#i love when characters are like cartoon characters this fuels my insanity

[cowardlybean]

listen these are just doodles but im actually obsessed with that one sequence of reigen where his face does this

(At the end of the recap OVA)

[unicronian]

what are your galvatron ships and what makes them appealing to you? :]

Thanks for sending an ask! I assume this is in response to the rarepair post but I'm gonna talk about all my Galvatron ships regardless of rarity.

GalvaCyc The way Cyclonus basically worships the ground Galvatron walks on fascinates me. He's completely loyal, even despite the physical and verbal abuse Galvatron puts him through and I want it explored so badly. Why is he like that? Is it coded into his very being? Is there more to their relationship that we don't see? I need answers.

Also, Webworld. The way they call out for each other when Torkulon was going to devour Galvatron's mind pulls at my heartstrings every time. Cyclonus' voice crack and Galvatron's abject fear at what's essentially reliving his worst nightmare. And then, after that's all set and done, after Cyclonus (accidentally) betrayed Galvatron and lured him into a trap and Galvatron makes it out through sheer force of will... Cyclonus falls into place next to Galvatron and they continue as normal. They're insane. They drive me insane.

GalvaScourge I just really like Scourge in both the cartoon and the Marvel comics and I think he deserves some lovin' from Galvatron. I prefer Scourge's silly relationship dynamic with Cyclonus but it pains me greatly whenever I see Galvatron and Cyclonus in a piece without Scourge. There's nothing specific about them that's appealing other than that I like both characters, but I do like a poly dynamic between them + Cyclonus which leads us to...

GalvaCycScourge I basically can't ship Galvatron and Cyclonus and not Scourge. They're a matching set of three do NOT separate. The Unicronians as a whole are incredibly fascinating to me. Character-wise, design-wise, concept-wise they are meant to be together, working in tandem. If you only have GalvaCyc you're missing an entire third of their equation. Idk, maybe I just miss Scourge whenever I don't see him. Only exception to this for me is the Marvel comics, where I very much enjoy the CycScourge duo separate from Galvatron.

GalvOp I'm firmly in the "Megatron and Galvatron aren't interchangeable" camp, they're two completely distinct beings. I even like playing with the idea that Galvatron doesn't have Megatron's memories. So, I know this, Galvatron knows this, but all of the non-Unicronian characters seem convinced that Galvatron = Megatron. This allows for some absolutely godtier drama in Galvatron and Optimus' fucked up relationship. They'd be horrible for each other. The matrix doesn't want this. The Autobots don't want this. The Decepticons don't want this. They make each other worse and better at the same time through a long series of misunderstandings and lack of communication. The appeal to GalvOp is that there's no way their relationship ends well and also why I want to write 500 GalvOp fics where they tear each other apart. This is also fueled by the end of S3, where Galvatron acts different around Optimus, much more like his Marvel comic counterpart whose personality I prefer anyway.

GalvaSound I love Carnage in C-Minor almost solely because of how weird of an episode it is, but also because it has an interesting window into Galvatron and Soundwave's relationship. They vibe together and fly away into the sunset holding hands, which implies a relationship deeper than the one Megatron and Soundwave had. I like tying in Soundwave's telepathic abilities to portray him as constantly trying to seek whatever is left of Megatron in Galvatron's psyche. In return Galvatron likes Soundwave because of some leftover familiarity. But again, this isn't even remotely a good or healthy relationship- I don't think any of these are but that's their appeal. I think a big turning point in GalvaSound would be when Soundwave realizes that there's no way he can get Megatron back, and he either needs to accept Galvatron as he is or break off the relationship.

TronTron Okay. Hear me out here. Marvel comics Galvatron is my favorite version of Galvatron and I have an absolutely incredible amount of thoughts on him (and Galvatron II). But, I fully believe that if he wasn't busy trying to make Unicron-destroying machines in the past he absolutely would have sex with his past self. Galvatron is that bitch in every way. He wouldn't even be attracted to Megatron he'd just want the thrill of manipulating him into a fuck without Megatron knowing who Galvatron is. There'd be no love or intrigue here, just Galvatron being a horny bastard.

GalvaRod I don't ship GalvaRod I'm just mentioning it here because it's such a big ship. I think the appeal is the standard rival shipping affair common in fandoms + Hot Rod/Rodimus' angst. People want a big strong guy to appreciate Rodimus while he's Going Through It. And lemme be clear, I do love Rodimus, I think he's the best Prime and the best main character in all of Transformers. He's my favorite Autobot (closely followed by Ultra Magnus), I just don't actively ship him with Galvatron. I definitely read GalvaRod fics, but that's mostly because it's so popular there isn't much else to read.

Bonus: UltraCyc Obviously, not a Galvatron ship, but I do love this ship, and I love it even more when Galvatron isn't an antagonistic force on their relationship. Galvatron is just eccentric enough to be completely okay with their relationship. I especially like pairing UltraCyc with GalvaCycScourge. There isn't enough of that in the world, but I have some ideas...

This ended up so long... but it's nice to finally get some of the thoughts oscillating in my head out into the world.

[cartoon-buffoon]

Doing this because I can't sleep and no one will probably see it but: late night post about one of my favorite characters, SKITZO! I find him so silly and love him!!! He's a fucking awful demon and he's in hell for a reason, being a depraved freak, yet he's still a comfort character of mine. Oh and yeah I ofc don't condone his actions yet I still like him as a horror character, I feel like that should go without saying.

Screenshots from "Spare a dime" where Skitzo tries to get money and does a silly little dance to try and get it from a rich ostrich. Look at him being a goofball and putting on a show (he kills that ostrich literally 5 second later lmao).

Interestingly enough Skitzo shows an interest in money which I guess considering he's from hell and works for Idolatry makes sense. However this was before his cartoons were burnt and he got sent down there where he then presumably met Idolatry. I guess greed is also another trait of his? Granted he's fucking insane and ONLY does things for his own amusement and pleasure or because he's angry, yet it's still weird on why he would want money? Eh, he's just crazy I suppose

From "Too Hot to Handle" where Skitzo "works" (killed everyone else) at a fire department leading him to have to go save LD. He technically does save LD but ya know, it's not a Skitzo animation without that dog dying. Anyways: Skitzo himself in this episode puts on a little fire fighters hat and uses an axe as compared to a knife, I think his knife is iconic yet seeing him be a murderous psycho while wearing that hat and brandishing an axe is adorable to me. He also looks so cute when he's sleeping, the little skull exhales make me just wanna pet him while he snoozes despite the fact that he'd rip my arm off.

Screenshot from "Birds of a Feather" where Skitzo communes with nature and tries to befriend a bird. This animation has one of the few moments demonstrating his less crazy side and actual affinity for other—non anthropomorphic—animals. This animation has Skitzo not only enjoying the birds presence but also goofing around with it, it's only when the bird turns it's back on him does Skitzo get annoyed. Skitzo proceeds to murder the bird after it disregards his petting as well and as seen in the second ever animation it seems he dislikes and can't physically handle rejection and because of it he lashes out violently. Back to the image itself however: LOOK AT HIM!!! HE EEPING!!! I find him so cute when he's sleeping and just at peace not hurting anyone (⁠╥⁠﹏⁠╥⁠).

Skitzo's origins are a mystery and I'd love to one day just compile as much info there is about him in one place (either by digging through the animations and the YT descriptions or the little bits and pieces we get from Comick's illustrations) as his villain wiki page doesn't do him justice. I find him so interesting as despite his weirdness and downright psychotic nature, he doesn't exactly mean to be murderous 24/7? There's certain things that specifically tick him off sending him into a frenzy and it seems like there's moments where he wants nothing more than to sleep, eat, or mess around. Don't get me wrong, he is still inherently an evil entity that got rightfully sent down to hell, yet as his name implies he's obviously not okay in the head and there's certain factors that contribute to his nature. The most I can compare him to is Nny from Johnny The Homicidal maniac, like yeah they are both fucked up mentally and are sadistic crazy killers, yet there's moments where they don't exactly want to be and certain things specifically trigger violent, crazed, outbursts and episodes. Skitzo is in no way comparable to Nny and his reasons for what he does aren't fueled by an innate distaste for people nor a cosmic curse placed upon him to kill, Skitzo does what he does because he finds it funny, still it's the only real thing that comes to my mind in terms of characters he's similar to (in one specific way). When I say I think about this character a lot I mean it as you can see, THIS IS SUCH A WEIRD HYPERFIXATION TO HAVE BUT ITS JUST AUGHHH!!!! I LOVE THE CRAZY MURDER BEAR! I physically can't describe how much I wanna ramble on about him (⁠-⁠_⁠-⁠;⁠).

(final note/warning: all the screencaps are from the Skitzo animations on YT created by Comick. Skitzo himself is her creation and all credit goes to her for all the images in this rant. Wanna put a disclaimer as well if you watch the animations yourself, warning!: loud noises + flashing lights + gore + disturbing imagery is a KEY part of each of the Skitzo animations. Reminder he's a horror character and does bad things)

[castle-dominion]

6x5 time will tell

liveblog

Really can't see his face huh

Imagine if he was like a cartoon character & he was dead for like five seconds before looking up & his soul was standing there like "girl you're supposed to be dead" & then he drops & the soul finally floats back up.

sewer slide?

Lego a month already?

I mean I still ask my parents for permission bc I respect them & their judgement not bc I think I am less than them. she ALREADY signed the lease? "you're right honey & it was a mistake that I made at that age"

Mabe get beckett (who is basically alexis' future self) talk to alexis (beckett when she was a kid)

Didn't lanie love castle at first? "you sir have a gift for writing death" or smth? RC: A lot more lucrative, a lot less prison. Oh no a parole officer?

Oh I was WONDERING where ryan was.

Good. Call eachother a few times a month. Not super close but still sort of in contact.

RC: (to RYAN) Whatever crazy theory I could have come up with, this is better.

Meh only looks vaguely familiar. Reminds me of Diego in tua. Bible verses my beloved

Oh wait this guy IS that guy from the sketch My man has a grocery store scanner lol

Simon (john doe): Because. I’m from the future. RC: (low) This just became my favorite case.

Doyle? 2035, that is still over ten years from now.

SD: Ipso facto, QED I am not her killer. energy wars of 2031? don't you mean the helium wars? don't you remember my chemical romance's predictions about the killjoys in 2019? Also babe we HAVE other sources of energy, it's just that rich people don't want to lose their money on THEIR fuel sources.

Simon: I’m getting to that. Look – look. I’m a temporal anthropologist. What we do is travel back in time and we study culturally significant eras. Ancient Egypt, Middle Ages … man, I’ve been in Nazi Germany. I love how castle is into this

but he KNOWS NOW that it is 12:58 as a time, smth he didn't know in the psych ward. I love this man so much & I love how castle is so interested.

KB: For the sake of our future, please tell me you don’t believe that guy. RC: Oh, no. But you’ve got to admit, it’s a great story. KB: Really? KR: Ah, I thought it was kind of derivative. JE: Yeah, like a mash up of 12 Monkeys and Terminator. KR: nods. RC: Yeah, but it’s the way he told it. Total commitment. KB: Commitment that turned deadly. I mean, to maintain his delusion, Shauna had to die. He might not even know that he killed her. RC: Did you guys find out what this device was Doyle had on him? RC: holds up the scanner. KR: Yeah, tech says it’s just a bunch of junk thrown together. JE: What were you expecting, Castle? A time travel device? Dr. Who’s sonic screwdriver? He laughs. RC: You watch Dr. Who? JE’S laugh stops. KB’S phone beeps. GIRL LET HER WATCH DR WHO, IT WAS POPULAR AT THE TIME, ESP FOR WOMEN, SHE WAS PROBABLY A FANFICTION WRITER. WAIT THAT WAS NOT BECKETT, THAT WAS ESPOSITO. OK bro listen dr who is not a bad show, let him watch what he watches. at least it is not chiquitas or 2 cool for school.

Oh I forgot this was a lesbian episode lol

I don't think they would be allowed in this lesbian bar /j. Ooh new fanfiction idea: they let ryan in bc he looks like a butch lesbian.

Ah smart: We don’t have to. We had Veronica call him and tell him she’s been busted for solicitation. He thinks he’s coming in to bail her out. stock tips lol

What happened to the other psych for the cops?

When did he leave? do you have security footage? KR, sarcastically: and we’ll tell the DA what a swell guy you are.

Prison for years? that is a long long time.

always doing pushups always on alert lol.

His "mission" that would "change everything"

He could have been in a cult RC: unless he's the other time traveller Mom, watching me during my embarassing insane time: *laughing at castle making me decide to quote this*

Energy conference? energy wars? “destruction of the rightful kingdom of God by science and technology”. lmao insane

I don't understand that timeline castle tried to make

KB: Why don’t you guys go back in time All of them (laughing) KB: and see if you can dig up any of Ward’s known associates from six years ago.

Alexis hung up on him!!

Beckett is so smart & wise as an adult woman I won't clip this but wow alexis & her tiny hand

noooo he's already dead uwu crosswords

The child?

PHYSICIST? TIME TRAVEL! ENERGY SOURCES? BLACK HOLE? ALL THIS STUFF

Dr Wickfield, on video: Well, the work is very exciting. the work: *is math*

Esposito wearing nice outfit today.

Hastings is so right lol but also so wrong lol.

Nuts; Paranoid, things about the future, cleansing, this guy is kind of culty what bridges did he HAVE? Hastings: He said the electromagnetic field made it harder for the government to find him. I told you, the guy was crazy.

not giffing castle waving his hands at the energy plant lol outr vows

f u beckett.

