#literally not my fault the show's premise is That but it has a lot of really good scenes..... both silly and truly meaningful
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THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR TRUSTING ME BRO I COULD CRYYYYYYYYYYYYY šššššI hope it does not disappoint... REAL THOUGH about the drama you mentioned in your tags, that's exactly how I felt reading If My Wife Becomes An Elementary School Student's title, for example, but I'm told it's wholesomeā ļøā ļøI would love to hear about the one you were thinking of though!
I WILL BEAR IT IN MIND TO PREPARE FOR ARACHTAGON WHENEVER THE TIME COMES... totally understandable to get frustrated with RNG on top of that, RPGs can be so evil šššstill, again, I'm glad you're back to it! Also totally understandable to want to play on the original consoles... NOTHING beats the experience... the availability of playthroughs nowadays is nice for sure to be able to experience the series without investing that much!
I would LOVE to see more Normal interactions between Ichiban and Jo for realšthey have so much potential for silly moments... ever-thankful for your content and I Can't Say Enough always looking forward to whatever you might have in store :] whether it's that or something else :]
I EXPECT YOU'RE DONE WITH EPISODE EIGHT NOW AT MINIMUM SO I WILL JUST SAY the Ohashi arc and Episode Ć [<- why the hell is ep eight called this] are peak to me I am soooo glad you enjoyed the arc... LOVE the OST too, Yugo Kanno is a legend. HOWEVER all the songs on it are titled words that start with S and P so you get titles like Scarlet Pussy š
OH BUT SPEAKING OF SP'S WACKASS STRUCTURE pleeeeeaaaase consider watching SP: The Motion Picture and SP: The Motion Picture: The Final Episode after you finish the show... there is A Cliffhanger and those are the true conclusions to the story... and SP Final In Specific is what blew my nuts clean off...
STOPPP NO THAT'S EXACTLY THE DRAMA I WAS TALKING ABOUT BUT I DIDNT WANNA SNITCH ON MYSELF šš it really is a cute show..... im ngl it has some of my fave tsutsumi scenes/performances like it TRULY blew my expectations out of the water. i just feel SOOO awkward about it cause.. with a title like That and a premise Like That i wouldnt blame a single person for giving me a weird ass look so i generally try not to talk about it ā ļø its my guilty treat so to speak and i cant even tell if im making it sound worse than it actually is (āÆxā° )
in any case... i finished Security Police SO !!! onto After The Rain for me when it comes to Media Thats Awkward To Talk About But Please Believe Me When I Say Its Not What You're Thinking :]
LMAO PLEASE like... so long as you have the right equipment you don't even really have to do much extra grinding by the time you get to him... it truly is just hoping RNG doesnt dick you over ā ļø i've been cruising through the game since tho ! i dont expect myself to get into anymore awkward blockades anytime soon and then i can finally say i finished this game (āĖāĖā)
THANK YA THANK YA it aint much but its honest work..... i have been real dead this week tho and i always get scared if ill draw again durin periods like this- i HOPE to come up with something soon cause there really is an untapped well of Good Stuff to be explored :]]
THE SOUND DESIGN OF SP WAS REALLY GOOD IN GENERAL THOUGH LIKE not just music wise was it good but i really loved hos inoue's migraines gave me migraines... immersion... but also just knowing when to keep things dead silent (like finding nishijima's corpse) did SOOO well to put emphasis.. the weird as hell names are just bonus points by now like. Gotta Let Bro Have SOMETHING As A Thank You For The Sound Design (āÆā½ā° ;;) OH BUT IM GLAD THERE'S MOVIE TIE-INS CAUSE THE LAST SCENE HAD ME CONCERNICUS LIKE šļøšļø? i was only able to find the first 2010 movie on the site i usually go to but its somethin...
#long post#snap chats#i remember i was telling jess about tsuma and we were texting but i just know she was textually giving me that Customer Service Smile#like im SORRYYY I DIDNT MEAN TO TALK ABOUT IT I ALWAYS SPEAK WHEN I SHOULDNT and then i never mentioned it again#well. i HAD to mention it when making that Shit I Watched list and Rest Assured i put a paragraph's worth of a disclaimer there š#literally not my fault the show's premise is That but it has a lot of really good scenes..... both silly and truly meaningful#i actually downloaded a whole ep just so i could clip one of my fave monologues tsutsumi gives in it šš#REGARDLESS. if you dodge this drama i wouldnt blame you in the slightest like Again good luck talking about it without looking insane <- me#moving on tho..... big fan of the Lets Play era..... now my poor ass can watch people play games i want :) speedrun them too even..#but yeah no i love having gameplay vids on while i draw. not during streams of course but on my own time i watch gameplay vids#ugh its my moms birthday in like. half an hour and we're going out to eat... why cant i just watch stuff all day (āÆxā° )#IN ANY CASE im gonna go watch that sp movie so !!!! be back whenever i have the opportunity to speak again LMAO
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I Saw Wish
And it was the worst animated Disney movie Iāve ever seen. I have to watch it again before I can get into the nitty gritty details. But I donāt need details to sum it up, because my dad actually said it perfectly as we left the theater:
āIt was like someone who didnāt really understand Disney movies tried to make a Disney movie.ā
Both the form (the technical arts of filmmaking) and the content (the morals, values, and themes of the movie) were totally horrible.
I donāt know whoās fault it was. Jeremy Spears was in the storyboard room and Mark Henn and Eric Goldberg did some 2D animation. But they must have gotten outvoted, or they must not care anymore.
Because holy cow. Hereās some stuff thatās just off the top of my head.
SPOILERS. Not that it matters, because nothing interesting happens in this movie.
The writing? Terrible. Ninety percent of it feels like the characters are filling time with quirky one-liners that are trying too hard to be appealing, then failing, then taking you out of the movie. The jokes arenāt funny. The characters just respond to each other in conversation to check a one-liner box. The other twenty percent is whole conversations repeating tell-donāt-show exposition that has already been covered, usually twice, in previous scenes. Like if in Tangled, every scene had included some variation of Rapunzel saying to friends and enemies alike, āI have to see the floating lights so Iām sneaking to the castle with this thief who wants a mysterious tiara I hid from him. Donāt tell my mother, sheās a bit overprotective!ā Over. And over. And over.
The character motivations are way too broad. Asha? Her dream is just āthat everybody around me gets to be happy.ā Thatās it, in a nutshell. No deeper exploration of that. Nobody asks, āwhy do you care so much?ā Nobody tries to convince her she should look out for herself, and then she proves she was right all along. The King? We are told (not shown) that he doesnāt want anyone elseās dreams to be ādestroyed.ā But he in no believable way expresses that that motivation is still whatās driving him during the movieāwhatās driving him is just a plain old lust for power, no nuance.
