#it's a solid little breakdown imo

[essektheylyss]

I realized my final group paper was due at 8pm, not midnight, when I opened canvas at 6pm and almost had a heart attack, but I did also quote the Your Turn to Roll lyrics as the last line of my conclusion and took the opportunity to link the Mighty Nein Animated Intro in a footnote, so my professor better fucking watch it because I almost had a heart attack over this paper and it is the least she can do.

[canonicallyobserving911]

Hi how's your day going? Just wanted to vent and say I'm pissed at what sounds like Ryan being sidelined and casually belittled in the latest cast interview/promo 😑 i.e. apparently zero mention of Eddie's storyline for s7, Tim once again making the tired joke about eddie being "too pretty to kill off" (kind of insulting considering how much Eddie and Chris have brought to the show since s2), seems like the only thing Ryan got to say was something incredibly sweet and complimentary about working with Gavin 🥺😍 and fandom just thinks it's funny "well he IS pretty". If that's all Eddie is to buddie fandom...that just confirms everything I've been complaining about the last couple of years 🙃

Thank you @blutterlie for the ask. I'm doing well and I hope you're doing well too.

I read through the snippets that were posted on 911blr from the panel interview that was done a couple of nights ago with the main cast and the showrunner and... I really don't have words. But to say I was disappointed is an understatement.

I was really hoping things would be different for Eddie and Chris, the characters and RG and GM, the actors this season since it seems like KR got the boot and is no longer sitting in the showrunner's chair. Hopefully she is gone and if so, maybe someone other than Buck (Eddie, Chris, Chimney and Bobby because they were all sidelined in the last two years while the other half of their ships got good storylines) can get a storyline or two but I can't say I'm surprised with the outcome.

Apparently TM cares about the big emergencies which is great and all but it would be better IMO if they stopped trying to recreate scenes from movies (Speed, Poseidon and whatever other movies they've copied) and focus on growth of the main characters. I've mentioned this before in my Constructive Criticisms posts but none of the first responders have been promoted. How long are they going to remain in their same roles? For me, the show has lost something and I'm not sure a cruise disaster that puts Bobby and Athena in danger again for the umpteenth time is going to make people watch... but I digress.

I'm saddened because RG and GM the actors and the characters they play, Eddie and Chris have been sidelined and given minimal screentime for a while but the little amount they do get is always solid gold because both RG and GM are superb actors. They work very well together and I had hope for season 7 that they would finally be given the screentime they deserve especially since they barely got any in seasons 5 and 6 but it looks like another wash, rinse and repeat season with Buck still looking for answers (which I figured would be the case after I completed a post about his attire in the still of him and Chris). I was really hoping it wasn't going to be another season 4 with Eddie and Chris suffering with another recurring character (all they did was replace AF with M) while they wait for Buck to finally "get it" but apparently some people think it's fun and cute for Buck to be in the words of OS, "stuck on a hamster wheel" but I don't and honestly, unless he's headed for a massive breakdown SO he can finally DEAL AND COPE with all his issues, they can keep it.

The comment TM made about RG being pretty was just... 🙄. IMO, it was disrespectful, disgusting, disingenuous and completely discrediting. If it's true and he was initially hired for his looks for whatever reason, shouldn't they be past that by now? It's been six years and RG has proven time and time again that he's a fantastic actor. For those who forgot, EDDIE carried the ENTIRETY OF SEASON 5 on his back while KR was stumbling around as showrunner with most of the "top billed" cast (that's two-thirds of those who are paid the most) out of pocket. AB was working on A LOT of other projects and that's no hate to her but it's true, JLH was on maternity leave, RD and MR left the show and instead of giving more screentime to Eddie, Bobby and Chimney, they forced TK into the spotlight just to show how bad she was for Buck. They could have done that in episode 1 without giving her a back story so they could have dedicated more time to Eddie’s PTSD and therapy. Buck got two whole seasons and he still hasn't figured anything out but they rushed Eddie’s story and wouldn't even let him say he was going back to the 118🤔.

How many times will the audience have to watch these repetitive storylines? Also, how many times will RG, AH, GM, KC, CM and PK be sidelined for the other mains? It's supposed to be an ensemble cast but someone keeps forgetting that and pushing certain characters out front while they push the others to the side. In season 5, Chimney was sent on a road trip to drive across America with a 6-month-old instead of him staying in L.A. so Buck and Albert could help him with Jee-Yun. In season 6, Bobby was given a sponsor (Wendell) no one had ever heard of before and he appeared out of thin air. Hen's medical school storyline went absolutely nowhere and May disappeared after 6x11. And Eddie and Chris were once again sidelined and then pushed into another "Eddie has to date" because "Chris needs a mother" storyline with another bland and ridiculous recurring character because they keep dragging out whatever the "F" they're doing.

Now with the comment about RG being "too pretty to die", it made me wonder if Eddie and Chris being left out of the promos was a mistake after all🤷‍♀️.

I hope RG and GM can find a show that will appreciate their contributions and give them the screentime they deserve and it be based on how great they are as actors because they deserve so much better.

Anyway, this got longer than I expected and I didn't mean for it to but I'm disappointed in how they're treated and I'm tired of watching the same ole same old.

[ardentpoop]

your a person who I feel really understands Sam and I always enjoy seeing your opinions on the show so i hope you don’t mind me asking a bit of a specific Sam question. In s8 Sam says that the time is he found with Amelia was something unique that he found for the first time in his life. I’ve always found that line to be a bit weird considering Stanford and Jess but I’d like to see what you think Sam means and is saying by this line. Have a good day.

hi :)

I have mixed feelings on the amelia arc leaning more positive than negative bc I’m a contrarian and I thought the fandom disliked that arc for the wrong reasons lmao - as usual dean’s inescapable perspective aggressively dampened ppl’s ability to empathize w/ sam. also as usual this fandom hates women as much as the show does.

anyway bird’s eye view: sam’s “break” with amelia pre-s8 followed the extremely traumatic events (for sam more than anyone) of s4-s7. he spends literal years dealing w/ one catastrophe after another, his and dean’s relationship suffers its first major breakdown in s4 that imo they never truly recover from, he sacrifices himself to save the world bc it was “his fault” it nearly ended, he suffers an eternity of torture in the cage and loses those memories then regains them then loses them again, nothing feels solid to him least of all his own body and mind. and then dean dies in the s7 finale! or at least, sam thinks he does - he has no reason to believe otherwise. and sam looks for dean, we see that he does, we see him spinning out and suicidal again, but then he stops. bc he hits a dog! and he meets A Girl. and this girl, like him, is drifting and grieving and desperate for something solid to hold onto for just a while. and she’s prickly and unapproachable at first and sam finds that comforting.

my overall point is that sam’s headspace going into stanford era and sam’s headspace pre samndean reunion in s8 are like…. impossibly different. he goes through shit his teen self wouldn’t even have the words to describe. he and dean hit lows that he would’ve never thought possible when they only had each other for comfort under john’s roof.

stanford era sam was blessed with ignorance; he was trying to be Normal, he left his stifling family unit behind and started planning a stable future without them, he was doing everything you’re Supposed to do to be a happy successful person per american individualism - and at the time, it WAS making him happy, bc everyone had kept him in the dark abt the nefarious plot he was smack-dab in the middle of; he didn’t know his freedom was an illusion and that he’d never stopped being watched.

pre-s8 sam on the other hand has long since given up on normalcy. he views himself as a freak who will “never be okay” and hunting as a burden that he deserves to bear. it takes dean being gone for the veil to lift a little and remind him that A) it’s maybe okay that he’s a freak lmao bc amelia’s kind of a freak as well and they can help each other specifically because they’re broken in similar ways, and B) he CAN feel okay when he’s not hunting.

like we know sam’s always hated hunting lol his introduction as a character is centered on this inner conflict. however sam “running away” from “the life” before he knows abt what azazel did to him and before he’s made to shoulder the burden of the apocalypse in s5, among countless other burdens, and sam making an Informed Decision to step back from hunting are 2 entirely different things. to me.

also btw sam turning away from hunting is inextricable from sam turning away from dean, and punished accordingly. bc sam’s Place is at dean’s side whether he likes it or not. he is reminded of this the very instant dean gets back from purgatory and bombarded with guilt abt it for the rest of the season until he cracks.

[l3rking]

Brya's Love Breakdown

Finally got the pattern for the new Void Precision Scout Rifle, Brya's Love. So let's talk perks, stats, and buildcrafting.

First of all, it's gorgeous. I love the D1 scout models so this being a Void flavored Vision of Confluence was an instant win. And while the IS scope isn't my favorite, it's clean with a very prominent red dot. The ornate details along the edge of the sight can be a little obstructive especially when comparing it to its older sister, Doom of Chelchis, which has one of the best sights in the game.

Speaking of Doom, how does this new one stack up.

Comparing both with just Arrowhead Brake, Steady Rounds, a Stability masterwork, and Icarus, which is how I'd recommend setting either of these up, Doom is objectively the stronger of the 2. No surprise given it's a Raid chase and not a seasonal weapon you can grind out the pattern for in a week. But tbh, it really isn't that much better. And once we factor in perks both scouts are able to clear out a niche for themsleves.

Doom's strength comes from the ability to run Explosive Payload with a damage perk like Frenzy or One-For-All. Remember, EP deals a bonus 15% damage in PvE for free. While Brya's can get Explosive Payload as well, it is locked to the 4th column with the rest of the damage perks.

Where Brya's is able to catch back up is in the sheer value of the perks in both columns. While Doom can get some nutty combos, not every perk it has is valuable. Brya's literally doesn't have any bad options. I might even wind up crafting multiple rolls. So let's talk about it.

Barrels:

At base, Brya's has 78 recoil direction. Which is the highest natural RD of any 180 scout HOWEVER it is the furthest from a centered recoil pattern. Remember, if it's not 100, you want your RD to be as close to ending in 5 as possible. I.e. 55, 75, 85, etc. will tend to be more vertical. Something like 63 will bounce left; 78 will bounce right. So I recommend just going for Arrowhead to make it 100 and be done with it. The handling bump is nice too. If you don't care about RD, which is completely valid, go for stability or handling. Fluted and Smallbore are 2 favorites.

Magazine:

This one is a bit more to taste. I like the consistency Stead Rounds give and the AE bump is a nice bonus. Tactical Mag, Flared Magwell, or Appended are also great choices.

3rd Column:

Here's where it starts getting good. Keep Away is free Range (10), Reload Speed (30), and Accuracy (5%, 7.5% w/Enhanced) just for operating in your intended range (15m away from enemies). Even with perks like Rapid Hit and No Distractions this one is my go to for a PvP roll. The bonus Range reverses the -5 you get from Steady Rounds and the Accuracy bonus is actually very impactful imo. You'll hit shots you had no business landing.

Loose Change, while good in concept, isn't strong enough nor does it last long enough. Even when running it with a Gyrfalcon build. I'd love to see it buffed. It has good potential.

Perpetual Motion is a great perk. Just not on this scout. Especially if you're trying to use the Head Rush trait perk.

Perfect Float is a good perk especially when pairing with Frenzy.

Shoot to Loot is always solid. Especially now that it works with Orbs and Explosive Payload.

Rapid Hit will always be strong. Especially if you synergize it with a new 4th column perk.

No Distractions is a personal favorite. Use it with EP to become a dueling king. Literally an Energy Tears of Contrition.

4th Column:

Precision Instrument is crazy. Rapid hits will increase precision damage. It's literally precision Target Lock. And like Target Lock, it will reduce ttks against certain resiliences in Crucible. Non enhanced will let you 3 tap T4 res and below (enhanced will bump that up to T5) for a .67 ttk. Very strong. A free 3 tap with no activation cost. Think Luna's Howl but on a much stricter timer and res gated. However, the likelihood of running into T5 res or lower is very unlikely in the Crucible rn with Titans being as strong as they are. Still strong tho.

Explosive Payload. You know it. You love it. I will never fault anyone for picking it. It's always a good scout perk.