Someone has been there beckett? probably a teen smoking pot.

effede up how cops can just walk around with all their guns out like that.

All those clocks on the walls?

Ok now I need to stop this bc my uncle is here & we are watching our stuff that we watch with him now & besides, it is time for me to stop.

I'm back! I only have a few hours before work but you know money is necessary to live!

Wow I missed what happened with that heck of a fight scene

Was my man actually tracking ward? Great sound it made lol

They just cuffed him here? What if ward comes back?

So wait she DOES become senator? Remember the s7 finale? Three kids including of excluding alexis? Don't tell them that much, that would mess up the timestream He writes serious literature? There is a t & also beckett even if he is delusional you need to be on his level.

RC: For your information, I wasn’t sharing details of the case. I was playing into his delusion to see what he knew. was he retroactively saying that?

Six years ago! Remember that?

Kid is not a high school student anymore SD: Hey, can I make a suggestion? (CASTLE nods like he’s listening) Ward. He was working off a photo of the letter. So perhaps the easier path is to ask, where’s the original? It’s bound to have the kid’s name and address. My man is actually smart

Ryan's nice tie Esposito's s1 outfit If I were her I'd be looking at date but then after that I'd look for browned letters

Dun dun dun not the child be des-chile See? university now

Doyle is soooo good. Everyone is watching him jump up & down in his cuffs with his videogame theory I just love it sm

Ooh planetarium, RC: The planetarium is all the way uptown. We’ll never get there in time. Send a patrol unit that is already in the area maybe?

Ooh this is beautiful, I love it. Oh no murder guy. Ward would just kill this kid in the middle of the observation? How did esposito get there so fast?

You ok honeybun?

My man is just not saying anything Love him Lol his creepy smile I love it. He looks like he really wants to say smth. Like he's... not nonverbal not semiverbal not selectively mute, what is the term? I have an autistic friend that sometimes has bouts of being unable to speak. Or theoretically able to speak but practically unable.

Ah PD: I’m the one who alerted security to Ward’s behavior at the energy conference six years ago. They stopped him because of me. KB: see? irl explanation RC: Yes. Now we know why Ward tried to bomb that conference. To kill Deschile. See, in the future when the famous Deschile were giving interviews he’d say that’s where it all started. Consequently Ward will know exactly where and when to find him. KB: You’re trying to drive me crazy, aren’t you? RC: Well, apparently I already do it - we end up with three kids. He wiggles his eyebrows. She bites her lip and tries not to roll her eyes. SD: Like to know their names? RC: yes KB: no

KB: What abt your psych eval? SD: Oh, please. Are you kidding me? I passed that with flying colors. You should have heard the crazy stuff coming out of my mouth. Growing up in Denver, middle class family. Man, I haven’t lied that much years. I love him soooo much

Never been in a psych ward? But from the future. lmao I love this one so much jfsldjdksklfj SD: Oh wow. I don’t have much time left. Um … (he shrugs) I'un'ow… see you in twenty years.

RC: (laughs) Is it just me or does that make sense? KR: No, it’s just you. (not clipping)

My boy just disappeared & the MUSIC lmao I LOVE THIS SM

She just ruined evidence lol dun dun dun SHE was the one to spill the coffee! & her thing is already dry?

So ig time travel is real?

Oh no I forgot alexis was moving out!

If she's making a huge mistake, then it is her mistake & it is important to make mistakes!

AC: Who are you always saying is the smart one in the family?

Big sad. rly good ep, also time travel

[bookwyrminspiration]

Oh lord that was beautiful and I love how you write Fintan and now I need every drop of him that I can get because he seemed so delightfully nearly insane and addled as if he was flickering thoughts and finding amusement in his insanity and all the cracks along his body and the fire beneath his skin and the way he was loving burning up inside, that was great. He was still so chaotic, too!! I loved him, it was great. It seems like a pretty good leap for his character, going from sexy arson cartoon villain to this a shell of his former self; Still keeping his mirth and his brains but with so many thoughts flickering around like the tips of a flame, burning so bright inside that his candle is almost up. I can't wait for him to snap, see where that lands him, what happens to him when he can't hold any more, when he's burned too bright, when he collapses to the ground in fits of laughter and sobs as his whole life crashes around him and he's stuck with the clashing memories from before his rebellion and from now, how everything he did was for nothing as he witnesses his work crash and burn and only do more harm from good, as he has burnt himself so badly that he can't even recognise his reflection and thinks, for the first time ever, "what's the point?"

He's out of ideas, out of fire, out of fuel, put of life. There's nothing left to burn to keep him running. He's been trampled on and even his most trusted friends have abandoned him to a horrid fate. Some Fintante can even be slipped in as he's brought before the council and can't bare to look up and see the hatred in the inflictor's stormy grey eyes. He's been reduced to a puddle of snot and tears and laughter, worse than a broken mind, and yet. Bronte feels no guilt, no remorse. Only sadness that his once lively and kind beloved sought this route and became so pitiful, so small, nothing

Bronte does not feel grief or remorse because the Fintan he lived has been long dead

Do you have a list of chapters that Fintan's in so far?

!! This is all so sweet, thanks for waiting a little as I answered this as I was going to bed right as you sent it and couldn't answer immediately but!! You're incredibly kind, thank you <33

I was trying to achieve a balance of "something is very wrong with him" and also "he's very cunning and dangerous and someone to be wary of." I keep rereading the way you described him, finding amusement in the insanity and loving burning up because like!! yes!! that's what I wanted!! Despite all that's happened to him he's so enthralled with it all, he still loves fire and he loves to give himself over to it and it's almost unhinged, just how much he doesn't care. He knows when to be careful though, which is what makes the chaos more frightening because you know he's choosing to lose control of himself, at least in part.

The shell of his former self descriptor is apt!! He's still Fintan but he's also...not. He's a Fintan whose been through something we don't know (well, you don't know. I know what it was/is) and it's killing him inside. He wants to survive and to be in control and to let out all the flames pooling beneath his skin.

Also you saying that it's a realistic leap for his character is the best compliment ever, like I am going to be riding this high all day oaiergn. I always worry that I make the characters ooc, or at least unrealistically ooc. I know I change a few things--like deciding there was no romance between anyone--and have had to adjust them to fit into the situation I created, so it's nice to hear that they still read enough like themselves. And I love writing breakdowns so so much, they're like one of my favorite scenes/arcs to write so your detailing of him falling apart and burning down to the quick and wondering what the point of it all was is so appealing, like I love it so much.

Your ask is making me think about the council more because they haven't really been present in the au because they've lost a lot of power due to being moved underground and indebted to other species for their lives. I'm not going to slip any romantic or overtly fintante bits into the au simply because this is a no romance story and I don't want to, but!! a thing I've been doing that I do like is having moments between characters to give them time together out of the romantic context, so I 100% could slip in some tension between Bronte and Fintan that could be read a certain way if you want it to be! Depends on where Fintan's story ends if he'll have the chance to see Bronte again, who knows!

As for where Fintan has been so far: he's first mentioned at the very very end of chapter 19 (as a cliffhanger), then he's present at the beginning of chapter 20, then comes back towards the beginning of chapter 26, stays through 27 and the beginning of 28. He's part of an event-thing that's drawn out through those chapters.

He'll very likely make more appearances in the future, but for now that's where he is!

Thank you for reading and for your kind words, they seriously made my day <33

[leannetalksanime]

Shōnen Anime Through The Feminist Lens

During quarantine, there has been a significant rise in the popularity of Anime; this wave of new fans brought back memories of when I first started exploring anime and how I came to love this media. Anime is a confusing word: In the western world, anime a separate genre of animated shows and movies from the typical western cartoons (ie. SpongeBob, Tom and Jerry, etc.) while in Japan, it refers to any animation in general. But for the sake of simplicity, I will refer to anime as a type of animated show or movie that uses signature aspects of Japanese-style animation.

Usually, a person is recommended mainstream shows from the shōnen genre when introduced to anime. Shōnen anime and manga are marketed towards boys between the ages of 12-18, but a lot of people outside of that demographic enjoy this genre as well. I find myself watching and recommending shōnen shows because of how exceptionally written the plot, the character development, and worldbuilding are. However, problems with female representation stem from the misconception that shōnen is only for boys or that girls don’t enjoy these types of stories. It is frustrating to see how little action and development female characters are given compared to their male counterparts and how often they are sexualized for the sake of comedic relief or fan service. 

NARUTO and NARUTO SHIPPUDEN

The Naruto series follows the journey of Naruto Uzumaki as he achieves his dreams to be acknowledged by the village he lives in and become the Hokage (the leader of the village). It’s a story about saving the world, protecting your loved ones, and believing in yourself.

Almost every person who has watched more than 3 years of anime has seen Naruto; those who haven’t still can recognize characters, references, and general plot points. Yes, it is THAT popular. I knew about the show but, I put off this anime for so long because of the silly reason that Naruto was an annoying brat at the beginning of the series. It took me a few months to build up my courage to pick up the series again— and wow! I was glad I did! I restarted my journey about two months ago and, as of today, I have less than 50 episodes left to watch to finish the series (keep in mind that the complete series has about 700 episodes). I got attached to the characters for their development and their compelling stories. I saw Naruto grow from being a troublemaker to a dependable hero, watched Sasuke go down a dark path for the sake of revenge, and learned about Kakashi and Itachi’s heartbreaking childhoods. But the girls? Where are the girls?

As well written as the story is, girls in Naruto are viewed as support-type characters for the boys; their stories aren’t touched upon and remain the same throughout the series. The lack of development of the girls is best highlighted by Sakura— the main female character and the most hated person from the series, and dare I say, all of anime. At the beginning of the series, Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura train together to become ninjas with their teacher, Kakashi. Sasuke was a prodigy and excelled in every task, Sakura was known for her intelligence and chakra control, and Naruto lacked skill yet impulsively charged headfirst towards his enemies. As the show went on, Naruto and Sasuke’s skills have grown on par as they continuously try to learn new powers to one-up the other. But Sakura stayed the same. Even though she gained super strength and trained to become a medical ninja under the Fifth Hokage, her abilities and progress are constantly shadowed by her teammates' flashy powers (look at the picture above). This gap is even more prominent after the time skip in Shippuden where she becomes a “damsel in distress” which annoyed a lot of fans. She had so much potential to become a great character. Even if she was not the strongest ninja, the show could have taken steps to make her valuable in some way even if all they did was make her an efficient support character to Naruto and Sasuke instead of making her seem like she is always in their way. The unbalance caused by the lack of active female roles in Naruto leaves the female audience unrepresented. The female characters' underdevelopment implied that the girls are incompetent and therefore don’t get to make an impact in the story.  

ONE PIECE

I can talk about this show for hours. With 950+ anime episodes and 1000+ manga chapters, One Piece is synonymous with art; it follows the story of Monkey D. Luffy and his crew, the Straw Hat Pirates, on an adventure to find One Piece. Unlike other shōnen stories, One Piece immerses the audience into a mysterious world that is complex, dynamic, and feels real. Every single character is well developed— each of them have insanely detailed backstories, memorable personalities, and compelling motivations making them feel human. The story also tackles unconventional topics such as slavery, racism, the justice system, and classism. I could go on and on listing reasons as to why I love One Piece or why it is worth catching up to the 950 episodes, but I feel like you should let One Piece in and find that out for yourself. 

Unlike Naruto, women take on significant roles in One Piece and are often admired as role models. However, the lack of body diversity and the over-sexualization of the female characters leave a rather unpleasant aftertaste. 

As seen above, they all suffer the same-body syndrome— large breasts, impossibly tiny waists, and skimpy clothing. I get that these are common types of fanservice but, there are plenty of questionable design choices whenever fanservice is prioritized over logic (ie. the top-left girl is supposed to be a gladiator but her outfit does the very opposite of protecting her as it leaves her vital areas exposed). Another issue I have is with Sanji and his behaviour around women. He is the prime example of what the internet would call a ‘simp’ where his perverse tendencies and chivalry clash whenever he is near a female character. I feel like his overprotectiveness toward women and his willingness to die for them is counterintuitive to the powerful portrayal of women in the story. I understand that fanservice isn't going anywhere but the girls’ unrealistic designs and their treatment dilute their complex characterization to mere pretty and delicate objects.

CONCLUSION

From a feminist point of view, Naruto and One Piece have their own shortcomings when it comes to the inclusion and depiction of girls. I particularly chose to talk about them because they are the central faces of the shōnen genre, both of them depict common issues with female representation in most shōnen stories. It is understandable to a certain extent as to why the authors chose to draw/develop their characters, however, the lack of active female characters in shōnen stories fuels the ” shōnen is for boys, therefore, don’t expect female representation” narrative. It would do no harm to write stronger and more complex female characters in these stories, in fact, it would make the stories much more interesting as there is variation in perspectives and experiences— especially now because of the strong societal push toward feminism and the growing female audience consuming anime media. The fact that shounen does target boys is perhaps the most important reason to feature complex, active female characters in these stories—not only as supportive figures or dream girls, but as someone they can relate to and look up to as well.

EXTRA: NEW GENERATION SHŌNEN!