By the way, the whole premise of the movie? Undercooked. Half-baked concepts strung together with no definitive meaning. Therefore, itās not believable. Example: The characters act like the wishes are beautifulāwell, actually, no, this movie doesnāt know how to show, so thereās not a lot of meaningful actingāthe characters just tell us that wishes are āthe most beautiful part of someone,ā and thatās why itās worth going through this adventure to give their wishes back to them. But thereās no proof of that in the movie. In fact, it directly kicks itās own legs out from under that idea, because it has every character who gives up their wish forget that part of themselves. Ashaās grandfather has forgotten his wish, but that doesnāt make him any less ābeautiful.ā She, and everyone, still treats him like heās this wonderful old man who deserves the world, who everyone lovesā¦but why is he so appealing? If he āgave up the most beautiful part of him?ā The only character who is changed by their lack-of-wish is the Sleepy-analogue characterā¦who is just sleepy, which is described as āboring.ā But nobody else whoās given up their wish in the whole kingdom acts like that. Itās just him. Also, the King acts like itās so important to protect the wishes from destruction. But what does destroying a wish look like? That actually happens to Ashaās mom. Her wish-bubble is broken, literally, and she just says she feels grief. But like. Why? She never remembered it in the first place; it had been missing from her life for years. Also, what the heck is a wish?! It seems to range from broad concepts like āinspire peopleā to āfly.ā Just āfly,ā like a bird. The desire to levitate off the ground is the most important, beautiful essence of one background character. Like, what?! But no character ever has the why behind their wish to make us care.
I could go on and on about that point. Like, think about Disney movies that wrote the book on how to make movies about characters with wishes. If Ariel were in Wish, her bubble would look like ādancing and learning and exploring on the Surface with someone who understands her.ā But we believe that that is her real, genuine wish, and that it matters to her, because we are shown why being understood is so important to her. Because itās missing from her life. Thereās a scene where she explores a boat alone, and even her best friend doesnāt get excited about it with her. Her dad wonāt listen to her point of view. Her siblings donāt ask her about her life even when they think sheās in love. She wants what she wants because of pieces of her life that we are shown.
We are never shown why Ashaās grandfather is obsessed with inspiring people, so we have no reason to believe it, or care whether he gets it or not. We canāt feel disappointed when his wish is said to ānever come true,ā like we did when Quasimodo was abused by the people he wished to join. We canāt feel elated when he finally āgetsā his wish, like we did when Simba smiles on Pride Rock remembering the same way he used to as a cub and claims the crown with a roar. We donāt have anything to hang on to, nothing to relate to, nothing to grasp and feel with the characters. So we donāt feel, because they didnāt put the work in to help us feel. They just say, āthe momās feeling grief. Feel grief.ā And expect us to do the work ourselves. I have to stop harping on this point and move on.
But The main point of the movie is very broad because of that lazy premise, and itās barely reinforced by any kind of appealing storytelling. If I had to guess, the point would be āKeep wishing for more even when itās hard.ā But the story they told to communicate that meaning was so unimpactful. Asha doesnāt have a dream of her own thatās such hard work to accomplish! (Neither does her grandfather; his wish is āto inspire people.ā And at the end, weāre supposed to see him strumming a guitar and believe itās inspiring? We were never shown how he worked hard to learn how to play the instrument. Or that he carved it with his own hands, or anything like that. So thereās no meaningful demonstration of working hard for it or achieving your wish even if itās far out of reach.) And nobody except the king is trying to take wishes away from anyone, and he just does it literally, after they voluntarily give them to him, so thereās not even any impactful demonstration of ādonāt let anyone tell you your wishes are dumb or unachievable, or stop you from reaching them.ā Even when he takes them away, itās just because theyā¦could, someday, be used to threaten his kingdom in a vague, really unlikely way. There are so many things you could do with ākeep wishing for more even when itās hard.ā For instance; you could say the main character has always been afraid to dream (wish for more), because maybe when she was a kid something wonderful almost happened but ended in tragedy, so she keeps her head down and doesnāt want much because if you donāt dream youāll never be disappointed. She takes no risks, and has to learn that sometimes trying and failing is worth more than slogging through life all self-protective. I mean, the pieces were right there. She has this line about her dad, and how she wished he would get better but then he died. She has lines about how nobody should have to live with grief?? Then thatās never addressed again! Itās just a throwaway emotion-moment with no buildup or follow-through to tie it to and support that main theme.
The compositions of too many shots were so terrible. Characters got cut off in weird places. One shot has Asha dead center, with her grandfather on the left side of the table and her mother on the right, having a family dinner with a super exposition-heavy conversation that is meant to be emotionally charged. But despite everything else being perfectly centered, half of her motherās body is chopped off. The movieās shot like someoneās mom who doesnāt understand technology tried to take a video with her phone.
The charm of the art āstyleā wears off basically immediately. I know what they were going for. I see the sketch lines and watercolor textures. This is maybe the first time Disney ever failed to accomplish a visual ālookā that turned out good. Everything looks dull. Muted. De-saturated. Slightly out of focus, but not in a cool Spider-Verse way. The sets or backgrounds are lazy; at no point does the scenery look complete; big, empty, boring spaces that do not create any kind of āstageā for impactful moments. The rendering looks unfinished. When Ashaās hair moves during her belting of the āI Make This Wishā song, itās bad. Itās unnatural. It flops in a way that doesnāt make sense for the weight of her hair. The most impactful visual moments come from the villain, and theyāre moments when he looks way too unhinged for the kind of line heās saying.
There is no interesting character development. Asha goes from believing everyone is basically good and their wishes deserve the chance to come true , toā¦.that, again. That would be fine, she could be a static character, if she proved contrast-characters wrong, in a believable way. But she never does. Because no other characters argue with her except the King. And it goes no deeper than āeveryoneās wishes are basically good and they deserve the chance to make them trueā vs. ānuh-uh, because I get to decide what makes them deserving.ā The King doesnāt have any kind of interesting development, either. They donāt expand on his tragic backstoryāit consists of one drawing of him near a broken boat, and a few images of the corner burned off of his family taoestry. They never say āKing Magnifico wished for _____ and it was taken away!ā They literally never tell you what his wish or dreams were, or what motivated him to create the whole kingdom that the movieās premise sits on. So thereās no convincing sense of progression, how he got this way, why heāll keep going āso far.ā
The pacing is weird. It undercuts every moment that could have any kind of emotion behind it. One minute Valentino is suavely bouncing around, then heās given a two-second beat to blubber with badly-animated tears that heāll miss Starāthen he instantly gets to have another funny one-liner so we forget he mightāve been sad a second ago. Weāre clearly supposed to believe that the King and his wife are devoted to each other, and his turning evil was such a big betrayal, but thereās no time and no impactful evidence for us to believe either of those things. And even if we did, the moment heās defeated and trapped in a mirror, and begs to be let free, the Queen kind of shrugs it off, makes a forgettable one-liner, and tells them to throw him in the dungeon. And he doesnāt look remorseful. And we donāt even get to assume heās embarrassed or emotionally devastated that heās come to thisābecause the last thing he says is ānooo, the dungeon is so smellyyy!ā Like this is a half-baked LEGO short that canāt get emotionally deeper than what an actual 3 year-oldās parents might be okay with.
And thatās the worst offense: The movie is not genuine. It works hard for nothing, and it has no vulnerability. It just uses old Disney standbys to pretend to be vulnerable. Have the music swell and the characters gasp and the songs drip emotion when characters are meant to be saying or doing something emotional.