Frenzy. Also strong on the archetype. Will allow 3 crits while active. The bonus 100 reload and handling are the best parts imo.

Adagio. Sleeper pick. Reduces RPM to 150 but allows a 2 crit 1 body. Great post kill perk. Damage output of a Radiant 150 scout but with the stat package of a 180.

Pugilist. Skip it. Use Monte Carlo. Stab the Witness.

Golden Tricorn. The king of damage perks. 15% for 7s after a kill will allow a 3 tap at all resiliences. 50% for 10s if you get an ability kill with x1 is active. If you get Tricorn x2 and also Radiant, you can 2 tap. But good luck with that setup.

Destabilizing Rounds. New for a scout. Great choice. Synergizes well with all Void classes but especially a Stylish Executioner hunter or Controlled Demo titan.

Recommendations and Closing Thoughts:

All great perks. Any combination of which I would recommend but let me give a handful:

PVE: Shoot-To-Loot/Explosive Payload. Perfect Float/Frenzy. Loose Change/Destablizing Rounds. Rapid Hit or Keep Away/Golden Tricorn.

PVP: No Distractions/Explosive Rounds. Perpetual Motion/Frenzy. Rapid Hit or Keep Away/Precision Instrument. Rapid Hit/Adagio.

And that's it! It's a very strong scout. I was initially disappointed to see another craftable void 180 but I was so throughly impressed once I got my hands on it. It feels better than Doom imo. Sounds better too. This is one that won't be leaving my inventory for some time.

Good luck farming!

[ballwizard]

oh btw my ACE ATTORNEY dual destinies post game review. LONG RAMBLE CHOCK FULL OF SPOILERS BELOW.. BEWARE!!!!!

ok SO. ending-wise it was fucking awesome. funnily enough while me and sal were on our own between playtime we ended up both getting spoiled on fulbright dying and something odd happening to him. On accident. So we both kind of knew what was coming, but not how or why. and id say it actually didn't take away from the surprise considering by the point you really hammer down on it, it's pretty obvious imo LOL. ALL the disguises threw me for a fucking LOOP!! i was like. Huh??? THIS GUY??? ironically all the big ones he did before the breakdown were ALL characters i voiced which was really really fun for me. i think the choice to have him impersonate phoenix last was so cool and the new sprites he gets RULE SO HARD. genuinely thought it was sick as hell. i miss you bobby every day of my life

something really funny that occurred was : Throughout the entire game sal decided they HATED Simon blacjquill. like genuine vitriol at seeing him. when we found out he was on deaths door they were like KILL HIM‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️ OT WAS SO FUNNY. but by the end of the game they did nearly a complete 180 on him and he was the first character they doodled after finishing the game.Thwy were sooooo mad about liking him now

speaking of liking characters: my top fave new characters were DEFINITELY bobby fbright & damien tenma. i already talked about fulbright yadda yadda he's cute yadda yadda need him expoditiously yadda yadda cool ending. Damien on the other hand was the only side character that we were consistently SO happy to see literally EVERY time. (Excluding Bobby). Dude fucking rocks he's so weird and he owns. Cawwww caw caw caw

casewise i think the weakest might have been the monstrous turnabout? even though i LOVED damien the rest of the case was. It was okay? but with the rest of the cases being so interconnected jt just felt kind of out of place. hypocritically i found jinxie and filch and labelle kind of annoying despite liking damien... eye dee Kay. My Opinion. my fav case was the very last one i think. i would say it was the academy one but means just felt like a kinda weak villain. especially since it felt really obvious from the beginning with his whole shtick (which was ALSO annoying) and also his whole. Him. but i liked the whole bit with scuttlebutt & the trio. it was very cute. Also elephant in the room, robin, i felt DEFINITELY could have been handled better. but it really wasn't THAT bad, and i like that he retained her like, testosterone rage screaming despite him "getting revealed". In my beautiful mind they're gender fluid. Smiles serenely. it was also nice seeing klavier again but his 3d model is NOT DOING HIM WELL . i like his gay little intro animation though

oh yeah and the 3d. since we were playing the original trilogy concurrently to dd, we got to compare how the characters look pretty often and i found that it's kind of weird, but i understand why it was done & honestly it allowed them to do more fun stuff. like having bobby wave out of the window or all the shit with recreating the silhouette of the statue was REALLY fun to see and I thought it was cute as hell. Simon does look like he's poking himself in the eye though. the normal art in the game was cute too & i thought the cutscenes were fun when they showed up!

comparing it to the original trilogy, without rose tinted lenses of nostalgia & with direct referencing via.... playing them both at the same time... i really think it was a solid game. one thing i really, really liked about it vs the trilogy is that it's a lot more... easier?? straightforward?? it's hard to put into words but i NEVER felt like i had hit a dead end in investigating and didn't know where to go. the notes system as well as the button to look back at recent dialogue are SUPER helpful, and even if i might not have used them All the time, they really helped when we needed them lol. i LOVE. not having to present every single piece of evidence to a random during investigations and just PRAYINF that one of them make something happen. and especially since i was playing with someone else, and therefore took what could be week + long breaks between playtime, it was really useful to get back into the swing of things. ANYWAYS

Overall it was a really fun & engaging play!! me & sal enjoyed it a lot and it's got our gears turning and steam smokin and shit. we actually finished the second game right before finishing the last case of dd and it was fucking awesome. we started trials & tribulations (one case in!) and after that we might hit up the investigations games... and THEN we'll play spirit of justice. so that's the game plan teehee

Thank you for reading if you did lol ^__^ ❤️🌈‼️

[grimmgrinningghouls]

Ark map tier list?

ark map tier list. for u anon. I'll even give u a whole breakdown cause I love talking about this game.

S Tier

Ragnarok - I remember when rag released and everyone lost their goddamn minds. It was and still is such a good map, I remember the frantic rush to be the first on the server to have griffins or steal wyvern eggs, especially ice wyvern eggs. Ragnarok is an absolutely beautiful map and I've built some of my all time fav bases on there, I'll have to see if I can find some pics. It has a lot to it in terms of creatures, caves, base locations, and scenery. Its got a lot to it, and theres even a good amount of hidden easter eggs if you look hard enough. I'd very much recommend rag for any beginner ark players out there, trust me it is easier than the island lol. plus u can get dragons.

Fjordur - Fjordur is just....such an amazing map I don't even have words. Nekatus really outdid himself. It is beyond gorgeous, like, some jaw-droppingly beautiful scenery. It has so much to it, there's so many places to go and so many things to explore, so many secrets to find, so many bosses to kill and so many creatures to tame. I will say I am a little disappointed in Fenrir, but hey, nothin a mod can't fix. Or a lil bit of research on the inis for console players. Plus, all the realms are just so fucking cool. Me and my friends built a massive Viking village in Asgard, I'll make sure to get pics next time I'm on that server. The caves r so fun, and all the bossfights are amazing. I really, really love the boss system they had set up. Its so unique and gave us so much to do, plus the final boss, fenrisulfr (pronoucned fenris-ulver btw) is such a fun fight. I had an absolute blast, also I absolutely love the new dinos. Much more than the lost island ones but we'll get to that.

Aberration - Screaming and frothing at the mouth. How do I even begin to describe how amazing aberration is. Its a hauntingly beautiful map, and the lore is so good. Did you know that you can hear the whispers of the survivors rockwell killed and trapped? its creepy as hell but its just so cool. its just such a unique experience as compared to the rest of ark. Theres no flyers, yet its got some of the most dangerous dinos in the game lurking around every corner. Aberration and scorched are tied for the hardest map imo. Its super fun to play on, and in terms of creatures its got some of the best new ones. I love rock drakes I would die for them.

A Tier

The island - I'll be honest, this ones mostly just here cause of nostalgia lol. I've been playing since day 1, I remember ark before it even had all its biomes. I remember a time when the volcano was just a mountain with a hole in the top, a time when pvp was just a bunch of naked people running around with bolas and spears, when having a rex made you a god, and most of all: When mammoths had buttholes and sabers had nutsacks. Sorry I had too lol. But anyways, the islands still a pretty solid map. Its like, the base map that everyone starts out on but its harder than a lot of the maps lol. Its extremely fun, and it has some fun caves. The boss fights will always be classics to me, Does anyone else remember when the monkey's boulders could hurt the rider? that was fun. The island may not be the best map, but it always has a special place in my heart.

Extinction - Not a ton to say about extinction, its certainly a fun map and the creatures are pretty amazing, I love adhd puppies and turret raptors lol. But its not that fun to actually like, survive on. Extinctions more fun when ur playing on a cluster with access to other maps. I do like OSD's and the boss fights are fr some of the best in the game, and I absolutely adore the ost. Probably my fave tbh lol

Crystal isles - This map is like, beyond beautiful and I do really, really like the crystal wyverns. But it was rather disappointing, I mean we all kinda expected them to remove the cool variants and stuff, but I feel like removing most of the cool variants the original mod had took away a lot from the maps charm. Plus, the removal of rock drakes was just such a let down for me. I do quite like the map still, and its very fun to play on and build bases on, as well as the wyverns, they're super fun, but it doesn't do much to compel me to play on it besides just getting crystal wyverns.

B Tier

Lost island - The big thing that tanks this map for me is its new creatures. Lost islands fun ig, but it just feels like an upgraded version of the island. Its pretty, and it does have manas so yay, but still. Its fun, but there's nothing that really makes it stand out besides being the only free map with manas on it. And as I mentioned before, I really do not like the new creatures. The dinopithecus is just a reskinned thyla with the Ferox's animation, I guess it has the poop stuff but it's just a very underwhelming creature. I feel like people voted for it more because of the memes than actually wanting it. The amargas…okay, I guess. but it doesn't really add anything and is a huge pain to tame, it doesn't feel very worth it. The Sinos prolly the best out of the 3, its a pretty good travel dino, and I call them rich man's glide suits lol. Also I hate the boss fight and the caves are very much not fun.

Gen 2 - Don't get me wrong, I do like gen 2, and I feel like it approved upon a lot of gen 1's issues and added some super awesome new items into the game, but it also completely destroyed the pvp meta lol. This is very much just personal preference, but I'm not super big on all the tek sci fi stuff. I mean it is fun to use the tek bow as well as like the hoversail. Gen 2 was very heavily biased towards the pvpers, which isn't bad, but as a pve player its just that a lot of the new dinos and items aren't worth getting for me. The stryder is useful I guess but being unable to cryo it...oof lol. Maewings and shadowmanes are also useful, but like the Noglin, Astrodelphis, and Voidwyrm are completely useless in pvp. The delphis is just a fancy way to get around, the Noglin has zero use in pve, and the voidwyrm is just a wyvern that doesn't do breath dmg. They're all cool lookin dinos I guess, but again just not much of a reason for me to tame them since they're a pain in the ass. I like gen 2's scenery, rockwells garden and the eden zone are cool and pretty but to me, they aren't as pretty as like fjordur or aberration. The R-dinos were cool, but I can get all those on other maps. Cool map, and it sent ark out with a bang, but still its meh for me.

Valguero - I do quite like it, but I don't like it enuf to put it on A tier lol. I adore deinonychus and its a pretty fun map to run around on, its also super pretty and I have built some dope ass bases, but its still just not a map I play on much or have much of a reason to go on. I can get deinons on a ton of different maps, so I pretty much go over there to make a cool base lol.

C Tier

Theres only one map on here lol. I do kinda like scorched, its fun, but its just not super enjoyable. I don't hate it or anything, but I don't consider it as good as anything on B tier. It gave us wyverns and has some good base locations, as well as being the first story map, it does offer a pretty fun challenge but much like extinction its more fun on a cluster than it is alone. Its caves are like, super fun tho, I love scorched's caves and I always have a blast doing them. Buuut I wouldn't say they're like, as good as fjordurs or anything. Okayish map, just not a fav.

D Tier

Gen 1 - eugh...I made a whole other post for gen 1 and this is getting long so imma just link that and give a summary here: the missions suck balls, its biomes are lame, and I don't like it lol.