Naruto and One Piece have been in the anime scene for decades, but as societal values shift, many New Generation Shōnen are trying to tackle the inclusion of feminism in their stories. Here are some:

Boku no Hero Academia, one of the primary faces of New Gen Shōnen: A superheroes story where superpowers or quirks rule the world.  Physical advantages male characters may have during fights is insignificant as the winner is decided by their ability to use their power at its full potential and their compatibility with the opponent’s quirk. Women are shown to have different body types, breaking the skinny hourglass stereotype with healthy and muscular bodies. Read more on how BNHA is breaking the moulds here: https://www.animefeminist.com/feature-hero-academia-confronts-shonen-sexism/ 

Mob Psycho 100: A supernatural shōnen where the main character, Mob, struggles with masculinity, battles for self-improvement, and desires to just be an amiable and helpful person. His story breaks the typical toxic masculinity tropes in shonen stories and instead focuses on Mob’s emotional journey to being comfortable with who he is. Read more about this here: https://www.animefeminist.com/anime-feminists-top-25-anime-of-the-decade/

Demon Slayer, another progressive main face of the New Gen Shōnen: A historical supernatural story where women are given major roles and are never looked down upon by their male counterparts. As demon slayers, their attire is unique to each individual yet fit for their job and is not compromised for the sake of fanservice.

- Leanne.

[mellomedia]

Youth Culture

For Media & Society’s first blog post, our class watched Euphoria, Mid90s, Mean Girls, Kids, and The Breakfast Club. If you haven’t figured out the theme yet, it’s youth culture. Most of these films were set in the 80s and 90s before this current generation. This is the first generation where our lives are saturated by mobile technology and social media (Divecha, 2017). But no matter what generation, youth culture has many common behaviors, or misbehaviors.

Often when I watch a film or read a comic book, I wonder if I relate to the story or anyone in it. I looked for anything in common I might have with one of the characters in the five films we watched. I can identify with Ray from Mid90s the most. I’m not a die-hard skateboarder like Ray. In fact I can’t skateboard at all, but I dedicate all my time and energy into art and animation. While we have different interests, I can relate to Ray’s passion for something he enjoys and the energy he puts into it. Ray is the top skateboarder in his group and practiced every day. All my spare time is spent drawing and taking online animation courses. My goal is to always do better than what I did yesterday. Words to describe Ray would be the same way I describe myself: down to earth, not concerned with fitting in, my own person, caring, always willing to help, and a very loyal friend. When Stevie joins the skateboard crew in the film Mid90s, he finally digs up some money to buy Ruben’s old, used skateboard. Stevie gets injured while attempting an insane jump over a hole in a roof and breaks his skateboard. Ray sees how much Stevie is trying to fit in, no matter how many falls he takes, he gets back up. Ray has a big heart and builds Stevie a new skateboard. As I mentioned, I’m not a skateboarder, but I enjoy trying to make people smile with my art. I enjoy drawing a cartoon of a friend to help them to get out of a funk or just listen to whatever it is they are going through. 

These films all share a few common themes. One theme is belonging. I admit I looked up the term “fitting in” and it was compared to belonging. Fitting in is defined as to be like other people in a group – what they wear, how they act, how they look. (Pace, 2018) Belonging is a basic human need – it is about acceptance – being where you want to be and being where you are wanted (Pace, 2018). A few examples are Stevie (Mid90s) wants to be accepted into the skateboard crew; Brian (The Breakfast Club) brings a flare gun to school as a suicide attempt because he didn't feel he was good enough; and Cady (Mean Girls) is the new girl trying to get accepted by The Plastics.

My freshman year in high school definitely falls into the theme of belonging. I struggled with speech and have a learning disorder. And at the time I had zero confidence in socializing. I’d walk over to a group of kids in the cafeteria just to try to get involved in the conversation, but I couldn’t form sentences quick enough to jump in. I would be the weird kid just standing there. One day my speech therapist asked me what I wanted to improve and I told her I wanted to gain confidence in socializing. She told me the best way to do this would be to just try to talk to more people. Well in high school that worked with some kids, but not all. I’ll never forget one day in the cafeteria I was trying to find a place to sit and eat lunch. I saw an empty chair at a table where a ‘friend’ was sitting. The group was taking turns roasting one another. At one point another kid challenged me. I was doing fine until he said, “You know people are only nice to you because they don’t want to hurt your feelings.” That hurt like hell. He was referring to my speech impairment. I got up from the table and walked away. And that ‘friend’ at the table didn’t defend me at all. One girl came running over to make sure I was alright. I was pissed and hurt. I was not alright. Just so you don’t think I went off the deep end and had a miserable high school experience, I actually gained a great friend in high school that day. Alex, who was a senior, saw me leave track practice early. My head just wasn’t into track, so I went to sit in the empty cafeteria hoping to clear my head. He asked how things were going and I told him what happened that day. He told me, “It’s not easy finding out who your real friends are. But don’t change for anyone and don’t try to be like anyone else. Just be you.” I’ll never forget how he took the time to talk to me. After his advice, I could care less about belonging.

Another common theme between all five films is rebellion. When they aren’t skateboarding, most of the characters in Mid90s spend their time partying, drinking, and doing drugs. In The Breakfast Club, each character is in detention because they rebelled in some way. Why else would they be in detention? Every character in Kids was a rebel, actually more like a criminal. I bet the writer of the film was too.

A third theme is “bro” culture. “Bro” culture is defined as people who are bullies but at the end of the day they have your back, like a brother (Sloothunter42, 2018). Two great examples of “bros” are John (The Breakfast Club) and Ian (Mid90s). Throughout The Breakfast Club, John constantly insults the other kids in detention. He even insults the principal. The group escapes detention to wander the hallways. When the principal sees them, John saves the group by telling them to go back to the library while he distracts the principal. This link shows you the scene I’m explaining: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Iq7MRlHg5I (Hughes, 1985). Not something you would have expected from a bully, but you would from a “bro.” In Mid90s, Stevie’s brother, Ian, beats the crap out of him every chance he gets. But when Stevie is laying in a hospital bed after a car accident, his brother is there by his side. He even shares his precious orange juice.

Now onto one of my favorite things in life, music! I put together a playlist that relates to my adolescent experience. In no particular order, here are 10 songs and what each means to me. But let me point out that some song lyrics mean something to me, while with other songs it was the energy it gives off. I’m all about positive energy. First song is “Mr. Blue Sky” by Electric Light Orchestra. I first heard this song during the movie Guardians of the Galaxy. This song kept me motivated and positive during high school. If I was having a bad day, this was my ‘go to’ song. I also listened to it every day on my way to school. Next is “Crazy” by Gnarls Barkley, a.k.a. CeeLo Green. This song reminds me of my mind, imagination, and the stuff I think about. I always have a trillion things going on in my head. I guess that explains my poor focus skills and super procrastination. “Inner Ninja” by Classified is another upbeat song. A few lines that always stuck in my head are, “I find my inner strength and I re-up; Here we go, I know I've never been the smartest or wisest; But I realize what it takes; Never dwell in the dark cause the sun always rises.” My junior year of high school I was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes. It has and still is life-changing and as much as I don’t let it change who I am, I’m human. But as the song says, don’t dwell on the negative, look for the positive. I always remind myself of the positive. “Through the Fire and Flames” by DragonForce always fueled my brain when I was tired of doing homework or studying. To me the lyrics mean to keep moving forward no matter how difficult. Just look at what your goal is and don’t give up. Plus this song has one hell of a guitar solo that is very motivating. Michael Jackson is one of my favorite artists and “Man in the Mirror” reminds me how important it is to try to do good in the world and make a positive change. Regardless of culture, color, religion, and disability, we are all capable of making good changes in the world. I tried this on a much smaller scale in high school by volunteering at the food pantry and community events. “Clint Eastwood” by Gorillaz is one of many songs by this group that I like. It’s not so much the words I relate to, but I love the animation in their music videos. I remember the first time I saw one of their videos I thought how cool and mysterious it was that we only see the singers as cartoons. We are never shown who they really are. I like the fact that it’s different. Different is good in my world. “Intergalactic” by Beastie Boys reminds me of breakdancing and dancing in general. I love to dance and looked forward to every prom and homecoming dance at high school. “Without Me” by Eminem reminds me that no matter how much people criticize you, you can be very successful at what you enjoy doing. The last song on my list is “Take Me Out” by Franz Ferdinand. To be honest, I just like the beat of the song and it’s one of those songs I listened to over and over in high school.

So that wraps up my Youth Culture blog. I hope it gave you a better understanding of how I relate to the assigned films. But let me make one thing clear, I do not relate to anything in the film Kids. Not one thing.

Below is my self portrait of what goes through my mind. 

Artwork by: Marcello Laudato

[popculturebuffet]

Ducktales Reviews: The Lost Harp of Mirvana!

The ducks head under the sea, no accusations just friendly crustacians under the sea.. along with some sorta monster, mer hippies voiced by voice acting legends and della being unable to enjoy any of this because she’s hiding back at the sub. Take a dive under the cut. 

I’ll confess this wasn’t one I was even remotely excited about going in: I’ts not that I thought it’d be bad: the series is at it’s peak right now, I figured i’td be entertaining like last week, it just had the misforutne of being right before we finally get Daisy next week, and recent episode solicits for the two afte ronly made it worse: Fenton’s third episode (hopefully he gets two this season), that’s also hueycentric and will hopefully make gyro less dickish, and a wrestling episode because i’m a casual wrestling fan and huey having to play the heel against a norse snake god sounds fucking amazing. SO yeah “Hippie mermaids and Louie being suspcious only to oh no be proven wrong about being suspcious” as I predecited the episode would go sounded boring in comparison.  But i’m not afraid to eat crow... metaphorically, literally I don’t want to eat a crow it’d taste miserable and I don’t want to eat this crow because I love him.   

But on dreading this ep.. I was blown away. Part of it is low expectations: I had really none other than “it’ll be decent” going in, but that only carries you so far. No this episode was fantastic, adressed a problem i’d had since “Timephoon!”, if not earlier, and had some great guess casting. It was a throughly enjoyable, funny episode. Will it probably end up on my faviorites list like the premire duo might? no, but it’s still damn good. Let’s get into the why shall we Our story this week is fairly simple: The Ducks are headed under the sea to find the lost harp of mirvana, sans Launchpad because he had to go help an ex girlfirend, hang out with darkwing, it was his day off, they had enoguh characters to juggle as is, he got his head stuck in a jar again, I dunno. But refreshingly Beakly is present! Seriously this IS something I wanted since season 1: her coming along with the family more. She rarely does, which makes some small sense given she’s the housekeeper but has made less and less since they have a ghost butler and sh’es family at this point.  I get she has to earn her keep and what not, and wants to show up her ghostly rival, but come on. Thankfully they have come on and while i’m not sure if it’ll be a common thing going forward, it IS nice to have her for this one.  The story itself is nicely divded once our heroes run into the mirvanans themselves, zen mermaids, our focus ones voiced by  hyden walch and greg cripes, who you may know as starfire and beast boy from the teen titans cartoon... andtheotherone... as well as voicing Princess Bublegum and 2k12 Michealangeo respectivley. I Love these two and it was a treat to have them voice mermaid hippies.  Our party quicklky splits up into three plots that converge at the end: Louie, being naturally suspcious after nearly being sacrificed by seemingly benevlonet societies 20 something times (and Dewey having 71 according to the tally given this episode that I painstakingly counted. The boy is one braincell starved for attention) is suspcious this is a midsommar type thing and he’s in the middle of some sorta death cult as usual, while webby, a trusting soul, belivies nothing is wrong and the mer people are genuine, with Beakly backing her up despite seemingly going against her nature.  Now this plot alone seems stock for any show, but works here since it’s rooted in character; Louie sees all the angles and thus all the cliches adventurers run into. He’s been at this for at LEAST a year, he’s seen just enough to get how a certain story will probably go and being a grifter by nature, he dosen’t trust easy to begin with.  In contrast while Webby CAN be suspcious, her being naturally trusting has also been part of her character from the start.  She genuinely TRUSTS people and gives them a chance first and unless their a clear enemy of scrooges, will not turn her back on them. This is best shown with her relationship with Lena: even AFTER getting clear evidence Lena was a  spy the whole time, and even without the evidence that after a certain point it was a lie, she refused to fully belive Lena had betrayed her... and was rewarded with Lena giving her life for webby. She trusted Violet even after Violet had been hiding her intentions and had a dangerous magical artifact from her arch enemy on her, and was again rewarded this time with Lena coming back and getting another lifelong friend out of the deal in Violet. Webby has a faith in people that pays off more than not..t hough we’ve also seen that faith backfire, mostly in scrooge as scrooge is a flawed man and has serious issues, whether it’s a combination of flu and gaslighting driving him insane, or him lashing out at her at his weakest moment. Her optimisim both fuels her and has made her life better but has sometimes blindsided her to the flaws in people, especially her hero. It’s as bojack horseman put it “When you look at life through rose colored glasses, you miss all the red flags”. What keeps this intresting as the two go into an off limits danger cave to find out what’s inside, Louie to find proof he’s right and Webby to go with him to prove he’s wrong, is Beakly. After saving the two from a monster, Beakly keeps boosting webby..then privatley admits as the audience probably guessed she’s also deeply suspcious and simply dosen’t want to shatter her niece’s worldview until they have evidence. And this is where that thing I wanted comes into play: see last season during “Timephoon!” beakly is directly conrasted as a parent with Della, having raised two children and being wiser. And while she was in that moment.. Beakly isolated her grandchild, and basically kept her in a guilded cage while training her to be a weapon out of fear of loosing what little she had left. LIke with Donald’s smothering parenting, it’s understandable, but it should be adressed.. and this episode does, but thankfully dosen’t make Betina unsympathetic either: Every parent, or in my case uncle, has to lie once in a while, especially now with the Covid-19 pandemic. It’s natural. But Betina has gone overboard to try and protect Webby’s inoccence.. and it’s backfired. Not preparing her for scroog’es worse behavior lead to him outright destroying her during “Last Crash of the Sunchaser” when he temporarliy disowned her.  And here it leads to a damn powerful scene with great acting from both Toks and Kate . The trio find the harp, voiced by Rhetta aka Donna from parks and recreation, whose basically the harp from the “raiders of the lost harp” episode of the original, the first episode of said show I ever saw and a classic about a harp that would melodically say “no no no, your fibbing fibbing fibbing” when someone lied, which this harp does, if not every time. She reveals her former owner, the king of mirvana who the hippies build their society after his example, basically ducked repsonsiblity while things fell apart and spent too long underwater (the mirvanans can also walk on land) and became the monster from earlier, and the rest will share his fate if not told