But truthfully, think of all the Disney movies youāve ever seen with the hardest emotional moments. The sheer joy of Genie when he realizes heās free. The anguish when Elsa thinks Annaās been frozen forever, or when Anna thinks sheās dead. The trauma when Simba loses Mufasa. The longing and dreaming of Ariel when she reaches up out of her grotto. The sense of foreboding when Mother Gothel says āfine, now Iām the bad guyā or the heartbreak in Rapunzelās eyes when she thinks Flynn has abandoned her, or the shame on Aladdinās face when Jafar reveals heās a street-rat, or the horror of cruelty when the stepsisters rip up Cinderellaās dress, or Kalaās tears when Tarzan leaves her in the treehouse, or Sarabiās tears when Simba comes back, or Mulanās father tossing aside the sword and token of the Emperor to embrace Mulan, or heck, even just Lilo pushing Stitch in the woods and telling him āget out of here.ā This movie has no moments like that. It has moments you can tell that the filmmakers wanted to hit like thatābut they donāt.
Because no work is put into building them up. You know how much Simba loves Mufasa, because youāve been watching their chemistry more than any other character all the way up till he dies. You know how much Mulan wants to please her family because she spends all of Act I desperately attempting to do that. You know Quasimodo believes the world below is beautiful and wants them to accept him because he has interesting things likeātalking to gargoyles, convincing us that heās lonely; building a scale model of the townspeople, convincing us that he sees them in a beautiful way and wishes he were beautiful in more ways than one like them, too.
Right down to the facial expressions, none of them are as anguished, happy, sad, excited, silly, in any convincing way like all of Disneyās other movies. Ashaās ālow momentā when sheās afraid her āwishā hurt everyone else (still vague on what that wish ever was) lasts two seconds, sheās not crying, sheās barely sitting with slumped shoulders, and her family barely spend two seconds comforting her. They basically just say, āaw, no, itās not y fault, itās the kingās.ā And sheās like, āyeah okayā and thatās that. Itās like the animators weāre afraid to animate really intimate emotions on the charactersā faces. The voice actors, too.
And the whole movie is peppered with Easter eggs to past Disney movies. But all that does, if you really know Disney beyond the visuals, is make you think of how hollow this movie is in comparison. How much you wish you were watching Cinderella or The Little Mermaid or something with depth and vulnerability instead of Wish.
#Iāll talk more in an organized fashion later#wish#disneyās wish#wish Disney#wish 2023#critique#spoilers
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I'll forever be upset about how Elemental (2023 Pixar movie) flopped so hard, and it's not even its fault.
Let's be real, going against Across the Spiderverse would be a deathblow for any animated movie, but the marketing team REALLY didn't help matters. Not only did the trailers barely show up (to the point my friends DIDN'T EVEN KNOW IT EXISTED), the trailers also did such a poor job representing its actual story.
A lot of people were turned off by the "unoriginal premise" as well as the "forbidden romance", and I can't even blame them but no!!! The story is so much more than just "ooo they can't fall in love because they're (gasp) FIRE AND WATER?!?!?!?" and "what if (insert concept) has emotions but elements this time"!!!!!
At the heart of it all is a personal immigrant story. A story about two fire people moving to another place in order to start a new and hopefully better life (aka literally immigrants). A story about their daughter who feels in debt to them for making the sacrificd to leave their home. A story about her feeling like she'll have to sacrifice her whole life and her dreams in order to repay them and make them happy.
Not to mention how Asian-coded it is!!! The director, Peter Sohn, is clearly writing from his perspective as a Korean-American immigrant, and as an Asian immigrant, I resonated so unbelievably hard with Ember's story. It really felt like the movie held up a mirror in front of me. I've never felt this seen in a movie before this one.
And it feels so good!!! I'm so sad that a lot of people will be missing it out because the marketing team did such a terrible job at their literal jobs. If more people gave it a chance, they'll likely find a story that truly made them feel heard.
Also the romance is really cute. Like I don't typically seek out romance stories, but damn that was good food, that was good fluff. I think it's also a great allegory for interracial couples, but I'm not in an interracial relationship, so I won't overstep too much!
Long story short, if you're unsure on whether you really want to see this movie or not, hear it from me who saw it twice:
Go Watch Elemental!!! You will not regret it!!!
#THIS MOVIE WAS MADE FOR ME AND OTHER ASIAN IMMIGRANTS FOR REAL FOR REAL!!!!#also obviously it's not perfect#I understand the concerns with how fire is dangerous so the allegory may be flimsy#but they addressed it in the film!!!#also honestly there's also a good disability angle to look at here?#especially with how fire people are trying to live in a world that refuses to accomodate them#and would rather discriminate them#or shun them from society to the point they have to make their own community#but I'm not disabled so again#i won't overstep!!#elemental#pixar elemental#elemental 2023#pixar#review#rant#opinion#commentary#chris p fried rambles
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rei mentioned sugar is in the premises
okay but can we talk about how she would absolutely love having reader having an oral fixation.. like?? itās not your fault that you just wanna give all your attention to her tits,, even when sheās on stage, giving a performance, despite trying your hardest to focus on her dancing you can literally just focus on her bouncing chest and she knows it AND LOVES IT???
also switch!rei thoughts but sheās either such a doll ready to be used and objectified or the caring praising mommy,,, wanting to be groped and titty fucked and ridiculed OR.. wanting to breastfeed you and pamper you while she fingerfucks you while she kisses your neck LIKE YOU GET IT RIGHT??
ask from suggy my beloved!! RRRAAHHH I HAVE TO DO THIS WELL OR ELSE I'LL DEACTIVATE š¤š¤
i am a firm rei-big-boobies enthusiast as ya'll may or may not know and ugh.. i need her badly š¤¤ switch!rei would be sooo cute tho?? as in her smirking and intentionally wearing outfits that show a lot of her chest to get you excited and then once you've got her alone she's completely at your mercy while you grope and squeeze her tits šµāš« i just know rei would absolutely love having you leave hickeys all over her chest and tits and take pics of it... lowkey she can be such a troll (jiwon's influence istg) so she'd send them to the 04 gc just to show off and bring chaos upon wony and jiwon's lives šš
mmmdsfhgfdh imagine coming home to a needy subby rei,, her climbing on your thigh the moment you sit down bcs she needed to be touched :(( pulling off her top and grabbing your hands, putting them on her bare tits herself.. stares at you with a pleading look that so cute to the point you don't bother to even tease her about how needy she was being! but she'd enthusiastically start grinding her cunt on your thigh without being told... whimpering at every little sensation she felt whether it was from her grinding or your hands.. and yes she can cum just from being groped bcs i said so!!
telling her to quicken her pace on your thigh so she does :(( watching her breasts bounce softly as she moved back and forth like the sick perv that you were šµāš« even slapping her tits from time to time?? laughing at the way she'd whine and moan but she enjoyed every hit more than the next š¤ her cumming on your thigh and she's sooo embarrassed š but both of you know that she'd willingly do it all over again!!
rei also doesn't mind when you choose to make a mess on her chest tee hee š¤ letting your drool spread while you sucked on her tits.. she absolutely loves how you'd look up at her and she could see just how obsessed you were with her š³ oh, and since she already sends pics to her 04 sisters as a prank, why not videos as well?? reibear probs has an entire album of you just,, playing and sucking her nipples like a needy baby and she touches herself to them all the timeāespecially when you're separated for a while!!