The center - I'll be honest, I totally forgot this existed lol. I do not like the center. I know its fun for pvpers but eh. It was fun back in the day, but nowadays you can just go spend ur time on another map and have more fun. I don't really like the scenery either, very, very forgettable and idk anyone who goes over to the center for any reason lol.

and thats it! sorry for the long post I love ark and I love talking abt it.

[violentviolette]

oh dude have you heard "heaven's sent" by fob ? heard it for the first time in the past year and fuck it itches that lil' snail in my ear so bad. also no idea if you've heard "for the departed" by shayfer james but I have an inkling you'll like it, even if the smallest bit, so I recommend.

i think the title is heaven's gate but if so then yea! it's pretty good, definitly solid but not my favorite. mania is probably my least listened to of all their albums. i've loved fob since i first got my grubby little emo hands on take this to your grave as a kid so im extreamly biased towards their earlier stuff lol but if ur thinking of getting into them i highly recommend it!! my favorite songs by them are grand theft autumn/where is your boy and dead on arrival off that same album. after that i'd say anything off infinity on high and under the cork tree are gonna be amazing i feel like folie au deux marks a big turning point in their sound, ryo insists its their best album and while i dont disagree with him it still just ranks low on my list. it's good as a complete work but it lacks individual bangers imo save rock and roll and american psycho/american beauty are like one era imo and while there's some bops i feel like those were very much more of a mainstream poprock trend albums. they sound like what was popular which means they sound like imagine dragons and patd but the fob remix version. which isnt to say that they were bad, just that they lacked a lot of the raw emotion that ive always preferred from them. if i can understand what patrick stump is emotionally yelling at me in the first listen its not peak fob to me lmfaoooooo

i haven't heard of shayfer james before tho i'll definitly give that a listen, thanks for the recs anon! also sorry if u didnt want my personal thought breakdown on fob's entire discography but u accidentally activated my emo trap card so u got it anyway lmfaoooo

[whack-a-moron]

I'll admit to jumping the gun on you for that first part. All I've had in my notes all week are pro-lifers who think abortion shouldn't even be an option on the table for anyone.

I don't recall the exact statistical page, but it was about the U.S. (and highly developed/wealthy countries) and the breakdown was 67% by their parents, 13% by an aunt or uncle, 3% by an "other" family member. 17% was committed by someone outside of their family. And the average life expectancy of most trafficked children, especially in sex trafficking, is 7 years (due to attacks/murder, abuse, HIV/STDs, malnutrition, overdoses, or suicide).

Talking exclusively about sex trafficking, there are about 300,000 new children who enter the sex trade each year. That's pretty easy math. 300k x 7 = at minimum 2 million children at any given time being trafficked for sex in the U.S., but its probably quite a bit higher than that since that's just the minimum "sustained" population of the victims who are dying within that 7 year period.

The page didn't have any solid data on labor trafficking but noted that there's an additional count for other forms of trafficking outside of sex.

I can't recall if it was the same page or a different one, but child mortality at the hands of their own family is also pretty high. 95,000 child deaths per year across wealthy/developed countries. In children age 5 and under, 56% is committed by parents. In babies 1 year and younger, 78% is committed by parents.

These statistics make sense, especially for the U.S., because parents/family have more legally guaranteed access to their own children most of the time even when the environment and circumstances are beyond fucked up. There's very much an attitude of "ownership" that parents/family have over their own children except in the most extreme circumstances of abuse (theoretically), which makes sense, but often leaves many children stuck in awful situations.

I definitely agree on CPS, government, and at least some parts of the foster/adoption system being little more than legally-sanctioned human trafficking. Yes, it does its job sometimes to put children in good homes where they need to be. It fails to do that or actively puts them in harms' way just as often. So I have extremely mixed feelings about all of that. But let's not mince words on what it is.

The fact of the matter is that pro-choice (compared with "pro-life") is and should be about availability of OPTIONS. Which Pro-Life movements actively seek to take away. And slippery slope is a very real thing.

Today its "No abortions but we'll make exceptions for XYZ", tomorrow its "No abortions period at all".

Even in places with exceptions, the most vulnerable people who need and qualify for the exceptions the most aren't getting them, despite that they theoretically should be, which is what happens when you put a system in place that actively seeks to bar, even "partially", access to these procedures.

That's also the problem with fully privatizing abortion options, such as making it funded only by private insurances paid for by the individual. Yes, there are people who will treat it as nothing more than a "tax funded birth control option". That's the unfortunate price to allowing vulnerable people who can't afford it any other way access to abortions if they need them, but those are the people who suffer the most if you make the barriers to entry too high. Even in places where abortion is completely legal and accessible, the cost barrier is often too much for them to achieve anyway, but some of them still can, as long as you don't add any extra steps like having to travel out of state to get one.

Adding even more barriers isn't going to help these people, but it'll make the Pro-Lifers feel all warm and fuzzy I guess, which is a fucking weird thing to feel proud about imo.

I'm just saying that if anti-abortion idiots put even half as much effort into combating human trafficking, I'd feel a lot more inclined to take them seriously as being "pro-life" and not just anti-choice.

[fencecollapsed]

mmmm I really wish I Am My Monster had been double-length,, I'm sure they had limitations which is a bummer cuz it really would've benefited from extra time I think

[cabinetduo]

ctubbo characterization master post

Ok so I was thinking abt ctubbo and characterization and how a lot of the fandom doesn't rlly have a solid grip on him (no shade its not on here mainly) whether it's bcs of lack of interest or exaggeration and like fandom lense or whatever (he tends to kinda get fucked ovr in ensemble fics) and then I thought well we talk abt scary nuke violence tubbo vs uwu beeboy or whatever but I was thinking there's definitely more to it then that bcs sometimes when I'm writing even I'm super insecure abt my portrayl of ctubbo so ig this post is kind of like a breakdown using some of my fav ctubbo things for me that could b useful 4 others as well

(This might b a little unorganized and like unprofessional-!!i will misspell and abbreviate a lot srry!!-but it's tumblr so who cares just don't expect too much cohesiveness I am writing this to get my thoughts out mostly

[DISCLAIMER!! most of this is my personal interpretation of ctubbo seeing as that's what ctubbo is mostly, what u interpret him as, but also its a bunch of notes and common traits that I got from awesome ctubbo fans and I'm mainly making it 2 help me :) < I'm not linking canon examples and evidence bcs I'm lazy and fuck that alsooo I'll mainly b focusing on ctubbo individually and not his relationships and such

ctubbos humor

I'm gnna start w ctubbos humor and irony and that kinda stuff. So like w ctubbo and characterization a lot of times ppl will take traits or speaking habits from the streamer and apply them to the character which is common in the general mcyt fandom but w ctubbo it's esp common bcs of cctubbos whole "ctubbo is just me but if I was put into certain situations" which we've kinda moved past seeing as that thought process worked better in the earlier seasons before ctubbo was morw cctubbo and less a result of his circumstances, his experiences, and ctubblings drawing lines between things << this isn't my main focus rn tho there is a huge distinction between cc and ctubbo

To get to the point ctubbo is a pretty serious dude but also he's not, there's a fun middle ground that I like where ctubbos humor has definitely become darker as he's aged bcs of his circumstances. One of the best examples I can thing of is this line from elegy in eleven bars by ssootsprite

^^this definitely portrays ctubbos humor well imo, the dark irony and humor that often stems from taht fact that ctubbo will sometimes jsut do what he finds funny but usually those take form on a smaller scale if we want an actual cohesive character

ctubbo swiss army knife

Ive made a handful of posts abt this but one bit abt ctubbo that is often missed is the fact that he's been dehumanized throughout his story which led to him internalizing it not seeing himself as a person entirely, more like a tool for others or a means to an end. I love love dsmp au fics but something some of them miss out on is ctubbos urge to serve others which stems into two branches that I call safety and self

When in a dangerous situation or around someone that he's deemed dangerous ctubbo will instinctively shift to politeness and servitude occasionally its his follower instinct<<this is bcs of manburg specifically cschlatt though it was really instilled to him by cdream after the whitehouse fight (where he called him a follower) and the disc saga finale (called him a sidekick). This happens sometimes in canon but enough times for it to be a full blown like, thing my fav explanation of this is augustus evergreen by thatweirdguyinthebushes on ao3

The second facet "self" is more deep, it's ctubbos actual beliefs, that he's not worth anything if he's not doing something or his tendency to work as a means of avoiding emotion. He doesn't see himself as a person or a child, often forcing himself into the roll of an adult to meet a goal of serving others (his nlm presidency) < this also comes from Manburg but can also be tied to my fav quote "a good kid and a better spy" (not gnna go too into ctubbos spy mentality bcs that's a whole other essay LOL) after being repeatedly handed jobs that are not meant for kids, responsibities much larger than him, he internalized all of it and tied it to his self worth and how he sees himself

Fav FAVVVV example is this poem and art

by @/yellogazello which gets the point across by whacking u ovr the head w emotion and some ctubbo aesthetics that rlly do well 4 his character -> also I made 2 web weaves on all ^^^this if ur interested also I've got a bunch of analysis on it in #smpanalysis bcs it's my fave ctubbo is kind of naturally a follower but this isn't always a complete negative (see: the way he comfortably follows Tommy or the way he and Tommy willingly followed Wilbur- it isn't always an 100% bad thing but over the course of his life it's kind of been tainted

ctubbo logic brain

Tubbo "logic braining" something =/= him thinking logically it's him and his fucked up process that filters things through his weird logic that would make any stable person worried, his brain does flips to rationalize his own and others thought processes to make them make sense to him, it's the same kind of thinking that is responsible for his "safe people" its the same kind of thinking that makes him blame himself for things that were clearly out of his control. While ctubbo is often seen as a more "brain lead" character, most, hell, all of his core motivations are emotional >> the need to protect his loved ones, his people, the innocent, to live upto expectations, and so on. This ties into his protective sort of paranoid nature that he displays toward his loved ones that is sometimes misconstrued as controlling

A lot of ^^^^^ this can be tied to ctubbos relationship w attachments and belongings which is one of the dsmps overall themes, ctubbos logic being that attachment is irrational and only leads to being hurt but forming attachments and getting hurt against his better judgment

ctubbo and the nukes

One thing that is often lost in surface level depictions of ctubbo is the nuke plot. This is often used to characterize ctubbo as violent or immoral (which I won't deny he can be at times) but one key detail about ctubbos nukes is that they were always a last resort, no matter what he threatened or said he never ever wanted to use them, constantly emphasizing how crazy it was that he had access to so much power and how terrified he was of misusing it in the missing nuke stream w jack. ctubbo has always always been a peaceseeking character. Like w most things abt ctubbo there's a nice middle ground, though tubbo leans less towards chaotic and more towards solemn, esp when at an emotional low

The nukes hold a lot of symbolism for ctubbo and are often presented as an antithesis to the bee symbolism used for him > the nukes being him becoming more violent and straying from what is deemed moral as a defense mechanism, becoming worse than your enemies (stay soft by mitski etc) and the bees representing his innocence and the loss of it (a common theme w ctubbo and on the dsmp in general) tying to the more nature-y imagery that become professional/political in late s1 & 2 which then became technologybased and cold in s3 & 4

ctubbos emotional intelligence

Another thing that a lot of people miss about ctubbo is that he has very veryy little emotional intelligence. Post-Michael kidnapping and arguably pre-Michael kidnapping there was this (mildly popular) notion that ctubbo was together emotionally to the point where there were a lot of misunderstandings surrounding his actions but the thing is he isn't. When it comes to himself ctubbo is aware that he is effected by his trauma (he will often make references to it) but he never does anything about it, he views it as irritational and tends to compartmentalize and repress his emotions which often leads to him hurting himself and others. ctubbos responses to emotion range from pure apathy to overwhelming him to the point of tears (which we've seen once w the anniversary stream) He's also not very good with recognizing the emotions of others, while he is good at reading people and their intentions (mainly people he has close relationships with) he is generally extremely blunt sometimes to the point of hurting other people's feelings on accident which he usually apologizes for immediately afterwards. In fact, ctubbos bluntness and politeness are a fun contrast to experiment with if you're interested

With all of ^^^this stuff dissonance by shrugofgod does a rlly good job of this I'm just putting a small snippet but the entire fic is incredible w sm details and ctubbo intricacies it's so good

ctubbo survival and tragedy

ctubbo has survived a lot especially in comparison to other characters he is close to << that was badly worded, what I mean is a lot of the people in ctubbos life have died/were dead/are dead and he just isn't. Tragedy is a large part of ctubbo, if something is going right for him it will inevitably go wrong, things like stability don't exist for him, he doesn't trust it and why should he? His paranoia has consistently been proven to be justified over and over again. Dramatic irony is such a huge part of him, he's experienced so much and has survived through so much but its like he can't die and he has to live everytime.

