#i somehow read the first part as

[megaemprezzz]

Besties idk what I'm meant to be doing here ngl

[miciiq]

Got Aventurine in 60 pulls!

He’s so auxhuehuche I’m so happy I have him now

[frobby]

Fukigen na mononokean doesnt really fit cleanly into the gagmangaverse but it would be really funny if it did because ashiya is implied to be related to ashiya douman

[my-thoughts-and-junk]

the thing about chilshi is that i see it as super one-sided on chilchuck's part and that's some shit he's bringing to the grave with him

[that-foul-legacy-lover]

today just will not let me rest huh. reasons are in the tags but i get very emotional just be warned

[neolxzr]

you do see my point though, I was saying that yes a piece of media can have a character imply they are queer, but it’s frustrating when they won’t explicitly confirm such, because of (in the case of… checks app store purchase statistics…. A multi million dollar game franchise!) the need to market to as many people as possible. Shumika will never be “canon” because some people just don’t like shumika and won’t spend money on the game if shu and mika are in a relationship, whether or not that’s because they like the ship or the characters or are genuinely homophobic or whatnot. If the writing team cared about telling a love story, they would tell a love story, not go “well maybe they’re in love, it’s up to viewer interpretation!” like this works, sometimes it adds to the meaning of the work, but enstars really doesn’t have an excuse for their constant “this character might have feelings for this other character, but we’ll never have them say it out loud!” except the fact it makes them a lot of money, since they can market to people who like a character being the way they want that character to be, whether that’s with that character being in love with another in game character or self-shipping or whatever else. Outside of shipping, this is why some characters like Shinobu haven’t changed despite wanting to change (he continuously talks about how he wants to be more mature and taken seriously but his cards continue to make him look small and cute because his fans like that about him and god forbid we change anything!) I just think enstars should not be your first thought when someone asks you about a good piece of queer media because they’re doing just about the same job as large cast games with characters of the same gender (minus Arashi) who continue to have characters go “we’ll do all these things to imply we could be in love, but we’ll never have our characters actually date! teehee!”

i can understand being frustrated about your ships not being "confirmed", but the obsession with what is "canon" and "not canon" is just straight up not a very interesting discussion to have. what happyele's or the writers' agenda is is not of particular importance to me. one of the first things they teach you in classes about media analysis is that once a work is out there, the intentions of the creator no longer matter. the only thing that matters in your analysis is your own thoughts and the way you interpret a text.

if we were having a conversation about how much the creator of something sucks, then sure, talk about that all you want, but i am specifically referring to discussions about the piece of media and these characters and their relationships and their growth and the themes of the work etc. those things are removed from whether or not the company writes the way they do because of profit motives or whatever. companies make money, that's just what to expect. if you want art that is free of profit motives, read something by an independent creator.

even so, it feels strange to place enstars into the bucket of "stuff that should be gayer but the bad company that makes it wont let it be" because the characters ARE so very openly queer. there are so many instances in it where characters pour their heart out to each other or offer themselves to another character in beautiful and poetic ways, and i think it's wrong to claim it doesn't count because they didn't confirm their relationship status at the end of it. if you ask me, there is absolutely no way to interpret enstars in a way completely free of queerness. there is so much explicitly queer text that ignoring it is just plain incorrect. but, if homophobic people like this game and choose to look the other way at all of the gay shit, again, that is not my problem.

why is canonization the only thing that matters? is a shitty BL with awful writing better and more worthwhile than enstars as a queer narrative because the characters had explicit gay sex on screen? are poorly written gay characters in the background of other media with nothing going on more worth talking about than shumika or wataei or rinniki or whoever else just because they say the words 'i'm gay' out loud?

queerness is so much more than all of that. it is so much more than labels and it is so much more than relationships that are easy to understand. it is so much more than the extremely narrow view of it that the internet has concocted about it over the last few years, where you’re only allowed to talk about queerness if you yourself are openly queer and out of the closet, and even then you’re only allowed to make art that makes for “good representation.” that is just so incredibly limiting. i would rather tons of companies who are trying to profit off fujoshis make vaguely gay media with unconfirmed romances and relationships that aren't easily defined by labels than have less queer art in the world.