The powerful part comes when Beakly tries to lie.. and the harp keeps shutting her out till she’s forced to admit the truth: you can just.. feel the pain coming from the poor woman, and webby folds into a depressed state. Naturally Louie realizes, once they get back to the rest of the family, more on that in a second, and seeing that the mermaids did NOT realize their king was a monster nor plan to feed them to him, webby was right and tells them to have hope and that the society they built IS valid even if their king was a dipstick, he rebuilds webby and after everythings wrapped up webby and beakly apologize and hug. It’s a damn good plot even if the “Louie realizes he was wrong and wasn’t right abotu them being evil” parts were predictable.. it worked due to the excellent character work, with Louie also realizing being a cynical dick is kind of obonxoious. A damn strong a plot The subplots are also rooted throughly in character while still being entertaining,especially once the a-plot gets heavy towards the end: Della in the c plot stays behind because she’s afraid of fish, only conquering it breifly at the end to help her family and punch a man in the face, but it’s nice to not only see some new bits to her as well as some neruosis of her own. She is donald’s sister: he can’t hog all of it for the two of them.  The main subplot though centers on the remaining family trying to earn their way to the harp by doing zen arts and crafts and works due to character: Donald becomes a hilaroius zen master in moments (though earlier he rebuffed a gently pat on the chest by the lady mermaid, though given she’s super pretty and he’s, for now, single and has been for a while.. jsut go for it. You’ll probably get a three way with the other one (who isn’t my type but it’s more the man bun than anything. Loose that and.. yeah i’ll be int hat mer sandwitch), but I digress, Donald finds inner peace, likely because well. he WANTS IT. He wants to be happy and calm, even if the world smacks him in the face and tells no. Granted said peace is disrupted in the most hilarous way possible simply by Huey telling him they think his barbeque is merely okay, but he deserves credit. The boys also quickly find it, Dewey making a mermaid tail with hot rod flames and huey making a woodchuck one but what makes the subplot is that scrooge..c an’t. He hates this society, he hates hippies and he LOATHES self reflection. It’s like this society was magicaly generated to piss him of and i’ts wonderful to watch.  And as a quick aside bit before we go Rhetta is awesome as the harp, not the parks cast member I woudl’ve chosen as my first round draft pick for the series but she does greatly and has great timing (especially when Louie talks about selling her) and it was nice to see a bit of my first ducktales experince come back in an intresting new way.  Overall this episode was a VERY plesant suprise, and taught me to be more open to an ep in the future even if it dosen’t look like it has a huge personal draw. It was excellent.And now before I go i’ve decided each week, especially now we have a enough, to put the episode in the ranking of each and every episode this season and placing them in comparison of one another. I might do a list ranking the first season and second seasons on their own for fun. But for now here’s season 3 so far, so you can see where the ep stacks comparitvley: 1. Quack Pack! 2. The Challenge of the Senior Junior Woodchucks! 3. The Lost Harp of Mirvana! 4. Double O Duck in You Only Crash Twice.  I”ll see you next week for DAISY AT LAST, the return of my boys the cablleros and some suprises and pies of all sizes ashurldy. Until then, courage. 

[theblackdragon-studios]

The Dragon Prince Tag

I wasn’t tagged...but I saw this and I had to fill it out. I am obligated by my own laws about quiz taking to do so. Sorry. (I read from the one I got this from that it was made by @ true-neutral-earth-elf)

Rules: Answer all 25 questions to the best of your ability, then tag 5 other blogs.

#1. Which Primal Source Do you identify most with? Why?

The official quiz said Ocean, and I agree. At least for now.

Moon is a good second guess though.

#2. Elves or Humans?

Dragons. *shot* Uh...I can’t really choose right now. We’ve only seen the human side of the conflict so far. I want to see the elf side of things before I choose a side.

#3. If you had to choose, would you rather free Runaan from the coin or Aaravos from the mirror?

...I know I’m basically an Aarahoe...and it’s very obvious by the era title “Return of Aaravos” he’s going to break free...but I still don’t know if that’s a good thing or not.

But Runaan...I’ll get into my opinion on him later. I’ll just say the one reason I’d have for freeing him right now is because of Rayla. If she asked, I’d try.

#4. Best animal companion?

Oh don’t make me choose! Um, Bait is the obvious choice because he’s got the most personality. Ava’s also a good girl though...and Phoe-Phoe is a beautiful Moon Phoenix! Oh and then there’s the Aarapod/Wormavos...but if I had to choose, I guess Bait.

EDIT: Actually Berto the parrot! Best animal companion! XD

#5. Best humanoid companion?

To have as your own? Also a tough choice...since they’re all good choices. Except Fen. *shot*

#6. You can revive one character, who is it and why them?

That’s also a tough one...Sarai seems like a good choice, based on what we saw of her...but almost every death in this show is for a reason that leads to major story choices. So...probably no one.

#7. Otp?

Please note this is my opinion. Not yours. If you disagree, that’s fine, but none of my choices are meant to be controversial.

Rayllum. I don’t care if they end up canon, not to the extent I’ll meme or throw a fit or something if it does or doesn’t, but they have the best chemistry I’ve seen in a cartoon in a while.

Other pairings I like:

Amaya x Gren-This is very unlikely given the age gap...I know they’re just close friends as we’ve seen, but it seems nice as a background ship to me.

Harrow x Sarai-Do I need to explain?

Harrow x Viren-Again, I know they were just friends but...it’s also a nice thought. What if they were? You know? (Alternatively: Harrow, Sarai, and Viren could be interesting to think about in an AU too)

Viren x Aaravos-Not super into this one...because this is a Toxic relationship with a capital T if you only look at canon footage. But the fandom has made some interesting “What if it was like this” content...and I love both Viren and Aaravos as characters. Just not their dynamic so far.

Aaravos x Reader/Self-Insert/OC-Aaravos x Anyone really, but I love the self-inserts and “x Reader” stories and headcanons. I’m a part of the problem of course...but that’s beside the point.

Viren x Reader/Self-Insert/OC-I see less of him than any of the main cast in this area, for good reason, but what I have seen...I support you and wish there was more out there. He wasn’t always who he is now.

#8. Unpopular opinion?

1.) Ok, probably the most unpopular...I’m not a huge Runaan fan. I don’t dislike him, don’t get me wrong. I’m just kind of indifferent. I like that he’s an uncle figure to Rayla and that’s really sweet...but I’m just not as interested in him or Tinker as what looks to be a lot of the fandom. Again, I don’t dislike them at all, but I don’t have strong feelings yet either. (That is a bit hypocritical since I know just as much, if not less, about Aaravos...but he intrigues me. There are so many mysteries surrounding him and he’s being built up big time...starting with his role as narrator. I’m not seeing that with Runaan. Sorry.)

2.) Viren is my favorite character, hands down. He’s the most interesting and such a refreshing take on an old idea. I don’t love to hate him for this either, like I do a lot of my favorite villains in the media I consume. I genuinely like him as a character, and that adds to my conflict on how to feel about Aaravos...

3.) I really hope Harrow isn’t Pip (the bird.) I think Pip escaped, but it’s not Harrow. It’s just Pip...whom Ezran can still communicate with if they go that route.

I also hope Callum isn’t half-elf. I don’t know if that’s unpopular, but it just feels like an easy way out. The show doesn’t feel like they’d do that when they’re trying to say Dark Magic is an easy way out, a short cut instead of spending years learning runes and the philosophy of the magic you study.

#9. Favorite headcanon?

More of a theory...but the one that Crowmaster is an Earthblood elf in disguise. I really like that.

Also all the Aaravos headcanons. Some are super cute, others are fuel for my angsty, sadistic writer’s heart.

#10. Best siblings pair?

Both the Broyals and the One Brain Cell Siblings. I won’t choose between them, they’re both great.

#11. Who’s your Queen?

...We haven’t seen the Dragon Queen yet...so I won’t say her in case she’s insane from grief or something... Uh...man, I don’t know. I’ll stay undecided for now.

#12. Lujanne offers you ice cream, how do you respond?

Is it Bubblegum flavored?

#13. Be honest, do you have the guts to use dark magic?

The guts? Maybe. The drive? Not really. My only reason to use it would be to test my theory if everyone goes through what Callum did when he used it. That weird dream where he had to choose. But that’s coming from someone that knows the consequences of Dark Magic and all the comparisons being made about it.

It’s like smoking, it’s like cancer, and for me it’s like killing household pests. When I started out, I was very hesitant about how hard to swat when killing flies that got in the house. Now, I use full force from so much time doing so. It got easier and easier and now it’s almost second nature.

That’s how I would describe the use of Dark Magic. Why it’s so easy for Viren to kill with it, why it gets easier for Claudia to as well...just my thoughts.

#14. Who’s best elf? Why?

I’m not sure yet. Rayla’s the only one that hasn’t insulted humanity in some way so far...but because I’m biased and thirsty: Aaravos (XD)

#15. Hot brown morning potion or leaf flavored water?

Hot brown morning potion WITH chocolate mixed in. Otherwise, I’ll take your flavored water.

#16. Best use for magic?

It depends what type. I’ll go with illusions for...personal reasons. Related to a certain starry elf in a mirror...

#17. Who wins the best hair award?

Does Thunder count? I mean look at that beard! *shot* I dunno...I like them all. But Harrow, Viren, and Aaravos (ofc) stand out most when I think about hairstyles.

#18. Viren; misguided, evil, or actually the good guy?

It’s hard to say right now...everyone raises some good points...but it’s too early to say. Is he just power-hungry? Seeking control? Wants to take control of the East side, the magical side of Xadia, for a selfish reason? Or was he being honest when he claimed to love the kingdom? That war is coming and they need to take action?

What we know from the creators is Viren’s main goal or dream is to “get his name in the history books” though I could have worded that wrong. Basically I’ll just say...he’s clearly the villain. Maybe he didn’t start out that way, but by now he’s definitely willing to do whatever it takes to get his way. Is it a good cause? I don’t know yet...but I can’t say he’s a good guy or the Good Guy at this point.

#19. Would you rather fly with Phoe-Phoe, hike with Corvus, sail with Villads, or stay home with Opeli?

I would love to fly, but Villads is just the best...and I like Corvus but I hate hiking...Phoe-Phoe or Villads.

#20. Who’s your crush?

Isn’t it obvious? Viren, of course. *shot* I mean like I said...I like him...but it’s obviously Aaravos.

#21. You’re being chased by a cotton candy hippo; reaction?

Confusion. And I run.

#22. Choose a champion.

I don’t get this one...

#23. Favorite scene? Why?

It’s hard to choose just one... All Viren and Aaravos’ scenes are great...but I’ll go with the scene where Callum is reading King Harrow’s letter. That is my favorite moment.

A more humorous answer: Anything with Villads, but I love his introduction.

#24. Should Soren be a poet?

I mean who am I to judge? I think people that complain about “bad poetry” need to lighten up about it.

#25. Soggy Socks. (No more context)

...I think that’s the metaphor. Villads is the only reason this is ok to me.

Tags: I only have one friend I know in the TDP fandom who won’t mind being tagged...so: @allykatsart and anyone else that wants to fill it out.

[findroleplay]

Hey, I go by Scout or Ash. I'm a 19-year-old part-time student and part-time worker, so I have varying availability. However, I always try to give the best possible replies when active and online. I make sure to send 2-3 responses a day, though. I have a literate writing style and tend to mirror the length of my partner. The longest I've ever written for a response would be about 500+ words. I like to have a good balance of both storyline and spice. I'm a sucker for slow-burn because the chemistry between our characters is what fuels me.

Alright, so! I finished season 3 of Harley Quinn, and it's fueled my Joker and Harley Quinn muse. I like drawing inspiration for my DC muses from all media (comics, shows, movies), so I'm not trying to tie anything down to one specific universe. But, if you prefer to stick to the cartoon series, that also works!

For specifics, I'd like to write Joker against Bruce Wayne/Batman. BatJokes is probably my guilty pleasure. I think I have a unique take on Joker since I don't see him as the bottom of the relationship, nor will I portray him as such. The clown is crazy, older (not that age has anything to do with it, but Bruce got daddy issues, so yeah), and a control freak. While I like the thought of them being wholesome, I think it'll be a journey of angst, rough smut, and altogether dark shit before it gets there. So, if any Bruce writers got their interest piqued, I've got my contact details below.

My go-to and number one in my heart would be Harls and Pam. I love that they're supportive girlfriends in canon, but part of me wants to write Dr. Harleen getting it with Poison Ivy instead of Joker all those years ago. I think the banter and dynamic would be interesting, and maybe Harls doesn't become a villain. Harley's well-known for her energetic and expressive nature, but I also want to explore that psychiatrist struggling to choose between her sanity and that insanity more dangerous than anyone ever thought. Push comes to shove: I prefer Harley/Harleen as the more dominant one (and, like, Dr. Psycho told Harley to control her woman in that one episode, so the gang probably gets the vibe Harley's taking the lead in things). I'm open to plotting other stuff if you don't vibe with this one.