I made a webweave abt this that pust cqs firey survival next to ctubbos cold survival, I think i do a better job explaining in the notes of that

And this post which is the best thing I've ever posted is basically a bunch of super talent tubblings who've written poetry abt this topic (and other ctubbo stuff but mainly this) if u wnna check it out

Most of these things can be heavily elaborated on (nature of the dsmp is to have incredible fleshed out characters that feel human and awesome and that make u crazy) but this is kinda a summary and I have others posts that kind of do that I just wanted to put all this in one place

More stuff ⬇️

This post is a succinct and well put ctubbo explanation/summary and a fave

And this post is wondas god tier dsmp characterism breakdown that will save ur life if ur a writer

This post is a fic recs post that has a lot of epic awesome dsmp writers but a lot of them write ctubbo bcs I'm biased

And finally here's a link to tubbo3091<3333 which a roleplay blog that has the most perfect ctubbo characterization ever in the world

[beatcroc]

tl;dr+disclaimer: this is NOT intended as some kind overarching review or analysis, just my thoughts on various things, and while i am absolutely enthralled by nge’s narrative tone/style/execution, i dont really give a shit about what the narrative is actually saying. This is not a writeup on its plot or themes, but rather the way they are presented and explored. [actually mostly a lot of obsessing over small details and side characters].  the end of evangelion movie is not included here and will have its own post.

secondary disclaimer: apparently nge has a fuckload of cultural context and stuff about How it exists as a commentary or subversion of stuff of its time or whatever. rest assured i know neither jack nor shit about any of it, and am just seeing how it functions as its own thing in a vaccuum.  alright here we go.

earlygame evangelion was absolutely nothing like i was anticipating, and as a person who Generally Does Not Enjoy Anime, i cannot stress enough how much this was to its benefit. first thing i noticed was a distinctive Lack of those ‘anime visual gag’ type of character expressions/reactions; refreshing just for my own petty disdain for them, but also notably important to its overall tone. eva’s tone is absolutely one of the best things it has going for it; i’ll get into specifics as i go, but even before i would get to seeing how it strengthens both individual plot beats and the narrative at large, it was by far my biggest draw to the earlygame.

i think i can best describe it as “contemplative”. there’s very little real dialogue in the sense of characters having 2-way conversations. there’s a lot of emphasis on weighted silences, a lot of minor exposition delivered through background noise/chatter like radio broadcasts, a lot of just... the world moving around and contrasting with the characters as they Exist. The ep where shinji runs away definitely has the biggest focus on this, but it’s noticeable as a unique tonal thing right out of the gate. I feel like anime often tends to explain things too directly, whether it be story or lore; or a character's feelings or intentions. here, you rarely get more than a simple zoom in on a character’s face to denote They Are having Thoughts About This. No internal monologue rambling walking you through their whole thought process, It’s left to just their expressions and reactions. evangelion’s execution of “show, don't tell” still holds up pretty well in 2022 imo. maybe not the best out there these days, but definitely still effective. I’m far from well-versed in media like this, but i’d still say eva’s fairly standout, and anything that manages to do that after nearly 30 years deserves some kudos

Very related to that, “Doing a lot with a little” i think is the best way to sum up all of eva’s strengths. The subtleties and things left unsaid, as it were. Aside from the obvious jab at their making do with a nonexistent budget, this sort of thing comes through in its somber and down-to-earth tone, its character writing, and most especially, its support cast.

Both in the handling of the characters themselves and their dynamics with the main cast, the nge side characters are really, really good; like, probably the actual best i have encountered in any media ever. Each of them in their own way provide perfect backings and contrasts to everything the main cast has going on, they’re laser-focused efficient to enhance the others’ characters and arcs and the overall narrative messages--and yet they never feel like plot devices and are still really solid and wholly enjoyable as their own individual Characters, all without overstepping their boundaries AS support cast in terms of both screentime and narrative presence/influence. suzuhara and akagi demonstrate this best from very different angles and from here out this thing is pretty much just gonna be a breakdown of thoughts by character, but i’m doing suzuhara first because his being much more narratively dynamic means he gets to shine in a plethora of ways, so most of the Cool Narrative/Tonal Shit i wanna say about nge can be said by talking about him.

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you’d think the character whose introduction is “beating up the kicked puppy protag because he’s pissed” would be pretty one-note and uninteresting; i still wouldn’t really call suzuhara deep, per se, but….well, again, they do a lot with a little.

usually for this role you’d get something like “i’m gonna bully shinji because he’s stupid and lame ”, and it’s not like this would be misplaced because like... shinji IS lame, other kids DON’T like him, but suzuhara’s motivation being his hospitalized sister instead of anything with shinji himself changes the entire dynamic here to a pretty profound degree. it’s still a really simple and understandable motivation, but it lets him say a ton more than you usually could with this kind of role. the overt message still just sits at “we’re gonna make shinji hate himself life a little more“, but instead of just, like, making him feel shitty because there’s Mean People who will beat him up even though he’s trying his best or whatever, the implied message is more along the lines of “you’re hurting people you can’t see, but they’re still people who mean something to somebody, and they can damn well see you.”, and it’s for sure noticeable this is the kind of stuff that’s weighing on him the next couple eps. It’s not that he’s afraid of some random bullies that could jump him at any time, it’s that he’s now acutely aware the consequences of him messing up are exponentially larger than he can see.

it also gives suzuhara much easier room for growth! He doesn’t need some huge distracting character-altering event, he just needs to see that this is all way bigger than him and that he was out of his lane and being a shithead. getting caught face to face with an angel is a pretty effective way to do that, i’d say! Being saved by shinji specifically and having to see his trauma firsthand is an especially great note coming out of that too, realizing that shinji is neither a cocky asshole nor some incompetent coward, but that he’s really just. Yknow. Trying. I also think it’s a really…. Idk, cute? detail that while the scene in the cockpit clearly Affects him, he doesn’t apologize or offer comfort right away and just spends the next few days kind of sulking/angsting about it instead. Just a fun little humanizing err for him i think. 

not a lot happens with him for awhile from there but i do really like him and his little nerd friend as just background pals for shinji. Comic relief isn’t usually a very…esteemed title in terms of narrative value, but in this case he’s earned it. Which isn’t something you’d usually say about comic relief characters! So good for him i guess.

The Fourth Child stuff coming into play is what really made me pog at this guy and his handling though. Just like. the framing of it. not telling the audience directly but showing that it’s someone all the other main characters already knew+the persistent scene cuts to him after someone brings up or asks who the fourth pilot is.

The character familiarity is cool mostly because of how small eva’s cast is overall. Like there are really not any random passerby citizens ever shown, let alone given dialogue, that they could have tossed in to use. Everybody who could be considered even remotely important/main cast is already occupied, and seeing that both asuka and katsuragi recognize him, it’s gotta be someone they would have met fairly recently–most likely someone we’d already seen on the show–and not some random guy from their backstories or something.  They had my curiosity but i wouldn’t have guessed it! At least not without the scene cuts lmao. They do this like 4 times it’s really funny. Oh yeah the 4th pilot? Yeah we won’t say who but heyyyyy check This guy out.

my favorite bit from this is seeing the change in his demeanor in these cuts before vs. after he gets the news; his usual cheeky self in the first couple versus his going out alone to stare forlornly off into the distance in the latter few. I am like such a huge fan of this ok. Once again, things left unsaid: there’s so much he could be thinking about here and refusing to have him say any of it in itself speaks volumes.

What’s in there? Regret? Apprehension? Resignation? You’d need a monologue half as long as this damn post to really get into all the different angles of him unpacking the idea that he could now be the one unwittingly dropping a building on someone's little sister + reflecting back all the fears that he’d left shinji with after that little beatdown, but simply Not Saying It leaves a much stronger impression of the sense that it’s just A Lot for him to be thinking about. very cool in other characters’ reactions to it too; suzuhara himself never explicitly verbally confirms his being a pilot, but everyone notices he’s acting different. Hell, they even used SHINJI to point it out, and he’s usually the guy who’s worst at noticing these things.

small side note but there’s also a delightful bit of last minute  rubbing salt in the wound with how bad his nerd friend wanted to pilot eva….seems like that kid is about the only other one who didn’t realize suzuhara is the 4th pilot too, which. lmao.

anyway then he gets in the eva and doesn’t really get to do anything. i don’t have any comments on that it’s the pretty obligatory “oop we gotta have our Angel Encounter for this ep”+”gotta find a newer and more powerful way to traumatize shinji” quota. There’s really good character moments here for some of the other cast which i’ll get to later but uhhh yeah suzahara just gets his shit fucked.

ok now full disclosure here i’m actually a huge bitch about character deaths like this, it is quite possibly my biggest pet peeve when characters go through something that is 100% presented as fatal or a killing blow, only to Not Actually Have Died At That Moment; either so they can give some kind of Emotional Speech:tm: and then die anyway, or by revealing they actually only got wounded or something bc of some kind bullshit plot armor. i thought eva might possibly be the kind of thing that’s brutal and/or disregarding-of-dramatic-narrative-flair enough to actually just leave it at him being dead there in the mech, but to an even bigger surprise i think this is maybe the only thing i’ve seen that’s played “they didn’t actually die in that horrific scene” to a way bigger impact.

The following hospital scene is already pretty interesting just with neither shinji nor suzahara knowing why the other was there; Shinji never learned who the fourth pilot is, and toji shows no animosity for the fact that shinji[’s eva] just beat the shit out of him so apparently he just wasn’t conscious for anything after his mech got taken over? and it’s just kind of like, spooky, to have what has every right to be an emotionally charged character reunion amount to nothing more than vague confusion between them. They don’t even get to talk to eachother! i don’t often see the thing of “audience knowledge vs. character knowledge” used like this; usually it’s the Characters who are sad or angry beause of some knowlege they lack, and You know that things are actually better than it appears to them; in this case you know things are way worse than they look and the characters are spared that burden. it’s weird and cool and potent but it’s not even my biggest takeaway from this. You know the thing that really fucks me up here?

we never see suzuhara again after this.

he isn’t given any sort of real farewell, he’s just gone. not dead, but gone. i’ve never seen that done before!!! it’s like....haunting to realize a guy who had been a minor but consistent constant is just not part of the picture any more, and it’s an especially odd feeling since you can’t really notice until it’s too late. now yeah, part of it was also that the plot had kinda moved beyond having time for side characters, but most of them do still make brief appearances, and we’re also specifically shown a brief scene in the schoolroom where all four pilot kids are conspicuously absent. their friends comment about how the main 3 are missing, and suzuhara is still never mentioned.

i genuinely feel more strongly about suzuhara’s narrative death than anything else in the show. i dont even care that it doesn’t mean anything this is my hill to die on. i love this dude and i love how every single beat with him makes me ape my shit.