if you were the super needy one, she'd definitely make you ride her fingers as a way to make you beg and beg for her boobs :(( "mhm.. baby wants mommy's tits in her mouth, hm? cum lots on my hand and maybe i'll consider even letting you touch them..." and then she gropes her tit herself just to make you whine and work yourself harder on her fingers š£
now.. omg... the titty fuck part??? š© YA'LL KNOW I DON'T DO THIS OFTEN BUT FUUUCKKK this is so perfect for g!p reader EEHHEEHDK sitting on your bed while rei has her tits around your cock?? moving up and down while sucking you off at the same time she's actually insane?? again, her loving the sight of you literally drooling for her while she did what she does best š«£ "a-am i... ummf.. doing good, mommy?" she randomly ask in the middle of her super awesome blowjob, knowing damn well you can't reply bcs you were too busy moaning her name š£š£
and now the best part of the night.. cumming all over rei's face and tits with a cute squeak (which she soooo loved, by the way) and watching her lap up your cum obediently.. she's such a sight to see GAWDDD
#ive smut#ive x reader#ive imagines#ive x fem reader#ive thoughts#naoi rei smut#naoi rei x reader#naoi rei imagines#naoi rei x fem reader#naoi rei thoughts#rei smut#rei x reader#rei imagines#rei x fem reader#rei thoughts#girl group smut#girl group imagines#girl group x fem reader#girl group x reader#girl group thoughts#g!p reader
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Ranking Every Restaurant Based BL
As of August 2024. Shows not yet finished by that date are not on this list. Otherwise, features any BL set in the restaurant & beverage industry (that I've watched). I did not include the home cook domestic BLs on this list (like Our Dining Table).
1 To My Star
Korea 2021 Viki
10/10
Hwang Da Seul directing this show about a neurotic actor (actual puppy) who takes refuge with a grumpy chef resulting in sparks, cooking lessons, and LOVE! Itās is a touch quirky to get into, but utterly charming once it hits its stride. This is the ultimate grumpy/sunshine pairing plus the most appealing light-filled kitchen of our dreams. I adore this show so much. Limited use of BL tropes makes this feel more of a sweet contemporary gay romance between an actor plagued by scandal and the grumpy chef who adopts him, but the gentleness will appeal to fans of the BL genre.
2 What Zabb Man!
Thai 2022 YouTube
8/10
Star Hunter's WZM was better than we had any right to expect, with decent pacing and a foodie theme threaded through the narrative as both love language and plot driver. Basically CEO falls in love with a street vendorās food, recruits him to work in his hotel, falls in love with him, and thatās just the beginning. Class struggles! Kitchen drama! Papaya pounding (not a euphemism)! Chef poaching (not literally)! Spicy scenes (yes both kinds)! Itās all so delicious.
3 DNA Says Love You
Taiwan 2022 Gaga
8/10
Okay it's only in a cafe about 1/2 the time but it is the main setting if not the plot. DNA deserves extra marks for an upbeat approach to a queer story arc that other shows have systemically mishandled with sadness (in the guise of realism). There is a twist, which I found predictable, but knowing what would happen didn't spoil this show. The leads are luminous and engaging, and itās full of queer found family representation and an unexpected amount of domesticity, plus itās Taiwan, so the kisses are great. The first few eps are rough going but have patience, it's worth it I promise! The second half is really special and life/love affirming - and the end is big-grin charming.
4 The Tasty Florida
Korea 2021 Viki https://www.viki.com/tv/38119c-the-tasty-florida
8/10
Not really a love triangle featuring the prettiest men ever to be grouped together outside of K-pop, honestly the visuals are ridiculous, thereās a story, it has to do with food, whatever, they so pretty. I have a weakness for this BL and it's entirely Speed's fault.
5 My Day
Pinoy 2020 YouTube
8/10
The set up on this one is enemies (also boss/employee) and they donāt like each other to start. But that gets resolved pretty quickly. And then they are some of the cutest, hottest, and best boyfriends ever. This is an under-appreciated BL, IMHO. It's also more set in the office of a food creation company, but there is a lot about food.
6 My Tooth Your Love
Taiwan 2023 Viki
8/10
Earnest dentist hottie with sad eyes who worries too much is smitten by an adorable sunshine neurotic bar owner with serious anxiety issues. They fall madly in love while courting each other with food, plushies, and naps. Then, shocker, talk about their feelings and try to actually sort out their problems so they can have an adult relationship. Bonus crumbs = 18 year old poor little rich kid in mad crush with a much older man. I really enjoyed this show, it had a unique premise, killer dialogue, there was a solid lead pair with charmg chemistry, soft flirtation, delightful smiling kisses, and stinkingly cute domesticity. All that said, I wasnāt wild about some of the darker themes it explored, even though it did a good job with them. And while the sides were adorable, they were underused. In the land of May/December, baby boy kabedon is my kryptonite! Why so little of it? (Kabedon is My Krytonite = also the name of my indie bandās first single.)
7 All the Liquors
Korea 2023 Viki & Gaga
8/10
A pretty classic foodie set KBL that managed to distinguish itself from others in this category by having a particularly satisfying final episode centered around found family. Sunshine sweetie soju rep gets involved with a shy introvert chef who doesnāt drink. This has a somewhat uneven plot and ridiculous central conceit (much in the way of Tasty Florida), but if you are looking for a restaurant BL with Koreaās signature softness, then this is a great option. FYI I may identify with our baby party boy hedonist more than any other BL lead ever presented.
8 Although I Love You and You - Sukiyanen Kedo Do Yaro ka
Japan 2024 Gaga
8/10
The promise of this show, younger cook courts older divorced office worker, should have been my catnip. I mean if someone pitched this to me in an elevator I would have downloaded it by the second storey. Unfortunately, it did not exactly fulfil that promise, not in the way I'd hoped. Did I still enjoy the ride? Yes, but I feel a little let down.
9 Ocean Likes Me
Korea 2022 Viki https://www.viki.com/tv/38367c-ocean-likes-me
8/10
Stars Kpopās best known out gay singer, Holland & Han Gi Chan (Where Your Eyes Linger). Noodle shop! Broken dreams! This is a solid little KBL, with a good premise and cast. Manic pixie dream boy can get old fast but when contrasted with awkward grumpy chef? Itās a tasty combo that elevates both ingredients. Holland is a charming screen presence - baby boy is HYPNotiC. And while I wasnāt entirely sold on the chemistry, these two did give us some very good kisses and sweet domesticity. I grinned through most episodes and I didnāt even mind the standard KBL 1 year separation at the end because it felt so true to the characters. Is this Korea's first out gay actor in a BL? I think it might be.
10 My Sweet Dear
Korea 2021 Viki
8/10
I liked this one a lot better than most. Strict professional rivals (chefs) in a very enemies to lovers BL - to the point where we mistrust the sincerity of the seme because heās so very in it to win. I kinda like that, because kitchens are hotbeds of drama, and I like a seme with some sinister edge. But be warned, it means the whole romance comes off as a little disingenuous.
11 You Are Ma Boy
Vietnam 2021 YouTube
7/10
The leads in this drama crackle on screen together and I kinda adore them. No one has seen this BL, and you should really give it a try. Is there angst? Nope even what could have been angst (a gay idol) doesnāt materialize, itās just cuties in a cafe confusing each other with cat & mouse games. The side het couple is a touch disturbing, tho.
12 My Lascivious Boss
Vietnam 2021 YouTube
7/10
While it did have pacing issues and some questionable content at the beginning, MLBās unabashed queerness carried it though and ultimately elevated it with camp. It never felt like mockery or punching down, it felt joyful, and very new wave BL. Itās as if Vietnam is starting a process of handing out HEAs to all the letters of LGBTQ+ in BL style - I love this look for them.