So, yeah! You can contact me on my Discord: ａｓｈ#7955

_

[takaraphoenix]

Let’s talk about character death for a moment.

Because I’ve been thinking about One Piece all day long. And for me, personally, One Piece will always be king of character death.

But before we go into that, let me clarify some things about character death.

I’m not a fan of character death. I don’t want to see characters I love die. That being said, The Thing (show/movie/book/whatever) does not exist to please and make every viewer happy and feel fuzzy. Especially when it features heavy action elements, character death is kind of a very important element and tool.

Nowadays, character death is kind of... a joke.

No one stays dead anymore. When a character dies, the viewer very often isn’t even under the illusion that this character might be dead in the sense of “gone forever”, which death kind of should imply. Instead it’s more of a “Well, how/when are they going to bring them back?”.

In Shadowhunters, for example, Jace dies for a full three minutes of screen-time before being brought back from death. They could have milked this for some suspense and feelings by killing him off in a cliffhanger for the season - not EVERYBODY has read the books before watching the show, you know. You could have pretended that he stays dead by killing him off in the season finale and waiting with the “Oh, I’d like to have him back, please” for episode one of the next season, to keep the viewers on their toes as to how and when the character will be brought back.

Sebastian. Killed off, immediately summons his mom who promises to bring him back.

And even on the slim off-chance that a character is killed and actually stays dead - Jocelyn Fray - it is not really... handled.

She’s been dead for a little more than a month now. That is no time at all. Yet when Clary had the angel summoned, bringing back her mother and only good relative doesn’t even cross her mind. It’s not like Jocelyn’s death has been years ago and she is well-settled with never seeing her again. It’s only been a handful of weeks now. I find it highly unrealistic that she got over losing her mother that quickly.

Luke too. The supposed love of his life died a bit over a month ago but he’s already flirting up the next woman. Like. Where’s the grief-period...? I’m not saying he ought to wear black and mourn for the rest of his life, but... more than two months, maybe?? You spent twenty years loving this woman. Somehow, I feel like that should have a longer grief-period and a harder impact than chatting up a woman after not even two months.

Not to mention the part where the show just opted to completely ellipse the grief-sharing between father and daughter. Luke and Clary addressed Jocelyn’s death in passing.

And it was mainly just used to fuel a tiny bit of Alec angst - but really only a tiny bit because he literally completely stopped being guilty about it right after he tried to kill himself over it. And while the suicide attempt was mainly the demon, it still rooted from his deeply seated guilt for having killed Jocelyn. But after that, it was kind of just... done.

Jocelyn’s death was all in all completely horrendously handled.

And horrendously handled death is kind of what brought me to this topic, as I had just recently ranted about Kevin Can Wait and how they just fridged the female lead because they didn’t know how to further the plotline but also added a time-skip of a year to assure no grieving will happen and we can move on to the “fun part” again.

That’s the two big bad Hollywood ways of handling character death.

Either you avoid handling it by just... bringing the character back to life.

Or you avoid handling it by simply not having the characters grief and deal with the death.

Both of those are awful options.

Look at Marvel. Avengers was kind of a movie you walked into expecting no real major stakes - there was just NO WAY they would actually kill off an Avenger during the very first team-up movie.

But they killed off a secondary character very effectively.

And by Coulson not actually being a character anyone was close to, you got to avoid the grieving process. Yet still the movie made that death impactful, gave it meaning and an appropriate reaction.

...I am still intensely salty that they fucking retconned it out of existence by whatever the fuck they did to justify that TV show. Like. I genuinely don’t care for it and it absolutely ruins the rewatchability of the movie for me because now when Fury goes drama queen over Coulson’s death, I just shrug and go “Meh”, knowing full-well he is still alive.

Prior to the retconning bullshit, it was a really good and effective way of adding stakes and feelings.

And that is what character death should be.

It adds stakes to a situation. Knowing that your protagonists are not invincible. That something can actually happen to them. The “no one is safe”-principle.

It’s why I absolutely adore the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series.

It had stakes. I spent hours crying over the final book, because Rick Riordan put the effort into making you grow attached to characters like Ethan, Charles, Silena and Luke. You cared about them, their deaths were not throwaway lines, they were impactful on the reader, the story and the characters in the universe.

He gained a shit-ton of respect from me for that book. Genuinely.

Granted, he lost all that respect with the sequel-series where he did the literal opposite and just did not kill anyone. Oh, yeah, nameless, never-before-appeared characters in throwaway line-mentions, a failed comic-relief death for Octavian and the “No worries, we spent the whole entire fucking book setting up the Death Cure”-death of Leo. It was pathetic and insanely boring.

There was absolute emotional detachment toward the final battle, while in the original series, I could not put that book down reaching with bated breath as some of my favorite characters died or risked their lives respectively.

After Beckendorf blew up, when Silena sacrificed her life, all bets were off. I could not stop reading. I had to know. Had to know if Nico and Clarisse and Thalia and Percy would make it out alive of this series. What other twists would come. It was incredibly engaging, both plot-wise and emotional.

That is what character death should do. Make a situation feel real. Make it feel emotional.

It’s one of the many, many reasons why I love and always will love Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Oh yeah, sure, this show is like the OG sinner of “Oopsie daisy, brought back from the death”-protagonist and it was ridiculous on that behalf.

But even Buffy’s death had impact.

Dawn, who started stealing and acting up because she did not know how to deal with her feelings and her frustrations. The utter... loss.

Spike fucking a robot, because the woman he loved was gone. But also Spike working with the Scoobies, Spike being an anchor for Dawn and being there for Buffy’s orphaned sister.

The utter despair of Willow trying to bring Buffy back.

Literally the only plotline of an entire season is them dealing with Buffy’s death. Buffy included. It’s not just “Oops, dead - aaand we’re back online!”. There is grief, heartbreak, confusion, the... “What now?”.

Even as real consequences as how to pay the fucking rent with the “woman of the house” dead.

And it’s not even just this “We will literally dedicate a whole entire season to this character death and it will ACTUALLY work and be brilliant”.

The Body remains one of the best episodes in TV history to me, as it deals with the death of Buffy’s mother, because it is... mundane. It’s a normal, human death and it’s... normal, human griefing.

Or... even smaller things. Kendra. She was only in literally three episodes. She wasn’t a big character. Yet even seasons later, Buffy still had Kendra’s stake, the stake that meant so much to Kendra and you were reminded that Buffy is still thinking of this dead friend. It wasn’t just a one-off character who was shrugged off and discarded.

That’s how you should handle character death. That’s how you make it work.

And now back to where all of this started.

One Piece.

Because there is actually a third option available on the “Death doesn’t matter” scale, aside from bringing them back from the dead and just not having characters deal with the death.

Simply not killing anyone off to begin with.

It’s usually the anime go-to thing, but also typical for cartoons. Generally, the animated medium where violence is hilarious and did you see how this Normal Human just walked straight through a wall and should technically now be dead? Hahaha.

Yeah. That.

One Piece used to be one of those.

In fact, One Piece went out of its way to show you just how ridiculously many characters survive ridiculously deadly situations in the Impel Down arc. We were reunited with so many characters that I genuinely had thought had just died an off-screen death in conclusion to the prior battles.

And then my favorite character died.

Died and stayed dead.

In conclusion to a story-arc that literally reintroduced a handful of characters I thought had died, making me feel even surer that this all would be fine. That Luffy would be on time to save his brother’s life, that they would leave, together, reunited.

And then they killed Ace off. Actually, on-screen, fully. Dead.

I cried for months over this death. It was intensely impactful.

For one, due to the world-building so far that has set it up that no one really dies. All actual character deaths laid in the past - being shown in flashbacks. But no one ever actually died from a battle-wound. Crushed by an entire fucking building? Shrug it off, dude.

This... inversion of an “avoiding death”-trope can make a character death intensely effective, because it really does hit you out of left field then.

But it wasn’t just that.

Luffy’s reaction to it was so intense and real and deep and argh, I cried so much. So, so much. And I was so angry about this. Stopped watching/reading for a solid two years of grieving period for myself.

I’m not good when you kill off my favorite character.

And I gotta admit, I have never really managed to get back into it since Ace’s death. I think that’s less due to the death and more due to the time-skip. I didn’t like that at all.

But yeah, it was hella effective and well-written.

So, in overall conclusion, what I want is for them to stop with the cop-out deaths.

If you don’t have the balls to actually kill your characters off, then don’t fake it either, because it’s uncreative, uneffective, boring and annoying.

Kill them off or don’t, there can’t be an in-between, the in-between has become an overused trope at this point.

And when you kill them off, fucking deal with it and have your characters deal with it too.

[mst3kproject]

Gamera vs Jiger (1970)

That’s right, Hollywood After Dark was actually so fucking depressing I decided the only thing that could cheer me up was a Gamera movie – and lo!  When I typed our sabre-toothed saviour’s name into YouTube, up pops this film, which I’d never seen!  Gamera vs Jiger was directed by Noriaki Yuasa, who brought us the other Gamera films, and features a really annoying noise and some even more annoying little kids!

The city of Osaka is getting ready to host some kind of world’s fair.  Young Hiroshi is particularly eager to see it, as is his American friend Tommy, because their families are both intimately involved with the preparations.  Hiroshi’s father, an inventor, is building mini-submarines for one exhibit, while Tommy’s, an archaeologist, is bringing in a mysterious stone statue all the way from Wester Island in the Pacific.  The statue is called The Devil’s Whistle and the natives don’t want to let it go, because a legend says it’s the only thing keeping away something called Jiger.  Boy, I bet that won’t come back to bite anybody in the ass, will it?

Turns out the reason the statue is called the Devil’s Whistle is because when wind blows over the hole in its top, it makes a really, really annoying sound that drives everybody insane – the crew of the ship transporting it, the audience, and a weird warthog-dinosaur-looking creature. Sure enough, this is Jiger, who sets out to destroy the statue and anything else it might happen to come across. Looks like a job for Gamera to me!

Now, the formula for these movies is to have Gamera get injured in an early fight, so that the people of Japan have to try to take on the monster themselves.  They then fail, and Gamera miraculously returns, summoned by the whining of bratty children in tiny shorts, to save the day!  That’s what happens here, too.  So how does Gamera lose his first face-off against Jiger?  Is he frozen, like he was by Barugon?  Held at bay by a threat to children, like he was by Viras?  Beat up and forced to retreat to the water to heal, like by Guiron or Gyaos?

Hell no!  Jiger is much more creative.  The first time the two monsters fight, Jiger fires quills into Gamera’s arms and legs so he can’t pull them into his shell and fly away, then rolls him over on his back and leaves him on a rocky island to starve to death!  Then we have to watch Gamera try to flip himself over again using his tail, screeching out in pain the entire time, and it truly is the sorriest I’ve ever felt for him.  Then at their second encounter, Jiger stabs Gamera in the shoulder with some kind of stinger, and Gamera staggers off in agony. There’s then this bizarre sequence where the kids take one of those tiny submarines down Gamera’s esophagus and find that Jiger has implanted a fucking embryo in his chest which is now devouring him from the inside out like one of those creepy spider wasps!  Holy shit! Since when did Gamera do body horror?

Gamera spends so much of this movie in obvious pain, I think it would probably be rather distressing for a child to watch. The part where the embryo is growing inside him, and Gamera turns white with his skeleton briefly visible before his glowing eyes go out, actually distressed me and I’m in my thirties.  I think this might be the only time I’ve actually seen the children in one of these movies give up on Gamera in what sounds like honest despair, when Hiroshi declares, “oh, he’s dead!” It feels weird to talk about a Gamera movie being dark, but this one gets there.

After the ridiculousness of Gamera vs Guiron, Gamera vs Jiger represents the series trying to regain some of its self-respect and the respect of its audiences (as demonstrated by the fact that the next installment was Gamera vs Zigra, it didn’t work).  The dark content is probably an intentional part of this, and it sits a little uneasily alongside the cheerful absurdity that naturally comes of this being a Gamera movie.  Sometimes it kind of works, but more often it really doesn’t.  The miniatures and matte paintings are as terrible as anything in Mighty Jack or, for that matter, in previous Gamera films.  The music includes classics like We’re Gonna Ride our Bicycles and of course the immortal Love Theme from Gamera, sung by a chorus of slightly tone-deaf grade-schoolers.  The pun ‘Wester Island’ is kind of awe-inspiring in its sheer lameness, and the dialogue includes technical language like ‘it’s based on super-ultra-violent waves!’  The foleyed-in footsteps sound like all the actors are wearing tap shoes.  The dubbing sucks.  The dubbing of the children, particularly Tommy’s little sister Susan, is so terrible it actually manages to suck and blow at the same time.

My favourite nugget of silliness is the scene in which one of the scientists shows a slide of an x-ray of Gamera.  How the fuck do you x-ray Gamera?!  Imagine the host sketch in which Joel and the bots try to figure it out!

But Gamera movies, like all kaiju eiga, live and die by their monsters and the fighting between them.  The Gamera of Gamera vs Jiger looks as dumb and rubbery as he ever did (I’m particularly fond of his belly-flop landings), but Jiger is actually pretty cool and mean-looking, with a surprisingly plausible quadrupedal gait – while Guiron always looked like a guy crawling around in a rubber costume, Jiger actually moves like a four-legged animal and I can only attribute this to a very gifted suit-maker.  Some of Jiger’s powers, like its quill-shooting, are quite interesting and scary.  Others, like its ability to fly by shooting steam out of its ears, are laugh-out-loud stupid.