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rei is the other end of Stuff Eva Is Really Good At. i mostly want to talk about her Big Reveal here but i do also want to give kudos for their committing so hard to the whole uncaring/ambivalent thing with her. feel like a lot of stuff that tries to do ‘emotionless’ characters chickens out and still gives them like one specific personality trait or thing they’ll react to or care about, probably for the sake of still making them relatable or enjoyable or something. granted, the context for this kind of character matters all the more when they’re Supposed to be empty, but even so this kind of thing is usually done to show there’s something Off about the character; rei’s being so aggressively, blatantly nothing and nonreactive about literally everything is just like. oh there is something OFF with you. Her and asuka’s exchange of “i bet you’d even kill yourself if they asked“ “i would, yeah“-said not out of devotion or depression, but pure disinterest, is probably about the strongest extreme you can take this idea to. 

The whole series she’s such a powder keg waiting to blow and they let you smell its smoke in the flashback with akagi’s mom where it seems to be revealed that she’s 1-possibly a clone, and 2-apparently got killed the same day as she was unveiled, which obviously feel like pretty significant revelations but then they move on from it with zero fanfare and i was like huh. Wait. no wait hold on go back. i had actually intended to go back and rewatch that scene just to i’d actually make sure i’d clocked it properly because it was just that was chilling* and disorienting to have left it sitting pretty much unacknowledged for several episodes, but then it comes to ep23 after her dying for real in the eva and she says “i think i’m already the third one” as a soft confirmation and you’re like OH SHIT I WAS RIGHT but then theyre still not done blowing up everything with the actual reveal and it all comes out in the following scenes and it’s just like oh this is all so much worse than i could have imagined. all that was my peak of being Affected By Evangelion. i kinda just sat there In A State for a solid 30 minutes afterwards, just, rotating the series as a whole in my mind. man.

the scene with 01′s awakening is done with a pretty similar structure to this, and even though i actually knew about the twist of eva units being Literally Humans before going into the show, that scene was....hoo. like the knowledge does not prepare you for the presentation. I credit this mostly to its tone as well; there’s something really awesome about how evangelion can pull huge fucked up twists like this, yet the raw shock value of the scene itself [which should not be understated!] never outweighs the gravity of the situation as a whole. Like the takeaway from 01’s awakening isn’t just “oh shit!!!! The government is making fucked up mechs full of blood!!!”, it’s “these measures may be extreme but they are a necessary price to pay for survival[though is it really worth it?]”. And also maaaaybe a little “mankind is hubristic as fuck and we Love to fuck around and find out.” but that’s kind of just the deal throughout the whole series

Coincidentally, it’s also rei’s brief first couple appearances that i think initially help establish that gravity.  very often when a character is badly injured it’s only really used to change how either they or another character engage with a situation; usually to remove them from it and/or spur another to action, which IS exactly what her role in e1 was for shinji. Thing is, unless the injury itself is a plot beat to be built upon, it just sort of gets swept under the rug at soonest convenience -so seeing her still really beat up a few episodes later, for pretty much no real purpose other than to say “yeah no that’s gonna take her a bit to recover from” was defintily a striking moment to me.

*spooky, haunting, chilling, i’ve used these words for these turns a good few times now. I know it’s a bit repetitive, but there really is something just so… hollow, so empty about these scenes; something that you know should be there and just isn’t and it feels weird. nge is damn good at anticipating where its emotional beats should be, and then intentionally leaving you with nothing when they come up. You wanted hype? You wanted catharsis? No get fucked. In most situations this would feel cheap or like some kind of buzzkill but with eva’s tone being how it is it’s just sort of… humbling? i know this is a bit of a pretentious read, but eva seems to make it a point to never go to hard into this being A Story, rather than Just Life; in the sense that life doesn’t always have the satisfying narrative conclusions you can expect in a story. They know enough not to Always do this because then the whole show would be actually lame and unrewarding, but the times they choose Not to deliver definitely have…a palatable contrast.

Also i know i made the jokey post about this already but LITERALLY why did they make rei go to school? There’s no?? Practical advantage to this???  I mean obviously from a narrative perspective it’s just to help sell the illusion that shes a normal human child but like. In-universe. Whose idea was this. Shes not even learning or getting Involved with anything she’s just staring out the window the whole time. She’s regularly absent and they’ve always gotta have people go check on/cover for her, not to mention that she doesn’t retain memories between bodies and they have to cover for her deaths too so like WHAT is the goal here!!!! Literally there are nothing but downsides to sending ur godspawn kid out into the public. Ok anyway. Moving on

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why DO people meme so hard on ‘get in the robot shinji’?? coming into this i really thought it was gonna take him half the damn series to get in the robot and that that was gonna be some kind of Climax, but it actually just happens in the first ep, and no one ever really has to ask or force him do it again after that? yeah he tries to quit half a dozen times, but all it really takes for him to come back around for another go in the eva is a fresh perspective. it’s more or less always his own choice.

i’ve heard a decent bit about shinji being an annoying or difficult-to-like character, and i... don’t get that at all? hes literally just a dude. A fucking babychild. coming into this i understood that he was young but i didn’t know he was Literally Fourteen, good lord dude. he’s definitely not a ‘good’ or standard type of personality for an anime protag but that’s literally the point? Like that is entirely central to what we are doing with this show. I’m not gonna say i’m a shinji Enjoyer; he’s mostly only my fave of the pilot kids by default, since asuka is,,,,,,, well. i’ll get to her in a moment, and rei you’re not Supposed to have an opinion on; but i am a shinji Defender. he has a couple of fun and strong character moments, and doesn’t really do anything egregiously awful or obnoxious so like. Literally leave him alone hes doing his best???

do people dislike him for that little tantrum he threw when he threatened to destory nerv hq? that one i can understand, but personally that was his strongest character moment for me. i’m pretty much always in favor of characters taking bold action for themselves, even if said action is outright a terrible/destructive choice. i think he shoulda done it. i would have supported him. the fact that he didn’t get to though is so.... oof. his most impactful moment for me for sure.  Like he absolutely was not bluffing, and the ONE time he really gets it in him to take charge of his own life and surroundings and he just gets such a harsh reminder that he’s still not the one in control.

this is kind of just the whole show with shinji. A friend pointed him out as being “trapped in the narrative” and wow god yeah. It’s just a cycle with him. he goes out in the eva and something fucked up happens to traumatize him and hes like oh my god why am i doing this and then while hes out trying to sort that out something nice happens to make him accept whatever fucked up thing he had to deal with so he gets back in the eva again and then something fucked up in a totally different way happens and rinse and repeat. it’s pretty good at escalating the different types of trauma each angel inflicts on him; if i really cared about plot or thematic analysis it might be fun to pick apart what exactly each does, BUT i dont. The two final ones dealing with having to hurt other humans is definitely cool though.

the one part i felt his characterization was Questionable was when he was going up against the jaws sphere, it is like. Super not his deal to ignore orders and leap into action? Really kind of a ‘he’s gotta do this because the plot needs him in this position’ moment but it was ultimately pretty minor so whatever

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So yeah asuka……Hm. Asuka. good lord. i’m not a fan of the whole ‘tsundere’ thing in the first place, but that alone wasn’t actually grating just bc it plays up against the much more stiff shinji and rei in really fun ways, and it’s also extremely funny just knowing she’s The Progenitor for that whole Type. her concept is fine and she very easily could have been a thoroughly Fun character but uhhhhhhhhhhh. uh oh. uh oh. oh no.

as the unfortunate vessel for most of nge’s Awful Bullshit i can’t say i was ever looking forward to having her onscreen. in the beginning she wasn’t even instigating it they just loved shoving her ass in shinji’s face for no reason or doing the classic wind blowing up her dress and shit like that. now to be clear i know this wasn’t the first instance of Fanservicey Anime Bullshit in eva, but it was much easier to tolerate before because.. well, one, katsuragi isn’t fucking fourteen, and 2 even when that shit happened with rei she didn’t have a Reaction to it. I think its really the reactions that make it insufferable for me. the kyaa! pervert! nonsense and the self-conscious anime girl yelling and the characters being visibly humiliated, also the halting whatever else was going on at the moment to do all this. this also did not happen with the katsuragi ass shots since she was still just having a normal fuckin conversation and carrying on the plot BUT i digress. asuka did start saying weird shit of her own accord later in but i still didn't hold it against Her Character so much as just "the writers are being weird". Yknow like it would just feel so forced and arbitrary every time she made some comment like that. For the longest time the only thing i blamed her character for is being fuckin sexist all the time. ‘shinji youre a man arent you’ he is 14 and traumatized as fuck leave him alone you are making things worse >:| 

In the end though, and i cannot believe i am saying this,  i do think all of that was at least conceptually justified. Not in execution, because all that came through there is their insistence on shoving naked 14-year-olds in your face, but conceptually the idea of asuka’s desperation to be seen as capable and mature manifesting as forced aggressive sexuality is honestly really solid. She wants to be seen as an Adult, so she jumps to the first idea she has for Things That Adults Do, which i guess is sex. This is kind of a fantastic notion for her character because 1, it’s shallow-showing she’s A Goddamn Child who has no actual understanding of what adulthood really means, and 2, it’s loud-a very visible and hard to ignore thing which bolsters her all the more to stick to it. While portraying this is obviously a super touchy subject, i can’t help but feel it wouldn’t have been. All that hard to so without it being,,, this bad. Don’t show it to the audience? Literally just don’t show the audience. I get they need to make the other characters uncomfortable to land the concept but like. Dont put asuka herself onscreen while it’s happening jfc. i still would have been HARD side-eyeing at it that way too but just. anything had to have been better than this bro.

ANYWAY. that nonsense out of the way, she did end up being kind of fascinating for her own. i have never seen a character so extremely, terminally, self-damning as asuka. i hear a lot about shinji being hopelessly miserable, and like, sure, but asuka has it so, SO much worse??????? shinji is miserable because he’s directionless; he doesn’t know what he wants or how to get it, but he knows a glimmer of hope when he sees it and never squanders it. were he ever given direction or a way to Find his path to happiness–or to at least a way to care about finding his path to happiness, i’m sure he’d be able to chase it pretty easily.

asuka does not have a path to happiness, or at least not for the time presented in the show. While it’s true if half her issue here is just “being 14”, her “i’d rather be dead than pitied” ideology isn’t something that will automatically solve itself with age. It stays mostly out of the way as long as she never fucks up but as soon as she DOES make any kind of big mistake it becomes pretty much her entire character. damaged pride is one thing, but usually the remedy for that is just other characters lifting her up if she can’t do it herself. here, this is not only not an option but also actively detrimental. It’s already incredibly self-destructive on its own, but i still wouldn’t quite call it “damning” yet just because like. If you’re ride or die committed to your personal philosophy, you’ll still die, but there’s probably some kind of underhanded gratification in it to chase it to its end. The thing is though that she’s not committed to it, and it’s honestly kind of hard to say to what extent she even believes in it at all.

this, i feel, is asuka’s defining moment, especially after her extensive agonizing in previous eps about having to be rescued by both shinji and rei. She can’t live with being helped because she wants to be independent, and yet she can’t live without help- with being alone-because she’s desperate to be seen and regarded as worthwhile.  

both of these are damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don’t situations! this kid is damned 4 ways ‘till thursday and the only way to get around it would be her undergoing some kind of minor ego death, and she is extremely not interested in letting this happen. shinji takes a blow and goes off to sulk for 3 days, has one positive interaction/experience, and gets a whole second wind. asuka takes a blow and falls into a pit of self-loathing [or really everything-loathing by the sound of it], aggressively refuses positive interactions, and tries to kill herself. It’s just like. Very telling i think that even though “everyone's depressed and miserable and dealing with shit Badly”  is a running theme in this show, asuka is the only one who attempts suicide.

If my interpretation of all this seems a little weird it’s because  “i’d rather be dead than pitied” is uhhhhhh unfortunately an ideology i’m very personally familiar with, and even though characters with that general idea aren’t too rare in media, i’ve never seen it BASICALLY stated verbatim, so. needless to say seeing asuka’s arc go the way it did did some things to me. whoops! anyway.