13 Pure Vanilla
Singapore 2023 microfilm Gaga
7/10
Itās very sweet. Bit awkward acting. I love seeing real tats. I wish Singapore would give us a full proper BL.
14 La Cuisine
Thai 2022 Gaga
7/10
A sweet and somewhat pure show, and like the Thai desserts it features, perhaps requires too much patience for a layperson. Because of the pacing and the focus on a bad girl character, I did dock it. But if you like stuff in the Oxygen vein, then this show is for you, and far better than most Thai BL pulps. That said, I suspect that I enjoyed it more than many would.
15 My Universe - Lucky Love
Thai 2023 iQIYI
7/10
A boy suffering heartbreak is asked to look after a friend's restaurant, and meets a young chef whose food brings on a relationship. I enjoyed this 2 part installment, itās a bit of a sad sack recovery SAGA, but the acting is genuine, the couple believable, and the story felt particularly queer to me. It was really quite charming.
16 Cooking Crush
Thai 2024 YouTube
7/10
1/3 of this is a sweet romance about a student doctor falling in love with a student chef, and the rest of it is utter dross. Look the OffGun bits were GREAT. In fact, I think theyāre better AS A PAIR in this show than in any of their other BLs. And I'm a hard sell on any OffGun being better here than PickRome. Saying that, how can I review a show where I could only tolerate 1/3 of it? Because I didnāt like any other aspect of this show, no other pairs and no other plots. That gives me: 9/10 for the OffGun bits, 5/10 for everything else. Frankly, it probably should be an 8 but I gotta go with my gut and it's UPSET about this so 7/10. Sorry boys. Itās GMMTVās fault. Your heart was in this show, mine wasnāt.
17 Love in Translation
Thai 2023 iQIYI
6/10
A sweet little pulp about a Thai boy with a crush on a Chinese influencer who ends up in a business relationship with her ex-bf. This show had truly great chemistry between the leads, cute found family with good rep, and an exciting (if silly) ending that almost, but didn't quite, make up for how incredibly annoying the main character was in the first half. Gotta say the make-out scene in the convenience store is one of the greatest in Thai BL history, but I can't like a show where I dislike the main character to such a degree, sorry DouOffroad I intend to enjoy your next offering.
18 Please Tell Me So
Korea 2021 microfilm YouTube
Cute barista (played by Han Hyun Jun star of Love Class) has a crush on his customer, musters up the courage to ask him out.
19 Love Advisor
Thai 2021 microfilm YouTube
6/10
Set in a cafe but not about cafe workers, this is an actorās piece, more like a one act stage performance about friends to lovers and miscommunication.
20 VIP Only
Taiwan 2024 Gaga
6/10
A sweet if aimless story about a writer and a chef finding love via noodles, fake dating, and family challenges. If it had a tighter script and a shorter run, more like a KBL this mightāve been quite special. But it didnāt and it lost me too many times.
21 609 Bedtime Story
Thai 2023 WeTV
6/10
Okay it's sometiems set in a club but that's not really part of the... plot. An interesting time slip concept and a great set up ultimately disappointed. It opened strong, on one of my favourite under appreciated Thai actors: Plustor (as Vee) in a side bartender romance with younger bisexual king, Games. Unfortunately, it went downhill from there. OhmFlukeās solid chemistry and romantically soft kisses were ill served by a reformed rake meets rich-kid cheater pairing. While it was nice to see Ohm play a part with more animated facial expressions, his was the only character that remained consistent. All in all, this was a confusing show about disloyalty and parallel worlds that never made sense or stayed true to its characters. A promising start, confusing middle, and disappointing end. I donāt say this lightly, but Oh My Sunshine Night is better, and OhmFuke deserve better than either.
22 Bake Me Please
Thai 2023 Gaga
6/10
A lackluster story about a group of bakers coping with (mostly) a shoddy script that could not be saved by either the beauty nor the talent of the actors involved. It suffered for lack of narrative backbone and so did I.
23 Bite Me
Thai 2021 Viki
6/10 (yeah I'mm surprise too, I thought I gave this a 5)
Thailand gave us Korean style slowly simmering ultra soft and sweet BL only at a Thai length so the pacing wasā¦ not good. Slower than molasses and full of insane subtext, long gazes, missing dialogue, abrupt mood swings, and one very pretty kiss. It curdled around episode 8, the sauce split, and there was no saving it. It did have some of the best food porn Iāve seen in my life, and I watch cooking shows regularly. It was beautiful, the leads were decent, it should have right up my alley, and yetā¦ it left me with a feeling of disaffected ennui - bland and boring and unsatisfying. 11 courses of tasty tasty pacing issues.
24 One Last Order
Korea 2019 microfilm Gaga
5/10
Extremely hot cafe customer has to figure out which of the cutie baristas has a crush on him and sends hime poetry.
25 Craving You
Taiwan 2020 Viki
5/10
Honestly, I haven't rewatched this since it aired and I maybe might cut it more slack now. About a jerk of a cook with a crush on a musician and having to make a cake for a gay wedding.
26 Coffee Melody
Thai 2022 Viki
5/10
Stars Pavel (my love) as a cafe owner (Forth in 2 Moons 2) and Benz as a composer (Call it What You Want). This should have been my kind of BL - on the fluffy end of the spectrum plus honestly queer. Unfortunately, the slow pacing, manufactured angst, odd secondary story arcs, and a selfishly immature unlikeable wet dishcloth main character, meant its flaws outweighed its charm. Jean (flame on snark fairy) is ME, I love him so much but in the end neither he nor Pavel in an apron could save this show for me. Itās not bad. Itās not good either. Ultimately so forgettable Iāve probably already forgotten it. There is also a Coffee Melody holiday special.
27 Evening Cafe
Thai 2021 YouTube
5/10
Cafe setting with no heat and no kisses (almost Chinese in this regard), but a decent lead pair. About a boy who works in a cafe and the new employee who has a crush on him. Thatās it, whole story.
28 Love Area: Part 1
Thai 2021 Gaga
5/10
It ended on a cliffhanger and I'm still annoyed by it. But it is somewhat set at a restaurant.
29 Love Next Door 2
Thai 2014 Gaga
4/10
One of Thailandās early very high heat pieces, itās odd, but sexy I guess? Some unexpectedly decent queer rep at the cafe including femme characters getting screen time and HEAs. Part one from 2013 has the same high heat content and feature the same lead character (and actor) early on in his queer journey, discovering he is gay with the sex worker next door, but isn't as good nor is it relevant to this story. Which, unfortunately, also isn't very good.
30 The Promise
Thai 2023 WeTV
4/10
Although well acted this show dragged a too simple premise out into the ultimate manipulative miscommunication repeats of idiotic "why donāt you just TALK!?ā Phu & Nan are childhood bffs through college (almost lovers) until Phu disappears. After looking/waiting for him, Nan gives up and self isolates, and the actual story takes place 10 years later. Phuās āreasonā and inability to say it out loud makes the whole show just frustrating, squandering good chemistry, and a stellar cast of multiple faen fatals (whose personalities wouldāve made them better boyfriends). Seriously do not bother. What a damn waste of talent, time, and electronic bandwidth. Fatally flawed.