The fights themselves are kind of interesting in that they are battles of wits, as well as monster fights.  Both Gamera and Jiger are depicted as observing their enemy and learning from what they see.  In the first fight, Gamera learns that Jiger will try to wrap its tail around his neck, and pulls his head into his shell at the last minute.  Jiger learns that Gamera must retract his limbs in order to fly, and uses the quills to prevent this.  The fact that both combatants are intelligent ups the ante quite a bit, without giving them the childlike human motivations that turned the monsters of Godzilla vs Megalon into cartoon characters.  The brutality I mentioned continues into the final fight, culminating in Gamera impaling Jiger in the face with the statue that started the whole thing!

Just as often, of course, the fights are ridiculous. There is a bit where Gamera throws Jiger up in the air, but Jiger lands on the other end of the fallen tower Gamera is standing on, launching him into some buildings in turn like something out of a kaiju-fueled Rube Goldberg machine.

The setpiece sequence of the film, and the one that sets it apart from any other Gamera movie, is the Fantastic Voyage bit where the two boys go inside him with the submarine to remove the Jiger embryo.  Fantastic Voyage was made in 1966, so I suspect it was indeed the inspiration.    Unfortunately, Gamera’s innards are not nearly as cool as anything in the earlier film – and in retrospect, Fantastic Voyage doesn’t even look that cool anymore.  Instead, the baby Jiger chases the kids around on an obvious stage set, among tunnels that aren’t nearly gooey enough to be something’s anatomy. The inside of Gamera’s lungs are made of inflated plastic bags with some algae inside them, and seeing the Jiger suit at its actual size is laughable.  For all that, though, the sequence is sometimes pretty tense, and when it fails at that it’s at least amusing.

I do like Gamera movies in general.  I mean, yeah, they’re not very good, they’re not particularly meaningful and they’re not gonna win any awards, but they’re fun to watch, fun to write about, and fun to heckle with friends.  I’d even say that Gamera vs Jiger is one of the better ones.  It doesn’t have the annoyingly irrelevant moral of Gamera vs Zigra, and a lot more money, effort, and creativity went into it than that movie or Gamera vs Guiron.  It helps a lot that the kids here are a little older – Hiroshi and Tommy are specifically described as being twelve years old, instead of the five or six-year-old Kenny and Helen from Zigra. The kids do keep ending up in places they don’t belong but for once the adults respond fairly realistically to this.

In reviewing Gamera vs Barugon I noted that insofar as Gamera symbolizes anything, it’s probably childlike faith in good overcoming evil.  Apparently I was right, because that is explicitly stated in the closing scene of Gamera vs Jiger – the adults admit that Hiroshi and Tommy were right about Gamera being the hero Japan needs, and that they should have believed in him.  This is still a weird attitude to take towards a giant monster that wrecks almost as much shit as Jiger does, but I guess that’s just something you have to accept about kaiju eiga.  There’s also some attempt at a statement with the world’s fair setting, in that what Gamera has saved is a place where all humanity can come together to learn from each other.  Gamera movies do seem to be basically optimistic in outlook, positing that humans are basically good and higher forces are looking out for us, and that’s probably one of the things I like about them.

As one final note, the movie claims that ‘Wester Island’ is the last remaining bit of the lost continent of Mu.  Godzilla vs Megalon did something similar with Easter Island and ‘Seatopia’, and was made only three years later… did one inspire another, or were Easter Island and Lost Continents just big things in Japan in the early 70’s?  If the former, that represents a rather curious inversion: Gamera began his life as a ripoff of Godzilla, but many years later we find Godzilla movies stealing ideas from Gamera instead!

[knightofbalance-13]

I Didn’t

http://dudeblade.tumblr.com/post/163454403646/so-kob-how-exactly-did-you-debunk-my-claim

1. That was not the argument at hand in the OP: The argument was whetehr or not the shows you listed where better than RWBY.

And 2. I actually did compare RWBY to them. And I even pointed this out the last time you tried this and said how it was an example that RWBY stands up even to professional shows.

But, guess it’s easier to fight a strawman huh?

Primarily out of curiosity. To see if they still held up even after all these years, and to see how they compare to RWBY. IMPO, they are BETTER. Oh wait, that’s an opinion that makes RWBY seem mediocre in comparison, no WONDER you think that all I do is bash RWBY despite the fact that I want to love the show. It makes SO Much SENSE NOW.

No, you were talking in a very affirmative and factual way in the OP, meaning you were claiming yourself to be right. (https://knightofbalance-13.tumblr.com/post/162855264440/yes-yes-it-was)

And I realized that the show, Beast Wars, one of the very FIRST 3D Animated shows ever aired, is better than RWBY.

So no, you were not saying an opinion, you were trying to pass off an opinion as fact. As you are still doing now. And half of your argument is strawmaning me for pointing this out by twisting the facts: if you are so right, you wouldn’t need to do this.

1. So, if Cinder is supposed to be hated, why are we shown her having regrets about things? Why are we shown her to be in pain? These are things that are done to give us a reason to sympathize with a villain, but we have yet to actually be SHOWN or even TOLD what her reasons are for wanting power. She’s supposed to be sympathetic in those scenes in Vol 4, but earlier she acts like a villain who is aware that she’s evil, and is okay with that. Also, the Joker is a force of nature, no villain can top him. But Rampage utterly DEMOLISHES Cinder in the ‘motive’ department.

because she was give n some humanity, some flaws, to make her less two dimensional. By this logic, because the Joker has a tragic backstory, we are meant to feel sorry for him when that is clearly not the case.

And here’s a problem I stated in the argument: Beast Wars is finished. RWBy is not. In the future, we could very well get more information on Cinder’s motives. You can’t make judgements like these until you have all the facts: And yet you are making broad strokes about RWBY.

No...The Joker is not a “Force Of Nature” villain: Darkseid is an example of that type of villain. The Joker is the “Insane, tricky, unpredictable, chaotic trickster” type of villain. This is a problem you have here: You cannot tell the difference between two types of characters. It’s like saying Shinji Ikari is a better protagonist than Goku: they are not compatible. In fact: That in and of itself is a problem here. Rampage was built t be the “Tragic insane” character whereas Cinder is the “power hungry manipulator” villain: they are not compatible thus the argument comes down to who you like subjectively better and in an argument, that means jack shit.

And another thing: You STILL don’t explain jackshit abut your side: How does rampage crush Cinder in motive? Why does he? You can’t just claim these things as fact.

2. Beast Wars IS better. For starters, the writers NEVER withheld valuable information, and they never relied on forced humor. Not to mention the fact that the characters are fleshed out, and get more than one episode in the limelight.

Okay, so first you say that you are stating your opinion and now you are repeating what you said earlier but as fact...Dudeblade, you can’t even go a paragraph without contradicting yourself.

Okay...So? How is that bad? How is not withholding information bad in RWBY or Best Wars? in fact: How do you know withholding info wouldn’t make Beast Wars better or not make RWBY better? No explanation? FIne, your argument is invalid.

How is the humor forced or not forced? What is the tone of Beats Wars and how does it ? Any examples? No? Then I claim bias against RWBY again.

And RWBY isn’t finished: Stop making jumps in logic just to suit your narrative.

3. This is because RW/BY has a cultish following of fans who refuse to see the bad in the show. Like you. You claim that RT isn’t homophobic when they literally repeated the same unfunny “fag” joke in Camp Camp TWICE! And this is just proving my point. “If it’s professionally made, but has a lower rating on IMDb, then we can compare it to RW/BY“ - That’s you. “If it was professionally made, but has a higher rating than RW/BY, then it isn’t fair to compare the two.” - That’s also you.

And I can claim that Beast Wars has a cultist following fueled by Nostalgia and it’d hold the same weight as yours: none at all. because neither of us provide any evidence. In fact, I can say that you are biased against RWBY and then as proof point out all points in which you ignore aspects of RWBY (such as being incomplete, different types of villians and how the shows are structured) or never give examples (humor, motives, characters as well as action, vocals, audio and animation) in this very post in order to declare Beats Wars better.

I can also point out the fact that you call Camp Camp unfunny but admit to watching South Park and the SImpsons were they made those exact same jokes.

And no, I am not. As we will see latter down the line, I actually compare RWBY to higher rated shows. You are the only one who refuses to acknowledge RWBY as being professional until you can say that it is worse than something else.

Here, let me do it right now. Jimmy is the smart kid who feels like an outcast because of his intillect - Something that people can relate to because they can feel like an outcast for simply being BETTER than others at something. Carl is the kid with the medical conditions and weird obsession, which everyone has. Sheen is the guy who hero worships a fictional character, much like how you worship miles and Kerry. Cindy is the girl who is jealous that her title of “The Smartest” was toppled, and Libby has an obsession over music - something that EVERYONE has, or at least KNOWS a person who is.

Except that I don’t feel like an outcast because of my intellect, in fact, it wasn’t because I had something over other people but rather I LACKED something from them. So Jimmy would seem pretentious and entitled to me. Not everyone has a weird obsession and definitely doesn’t have medical conditions. And you missed the ACTUAL chance to be right and say “Kamina or Simon The Digger”, two characters I heavily look up to. Instead, you bring up an attack on me that makes you look like an ass.

Cindy just comes off as a brat to me because I LIKE it when someone is smarter than me: it allows me to see what I am doing wrong and improve. And Libby’s obsession with music is literally the only thing I can relate to.

See the problem Dudeblade? Not everyone THINKS your way, not everyone AGREES with you: In fact, most people don’t.

Going off of your point: I can say the same to the characters in RWBy. Everyone has been like Ruby at some point, blissfully believing in a good world. A lot of people have parental problems like Weiss (like you), a lot of people can relate to trying to fight against the world while trying to NOT become like their enemy and a lot of people can relate to Yang’s depression (as I have and I know you have.) Even if you bring up my previous point: That just means the two shows go after different things.

But if you insist on this, let me ask you: Name a trait of Jimmy’s that isn’t smart or condescending. Name a trait of Carl’s beside sick and weird. Name a trait of Sheen’s beyond stupidity and obsession. Because I can with RWBY: Ruby’s issues with dealing with the world not being what she thought it was, her eagerness to make friends and her guilt about putting people around her in danger. Weiss has her overcoming her racism, learning to put aside her grievances with Ruby to work with her and become her best friend and her admiration of her sister Winter. Blake has her cowardice, her martyr complex, her issues with Adam as well as her inability to let people help her. yang has her maturity, her depression and overcoming it, her good nature, her relationship with Ruby and her father, her duality with her mother and her tendency to be harsh towards those she cares about. You do not give an example of how they are better characters beyond being relateable which RWBY has as well.

Oh hey, look! MORE proof that IMDB ratings are all that matter. Despite the fact that you claim that LoK has an unfair advantage when it has a higher rating.

1. Because they are factual and the only place RWBY shares a page with all the examples.

And 2. I pointed out the exact same advantages that the other three had as well:

And unlike Beast Wars which is a part of an existing franchise, complete and had more professional backing: RWBY didn’t and still doesn’t. Again, while this is amazing of Beast Wars, RWBY is still factually rated higher so your opinion doesn’t hold much weight.

And this while being completed and backed by a popular network whereas, again, RWBY is NOT. SO even with all those advantages, RWBY still beats it out.

And it aired on Cartoon Network and is complete. So your statement fails.

I bring them up in BOTH sides of the coin: You only argue them when they have the higher ratings.

More proof that you only care about ratings when it comes to comparisons.

Contradicted when I demanded that you explain why it was better right BEFORE that as well as the fact that I bring up this right at the end:

And the only one I really fond impressive is Beast Wars. Storm hawks and Jimmy Neutron are both utterly crushed by RWBY in teh ratings, who doesn’t have network backing, isn’t a part of an existing franchise and isn’t complete so it can still go up.

And again: ratings are factual. You cannot make them up nor can you fake them. They are a factual way of quantifying a series' quality. You have yet to disprove that.

YOU SEE! You just proved my point. You just said that the other shows don’t matter because they got crushed by ratings, but when it’s RWBY that’s getting crushed, then it’s unfair because they had “network backing.” NEWS FLASH! - LoK got SCREWED OVER by the network. Your argument is ALREADY contradicted by actual facts.

Except that these exact points you bring up were brought up with the previous three when they had lower ratings: You are only now arguing them because you have a chance at twisting the facts.

And how was LOK screwed over? Because it got so low ratings that Nickolodean pulled it off the air? (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Trivia/TheLegendOfKorra) Wouldn’t a show getting pulled or canceled be a sign of it being bad normally unless proven otherwise, which is not the case here? Especially since TLA never did?

Again, because people like YOU keep claiming that it’s “unfair” to compare RWBY to things like LoK or SU. RWBY has the advantage of not having to deal with censors, and being able to go back to fix things they are aware would make fans confused, but they don’t take advantage of it. Which is a problem considering that you seem to ignore the fact that other shows have to deal with censors, and don’t have the luxury of being able to hire TFS or Funimation VA for one-shot characters. when SU uses a guest star, it’s for a character that is special, and is likely to return. RWBY? - “Oh hey! Let’s hire TFS voice actors for these characters” “Great, which ones?” “These guys.” “But, they’ll only be there for one episode…And they hardly have any lines.” “Exactly! We’ll get the recognition of USING TFS actors to voice characters,and NOT have to worry about paying them so much” - That? That was the (probable) thought process that went into the idea of using TFS actors. Though, it’s also my cynicism talking as well.

I claim it is unfair...then proceed to compare them to RWBY with the same standards that I did with the previous three while you refuse to argue ratings until they are higher than RWBY’s? And...so what about censors? Stuff that the censors deal with nowadays don't concern the quality of a show: Lesbians and black people do not make a good show. They are inconsequential to a show’s quality.

