops also introduced in V7. I could make an entire post about the ways that I think that failed that are a little more important than their uniforms like Robyn being a politician and them stealing from government works projects rather than like them stealing from Jacques Schnee and how I would've done the Robin Hood allusion differently etcetera etcetera, but those aren't nitpicks.

But specifically with the uniforms, I'm gonna nitpick the hell out of that. Because one of the ways that the Happy Huntresses could've so easily been used to contrast the Ace Ops is their clothes. We as the audience are meant to see the Ace Ops as stiff, order followers who act within the confines of Atlas and Ironwood, and we're meant to view the Happy Huntresses instead as the cool, rebellious non-conforming good badge carrying law enforcement officers that only follow their own rules (which again is an entirely different problem that's much bigger than a nitpick.) But if we're going to see the Ace Ops as stiff and confined and the Happy Huntresses instead represent freedom and expression... Why are their outfits so matchy? The Happy Huntresses should dress however they want, wield cool creative weapons, express themselves through their clothes and emblems if they even have emblems! Even though the Ace Ops all keep to an Atlas color scheme, their outfits are otherwise just as personalized if not more personalized than the Happy Huntress outfits are. Apparently Ironwood is like "No, it doesn't matter if Marrow is wearing a long sleeved coat, Harriet, of course you should wear a tank-top shirt and white shorts with dark blue chaps if you want to," but the Happy Huntresses were like "If our jackets aren't almost the exact same except in different dulled down colors, we won't look like a team." I'll also point out that making the Ace Ops a group of five (something that goes against the norm of teams as we've seen in RWBY) and only making four important HH members (though there is one more member named Crimson that's offscreen according to the Wiki,) is also slightly weird to me. Like, shouldn't Robyn's team be the one not adhering to strict arbitrary unnecessary rules like how many people are usually put on a team, while the Ace Ops are the ones who are adhering to those guidelines? I read on the wiki once that the Ace Ops being comprised of five people was 'a clue' that Ironwood wasn't good because he wasn't adhering to the four-person team thing, and I'm just like...

It's a nitpick, but really, why do the Happy Huntresses have any sort of uniform? If I was trying to play the Ace Ops as stiff and controlled and the Happy Huntresses as contrasting that, I'd start by giving the Ace Ops all one unchanging across the board uniform and making the Happy Huntresses an explosion of different styles and cool color schemes with no set aesthetic or uniforms at all. It seems obvious! Why couldn't one of them be more subdued and grayscale and one of them is like colorful punk and one of them is more cutesy vintage and one of them dresses in like... Idk, seventies inspired glam, or vampire looking goth stuff, or grunge or biker or anything interesting and not conforming?

This might just be me personally too, but I have an easier time getting attached to and caring about side characters when they look like they have a lot of personality. Like don't get me wrong, May specifically has a great personality that shines through even without some kind of iconic look. But compare this

To this

There's a reason people loved Neo from her very first appearance before we even knew anything about her, and it's because we could get so much character from just this shot

Not to mention

So much character can be gleaned by style (and attitude.) I do not understand the choice to make characters that are meant to be significant and thematic like the Happy Huntresses and then putting them all in dulled down samey uniforms with all the same weapon.

[madraleen]

The Case Study of Vanitas - Season 1 (ie eps 1-24) A mixed first-watch commentary (*fair warning, i actively dislike stuff)

-the fairy tale style introduction is such a beautiful beginning.

-favonius codex, is that you?

-what is this op, are the guys in love?

-THE AIRSHIP IS SO COOL

-BLUE MOON, AND WHITE-HAIR-GUY SEEING PARIS FOR THE FIRST TIME AS HE HOLDS ON TO VANITAS AS THEY FALL TO THE GROUND AAAHHH

-HUMAN?! VANITAS IS HUMAN?!

-wdym you'll slay him in the end, noe, i'm not prepared for an unhappy ending even though i only just met y'all

-NOE'S FACIAL EXPRESSIONS ARE SO CUTE

-oh okay, so vanitas is human with some blue vampire power

-please freakin decide if vanitas has human nails or claw-like nails 'cause atm, gloveless, he has both depending on the shot

-wtf did just happen between vanitas and jeanne? leave the woman alone.