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i have to talk about katsuragi now ok. Ok. katsuragi is absolutely the hero of this show for me and it’s a little baffling she’s not like, A Recognizable Eva Character in laymen’s circles? Like coming into this I knew the pilot kid trio and a handful of the angels just from seeing stuff floating around the internet, and i could least recognize gendo from memes, but katsuragi? Entirely new territory here. what gives! She’s an incredible character and people should talk about her more because i am NOT about to be out here being the foremost katsuragi enjoyer in 2022. Come on

anyway man where do i even start. she’s everything. she’s got a cool car. she’s fiercely competent. she’s the man with the plan. she’s a domestic disaster. she notoriously cant cook for shit. she has a pet penguin [?!?]. she adopts two kids. shes a little bit crazy. She’s the butt of a lot of jokes. shes a rogue agent. she fucked her ex in an alley [??!?]. She has a drunken breakdown and needs help to get out of it. she hates her father. she has complicated feelings about her father. she’s on a vengeance quest. She accidentally gets attached to the kids in her care. she fucked her ex for government secrets. She’s sick of the expectations on her. she’s petty and emotional and weird, and most of all, she’s allowed to do all this without ever undermining her skill and authority, and the respect other characters have for her. im going to be real i don’t quite think all of her traits and flaws were intentionally written to be enjoyable but damn if i didn’t enjoy them anyway. Katsuragi has this real edge of emotional roughness to her that i feel like most female characters aren’t allowed to get into, and i really just??? Love her for it???? I thought i was gonna have a ton to say about her but honestly it all just comes back to “i really really really like how her flaws are written/handled alongside the rest of her character”.

I don’t have anything to like dissect about this line i just really like it. Eva had built up a pretty good bit of goodwill through its first 7 eps, and this really put a point on it. unfortunately it would then be ruined immediately in ep 8 BUT i did want to bring it up just because it was like. an ‘oh ok i can be justified for liking these characters’ type beat.

Also as far as the series ending goes i do have to be an apologist about her sorry. She literally has not done anything [more] wrong [than any of the other characters]!!  they wanna go through and list out all these characters’ insecurities and flaws and they go after katsuragi to slutshame her like  “Oh you're lonely so you use men to chase simple pleasures” and like. no?

First of all, every character’s breakdown was “you're lonely and/or afraid so that manifests as x”!!!! if she wants to fuck about it that’s her business! There is nothing inherently wrong with that! this COULD have still easily been a fatal flaw, like they could have presented it as a bunch of partners she’d had in a sort of use-and-abuse fashion and i’d have been like ok yeah this is an issue for you but they didn’t do that! the ONLY thing they talked about  was her less-than-stellar relationship--and subsequent messy breakup with kaiji**. Even if said breakup was largely her fault, she already acknowledged this and recognized the issues that led her to it! She has already apologized and openly admitted her fear to him, and that fear was explicitly why she ended the relationship! That is not intentionally “using” someone!!! you cannot call this a fatal flaw without more evidence. she had one messy relationship and she likes to fuck. That's a normal human flaw, try again. 

**this is actually a blessing in disguise, as it’s most of why i’m willing to look the other way when it comes to interpreting the more, uh, questionable aspects of her dynamic with shinji in nge. Like if the possible sexual implications there had been a Serious Deal for her character/portrayal i feel like it would have been brought up here, but since it wasn’t im happy to sweep it under the rug so it doesn’t ruin a character i otherwise really love. i do have a decent bit to say on this, but i’m saving it for the eoe post because it’s more relevant there and because, unlike eoe, my feelings towards nge are mostly positive so likewise i want to keep this post mostly positive. 

only thing she doesnt get a pass on is the alley sex like come on at least ONE of you has to have more class than that?!?!? It’s gotta be cold and dirty out there you are ON THE CONCRETE GROUND and there is VISIBLY A TRAIN GOING BY someone one is gonna see you!!! You’d have been better off fucking in a goddamn bathroom at that point

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akagi is the other unsung hero of this show, but in an in-universe way. this woman is holding this whole damn operation together. i don’t have much to say on her narratively, she’s got a very small presence, but as with suzuhara i think her lessened involvement really shows how eva lets simplified characters shine. I’m not gonna break down all of her appearances like i did for toji, but she has the same general “every time she’s onscreen they make excellent use of it” thing going on. she’s known the other NERV mainstays pretty far back and they’re really good at showing that familiarity through her dynamics with them. they just Know Things about eachother, and it’s played in a very natural and non-exposition-y way to inform stuff about the other characters’ pasts or motivations or how they’ve changed through the years or something like that. it’s good. she’s good. Always a delight to have you ma’am

Also im gonna say it. She should have been a lesbian. she has the vibes and it would have saved us all from... whatever that lategame nonsense with her and gendo was. c’mon girl LITERALLY anyone but gendo i know you have better taste than this. also x2 her dynamic with katsuragi is already great but i think it could have been even more interesting with some Subtext:tm: at play, even if unrequited. also x3 there is literally official art for this.

its literally right there. come ON

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also on side characters i never learned suzahara’s little nerd friend’s name but he’s really good too. his scene with shinji in e4 is wonderful and i think his being a dweeb does a good bit to enhance suzuhara’s character too, again just showing suzuhara isn’t an indiscriminate bully going after people who are ‘weird’ or lame or whatever since he clearly does not share this guy’s interest in military junk. also him cheerfully apologizing while suzuhara beats shinji up is just a great dynamic.

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I have to bring up penpen real quick just because no one ever told me theres a fucking penguin in this. hello? shinji just opens the door and theres a fucking penguin there and gets told thats his other roommate and we just have to accept that. I was looking at his wiki page and apparently 1. He lives in a spare freezer [very funny], and 2. katsuragi “took him with her from her previous job”  HELLO??? Did she steal a fucking penguin???? and what IS this thing’s level of sapience anyway. he eats out of a little doggy dish on the floor and doesn’t seem to have much capacity for communication, but knows how to use buttons and switches around the house, takes his own showers, and is apparently LITERATE???? lots of questions here but nonetheless i am very happy he exists. little guy :)

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kaji is.....*through gritted teeth*...........okay.......i guess. He does a lot of shit i want to kill him for but he also behaved himself at all the most crucial moments [providing gentle support when katsuragi was at her most vulnerable, and flatly ignoring all of asuka’s advances] so that makes him better than a lot of other characters. there’s a lot about him that easily could have gone way, way worse so ill take what i can fuckin get here. i don’t actually care about his narrative involvement at all sorry. i’m taking a petty point on this one. kind of glad he died just for getting to avoid the painfully obvious cliche of being the love interest katsuragi gets together with in the end, especially after treating her the way he does most of the time, and her still being really into him regardless for some reason. Would have felt like a really cheap and bullshit way to “justify” all of that. the most frustrating admission i have to make with this show is that "well, i'd rather it be between misato's tits, but failing that i'm choosing to die right here in my garden" is kind of unironically a fantastic line...he can have that one. That whole gardening scene was just really nice in general, and i do enjoy him as a sort of guide for shinji but other than that jesus christ dude.

i think he’s probably the most messy and plot device-y feeling character, though i recognize at least part of that is my general distaste for him so i have nothing else to say here.

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The little trio of field operations tech type guys…. Listen i know my fawning over literally every minor character is getting absurd at this point but like. I literally enjoy them. Ok. i think it’s really cool having a handful of just Actually Normal Guys along for the ride on this; seeing how The Horrors affect just the average joe kinda guy. For everyone else their own emotional torment is on pretty equal footing with all the impending physical threats, but these guys aren’t already super traumatized and have a much more surface-level relation to the horrors. Idk !i just think it’s neat seeing a different set of perspectives with them that lacks the tint of the Personal stakes/involvement the rest of the cast has with the whole situation; even if their reactions are pretty “generic” and could have been done with any random passerby in the city, i think it adds to it that it’s done with recurring guys, however minor. they are freshly Going Thru It but they persevere and i love them for this.

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gendo is notable just for how much he sucks. like it’s truly astonishing. i dont even mean in the abusive shitty father way. or, well, i do, because he IS also that, but even moreso he is just. so lame? he’s SO lame. all he does is sit there with his hands folded and say edgy ominous shit. some of that was definitely intentional and i think they also just couldn't afford more than one pose for the guy, but also....come on. Get a life loser.  even the peppermints guy somehow has more personality and intrigue than gendo and im pretty sure his only purpose is to sit in the bg to be intimidating and to mediate between nerv and seele.

anyway in ep18 he CLEANLY crosses the line from “obnoxiously distant and uncaring/nonreactive” to ”oh this guy is Actually evil”, in a... not really unexpected, but still very brutal way. given his interactions with rei it’s easy to think he’s still a somewhat benign dude overall and just hates shinji for being a failure son or whatever, BUT turns out actually shinji is the rule and rei is the exception instead of the other way ‘round. which, given what rei is... lol. lmao. [you of course don’t know that at this point though.] but no yeah this dude is just totally down to physically destroy some random kid by mentally destroying his own kid. oh and he also killed his wife. literally just astonishing how awful he is.

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oh yeah and kaworu exists. i guess. evidently people actually care about this guy? don’t get me wrong he’s a hell of a plot catalyst, but like as a character? Theres nothing there dude. he only exists for like 1.5 episodes and has zero agency, he’s just there to once again fill the quota of “new angel+traumatize shinji”. To be fair he is very good at this. But yeah i cannot give a shit about him, even as an angel. If i wanted to talk about individual angels i think i’d legit have more to say on that glowing one with psychic beams than the guy whose role is “suck up to shinji for an episode to make it extra painful when he inevitably has to die” i do think it’s insanely funny he shows up in so much of eva’s promo art though, what an absurd way to do a red herring.

--------------------------------------------- ok thats all the characters. umm a few other random misc notes

I moved this part out of the intro bc it’s a longer sidetrack but another thing that hooked me about the earlygame was actually the coverup explanation of the second impact as a meteor strike. It’s the first one you’re given, and a devastating natural disaster plays perfectly to the Somber tone eva thrives on. something unavoidable and unprovoked…. perhaps it is simply the bio nerd in me but the idea of earth and its life just trying to figure out how to exist again in the wake of something like that is awesome to me and did a ton to keep everything down to earth despite the giant robots and otherworldly horrors and whatnot. Definitely kind of a letdown to hear that’s just the cover-up explanation though, sort of turned it into your generic “humanity brought its own end” post-apocalypse thing, which may have been more novel at the time but it’s become pretty overdone these days. granted, eva’s a lot less overtly About said apocalypse than your typical modern post-apoc thing, and the… circumstances for this cataclysm are definitely a bit different, but still. “You couldn’t have stopped this, you can only repair after the fact” is an angle i’m vastly more interested in, and also one i don’t see as much.

coming out of that, 8-17 are definitely the low stretch for me. the introduction of kaji and asuka their Anime Bullshit™, and the tone turning to a more standard monster of the week mech battle thing definitely killed my engagement there. whether there was actually more dialogue or i had just gotten acclimated to the Usual lack conversation i can’t tell, but all the aforementioned stuff put a pretty big hit on my enjoyment regardless. it picked back up HARD with the fourth child stuff though, and the plot motion of the Really Fucked Up Shit from there was plenty enough to outweigh my other gripes.

As far as the ending goes… yeah it’s good. It’s lame as hell in execution but like conceptually it’s fine and i can’t really be too mad about anything seeing as they were evidently Out Of Money. They stuck the landing effectively enough; really about as well as they could have given such strict limitations, and i do actually think it’s extremely cool that they were able to frame “removing backgrounds and colors and clean lines” and “we literally can only get this part out as storyboards” as a legit storytelling thing. Still sad about the dozen hanging lore threads ofc but getting any followup on those means acknowledging the movie so i’ll gladly cut my losses

I think this might fall under ‘fakedeep’ and ‘not actually good’ but i do genuinely appreciate that while nge looooves to have intentionally confusing presentation, when they Want to say something  it’s never really inscrutable and/or buried in metaphor and symbolism. This isn’t a narrative critique or anything i’m just not very smart so i like that it’s still pretty straightforward.