And that’s true...only Tara Strong, one of the most iconic voices in the business.

And a constant compliant with RWBY has always been the voice acting: So wouldn’t hiring more professional actors fix the problem? So attempting to fix a problem is bad now?

And you just admitted to having bias being prevalent in your argument: Why should anyone take what you say here seriously?

Much like how RWBY isn’t even noteworthy enough to get a review by the Nostalgia Critic despite LoK and SU doing so. And considering that you used the words “mostly just using Smash Bros brawl for acting” when you conveniently ignore the stolen assets that RWBY uses, I’m guessing you don’t even know the story at all.

... Nostalgia critic doesn’t review cartoons anymore, especially such recent ones. That's Doug Walker and those are Vlogs, personal opinion. Not factual reviews.

And that “assest stealing” has been disproven (https://lovenotefromcoco.tumblr.com/post/155633293739/slashmaiddeviantartcomartrwby-wtf-645284611). A RWBY fan would know this.

Here’s another thing: Just because RWBY is the first American-made anime DOESN’T automatically excuse any of the mistakes that it constantly makes. I know that’s a hard concept for you, but I can do this about Beast Wars and the mistakes that it made despite being one of the first 3D animated shows to ever air.

Okay...never said it did: You were just trying to devalue the accomplishments of RWBY so I showed accomplishments you couldn’t devalue.

Ahem; Tigerhawk got killed off too early, we never got to explore a whole lot on Megatron’s dragon mode, Blackarachnia whines about not being trusted too much despite having a lot more bad blood with the other Maximals, they used TIME TRAVEL as part of the plot, and Rampage’s caring nature wasn’t explored that much.

And yet you claim it to be better than RWBY when I see many of the same mistakes you claim RWBY has done in here. And when I did this in the past, you still called me a fanboy so why should this be different for you?

There, I just listed off some of the things in Beast Wars that were mistakes/irritating. But unlike RWBY, these are just mine, whereas most of the gripes about RWBY are shared by most of the rwde tag.

And are these shared by most of the RWBY tag on Tumblr, let alone circles that do not include Tumblr? Are they shared by the critics of RWBY or that one jackass FMF? No, so by your own logic, you are still wrong here.

Grow the fuck up kob. RWBY isn’t “Magically exempt from criticism” like you say. Neither are miles, Kerry, Grey, and the rest of crwby. They have to be held accountable for their bullshit excuses and mistakes, or they’ll only receive praise from the likes of you and the rest of the cultish fndm. Meaning that they’ll keep making the same mistakes over. And over. And over.

Funny you say that: I did in fact criticize RT in my Volume 4 review (https://team-crtq.tumblr.com/post/162758524659/volume-4-review). I’m not the one lying, attacking people, being hypocritical, calling someone racist in the tags for no reason other than Ad Hominin and attacking people. I’ m not the one who refuses to say anything but one side of a conversation, refuse to do the same for other shows and then calls everyone who disagrees with them a “cult.” That’s just you.

You failed in the very title of your post so I don’t know what you were expecting.

[stevenuniversallyreviews]

Episode 51*: Open Book

"WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT”

As you know if you’ve read this blog’s description and/or certain other reviews, I’m a children’s librarian (surprise, someone writing about youth media works in youth media). The passion that consumes Connie when talking about her favorite series is something I’m therefore accustomed to, both as a reflection of myself and as the ideal reaction of one of my kids. Still, while sheer enthusiasm may be wonderful in real life, it makes for a pretty dull plot if left unattended, and I love how Marble Madness and Open Book manage to show two distinct ways nerding out can go wrong.

Connie’s past frustration with Steven’s lack of shared fervor and familiarity with book series basics like reading in order (unlike cartoon series, which can apparently be watched in a variety of orders, ahem) is enough to fill a subplot, but Open Book needs to be fueled by the kind of rage that fans reserve for the content itself. And sure enough, Connie’s minute-long rant about the ending of The Spirit Morph Saga is a thing of beauty. Seriously, I clocked it, she’s rambling for fifty-eight seconds, nearly a tenth of the episode’s total runtime.

What she, and perhaps we, don’t notice is that Steven isn’t on the same page. It’s easy to attribute his grimace with Connie’s general zeal rather than a firm disagreement, and said zeal is endearing to nerds like us, making it just as easy to forgive her for not genuinely asking for Steven’s opinion. But this is a series about empathy, and Connie is definitely in the wrong for steamrolling the conversation.

Far from making her a monster, or even a jerk, this mistake humanizes Connie as any good narrative mistake does: I’m sure we’re all guilty of going on and on about something we love without paying enough attention to the person we’re talking at. It adds a subtle lesson to an episode that doesn’t spare much time for subtlety, a lesson that fans of all ages could stand to hear more.

Mind you, just because Open Book isn’t very subtle doesn’t mean it’s bad. Something is clearly up with Connie when they enter Rose’s Room and she keeps delegating the details of their adventure to Steven’s imagination instead of hers—a benefit of her impassioned speech is how obvious it is when that passion evaporates. But she needs to be blatant for the eeriness of her behavior to sink in, and for our occasionally obtuse hero to understand that something is clearly wrong.

Even more obvious is the romantic subtext of Fake Connie Connterfeit’s final conflict with Steven, between her wedding dress and her menacing “I know you like her.” But that’s what makes the twist that he’s hiding his true feelings about the book all the more satisfying. Steven and Connie’s relationship often veers platonic, which is terrific, but the crew gets great mileage out of remembering its origins as a crush (see: An Indirect Kiss, Alone Together). Even if he acts younger than his canonical thirteen, he’s still mature enough for crushes to be a factor in his life. Connie can make Steven feel embarrassed like no other character, and this dynamic makes Connterfeit’s words and Steven’s reaction hit us right in the gut.

Is Open Book a horror episode? I lean towards no, but it’s certainly unnerving in the way only Rose’s Room can be. Connterfeit’s eeriness is amplified by an unfortunately unavailable distortion of Connie’s theme, and Connterfeit’s slightly off delivery devolving into a frightening glitch (on top of the aforementioned book rant) cements the episode as the series’s best Grace Rolek showcase so far. Sure, she’ll outdo herself soon when she finally gets to sing, but credit where credit’s due, she’s amazing here.

For better and worse, this is the fewest number of characters we’ll see in a Steven Universe episode, with only three (four if you count Floaty Pink Whale’s silent cameo) and two voice actors between them because one is a clone. While this allows for laser focus on the story it’s telling, the lack of subplot or side characters also forces some narrative padding in a way that’s rare for a show with such a tight time constraint. Steven and Connterfeit’s imaginary second act adventures drag on a couple scenes too long, and the chase leading up to the finale takes forever; the latter stretch is especially unfortunate for Steven’s repeated variations of “I don’t want this” after it’s been made obvious that Connterfeit is doing the opposite of what he wants now so he should really stop saying stuff like that. Yes, lack of subtlety isn’t always bad, but in this case it definitely hurts.

And don’t get me wrong, this one’s a ton of fun. Steven’s falcon suit is a wonder to behold, Connie’s gusto rules, and even Connterfeit gets some humor between bouts of uncomfortable strangeness. Moreover, I can’t really imagine a sideplot that could fit into this story without some serious rejiggering, so I see why they’d forgo one.

Still, the pacing suffers regardless of how fun Open Book often is; it’s great that the crew gave this format a shot, but I’m glad they returned to a structure that makes the most of their many wonderful characters. Steven Universe has a killer roster and an insane batting average for well-structured eleven-minute plots, so no need to adjust the formula too dramatically.

It’s cool to watch Open Book alongside future episodes like Tiger Philanthropist and Rocknaldo for their varying perspectives on fan culture. All three have the same general message of fans benefiting from avoiding extremes, but while Open Book is a more general message, the latter two episodes seem aimed squarely at Steven Universe fans themselves. Ronaldo and Lars are always going to come across a bit rougher around the edges than Connie, but honestly all three are pretty sympathetic stand-ins for people obsessed, regardless of how frustrating the fandom (or any fandom, really) can be.

Some people just like schmaltz, and the world would be a better place if hardcore types accepted this as easily as Connie. To a degree. Too much sugar (as opposed to too much Sugar, which might not exist) will eventually make you throw up.

Future Vision

Steven’s art style, complete with plus-sign teeth, will be explored further in Shirt Club, which takes place after Open Book in both the intended and the aired orders.

This is the second time Connie’s gotten her hands on a sword, which is two times too many not to be foreshadowing some sort of training montage at least.

Together Forever is just plain mean to Open Book. It was uncomfortable enough for Connie in a wedding dress to torment Steven about his secret feelings before we learn that his love of weddings has some serious downsides.

I’ve never been to this…how do you say…school?

Okay Hilary now you’re just pandering to me. 

I guess you could read it that way…

It’s nice to see Open Book come right after fellow Connie episode Full Disclosure, and Steven’s had way more time to realistically finish the Spirit Morph Saga than if this episode immediately followed Rose’s Scabbard. That last book alone was 917 pages long!

However, the break between Full Disclosure and Joy Ride bleeds momentum from establishing the new status quo. Season 2′s Homeworld pacing is wonky regardless (looming threat Malachite is ignored for most of it then jumps back in out of nowhere as Season 3 begins) but I can imagine some folks prefer a more direct link between the first two intended episodes. Still, Open Book partially relies on the TV ban that Joy Ride sees lifted, so it has a pretty limited airing window.

We’re the one, we’re the ONE! TWO! THREE! FOUR!

Open Book is the first of many early Season 2 (viewing order) victims of the preceding season’s cream of the crop. It’s a good, but not great episode; with better pacing it might be ranked higher.

Top Fifteen

Steven and the Stevens

Mirror Gem

Lion 3: Straight to Video

Alone Together

The Return

Jailbreak

Rose’s Scabbard

Coach Steven

Giant Woman

Winter Forecast

On the Run

Warp Tour

Maximum Capacity

The Test

Ocean Gem

Love ‘em

Laser Light Cannon

Bubble Buddies

Tiger Millionaire

Lion 2: The Movie

Rose’s Room

An Indirect Kiss

Space Race

Garnet’s Universe

Future Vision

Marble Madness

Political Power

Full Disclosure

Like ‘em

Gem Glow

Frybo

Arcade Mania

So Many Birthdays

Lars and the Cool Kids

Onion Trade

Steven the Sword Fighter

Beach Party

Monster Buddies

Keep Beach City Weird

Watermelon Steven

The Message

Open Book

Enh

Cheeseburger Backpack

Together Breakfast

Cat Fingers

Serious Steven

Steven’s Lion

Joking Victim

Secret Team

No Thanks!

     4. Horror Club      3. Fusion Cuisine      2. House Guest      1. Island Adventure

[datingdummies-blog]

The Angler

I hate to start this chapter off with yet another cartoon movie, however had it not been for this movie shedding light on this deep ocean character I would have never even known it existed.  I’m talking about the all too classic, Finding Nemo.  Dory and Marlin have this moment where they are both captivated by “the light” as they draw closer, and closer they start to see it’s just a rouse.  It’s actually an Anglerfish ready to feast on an unsuspecting clown fish and regal tang.  Which I for one, being its a kid movie am glad they came to their senses quickly and retreated prior to being eaten.  I however wasn’t as fortunate. 

Anglerfish have a fleshy growth that grows from its head and lures its prey in.  This carnivorous fish has a huge head with an evil crescent shaped mouth and long fang like teeth that are angled inward in such a way that the prey is trapped and not going anywhere fast,  other than to its digestive system.  Male Anglerfish even have specialized eyesight built for identifying its mates (or in my case victims) in the dark environments.  Just a couple reasons why this type of man has the perfect nickname of “The Angler.”

I can’t really describe this type without first giving you a little idea of what my life looked like when I became this certain types, type.  I had landed myself in the ICU for ten days with something as simple as tonsillitis, that went bad and FAST.  I was VERY sick to say the least.  Actually, pretty much on my death bed surrounded with friends and family visiting to say their “goodbyes.”  I went into septic shock with severe acute organ failure and had a blood clot I named “Boris” who would later go on to fight my surgically placed PICC line “Pierre.”  I remember cracking jokes on a daily basis as I do when going through anything hard.  Hence, why I'm writing a dating comedy book.  I nicknamed my ailments all of which had some pretty gnarly battles to which the strongest would survive.  I had an imaginary relationship and marriage with the man who came in to draw my blood every morning for my blood culture.  He was going to break me out and we were going to have ten kids and live happily ever after.  I’m also pretty sure the nurses thought I was either intensely crazy or just plain fun.  Either way I was sick and going no where fast so I had to make it fun.  

While mastering the art of paper airplane making, watching every super hero sci-fi film Kaiser had to offer and making up fantasies and people only I could see, I also was talking to a man (yes, this time a real man) I would in just a few short months grow to hate.  But in this moment I was infatuated!  He was a tall, had a body builder build with an amazing smile.  He also managed to text me just about every insane minute I was in the hospital.  We talked endlessly into the wee hours of the morning and the relationship was off to a very quick and amazing start!  This specific type is known for mainly his narcisstic ways.   I don't just say that because he is built and tall and beautiful.  I say this because of the mind fuck the next three months would give me leaving me alone, wondering when I would get my next hit of the drug he had to have been giving me during the duration of our relationship.  I was drawn to him, and felt that I needed him.  I played into his hand perfectly.  I was exactly what he was looking for.   Someone vulnerable, naive and enough passion and happiness for life that he would have no problem sucking the life right out of me leaving me with nothing and damn near unrecognizable to even myself.  