31 Love Area: Part 2
Thai 2022 Gaga
3/10
It wasn't as boring as Bite Me, but it wasnāt actually good, either. This started out as Thailand tackles love triangles pulp style, but in part 2 lockdown changed everything. Valen & Kaitoon dropped some great kisses but traded off crazy hair and makeup in a scene-by-scene whiplash that was clearly pickups done months after lockdown, and the second lead vanished. It was... surreal. Side dishes jumped up screen time but tackled mental health... badly. A fantastic new queer side character was randomly introduced, June, who was the best thing to happen to BL linguistics in 2022 but had nothing to do with the rest of the cast, show, or plot. What a mess. In the end, I didnāt know what I was watching, and neither did it.
32 Cafe In Love
Thai 2023 grey
3/10
A cafƩ setting featuring 3 couples with a great queer fam but held together by tropes and sexual-harassment, surrounded by dubious consent and statutory rape. Avoid.
33 I Am Your King 2
Thai 2019 grey
3/10
Early love triangle BL about a cafe boy caught between two brothers, mostly not good because the wrong brother wins. Has no connection to the original I Am Your King.
34 Senior Love Me
Thai 2023 YouTube
3/10
Pulp cafe, nothing happens, not even a BL
35 Jealousy is My Guest
Korea 2016 microfilm Gaga
2/10
Just very very odd and kinda deadly.
I also have 3 unrated DNFs in this sub genre:
Accomplishment of Fudanshi Bartender AKA Fudanshi Bartender no Tashinami - Japan 2022
My Story - Pinoy 2023
About Us but Not About Us 0 Pinoy 2022
Restaurant & beverage is my favourite possible setting for a BL. I'm extremely disappointed that the BL world hasn't produced more that I truly love. I'm not demanding 10/10 but I could use some 9/10s.
Side eyes Thailand and Japan.
(source)
#restaurant BL#cafe bl#food prep bl#bar bl#restaurant and beverage#To My Star#korean bl#What Zabb Man!#thai bl#The Tasty Florida#Ocean Likes Me#My Tooth Your Love#My Sweet Dear#Taiwanese bl#My Day the series#pinoy bl#DNA Says Love You#Although I Love You and You#japanese bl#All the Liquors#Sukiyanen Kedo Do Yaro ka#You Are Ma Boy#My Lascivious Boss#La Cuisine#Cooking Crush#Love in Translation#Bake Me Please#Coffee Melody#Craving You
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I sometimes wonder if the reason (if not at least one of many reasons) why antis are so against Hazbin Hotel as a show (besides the obvious anti viv bullshit) is because the very concept of redemption is anathema to them.
They do not believe people can change, and thus the entire premise of hazbin, (and frankly helluva too) is something they literally cannot understand. Refuse to understand at the least.
They donāt care about other people, they do not care if their actions in the name of their own twisted form of justice causes undue suffering, they simply want to be seen as a āgood personā without putting in any actual effort to be good.
Sure, itās easy to find a shitty person online and rake them over the coals for things theyāve said or done years ago. Effortless. But it takes real patience, compassion, perhaps slight firmness but certainly no undue cruelty to convince people they need to change, and even then, thatās a personal journey that others can at most try to influence, but they canāt make people change.
And even if the person theyāre bitching about does, itāll never be good enough.
Thereās nothing Viv can do to change these peoples minds, nothing we can do. No matter how many apologies she gives they will never accept it. No matter what we say they will never accept that Viv is not fucking Satan incarnate.
Engaging with these people is a waste of time. Always has been. If Viv is so irredeemable to them, they likely look at us the same way.
I wonder what skeletons people like this must hide, anyone who acts holier than thou about being a ābetterā person while engaging in reprehensible behavior themselves is a rather irritating form of hypocrisy that boggles my mind.
I am no saint, god knows Iām no fucking saint, but I know whatās right and wrong and antis are wrong every. Single. Time. Any evidence they claim to have of Vivās awful behavior is either nearly a decade old and thus clearly irrelevant given the people who vouch for her in the present, doctored discord messages (which even if they were real, shows no dates, so we have no idea how old those are to begin with) or the āevidenceā is so flimsy that if a lawyer looked at it he would say youāre wasting his time.
I think these people donāt like Vivās shows because they are morally incompatible with it. They do not believe in redemption. They believe once youāve fucked up in life, thatās it, no second chances.
I fear what they must think of our current prison population. I fear what they might say.
These people have no moral high ground whatsoever.
They dare to talk shit about the fandom, Viv, anyone else associated with the show, pretending that theyāre saying what theyāre saying in the name of justice, as if attacking people with their past when they have clearly changed and made apologies is in any way a justifiable thing to do.
They donāt have to like Viv, they really donāt, but calling her irredeemable, calling us irredeemable, is fucking bullshit.
None of us are irredeemable.
The fucking conceit. The fucking gall. The fucking balls on these people.
Everyone has the capacity to make good and bad choices in this life. Yes, many people donāt make the best choices, but that doesnāt mean that they should be stoned to death for the most minor of offenses. For shit thatās long been in the past and apologized for.
Iām not going to say I think very highly of humanity as a whole, Iām a fucking misanthrope through-and-through, but I donāt think weāre incapable of being good, or doing good things, we justā¦choose not to, a lot of the time.
I also do not deny that there are some crimes so horrible that redemption isnāt even on the table, nowhere near it. But I feel like antis treat every perceived fault of Viv as some most grievous sin that must be met with full penance byā¦doing what exactly?
Apologize? Again, they wonāt accept it.
Donate to charities or causes? She gets shit on for it, say sheās āflaunting her wealth.ā
Get off the internet entirely? In an antiās wet dreams maybe.
Her very existence makes them so mad. It would be funny if it wasnāt so fucking pathetic.
These people twist her words in every way imaginable to make her look like some horrible person undeserving of her success, without realizing they make themselves look far worse than her by several measures.
They claim sheās racist and queerphobic, but if anything acting as if BIPOC and queer people shouldnāt ever be shown doing awful things because ābad queer/ BIPOC repā or whatever I think is just as racist and queerphobic. Minorities are human beings, and as such they are just as capable of being shitty. I already made a post about this before, so Iāll keep this paragraph short.
They claim sheās abusive to her coworkers when it seems the one person bitching about it has no problem putting other past co workers under the bus for their personal gain. Antis claim sheās abusive while engaging in downright emotionally abusive behavior (I know that sounds kinda dramatic but Iām making a point) themselves as they shit on us for the stupidest reason imaginable: liking a cartoon.
They cry about ableism while ignoring their own.
Not that Iām all that offended if Iām honest, itās just more evidence that antis arenāt any better than the people they bitch about.
I could go on about this for a while but you get the point.
I repeat, these people have no moral high ground whatsoever.
Frankly, as much as it bothers me that they leak patreon shit and whatnot, many fans are actively warning against them, and I think the idea of someone actively choosing to give money to someone they hate just so they have more content to shit on is fucking pathetic and getting upset about it is exactly what they want.
They want you to be just as miserable as they are. They just want to suck all the fun out of this fandom, Iāve said it once, Iāll say it again, these people are tar pits, trying to drown us in their muck. Itās pathetic and sad. No use in having sympathy, they donāt deserve any.
Itās funny how antis scream and cry about how awful we are as they ignore their own sins and mistakes, hypocrites.