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Obligatory section about the angel designs. Yeah they’re good too. Anyone knows me knows i am allllll the fuck about creature design, and even though these aren’t as in-depth as what i usually go for[mostly due to budget stuff no doubt, judging by what they did with ramiel in the rebuild] [again i havent seen rebuild but hot damn rebuild ramiel my beloved], i still really appreciate just how diverse most of them are. They don’t stick to any particular type of design logic, and it’s rare to see something actually embrace an “anything goes” ruleset as well as this does. Like you got ones that are sort of just fantasy animals, ones that are a funky combination or suggestion of earth animals, ones that are just arcane imposing shapes, ones that are kind of abstract interesting shapes, some that are humanoid, some that are just and then like…whatever the fuck was going on with that dna halo thing. The humanoid ones do feel a bit samey but also anyone who knows me knows thats pretty much always the opinion i have on human/oid designs fdjsdjkfd. They have pretty funky and diverse sets of shapes which is rad, but their attack methods are all… Pretty boring. Pretty much all of ‘em just attack with their hands in some way and i feel like theres a million other things they coulda done there but oh well. Bland attacks are consistent across a lot of them though, like half were just “extrude something through the guy”, though i don’t think i can really be too mean about it because elaborate fight sequences would Also require money lmao.

Anyway my fave is the spider, followed by the weird fuckin orange splatter comet thing and the eel type guy

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i just have to say this as a standalone point but why do people not meme on the part where an angel starts fucking shit up and they just drop the hallelujah chorus oh my GOD. we make fun of the elevator scene and rightfully so even though that wasn’t the only instance of a single frame lasting over a minute, but like. idk maybe they thought the hallelujah chorus souned cool and dramatic or something but it just made me lose my shit when it came on. asuka is going fucking through it and the most sanctimonious singsongy music is playing.

another really funny thing is how every time they do a scene with an eva unit they’re like “oh no! something is going wrong! cut the power! aaah it’s not responding we can’t stop it!! oh no this is unprecedented!”. yes this is very precedented actually it happens literally every time. i know theres no suspense in an easy mission and they’re trying to drive that controlling the evas is janky as hell but you gotta have SOME standard of success/normalcy to compare to sjkdskdfdsf

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on the rebuilds....yeah no i don’t intend on watching them [unless it’s as a group with friends or something] If i’ve communicated nothing else in all this, i’d hope i got across that i admire nge mostly for the incredible efficiency of its narrative. It’s tight, focused, makes the most of that it’s got, and doesn’t go anywhere it doesn’t need to. i wouldn’t have been able to see a purpose for the rebuilds to have a new character in the first place, and after hearing a bit about said character’s evident production hell, uhhhhh. Lmao. i’d already think it loses something by not having by not having such tight budget restraints-since those no doubt factored into the way its tone was played here, but if they’re also adding shit just to add shit i Really don’t care.

that’s it i dont have a cool conclusion to all this or anything. i just needed to get all the thoughts out so i didn’t go insane. thanks for reading!

[thoughtfulfangirling]

75 books is definitely my most impressive book count in at least a decade! This year I used StoryGraph and had too much fun watching the numbers on the graphs change. So! I'm posting my graphs.

Surprising no one, my biggest 'mood' is Adventurous. I'm a little surprised that Emotional is my next largest one, but not very surprised about the next two.

Pace means practically nothing a lot of the time in this app imo, but I am surprised at how few are 'fast paced' cause I'd generally think that would be more of my reads.

I didn't read many long books. I'm also a tad bit surprised how many nonfiction books are less than 300 pages, but that seems to be pretty common for nonfiction. Not at all that all of that slice is nonfiction or anything, but definitely some of it!

Speaking of, I did read a fair amount of nonfiction this year! Nearly a quarter of my reading! Might be a bit too much to hope that next year it could be a full quarter, but maybe. We'll see. I'm removing my mostly ban on YA this year, so that could end up taking time, though I still do not want to overdo it. I'm definitely just not the target audience anymore.

I wasn't able to capture all the genres that I had books fall into this year, but who needs more of a breakdown than this. The point being that hey, I did read a fair variety of genres even if most fell into a solid five or so. And look! I even did a fair amount of reading of printed copies! Not all just audiobook this year! I attribute that to play a large factor in why I got so much extra reading done this year.

I largely avoided starting any series this year with a couple of exceptions, tho all of those had a finite number of books. Like the Agents of Hel series only has had three books for a while, and The Song in the Silence books are only a trilogy with nothing coming after as far as I'm aware. Nona doesn't really count because the book that came out this year was the only one I hadn't read yet and the other book by Muir was a novella.

And I think the last chart speaks for itself. Damn I was a book worm in September!!

I'm not sure what my goal is for next year. I really really enjoyed the one I set for 2022 of reading a book a mutual picks out for me, but I'm not sure how to do something similar without doing it the same that will actually get much interaction. Maybe I'll come up with something yet.

Here's to a year well spent reading, and cheers to looking forward to more new reads in 2023.

2022 Reads

It’s that time where I start a new list of the books I’m reading this year. I might try again to do blurbs about them as I go and link them but uh… I’ve never kept up with it so no promises. For my 2021 and previous year reads, go here and follow the rabbit hole.

Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother’s Will to Survive^ by Stephanie Land

How to Lose the Time War* by Max Gladstone and Amal El-Mohtar~

Sorcery of Thorns^ by Margaret Rogerson

The Animals in That Country^ by Larua Jean McKay

Gearbreakers by Zoe Hana MIkuta

An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States: ReVisioning American History by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

Princess Floralinda and the Forty-Flight Tower (novella) by Tamsyn Muir

A Winter Haunting^ by Dan Simmons

The Binding: A Novel by Bridget Collins

Falling Leaves: The True Story of an Unwanted Chinese Daughter by Adeline Yen Mah

The Dark Lord of Derkholm^ By Diana Wynn Jones

Sooner or Later Everything Falls into the Sea* by Sarah Pinsker~

Midnight Never Come by Marie Brennan

The Song in the Silence* by Elizabeth Kerner

How to Do the Work: Recognize Your Patterns, Heal from Your Past, and Create Your Self by Nicole LePera, PhD

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell^ by Susanna Clark

Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland by Christopher R. Browning

Dark Currents: Agent of Hel book 1 by Jacqueline Carey

The Collected Schizophrenias: Essays by Esme´ Weijun Wang

Pride and Prejudice* by Jane Austen

The Lesser Kindred* by Elizabeth Kerner

Lincoln in the Bardo^ by George Saunders

Emma by Jane Austen

Accessing the Future edited by Kathryn Allan and Djibril Al-Ayad

Redeeming the Lost* by Elizabeth Kerner

1984 by George Orwell~

Kushiel’s Chosen* by Jacqueline Carey

One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston

The Secret History by Donna Tart

How we Fight for Our Lives by Saeed Jones

She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan

Honey Girl by Morgan Rogers

GenderQueer: Voices From Beyond the Sexual Binary edited by Joan Nestle, Clare Howell, and Riki Wilchins

The Deep by Rivers Solomon (novella)

Parable of the Sower by Octavia E Butler

For the Love of Men: From Toxic to a More Mindful Masculinity by Liz Plank

Contact by Carl Sagan~

Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne

The Witch’s Heart by Genevieve Gornichec

We’re Going to Need More Wine by Gabrielle Union

Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging by Sebastian Junger

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen*

Parable of the Talents by Ocatavia E Butler

Terror, Love and Brainwashing: Attachment in Cults and Totalitarian Systems by Alexandra Stein

The Last Gunfight: The Real Story of the Shootout at the O.K. Corral-And How It Changed the American West by Jeff Guinn

Circe by Madeline Miller

Autumn Bones: Agent of Hel Book 2 by Jacqueline Carey

Ice Planet Barbarians by Ruby Dixon

The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty

Dead Girls: Essays on Surviving an American Obsession by Alice Bolin

True Irish Ghost Stories compiled by St John D Seymour and Harry L Neligan

Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree

Nona the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir~

Beloved by Toni Morrison

The Penguin Book of Hell edited by Scott G Bruce

The Devil and Harper Lee by Mark Seal

Plain Bad Heroines by Emily Danforth

Mostly Void, Partially Stars by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor

Carmilla by J. Sheridan Lefanu

Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors* by Sonali Dev

Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo

Thirteen Storeys by Jonathan Sims^

Hallowe'en Party by Agatha Christie

Dracula by Bram Stoker*~

The Girl in the Green Silk Gown by Seanan McGurie

Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas

Under the Pendulum Sun by Jeannette Ng

Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen

Red Azalea by Anchee Min

The November Girl by Lydia Kang

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle^ by Haruki Murakami with Jay Rubin

Poison Fruit: Agent of Hel Book 3 by Jacqueline Carey

Kiss Her Once for Me by Alison Cochrun

In the Midst of Winter by Isabel Allende

Make You Mine This Christmas by Lizzie Huxley-Jones

*Re-Reads ^Chosen for me by someone else ~Reads done with spouse

[digital-dhampirs]

vnc episode 11 thoughts

The penultimate episode of VnC season 1 has aired and I have feelings about it! This is actually the first time I’ve done an anime episode breakdown/ review type thing, and I was considering just doing a full season review after the final episode comes out next week, but I have a lot of thoughts on episode 11 specifically. So! Let’s get started.

one quick spoiler alert— this review contains spoilers for manga events that don’t happen/ haven’t happened yet in the vnc anime; and will probably spoil parts of episode 12 of the anime. proceed with caution..!

VnC season 1 episode 11 is based on chapters 19 through 21 of the manga. We see the entirety of Vanitas and Jeanne’s date, which, while having a handful of janky animations and proportions, is a very fun time.

The voice acting is all around fantastic; Domi and Dante’s interactions are great; Jeanne is pretty. The chibi sections are adorable (especially Jeanne eating snacks). The music that plays when Dante notices the pair on their date is fantastic, and so is the music when Jeanne spills her full plan to Vanitas.

There are a lot of little details that got cut from this date scene, along with two more major things we’ll get to later, but in general you don’t miss them too much. Domi telling Jeanne about a fable her grandfather once told her, Domi saying she only has experience getting romantic attention from women, Dante sharing candy with Domi, Domi telling Dante everything that led up to the date…. a handful of these little character details (mainly revolving around Domi) got chopped, but none of them are too important. The date moves at a pretty breakneck pace for a lot of the episode (the scene where Jeanne almost gets hit by a car is especially guilty of this), and these details likely woulda made it too cluttered and fast paced.

Speaking of pacing, there’s one part of Vanitas and Jeanne’s date where things seem to slow down— the scene where everything goes to shit and Jeanne very nearly attacks a human. Jeanne drinking Vanitas’s blood is fantastically ominous and dark, and I would say it was absolutely perfect… if not for the two parts of that scene that the anime left on the cutting room floor.

Firstly, they left out Vanitas’s vision of Mikhail after promising Jeanne he’ll kill her. This scene is so short and so significant and I think it coulda easily been thrown in after Vani’s promise.

To break down why that one other thing was omitted from the date scene, we first have to go over the other half of this episode— Ruthven’s encounter with Noé. As a warning, this is the section of the review is where I go full on salty manga fan. don’t worry, I still love this anime, I’m not gonna say it’s inferior to the manga even though it is, and this is all just my opinion! here we go

In my opinion, the cafe scene was by far the weaker half of the episode. I love chapter 19 of the manga so damn much, and while the anime did at least a solid portion of it justice, it also left out a lot of fascinating exposition and made the decision to chop this scene up into little pieces to play concurrently with the date storyline, leading to (((IMO) a much weaker scene in the anime.

Firstly, and similarly to the date scene, we lose a handful of interesting little details in the anime’s version of chapter 19. We don’t get any exposition on the shapeless one’s past or standing in vampire society, and we lose the hug pillow line and Amelia’s lil crush on Noé. And most importantly, the way the anime has the date and cafe scene run concurrently means we miss out on the thrilling final few minutes of Noé’s encounter with Ruthven, which will likely occur in episode 12.