more queer art means more queer people who will find something to really connect to. more queer art means telling more queer stories. why should who is allowed to write lgbtq media be limited? why should the kind of media people are allowed to make be limited?

its fine to criticize happyelements if youre unsatisfied with the way they do things, im not always 100% in love with everything they do either. i wouldn't even consider enstars to be the worlds' best example of a queer piece of media. but no one is forcing you to like or engage with it or give the company money if you're unhappy with how they write and market their game. they don't owe anyone explicit confirmation that any of their characters are dating, and it doesn't even matter if they do provide that confirmation or not.

regardless of who made it or for what reason, queer stories are worth talking about, "canon" or not.

[hibiscusangel15]

Battle Royale is more brutal than I was expecting. Usually when I go back to watch the origin of a trend (death tournaments/matches in this case), I'm a little underwhelmed, but that wasn't the case for this.

It's still really good. Highly recommend.

[001parasite]

came up with an aaaawful idea for what could happen in trial three! ♡

" haruka? "

es, who is about to go question haruka, cannot find him in his room! or cell. whatever

eventually they start asking the other prisoners and apparently shidous taking care of him cause he NEARLY DIED !!!!!

so he like explains what happened and es is like oh my god i didnt think hed actually do it ??????crap

since obviously they cant question him they just end the reeeally short voice drama

" sakurai haruka, sing your sins "

the song starts yk its a normal haruka song

but then at some point it ends abruptly [ haruka dies ]

[unnonexistence]

just started reading book 3 in this series and page 1 is taking no prisoners hgdshdslk

[spikeisawesome456]

Oooh, I finally got contacted by the Avatar: the Last Airbender people about the figurine I won from the Braving the Elements podcast Live! panel I went to at Comic Con! Apparently, I won a Diamond Select Toys Uncle Iroh figurine that they’ll be shipping out to me soon! The whole panel was about Iroh, since his voice actor was one of the guests on the panel (as was Toph’s), so it makes sense.

Ha, I was so worried that I was going to be ghosted by these people, especially since my last name is commonly misspelled and my email address is just my first and last name, so it’s nice to have gotten contacted at least.

(Also, since I don’t know if I made a public post about this on this blog, when I was at Comic Con a couple weeks ago I attended a panel for the live recording of the Braving the Elements podcast that Janet Varney and Dante Basco (Korra and Zuko’s voice actors respectively) host. Since my mom is physically disabled, we were able to enter the room first and I got front row seats to the panel, and was able to book it to the line where they were doing trivia for ATLA. Now, I’m usually awful at trivia, but I am a fairly big ATLA fan, so I had some hope that I could get it. Luckily, the question I got was one I knew (at what stage of the siege on Ba Sing Se did Lu Ten die), and while I kinda didn’t get the question fully right, since I had no idea what they meant by stage, I answered that he died right as they broke through the wall and they were about to invade Ba Sing Se. Which Janet Varney accepted, ha. They told us to give our email addresses to a staff member to the side and they’d contact us about shipping out our prizes later, since they’re supposed to be a nice, more deluxe prize. After a week passed I was a bit skeptical about getting contacted, especially with the previously mentioned concern over my last name, but I finally got contacted which is a relief. ^-^)

(Oh! Also, I took video of them doing live script reads from the show, even though I don’t technically think I was supposed to?? No one has requested I take it down yet, though, so if you’re curious you can click on this link to see the YT video I made of it. They did three scenes, the one where Toph meets Iroh in season two, the scene where Iroh and Zuko reunite in the White Lotus Camp in season three, and the “father lord” scene also from season three. They also did a read of a comic book page with Iroh and June, but since I was on line for trivia at that point, the view is very obscured, and you can overhear the lady who was getting our signatures to acknowledge that we were going to be featured on a recording for a podcast. I also missed a bit of the beginning of the scene, but it was still cute, so I decided to add it to my video, ha. The actual podcast episode will be coming out at a later date?? From what I’ve seen of past live recordings, it can take months before they’re released, but if anyone does watch that podcast, you’ll hear/maybe see (if they post on YT) me answering trivia correctly for once, ha.)