-akira ishida could be reciting an omelet recipe and i'd still listen all riveted, but the world formula stuff is actually interesting

-every time vanitas interacts with jeanne, i want to slap him.

-lil noe-louis-domi are adorable. the noe-louis-domi ep is the one i’ve been the most interested in so far. like, even if i end up disliking the rest of the anime, this ep is peak, ep.5

-please make me like vanitas. i really want to like vanitas, but for now i'm edging towards dislike.

-ah yes, jeanne/domi is actually a ship i can get behind.

-the op is telling me i'm watching a certain kind of anime and the actual anime is telling me i'm watching an entire different thing and it annoys me

-it's nice hearing kengo kawanishi in roland's role. i haven't heard him in the slightly-deranged/overly-emotional range before.

-awww, roland is a good egg after all!

-oh i see, i do like vanitas, just not when he's being ~alluring. THAT vanitas i don't like

-i repeat, DOMI/JEANNE!

-when jeanne is tricking vanitas, and he's suspecting her but playing along, they're so cute. aw damn, she'll fall for him? blergh

-oh come on, jeanne crying and being scared over whatever's up with her is actually sad

-LET NOE/US PEER INTO YOUR FUCKING MEMORIES, VANITAS! LET US SYMPATHIZE!

-AYUMU MURASEEEEEEEE

-the vanitas and noe interactions are so damn cute.

-hold up hold up, ayumu murase's range??

-pretty sure vanitas is on a time limit or sth, right? where's your earring, vanitas darling?

-no offense but jeanne has more chemistry with chloe in their hellfire witch backstory scene than she has had with vanitas in the entire anime

-nice chloe twist!

-roland, what a good egg

-astolfo's backstory tho <3

-hold up hold up, seriously, ayumu murase's range?????

-roland and olivier though <3 

-i am plagued by mikhails and mishas

-dude, misha's and vanitas' backstory >>> present story, like- the backstories are SO strong and streamlined compared to the present arcs. and i really like lady vanitas

-wait, domi's arc tho? chef's kiss

-poor noe, all of his closest people want him to be the one that kills them.

-MISHA, NOE AND VANITAS ON THE ROOF, PEAK

-aaah, i see, noe "will slay him in the end" as in the end-end, of the story, when vanitas succumbs to the book, okay. the last two eps were peak, i'm so emotionally confused. i'd gladly watch a s2. that said-

-i really don't like how romance is handled, and it's too present to just ignore. i don't find it cute, nor funny, nor romantic, nor alluring, nor particularly toxic, i just find it annoying and forced, lacking chemistry.

-i'm so confused on how i feel about vanitas. there's moments where i liked him, a lot of moments where i was neutral, but lots of others i found him incredibly annoying. but also, he's so complex, which is great, he's a well-crafted character, and you *get* it after you’ve seen these bits of his past, you come to understand him. and part of me thinks that we’re *supposed* to half-like and half-dislike him, that we’re supposed to mirror noe’s sentiments a bit, the “i don’t like you, but also i want to get to know you and to understand you and i’m never leaving your side, ever.” it’s just that for me, vanitas doesn’t have the charm or strength of character to be magnetic even when i dislike him, and i don’t know how i feel about that. i think if i didn't dislike the vanitas/jeanne approach so much, i might have been more fond of him.

-but again, that said: i'd like a rewatch, now that i know vanitas' backstory.

[remxedmoon]

For the isat ask game! 9, 13 14?

AHHH THANKS TUMBLR FOR NEVER NOTIFYING ME OF THIS THATS SO COOL THATS SO AWESOME. sorry about the wait!!! ty for the ask!!!!!