I really dislike how the anime chops up the cafe scene. It messes with the episode’s general timeline (Jeanne and Vanitas are still on their date in the afternoon and it’s night by the time they retreat to the abandoned studio, while Ruthven and Noé’s conversation takes place entirely in the morning, but the anime flips between the two like they’re happening at the same time) and makes things feel quite rushed.

Not to mention… the “swear” scene at the end of chapter 19 adds a Lot to the blood drinking after Vanitas and Jeanne’s date. The anime scene is still really well done and horrifying in a good way, but it’s missing that extra boost of “oh holy shit what’s going on what did Ruthven dO” that Ruthven’s curse brings to the table.

I really do find myself wondering why the anime chose to purposefully save the end of Ruthven and Noé’s interaction for episode 12. Did they think including the scene and then immediately going to the date would be too abrupt a shift in tone? I do think the way the general tone of the episode across its two storylines stays pretty consistent, starting out fluffy and cheerful and slowly turning more dark and creepy, is very nice. Was there just not enough time to fit all of the cafe scene in? Did the showrunners want some sort of Olivier style “things are worse than they actually are” red herring cliffhanger? Or did something else entirely happen?

Either way, I’m pretty disappointed by the pacing and two big cuts from this episode. But! Regardless! This episode was still enjoyable. The music and voice acting is consistently great and the episode’s consistent tone across both storylines was a big plus.

I beliiiieve the final episode of the show will wrap up the events of chapters 19 and 21, and will probably tackle chapter 22 as well. I’m up in the air on chapter 23, because while the ending of chapter 22 seems like a very decent ending to a season, the events of 23 directly correlate to stuff that happens in 19, 20, and 21… I guess we’ll find out next Friday! Either way I can’t wait to see more of Roland and Olivier, Mikhail’s introduction, and the conclusion of Noé and Ruthven’s confrontation!

fun fact

Jeanne pretty

[pickleslice]

ivx is a bad book with a very badly written emma but imo death of x is a pretty okay continuation of the revolution and mission to protect mutants for both scott and emma? idk i don’t think emma’s actions ruin his legacy at all. he dies asking her to not let it end and while she herself is distraught with grief i think what everyone else sees in her projection of scott is a pretty accurate picture of him and his goals and methods which shows how well they knew each other. getting rid of the terrigen was for the best for mutants and the demonization that scott faces afterwards is the same way everyone was talking about scott post avx anyways. curious about how you think death of x specifically diverges from the revolutionary figure built up across bendis uncanny?

i haven’t read the actual ivx event yet!! so this is all before knowing what that bullshit is.

2 meeeee scott’s journey through uncanny was about losing his friends and family bc of his mental breakdown/ months long panic attack post xavier dying and him working through the trauma . and all the weird matthew malloy stuff was a huge wake up call in terms of endangering those he was meant to protect and he wanted to turn away from violence in #600 with his big speech you see multiple relationships he’d lost (storm kurt and i think bobby and then later magneto) turning around and idk rethinking their opinion of him and his methodology? it kind of mirrors hank’s intervention in how hank refused to change when his friends confronted him while scott needed that eye awakening moment to see he’s “on the wrong path”

and then i skipped secret wars sorry <3 but at the beginning of death of x you see him working on the same team as bobby iceman again . and bobby was one of The Most vocal scott haters throughout uncanny so that demonstrates to me a general change of opinion of scott and his whole deal. the general public was divided on him already so i don’t know how much his speech would change but based on him being back on the xmen roster by death of x. if the public still hated scott they probably just hated the xmen in totality

i think how emma handles the terrigen was a little extreme i mean scott would’ve stopped the most at all costs but announcing to the Entire Planet that terrigen mist will likely kill you all! is not a very rational act lmao. i also just hate the inhumans so i hate being reminded they exist and i loved when emma’s idea of scott comforting a dying man is to tell him he’s a Good Solider and that guys dying words were “i’m not a soldier?”

oh my god this is long anyway tldr lmao i felt that scott’s image was more reformed revolutionary by death of x? i mean probably not beloved by all but not nearly as hated as he was after emma enacted a world war with the inhumans?

[ponyguru]

Here she is at last ... Marie Antoineigh, in her full glory!

WARNING: LONG POST AHEAD! Only read further if you’re prepared for artist babble!!

I already posted most of these photos on my Instagram, but I like to have a more full ‘breakdown’ on my Tumblr, simply because IG isn’t as friendly a format for the more informative posts, imo. (Plus, no line breaks!) Marie Antoineigh was created for the 2021 TheDollPlanet rerooting contest, and won first place in her category! She also was featured on the front page of their Etsy! Her hair is done in their NP Fluffy in pink and white!

Marie Antoineigh (obviously based on Marie Antoinette, with a punny name suggested by a friend!) started life as a very sad, stained Pony Bride, with her hair shaved down to the skin, a rusted and lobbed tail, a chopped-off neck plug and Sharpie stains everywhere, notably around her eyes. I didn’t get a true “before” photo, simply because with my impulsivity, sometimes the only choices are ‘start now or start never’, so I try to minimize how many roadblocks are ahead of me.

I took a photo of her after her rehair, but before the styling, so you could see how thick and poofy her hair was, and try to illustrate a little step-by-step of how her hairstyle came together. I knew some of the basics of how a Rococo hairstyle should look, but because I didn’t know if the hair would curl in time, I didn’t want to rely too heavily on curls, so I incorporated more braids than would probably be period accurate. I actually used a Gibson girl technique for the body of the hair, creating a ponytail that would cover up a square of Styrofoam (stabilized in the head with a straight pin), with another ponytail on top to enhance the volume. I love reading Instagram hair tutorials, so I attempted some ‘teased braids’ to frame the front of her bouffant. I left some hair loose at the end, so I could French braid it into the bouffant, and added a lock of the solid pink to twist into a bow, which I also learned on an IG tutorial. I figure she’s not Marie Antoinette exactly, she’s Marie Antoineigh, and so a pony version of a royal could have more liberties with her style. Her hairstyles often featured pearls, so I strung pearl beads onto thin jewelry wire, which gave me more control where I draped them. I also kept a hank of hair loose in the front to curl it on top of her crown, which is a ring, secured in place with two thin strands of hair tied at the back of her bouffant. Her tail is done in two braids, one large four-strand and one mini three-strand! 

(Painting is “Portrait of Marie-Antoinette de Habsbourg-Lorraine (1755-93))

I originally planned to have a more stereotypical crown next to a slice of cake, but I realized that I should use a reference for a French crown. Unfortunately, the paintings I found of Marie Antoinette online didn’t feature any crowns, but I did find a beautiful jeweled headpiece in the painting above, with the typical feathers and pearls to accompany. She is also often painted with roses, so I added a frosting rose to her cake. And because she’s a royal, she gets the extra luxe treatment; a symbol on both sides! I also gave her a heart-shaped beauty mark to cover a particularly obvious purple dot on the side of her nose.

Marie kept her original eyepaint, as you can see in the top comparison photo; I used white speckling paint to cover the stains around her eyes, which reduced them to more of a lavender eyeshadow, and then painted a lacy pattern over it. Her original symbols were removed, and repainted with the cake-headpiece symbol.

I think that just about covers all of it! But I took a million photos, so just for kicks, I’ll include those below the cut! Thanks for reading!

This was my first composite photo, I was going to use this as my entry ... but when I emailed the organizer to ask if a composite photo was okay, she told me that someone uploaded 16 photos! So I added even more photos!

(^This is the shot I decided to use for her primary photo!)

Okay byeeee!

[yellowhollyhock]

Casey Jones gets knocked down fast but he gets back up fast no matter how many times it takes

Raph vs Karai let's gooo more of this please

Donny taking his sass out on Karai lol. He has been scrambling to keep his brothers who will not stop screaming at each other from getting crushed by buildings and giant robots, don't test him Lady

oh wait ih shoot when he had Mikey herd the robot over. hang on this is now my headcanons but guys he knows Mikey can outrun the Foot. He made sure his little brother went with the devil they knew instead of the giant robots, and away from the fighting which we can see in the background has been stressing both Don and Mikey out. And he did it in a way that Mikey wouldn't feel like he was being babied but instead that he was helping, which he did.

Casey 'i think she's perfect' not the time my dude

Okay I had never caught this before in wuite this way: nobody is with Leo on teaming up with Karai. They're all saying 'we're already in too deep and we probably can't trust her'

But then Raph leaves. I get why, he's felt ignored and been worried about his brothers dying all day. Stressed the heck out and also just now had an argument where Leo basically told him to leave but tried to make it so it was his own fault. Here's the thing though

They were all with Raph. Two seconds ago, in the huddle. But if Raph walks away (he did) Mikey and Donny are gonna follow Leo (that is what happens). Simply because they don't want to leave him alone.

And Casey--I did not notice this before but Casey is attracted to Karai. I mean I do not blame him but it is really not the time to get distracted by a pretty girl who can beat you up, Case. Raph actually really needed you rn. Actually Leo really needed y'all all to talk some sense into him. Also you really needed you to not get yourself and your friends involved with this. Annoyment, Jones. Much annoyment

I don't mean to dismiss his whole argument just because he called her pretty, but his entire argument is 'i was always taught you fix your mistakes, no matter what' which could be a solid wanting to do what's right and feel om character for him in different circumstances, but in context it just feels like surface level half-heard Leo and Raph's argument and spitting words back out. The fact that he was distracted makes his whole stance make a lot more sense imo

Anyways every time the Shredder is defeated Leo has a breakdown. Which is. A lot of breakdowns for one turtle

sjhdhw watching the city at war arc today and guys guys Raph is so good to Leo 😭

there's a bullseye on a billboard and Leo misses

Raph: I don't know about all them fancy moves. *makes a bullseye* I prefer just getting the job done

And it's this whole scene, it kinda plays like Raph just giving Leo a hard time, and yeah they are competing and just bantering, but it's the tone. "That's a little too advanced bro" he's being so warm with him you guys

Because Leo is such a perfectionist right from the start and here's the thing. Raph is the only one who meaningfully intervenes. Mikey sees it, but he doesn't really understand that it could be harmful, from his tales of Leo story it seems like he sees it more as a strength. A strength he simply absolutely cannot find in himself and admires in Leo. Donny sees it, and the best way he knows how to help is by making sure things run as smoothly as possible. Leo and Don both take on so much of whatever suffering they see and don't know how to protect themselves in the process, and they kind of feed into each other's self-blame and anxiety. Master Splinter, just like Mikey, seems more proud of Leo's discipline than concerned about his extreme self-denial. He doesn't see, at this point in the story, how deeply ingrained and self-defeating it is for Leo to hold himself to this idea of perfection that he's crafted in his head, largely drawing from Splinter's teachings.

And it just hurts so bad how Raph is the only one who really seems to know, and know what to do, and always stands between Leo and that harsh internal judge.

And that makes him seen as the rebel of the family. Sure there are times he's just rebellious, and he does have big emotions that he sometimes needs more space for than they have in the lair. But he really doesn't cause that much trouble, he talks tough but he's very supportive if his family and ultimately generally respects Splinter's wishes, even if he complains. But he's got this reputation, this place in the family politics where he acts as Leo's foil (to protect Leo from himself in ways no one else has even realized he needs), and that makes him the scapegoat in so many ways. Because if Leo is the responsible obedient son and Raph has made himself stand out as the opposite of Leo, he must be the crazy troublemaker.

also it makes me emotional how these two go off to hang out just the two of them sometimes, just running around goofing off getting exercise, usually competing in some way. There are lots of close pairs among the four but iirc these two are the only ones we really see just choosing to hang out separately, when we got other dynamics it's usually because the plot has put them there. this is the episode that starts with that little song about feeling free being out in the rooftops at night, and it's Leo and Raph just enjoying each other's company.

And it's leading into the arc where they fight, the thing their dynamic ends up being remembered for. i am. fine