If anything, their behavior is far more irredeemable than Vivās has ever been.
I wonder when they will realize that, if they ever do. I can only hope some of them grow the fuck up and realize what the fuck theyāve done. If the ensuing guilt eats them alive, I canāt say I have pity for them.
Wonder how many of us would accept their apologies, if they chose to make one.
Alright itās almost 7 am I gotta get to bed. Peace.
š„š§Ø~Firecracker out~š§Øš„
#tis i the werebitch#vivziepop#hazbin hotel#helluva boss#btw to my followers#sorry Iāve been so extra negative lately#I just have way too much to say about this shit
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endlessly curious about the death note utena au ššš
okay so i wanted to have some more content to show before answering this ask... and i was already working on a character lineup for artfight!
so here's the full lineup of my death note au redesigns (not including any side characters i may include later as story permits such as akio, nanami, shiori, etc.) :)
and honestly i have to stop just calling it "my death note utena au" when it has a name.. so: here's the beginnings of revolutionary girl kira!
the basic premise is literally just inserting them into the death note character roles, nothing too crazy lol
surface breakdown:
utena is light! obviously because she's the main character but also because she would probably test out the death note to see what happens (in this au, she decides to use it to "revolutionize the world" and take out perpetrators of violent crimes who never faced justice)
anthy is L (or, in this case, "rue,") because seriously who else would be L. after shutting herself out from the world to focus on a job she can do without showing her face, she's forced to show her face and work with the police to gain access to more information. she knows this isn't a typical serial killer case...
wakaba is misa! she adores utena almost to a fault after discovering her status as kira, but becomes an invaluable asset due to the shinigami eyes she got from a deal with her shinigami (shadow play girl)
touga is the captain of the kira task force and is determined to stick with it until the end, maintaining his confident persona while overlooking key details provided by rue (much to her dismay)
saionji is touga's second-in-command, although treated more like a bodyguard than a friend sometimes. since high school, he's cut his hair short to distance his resemblance to touga (which doesn't work too well since they ended up in the same profession anyway).
miki takes on matsuda's role, but often takes things too seriously rather than not seriously enough. he's by far the youngest member of the task force, and is incredibly dedicated to the kira case.
juri parallels aizawa as a voice of reason for the task force, but their characters aren't too closely tied together. juri holds a grudge against rue (and later, utena upon joining the task force) due to her belief that they're young, inexperienced, and didn't work hard enough to get here; she's often maddened by rue's often unusual tactics and plans.
in terms of changes to the main story, a lot of it is driven by the subtle changes in character relationships or motivations. for example:
utena's motivation to use the death note, while similar to light's, differs in that she only kills criminals who haven't been brought to justice-- which makes it a lot harder for anthy and the task force to ignore the message she's sending.
wakaba and utena have a more balanced relationship than light and misa do in the original show-- utena still considers her a liability, and wakaba's actions lead to some unfortunate circumstances, but i want her to have a complete character arc (unlike misa's complete shafting in the show. pissed me off)
obviously, since touga isn't utena's dad, utena's gonna have to figure out some other way to get access to police records and land herself a spot on the task force.
utenanthy endgame. dont even worry
the themes established in utena (for example, the effects of misogyny and the meaning of revolution) will make a big effect on how the story changes from death note as well! i want to stay faithful to both source materials in a way that's productive.
if this ever gets written/created in some form, the story's gonna veer away from following the death note storyline at the end of L's arc. i have something completely different planned for those scenes that changes the rest of the plot!
with all that being said, honestly there aren't any guarantees i'll have time to end up making this real.. it's mostly just a thought experiment for now since i love both shows and also (re)designing characters :)
#rare velvet text post#sorry if its too much lmao#revolutionary girl kira#id in alt text#revolutionary girl utena#rgu#shoujo kakumei utena#sku#utena au
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I've been thinking a lot about that 'finding a lost cat in the alps' post in conjunction with the 'stardew valley is wehrbauer' post because of potionomics because like...
I have to not criticize the game for not being anti-capitalist because that's like criticizing call of duty for not allowing you to solve problems nonviolently - you're playing a shooter, what did you think you were going to do, except in this case it's a 'capitalism ho' game like recettear. And, I need to not criticize the game for not being citizen sleeper because yes, I want more games like citizen sleeper, but that doesn't mean I can complain that the devs didn't agree with me and make a citizen sleeper clone.
But I keep coming back to those criticisms as underlying causes of the symptoms I feel like I CAN complain about - that the story has fundamentally no conflict, that the game tries so hard to be 'wholesome' and diverse without ever exploring what that actually means in context, and of course the game being a glorified dating sim with a fully functional minigame tacked on.
And the problem, at its core, feels like: I am playing a game with neoliberal ideology by people who want to feel good about neoliberalism. And so everything is fettered by the imperial worldview that the developers either didn't even know they had, or chose not to interrogate because it wasn't 'feel good'. And I feel like, the more I play this game, the more I feel like there's no substance. I can't even say 'it would be so good if it was good' because the only reason I'm still thinking about potionomics is because I want to give it a fair shake for my sister's sake, and because I'm so disappointed in what I'm given that I can't help but try to analyse so that I'm not just going 'what a piece of shit'.
The game wants the central conflict to be 'you're stuck in soul-crushing (literally!) debt due to your uncle, and if you don't succeed at this business venture you're fucked' but it can't even commit to the basic narrative conflict - there's a very minor scuffle with the uncle but he's helping you the entire time and he's really sorry about the whole thing and really is it even HIS fault, and of course the nasty lady who is collecting your debt actually turns out to be completely reasonable and she's not actually going to fuck your life up, and the evil witch who mind controls the entire island actually is pretty reasonable too when she loses to you in a fair contest because even though she could just mind control you she wants to win FAIRLY but then she's like 'oh well, gave it a good shot' and just wanders off
And there's SOMETHING they could do with ANY of that but they just don't WANT to, because it would mean starting to interrogate ANYTHING about the fundamental premise and show the underlying contradictions.
Like, how did your dumbass uncle get a MILLION BUCKS in debt when renovating your entire fucking building costs like, maybe ten thousand in total? You can pay a girl twenty five bucks to go fight monsters for you and bring back potion ingredients. It's like, they can't possibly start to look into that without blowing the entire premise up. And of course, you're not even doing a recettear run where you DO have to earn all that money back, it turns out there's a potion contest conveniently right after you inherit the place that pays out A MILLION BUCKS over the course of five rounds so you don't even HAVE to earn money during your off weeks, you just need to cook two really good potions every ten days and the whole debt is taken care of. It's not just 'capitalism ho', it's conveniently whitewashing 90% of it's own plot in order to make sure you don't ACTUALLY have to worry about anything because like-
Part of the game is that when you gather ingredients, it can cause parts of the island to get 'overharvested' and the game tries to incentivize you to 'take sustainably' but a) all it really does is increase cost and b) fundamentally I don't think you can have a mechanic like that in a game about sending heroes to kill monsters. Like damn, I guess we need to let the bandit population bounce back a little, we're overfishing their camps. And of course the idea of harvesting sustainably only works when you're LIVING sustainably, and not being a profit-maximizing business in a thriving mercantile town where EVERYONE is taking from the same land.