9- any theories on unanswered questions from the game? (about the forgotten island, why colors disappeared, etc)

surprisingly not much tbh?? i love reading other people’s theories on that kinda stuff but i don’t have many of my own.

i guess when it comes to what actually happened to the people of the island, i think they’re still alive and well, they just can’t remember anything related to the world outside of the island. or maybe they’ve even forgotten about the mainland entirely. anyone who leaves the island is just. instantly forgotten by its inhabitants. i imagine foreigners who were visiting completely forgot their pasts like siffrin did. prolly isn’t great over there!!

i also like the idea of the wishes that erased the island and colors were super mundane. someone from the island wished that they could forget all their problems, maybe. or someone was frustrated and wished the world was simpler. whatever those wishes were, i definitely don’t think they were intended to do what they did. the universe was just feeling silly i guess

13- if you’ve played the game, how many loops did you do? if you’ve played multiple times, whats the least amount of loops you did? the most?

ahh this is harder to answer than you’d think. for those who are unaware, i only had like, 2 weeks to beat the entire game because i could only run it using a free trial version of parallels desktop. so i can’t like. actually boot up the game and check unfortunately.

i think my actually completed playthrough went up to… 184 loops? it was somewhere around that number. but the highest amount of loops i’ve gotten was around 233 (thanks op achievement). don’t really have a lowest number, i left my second playthrough once i got all the loop chats. i think i still went over 100 though. i love being thorough and checking random bullshit ❤️

14- favorite character portrait(s)?

OUGH i’ve got a LOT. love this games portraits

i like silly looking expressions!!! honestly this isnt even all my favorites i just don’t want to spam images

[the-punforgiven]

All My Tarnished In Elden Ring

2 of you said do it so I'm doing it lmao

My first character is Ari, they were my very first character and are currently my "main" character. They started out as a raw Strength Claymore-only build and just kinda stayed that way until after I'd beaten the final boss. My original intent was to have them do the rad Carian Sword stuff as a sort of spellsword/battlemage thing, and while they can do that now, I just kinda waited a little too long to spec them into INT so now they're just a friendly summon who's a tanky sword-wielding sword mage who can deal a casual 7453 damage with Carian Grandeur under the right circumstances (As for weapons since they're my Main character I've got a bunch of random shit I've leveled for hyper specific situations, but Claymore is still, as always, Old Reliable for them)

My second character is one named Bryndegaard, she's a VERY heavy Strength/Faith build that I like, accidentally made good lmao Turns out guard counters with the Great Mace do a lot of stance damage Her shield doesn't have an Ash of War on it, and her mace has Prayerful Strike, so even if someone does manage to hit her through it, her vigor is so good and Prayerful Strike is so strong that the damage is usually pretty negligible. She's my tank/healer build first and foremost, but I also have the Envoy's Longhorn levelled up for her just in case I need to absolutely decimate a large boss like Placidusax or Astel. The Longhorn also worked surprisingly well against Elden Beast, as turns out its 80% Holy Damage negation doesn't mean much if you output too much damage for it to matter

My third character's named Edge, Lord He was supposed to be my Spooky Scary Death Mage but tbh I haven't touched him in a while so right now he's just a really unoptimized scythe guy with like, Rancorcall and that's it. I tried to make him look like a black metal musician and I think I did really well, but he also looks so angy it's really funny to me fhdjksahfkxz

Fourth character is Vlad, he's my funny little Dracula Boy. He's not very good but I love him nonetheless. He's built around claws, bleed, and Lifesteal Fist, which I'm very glad was recently buffed because man, this guy was not great to play before that lmao Also I love how tiny his head looks with that cape it's really funny to me

5th character is Guano Gobbler. Very original. Do Not Steal. Idk man I wanted to get the Dung Eater ending at least once, and idk I didn't want to get it on anyone else. I did use the Dung Eater's facial presets for him, I just thought it'd be funny to make him bald too

6th character is the lovely Cap'n Rumguzzler. My entire thought process behind him was 'want pirate' and then I made one. I have no idea what build I was gonna make with him and as a result he fucking sucks but I love him anyway. He also has a cannon hidden in his back pocket or something (I am aware what his name is one letter away from, that just straight-up did not occur to me at all when I was first naming him)

7th character is my Gravity Boy, I don't like his name so you don't get to know it. I've decided he's not going to progress past Maliketh because I still want at least one character I can co-op with in Leyndel. He's exactly what he says on the tin, he's got a Zweihander with Waves of Darkness and he's got a bunch of gravity spells. Not much else to say tbh aside from that I really like how the purple of the gravity magic goes with his All Black Everything look tbh. It's just very aesthetically pleasing to me

8th character is The Legend Herself, 4PattyCheeseBurg. She's built with the express purpose of having the highest possible health achievable in game. Her first 85 levels were all in Vigor (She started out with 14). She only uses the Star Fist. Red Sun gets stuck in my head every time I play her. She's somehow the strongest character I've ever had for Colosseum battles. I've made people just straight-up avoid her completely for entire matches. Demigods fall before her. The earth itself shatters at her victories. She's so fun to play I love her

Her health bar looks like this btw.