 For those of you wondering what I mean by mind fuck, it means you are so in love and enamored with someone you look past the negative qualities and the red flags that are posted with warning signs to boot and you keep moving forward, fully knowing you’re heading for a very steep cliff where you will bleed, and death is certain. See real, true narcissists have a game they like to play and are fully aware they are playing.  They start the relationship a perfect specimen designed specifically for you.   They have done their homework.  They know your ins and outs and are just waiting to hook, line and sink your ass.  They first make you entirely dependent on them.  This stage is called the Idealization stage.  In these moments you are being showered with attention and affection.  You wonder if you have ever even been loved before because this love was so different from any other kind of love you have ever had.  This manipulation technique is to lay the ground work to make you completely dependent on him so when he takes it away it will hurt that much more.  

Little did I know I was looking right into the light and being mesmerized by its beauty only to be awoken from this dream like sequence to sharp fang like inward shaped teeth with an evil crescent shaped mouth staring back at me ready to pounce, and thats exactly what he did, pounce.    

Anglerfish males when finding his mate or a woman he deems fit to be his mate he bites into her skin and releases an enzyme  that digest the skin of his mouth and her body, fusing the pair down to the blood-vessel level. 

The next stage of the typical narcissistic relationship is when the victim starts to uncover the real man hidden behind the pretty light that drew you closer. This is when you uncover the man behind the curtain.  Sadly for you this is not a game show and it won't be bachelor number one, two or three. He will never show you these things, you will simply stumble upon them because he's not very good at hiding his tracks.  When you do finally find these things about him you approach him immediately.  Hurt, broken and confused and you confront him only to leave the conversation not even sure how it was resolved.  In fact you walked away and now you feel guilty, and like you’re to blame for even finding this material, he thought he had hidden so deep.  This is called “blame shifting.”  This is a cowards way out. You will spend one entire minute talking about your pain and hurt and what he did and then you will spend fifty nine minutes defending yourself about everything you've ever done in your life.  You won't feel validated or heard in anyway.  You’re his main source of fuel at this moment whether you intend to feed him positive or negative energy.  So of course when he blame shifts you, and turns things around making you enemy number one taking grenades for his hurtful actions, you actually walk away feeling you have betrayed and hurt him. This is when I started to slowly see the cliff edge coming at me and the only way out was down.  It all came crashing down on me like a ton of bricks or in this case as the mouth was shutting and the darkness was seeping in.  

The next stage of this type is known as the devaluation phase because at the start of the relationship he built you up so high and had you on this pedestal that now you need to be knocked down a couple feet because he's become bored with you and now just the sight of your face is repulsive.  Unfortunately for me, during this phase is when I had a really hard night as a 911 dispatcher.  See, every 911 dispatcher has certain types of calls that trigger something for them.  Never in the moment, but later when reflecting as we do driving home we start to realize wow, that was a really fucked up thing I heard today.  I had one of these moments, and unfortunately for me I was being devalued and he had nothing for me.  I asked, begged and pleaded him to just hold me, love me, be there for me.  He couldn’t be bothered with my issues and would go on to feel repulsed by even the thought of my touch.  All the things he loved and praised me for being in the start of the relationship were the things he now hated about me.  

The last and final stage is the discard phase.  This is when you are being thrown  away and abandoned.  He won't directly break up with you because he needs to siphon as much energy as he can from you.  You're going to have to be the one who walks away.  The one who grows the back bone and says “no more.” This was the phase where I packed my bags, loaded up my car and drove away never to return.  It was during this phase I said “I am too full of life, and I worked way to hard to leave my marriage to be half loved by anyone.”  I won't tolerate it and anyone else going through this should never tolerate it either.  The moment I was driving away I remember sighing, knowing it would be a hard road to recovery but I was relieved to be away.  It took me a long time to recover from such a short relationship.  I still have moments where I am angry at myself for how much I allowed this type to control my life.  I am stronger for this man having been in my life.  I also am aware of what to look out for in the future.  As I said with Three-Pete, I will always care for Angler but he will never be allowed back into my life again.  

I am thankful to him for showing me what real love isn't.  Real love isn't immediate, its worked on constantly.  Real love doesn't abandon you the minute you need it most.  A normal person doesn't just turn love off, but narcissists can turn it off just as easily as they turned it on. Lastly, please always remember that real love isn't painful.  Anglers use love as a tool to con people just as the Anglerfish uses their light to con other unsuspecting fish to come closer.  

While this was a very painful time in my life followed by many internal break downs I just want you to leave you remembering when dealing with this type of woman or man, that every cell in our entire body is destroyed and replaced every seven years. Isn't it comforting to know one day you will have a body he or she will have never even touched!  

XOXO Jess 

[smokeybrandreviews]

I Mustn’t Run Away

I’ve been binging through a bunch of youtube stuff lately and i stumbled across a guy named Bennet the sage. He reviews and explains old timey anime. I think he has a ten year rule or whatever, like, it has be be at least a decade old or something. I often disagree with his synopsis but he’s literally a neckbeard beta so i guess he HAS to hate everything. That’s the most 4chan thing i’ve ever said but it kind of describes him perfectly. Sometimes he’s on point and executes his argument but he hates EVA. It’s hard for me to take his arguments, academic or not, to heart because, i mean, Evangelion is the best, man. Sure, it’s a bit pretentious, maybe a little heavy handed at times, maybe a little convoluted, and mad heavy with symbolism, but the characters and narrative more than make up for that. Moreso, it’s cultural impact has been mad profound. If you don’t like EVA,  that’s cool. If you think it’s trash, okay. But to mitigate it to the throwaways of the genre, and you just don’t understand anime. Watch his episode about End of Evangelion. Cat is on point. Everything he says is pretty accurate. The thing is, kid glazes over all of the reasoning behind why EVA is the way it is. He just immediately goes into a rather glib review, of a re-imaging of the last two episodes of a show that got so existential, it needed to basically be re-shot just so people could digest Anno’s vision. it feels like he gives a rather shallow critique, based two episodes of a show, that’s as deep as the Pacific ocean.

Sage ignores Anno’s mental breakdown and spiral into depression, causing the tonal shift in the later episodes of the series. After Anno’s mom died, cat had an existential crisis and that uncertainty bled into his show. HIS show. Anno has a habit of spiraling into depressing when he creates becuase he puts o much of himself into a project. If Anno doesn’t need a vacation when he’s done with a project, it’s usually not one of the great projects. Sage ignores the fact that Japan is not a christian country so everything about the dominate American religion is window dressing there. it’s not taboo to use that superficial christ imagery to convey a story about humanity being self destructive and fickle because, to the Japanese people and Anno, himself, that’s all we are. Christianity, and Instrumentality by extension, is shallow because we, as a people, are shallow. Instrumentality is our lazy attempt to better ourselves, to evolve beyond the fickle human existence without having to actually engage with that human experience. And the 14 year old boy who supposed to Jesus us into the next stage, reneges. He opts for the biggest “F*CK YOU” in human existence because he’s an obtuse, unlikable, whining, douche-nozzle. Shinji chooses to force everyone into dealing with his teenage angst rather than accept people into the omni-bubble of the hive mind that is forced evolution. EVA is a scathing, cynical, and relatively apt description of what it means to be a growing adolescence in Japan, conveyed to us in the form of a post apocalyptic mecha series, wrapped in a healthy dose of Judaeo-Christian imagery. Or, at least, that’s one of the many interpretations and the one i personally gleaned from the series. Cats have written theses about this show. You get what you put into Eva and he refused to make the effort. Interestingly enough, FLCL could be the same goddamn story, just seen from a different set of eyes, which makes sense because Tsurumaki was Anno’s junior at Gainax way back when. Fooly Cooly just went light on the depression and religion but WAY heavy on the sex and teenage rebellion.

Neon Genesis Evangelion is a goddamn masterpiece and it’s wild to me that people are too lazy to invest in it enough to understand why it’s a goddamn masterpiece. Listening to Bennett the Sage go in on it was ridiculous. Every one is entitled to their opinion and i get that but i almost immediately knew this cat was full of sh*t. Dude doesn't like Eva. He doesn’t like Tenchi. He doesn’t like Vampire Hunter D. He doesn’t like The Big O. He doesn’t like Elfen Lied. He doesn’t like Inuyasha. It’s almost as if you have to actually participate in the narrative, kid isn’t interested. But he LOVES Ninja Scroll. Ninja Scroll is awful! it’s all murder and rape. Literally, that’s it. If that doesn’t tell you what this cat is about, you’re not paying attention. When he admitted most of his positive critiques err toward “Classic” Toonami anime, everything made sense as to why he was so goddamn ridiculous; He’s a Toonami kid. His first foray into anime was, apparently, Pilot Candidate at the tender age of 12. In 2002. I have been watching anime since 1988. In 2002, i was 18.

The old stuff he reviews, your Gusmith Cats, Bubblegum Crisis, and Burn Up!, all of that stuff from the golden age of OVAs, i was watching fresh. I remember when i first got a bootleg of A.D. Police. I thought it was brilliant! When Bubblegum Crisis Tokyo 2040 came out, it was nostalgic for me and became one of my favorite shows, mostly because i had already digested it’s predecessors. it’s actually influenced one of my personal tales greatly as well as one of my all-time favorite films, Ghost In The Shell. I grew up with the popularity of anime. I grew with the culture. I enjoy Bakuretsu Tenshi because it feels like an updated piece of the Bubblegum franchise. I imagine Bennett would hate it because he’s a goddamn Toonami kid. Toonami kind of killed anime for the generation after me because of the insipid shows that were aired. Don’t get me wrong, DBZ is a force. It’s culturally relevant and Goku might as well be Japanese Superman, but, let’s be honest, it’s a one trick pony. That trick is dope as f*ck but it’s a trick that has hindered the culture ever since. Because of DBZ, we got Naruto and One Piece, and BLEACH and, more importantly, Weeaboos. Weeaboos take the most superficial, the easiest to digest of anime, and hold it to such high esteem, it’s crazy frustration. These are the cats the regale Attack On Titian like it’s high art. It’s not. These are the cats that made SAO a thing while slighting it’s direct inspiration, the Dot.Hack franchise. These motherf*cking children are the types of people to try and convince me that Samurai Champloo is the greatest thing since the second coming because of Hip Hop music and Watanabe. Look, i get it. Bebop and Champloo are great. They’re not the Big and Tupac of anime though. Have you ever taken in Angel Egg? That sh*t is a mindf*ck and better than almost any episode of either one of those shows. But that Bebop/Champ Fandom is too fervent to tolerate and they’ve ruined the experience for me. Just like they did for Inuyasha. Just like they did for FMA. And Bennett the Sage is like the poster child for these first generation weeaboos. It’s wild to see.

He apparently doesn’t like Dragon Ball Z either. This f*ckboy, man...

It’s crazy to think that there are anime fans that have never seen Ghost In The Shell. The movie, not Stand Alone Complex. It’s ridiculous to me that there are kids, now, getting into the culture, who think that Kirito is the greatest anime protagonist ever. It’s insane to me that Akira, one of the most influential movies ever created, gets slighted because it came out in the 80s for more “mature” subject matter in shows like Tokyo Ghoul. Cats nowadays think that anime has to follow a formula but, when i was coming up, the only formula anime had was the boundless possibilities, locked inside of the imagination of their creators. There wasn’t a saturation of harem antagonist, insipid Slice of Life tropes, or Travel to another world and be an ultimate bad-ass, nonsense. Production values were generally on point and the wild uniqueness of early anime was tantamount. I mean, there’s no way Angel’s Egg gets made today. You want to talk about being saturated in Judaeo-Christian imagery, go watch that sh*t and come talk to me about it.

I adore anime. All of it. I’ve watched it long enough to appreciate all facets of it. There are moe-blob shows i adore like Chobits and Lucky star. Some of my favorite serials are mad pretentious and crazy convoluted like Elfen Lied or Evangelion or Deadman Wonderland or Mirai Nikki. Still, other like Erased and A Silent Voice get a spot on my all-time list because of their raw emotion and gentle portrayal of what it means to be vulnerable. Of course Space Dandy, Onepunch Man, and BLEACH all have a special place in my heart and even the grand daddy of mainstream anime, Dragon Ball Z gets recognition. My point is, i love this sh*t man. Love it. All of it. So to see someone who jut adopted it as a hobby in 2002 but acts like he’s been in it for decades is wildly infuriating to me. His analyses for most of these shows is the analyses of a child. Because he IS a child. Because he came up in that Toonami era of anime where everything had to be profitable and accessible. I didn’t have that. I saw Gilgamesh and Melody of Oblivion and Bio-Bosted Armor Guyver and Wicked City before i saw even one episode of Naruto. I saw Evangelion for the first time when i was 12, way back in, like, 96. This kid was watching Pilot Candidate and f*cking Blue Gender. He was at the mercy of the Cartoon Network zeitgeist. I was not. And it rains through almost all of his reviews. He’s looking at shows i watched with fresh eyes, through first generation weeaboo goggles and it’s frustrating because of how shortsighted that view can be. It’s cats like this, i think, that have slowly strangled the life out of anime. They choked the creativity out of a once wild and unique medium because of their stifled, pedestrian, tastes.

Toonami did a lot for making the culture accessible but i don’t think it was all a good thing. Toonami created a culture of formula and profit rather than creativity and uniqueness. And cats like Bennett the Sage eat it up. Cats like Bennett the Sage fuel this crippled machine. Cats like Bennett the Sage are what’s wrong with anime.