[fuwaprince]

Yes, society runs on the kindness of seemingly uncompensated labor. But I promise, if you stick around and stick with it- you will be compensated with the most fulfilling and meaningful life. With the richness of empathic regeneration. It will go beyond thank you. Beyond hugs and friendship and even love. Being kind to each other is the whole point. The sum of the whole will be greater than the sum of the parts.

Voluntary kindness is EVERYTHING. Today I shared kisses (the chocolate kind) with a few ladies at school.... then a very kind lady with pink hair gave me an ice cream sandwich (she didn't charge me anything :'3 which was a surprise)... and then ANOTHER kind lady came into THAT kind lady's shop just to gift her sweet grapes that she mentioned she grew out of her backyard!!! Then guess what???

The cycle continues!!!!! And we're all so grateful and smiling. We're all so much happier than we would've been just buying these things because we had to for ourselves. Everything tastes better when they're coming from someone who thinks of you and cares. I love people.

I'm hopeful for dream weavers making this happen. College students voluntarily sharing pages of textbooks and lab manuals. Kids voluntarily sharing their toys. Strangers sharing benches and holding doors open for each other. It's all in the spirit of KINDNESS. I'm so proud of the camaraderie I've seen within society and to be a part of it. I'm proud of whoever is reading this for all the nice things they've done on earth too. It might seem unnoticed or uncompensated for now but hold onto this vision. It's a positive feedback loop. It's symbiosis. It's mutual aid. It's humanity! I'm so grateful to play a part.

[spiritforestwrit]

oh my godddd so much is happening in my brain

[13eyond13]

.

[theladyfae]

nothing to me will ever be more iconic than my beloved mutual managing to get me so invested in a (rarepair) ship for a media i had no previous interaction with that i was actively making my own headcanons abt their potential relationship dynamic and making song associations and engaging in others’ brainrot for months before i ever even considered getting in to said media. and now a year later i’m finally writing fic for them but still know next to nothing abt what they’re like in canon cause i still haven’t made it to that part of the story, the memories of the shared delusion are genuinely the only thing keeping me going.

[oflights]

Ithaka

As you set out for Ithaka hope your road is a long one, full of adventure, full of discovery. Laistrygonians, Cyclops, angry Poseidon—don’t be afraid of them: you’ll never find things like that on your way as long as you keep your thoughts raised high, as long as a rare excitement stirs your spirit and your body. Laistrygonians, Cyclops, wild Poseidon—you won’t encounter them unless you bring them along inside your soul, unless your soul sets them up in front of you.

Hope your road is a long one. May there be many summer mornings when, with what pleasure, what joy, you enter harbors you’re seeing for the first time; may you stop at Phoenician trading stations to buy fine things, mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony, sensual perfume of every kind— as many sensual perfumes as you can; and may you visit many Egyptian cities to learn and go on learning from their scholars.

Keep Ithaka always in your mind. Arriving there is what you’re destined for. But don’t hurry the journey at all. Better if it lasts for years, so you’re old by the time you reach the island, wealthy with all you’ve gained on the way, not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.

Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey. Without her you wouldn't have set out. She has nothing left to give you now.

And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you. Wise as you will have become, so full of experience, you’ll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.

C.P. Cavafy (translated by Edmund Keeley)

[the-jam-to-the-unicorn]

Well, i have read the sample from Shusters book and what can i say. Now i get what the other anon was saying. Just from two chapters it’s already clear that Shuster is trying to paint Ze like some applause dependent dictator, who doesn’t give a fuck and his kids and wife(As Shuster wrote «Puts his work above everything else»🤡🤡)

Interesting, what you can say about that book because i’m already disappointed…

.