9th character is, regrettably, RudolphReindeer. My friend wanted to do a funny holiday-themed run and he'd already claimed Santa, so this is the best I could come up with. You don't get to see his face up close because I hate it

10th is my sleep build, Eurythmics (Because, y'know, Sweet Dreams) idk what else to say about them aside from that they're here, they do sleep, I don't know what to do for their fashion, and they're Not Very Good

11th character is just this one, I've named her Sellsword because idk what else to do with her She's a Quality/Quality-Mage build and I just kinda use her for testing out all sorts of wacky shit trying to wrangle huge damage and big AoE's (Fun Fact: Hoarah Loux's Earthshaker is buffed by the Highland Axe, and the buff stacks if you have a second one, but for some reason it is not buffed by the Roar Talisman) I like making her dual wield stuff also

and the 12th (last) character is this one, She's a Quality build with a bit of arcane. With her I typically use either the Claymore, Marais Sword, or Eleonora's twinblade, and the Dragon Communion Seal in her off hand. Her damage is surprisingly good for me barely playing up her bleed potential, and for some reason she tends to get summoned by randos way more than my other builds, couldn't possibly imagine why She's in the Hoslow set here, but sometimes I switch it up and put her in the Briar armor (With the Vagabond legs/arms) instead. idk just kinda depends on mood but I think the Hoslow chest's red bits compliment her eyes idk

And that's it, that's all of them minus a few I started, got like 5 feet from Limgrave, and haven't touched since

Elden Ring 10/10 game, absolutely consumed my life 👍

[justatalkingface]

There is a difference between making your characters suffer for story purposes, and just flat out torturing your characters for shits and giggles.

And Izuku Midoriya unfortunately falls into the latter category.

Because for whatever reason, Hori just flatout refuses to allow Izuku to have anything nice.

From a lack of supportive adults in his life regardless of his quirk status, lack of teachers actually giving a shit, lack of friends to confine in so he could be paired with the Cash Cow Triplets (Him, Shoto, and Bakugou), and just overall being the butt of many "jokes" that're not funny given his history.

There are even times where it seems like Hori wishes Bakugou was the main character instead of Izuku, and that's honestly sad to be honest.

You know, it's exhausting sometimes being an Izuku fan, because it feels like Hori took the standard shonen formula with him and just... made it worse.

Izuku starts off beaten down, bulled, and discriminated against, then he meets All Might and changes, and trains, and it's great! And then he gets the Quirk.

The problem isn't that he has problems using it, the problem isn't that it's even dangerous, it's that it's so dangerous that using it causes him instant, permeant harm, even with an OP healing Quirk. And when he tries to get help with it?

All Might: Sorry! I'd love to help, but I used up my entire quota of usefulness just getting you to this point. If I do anything more, God will literally murder me!

Izuku: ...What?

All Might: Being your mentor would have been great, I was looking forward to it, but sadly I must slowly fall apart, both in body and as a character, and grow more and more pathetic until little old ladies help me across the road!

Izuku: What?!

Then he goes to UA, and meets Aizawa, whose basic response to children half the time is to ignore them and the other half boils down to:

"Look at me one more time and I'll expel you so fucking hard your limbs will fly off!"

Beat.

"Psych!"

Beat again.

"Or not psych?"

And then finally, finally, we get to Gran Torino, and sure, he only knows how to express affection through causing physical pain, but he's the only person to just actually help Izuku, and he's so desperate not to kill himself he's pathetically grateful to be beaten up just so he doesn't pull a Deidara.

And the thing is? Izuku is hardly the first protagonist to suffer from power related problems. What makes him unique is how unusable his power is, and yet it's his only option.

Naruto, for example, has the Nine Tailed Fox, that big oogie-boogie, living hate, all that stuff. It controls him, drives him berserk, burns his flesh.

But. You know. He doesn't actually use it all that often. He has all these other options available to him, and even even if it ultimately boils down to 'More Shadow Clones' and 'Bigger Rasengan', and that's kinda boring, but it doesn't hurt him. It's a simple but serviceable combination that doesn't in any way, shape or form harm him, and allows him not to use his self destructive powers.

Izuku has OFA and... his brains. That's it. And, I think in a different version of MHA, brains alone could have been enough, hell, it was, for awhile. But you'd have to adjust the goals, is the thing.

Lets look at the Sports Festival.

Izuku did well in the Sports Festival, and honestly that should have been enough, but he had to win for All Might (for... some reason). Acting as an effectively quirkless person, he got to that final round, and even if he got stopped there, that could have, maybe should have, been enough.

But it's not enough to be 'enough'. It's 'Plus Ultra'. He has to be the best. If you look at the festival as a grade, Izuku, before fighting Shoto, had an A, maybe an A minus. He got to the final round where god knows how many other people didn't. But an A wasn't enough, he needed an A plus. And, honestly, that's a typical shonen thing, sure, to strive to be the best, but again, just brains isn't going to make you the best, so he needs more. He needs a typical shonen powerset to match those ambitions. And all he has is One For All.

Another example is Bakugou; I don't want to get into it too heavily (because talking seriously about Bakugou leads to you getting sucked down into the Endless Abyss of Bad Characterization he creates around him) but Bakugou has the formula of a typical shounen rival, but the execution doesn't match. Skilled, powerful, an opposite to the hero in personality and somewhat antagonistic to them... like Sasuke was. But Sasuke lost. He didn't just lose unfair fights, against vastly overpowered opponents, he lost against people on his level, like Rock Lee, or Haku, and critically to Naruto, his rival. There weren't secondary objectives confusing things, there weren't mitigating factors, he just wasn't good enough. Moreover, Sasuke had a reason for being who he was, a deep purpose that drove him that made him aggressive and unwilling to cooperate (immense psychological trauma!) that made his character make sense if you thought about it. And, honestly, and most damning of all, Sasuke, before he had about eight psychotic breaks and became a criminal, was nicer than Bakugou.

Sasuke fought with Naruto, true, but he never bullied him. Sasuke never hunted down to Naruto to tell him he has no parents, that nobody loves him, and that nobody ever will (though, ironically, I think Naruto actually did something like that to Sasuke early on, though that's digressing a bit). And the fact they weren't that antagonist, that their dynamic wasn't so one sided, made their rivalry so much more... palpable to read about, while it was still a rivalry (I'd argue that they stopped being rivals after he left and Naruto was the only one who cared, who seeked him out, while Sasuke was off doing his own shit and living his life without Naruto, and but I digress yet again).

I mean, hell; it's the final arc, and we had this big... friendship moment. All of Izuku's classmates are uniting, under the banner of working together to help each other. Sounds good, right? It's a classic formula. Except... they united against him. All of them, together, formed up under the banner of Bakugou, his 'rival', to hunt him down. Not with Izuku, against... Tomura, or AFO, but against him.

The thing is, I can sum up Izuku's struggles, ultimately, in three ways: he loses. He wins, pyrrhicly, in a way that either damaged the value of victory (or himself) immediately, or had lasting long term negative repercussions for him (or both!). Or, and this is a lot more common lately, he wins, but it feels like an empty victory because it doesn't feel like Izuku won, but Hori made it so he won, so that his victory feels unearned.

Izuku can't win. He can't get respect from anyone, including himself. He can't have his issues be discussed in a meaningful way, and it's just... exhausting, sometimes, to read this, and realize that he's just... suffering. He's suffering all the time, and there just doesn't seem to be an end in sight. After this is over, assuming he's still alive, assuming he still has a Quirk, and is still able to be a hero (all of which I could easily see not happening), do you think he's going to be any better? Is he going to respect himself now? Because I can't really see that happening, anymore, the way I could early on.