And like, the game also shies away from the idea that people get killed adventuring! Every time it comes up, they joke about it, like the only time a faulty health potion doesn't work is when they're using it on a fucking papercut. The idea of profiting off people's literal health never comes up. You can give your heroes free potions as they go off to fight monsters for you, but the game never asks the question 'what happens if some rando can't afford the seven hundred gold that's being upcharged by 158% by you?'
Because y'know, every single one of your friends is financially stable and landed. Even the homeless orphan has a thriving business that you end up dumping half your money into every day. And they're all COMPETENT in a way that drives me CRAZY. There's no conflict, there's no stress. I'm not asking 'uh oh, what if Mint gets killed' because she's not in any fucking danger. It's wholesome taken to a cloying degree where the game refuses to allow anything that could potentially make you feel bad. Every rival you face becomes your friend right afterwards. Every romance option wants to fuck you and is always friendly and receptive every step of the way. Every possible conflict in the story gets resolved painlessly. Yeah it sucks that your uncle landed you in soul-crushing debt, but don't worry, no harm no foul. Yeah it sucks that your rival is using underhanded tactics to try and cheat you out of the prize money, but don't worry, they'll become your friend and TEACH YOU HOW TO CHEAT JUST LIKE THEM
It's like... yeah, I want a game with better politics. I want a game with a stronger narrative, with more stakes and more excitement, but also on the face, as what it is? It's just a nothingburger game. It's playing twister trying to avoid making you feel bad about ANYTHING. It's fighting for its life to say absolutely nothing.
And I can't get away from the fact that it feels like, the reason why this game is so devoid of anything to chew on? is because it's trying to sell you the neoliberal dream. You get to be the good, profitable, nice, well-liked small business owner, making a million fucking dollars in less than two months, being the best at everything, and everyone wants to fuck you, and you don't even have to feel like you're exploiting anyone! If you never ask any questions, if you never think for a second about the people trying to buy potions priced 70% over normal value, if you never consider whose bodies you're cutting up to get ingredients, if you never consider the people literally putting their lives on the line for your profit margins, you too can see number go up and kiss all the NPCs who are just personable enough to be fuckable but not people enough to complicate your life in any way.
I get why games like this exist, I do. And I don't even necessarily mind - it's a fun game, and I had some fun playing it. But it's just... I don't know how to fix it without ruining the core goals of the game, because the core goals of the game seem to be 'capitalism is great and you can be an ethical capitalist don't worry about it' and 'what if everything was nice forever'
And lemme tell you. As a writer, I feel like sometimes I write scenes where the characters do things too correctly, where they act reasonably and justifiably and don't react badly to things that might upset them.
But at least to my credit, I do in fact make those poor bastards go through it.
#long post#vent post#I'm a little buzzed and I could talk for hours more about this but I'm cutting myself off#because at the end of the day it has nothing really to do with potionomics#it's not fun to criticize the choices the writers made because they're all so bland and nonthreatening#and they all seem to be in service of creating a thing that I detest#which is a game designed to soothe your guilt and make you feel good about participating in capitalism#don't worry! our cast is diverse and queer and designed to never challenge your place as oppressor
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Why did Tsumugi allow Rantaro to tell his in-game self that this wasnāt his first killing game and what was the 53rd killing game meant to be?
Spoilers for literally the entire game, but also this game has been out for years so itās not my fault really if you donāt heed my warning now. (Btw, a lot of what Iām saying is speculation. Just my personal theory.)
Tldr at the end.
I think about drv3 a lot, and something thatās been bugging me is Rantaroās given plot line. Heās been officially allowed to record a message to his in-game self as a perk for surviving the previous killing game.
However, that is so incredibly meta compared to what the false story line that the flashback lights give them. The story that the flashback lights tell is meant to be itās own story (the main plot line), but Rantaroās perk tanks the credibility of it. Iām very curious as to why they allowed that.
We all know they were meant to be the last symbols of hope entrapped in a dome meant to be their own little Noahās Ark. Essentially a refuge from the terrors that fell from the sky and destroyed their Earth.
That is the story that Tsumugi wrote. That is the story theyāre meant to remember as they discover new flashback lights. And in the 6th trial, Tsumugi doesnāt let up on the plot line she failed to execute. She even goes as far as to reveal herself as Junko Enoshima the 53rd and used Kokichi as leverage to show that she indeed was real and had fans who followed her path to despair.
She even denies the possibility that there are viewers watching by excusing the set up of the game as just a reproduction of the first gameāwhich was meant to be viewed. Itās all under the guise that everyone aside from them are dead and that āJunkoā simply wanted to recreate the past games. She clearly didnāt want the illusion of the killing game to be broken and it was only when Shuichi revealed the truth that she gave in and revealed that everything was fictional.
I assume every previous Danganronpa game within this context has its own story itās meant to follow just as the first two games did.
So, what exactly is the initial story for the 53rd game meant to follow? What was it meant to be?
Rantaro being allowed a survivor perk that shatters the illusion of the initial plot line never quite made sense to be because it essentially would cancel out the credibility of the flashback lights (which Tsumugi heavily relied on to progress the story). Itās a huge contradiction, story-wise. The plot would all be for nothingā¦ unless the initial purpose of 53rd was to break the game and go full meta??? Or at the very least meta enough to where they acknowledge there being previous games but not enough to where they deem it all to be fictional. Thereās layers to this.
Rantaroās character doesnāt mix well with the story that Tsumugi made. Heās an entire contradiction to her story because he is a survivor of a previous killing game in a world where this is the first killing game thatās happening. Heās something entirely separate from the premise of the 53rd gameās plot.
Tsumugi is free to change the story as she goes, so before Rantaro died, was she aiming for a plot line where he exposes the truth. The truth that there have been previous games? After Rantaro died, she no longer had a use for the meta plot line so she discarded it. It was only when Shuichi brought up many of her inconsistencies that she had to reel back and go back to her first ever plot idea.
I think that Rantaro was her first plot device and someone important worth keeping around in order to lead the story down a certain path. Heās a survivor, someone the fans are anticipating and waiting to watch over. Heās important. However she obviously slips up and he ends up dying first.
She was forced to reveal the previous games herself, so instead of it being a meaningful story where her plot device progresses the story to find the truth, her story is left unsatisfying when she has no other choice left but to reveal it herself for the sake of shock value.
I wonder how her season of danganronpa would have went if she hadnāt misjudged the effectiveness of her first two motives and had someone else die instead of Rantaro. A season where she hadnāt been forced to frame Kaede and had her main plot device live to progress the story to a different path.
Iām definitely overthinking, I think Iāve confused myself somehow.
But iām thinking about this all through the view of the entertainment business. Danganronpa is obviously a huge show with a large team and audience. I think the big mistake they made was putting all that pressure of creating a good story on a teen girl who wanted nothing more than to have her own season of Danganronpa. I just know she was stressed as fuck the entire time.
Idk. I wrote this at 3am and I definitely strayed away from the main point.
TLDR: Was Rantaro meant to be apart of a plot line where he reveals the truth about Danganronpa to his classmates?
When he dies this plot line is discarded and they proceed with the meteorite plot line until Shuichi eventually fucks them over and reveals the truth anyway.
Rantaro dying is likely the main reason (or at least what snowballs the proceeding events) why drv3 went the way it did.
#danganronpa#text post#fan theory#drv3 rantaro#rantaro amami#tsumugi shirogane#danganronpa v3 fan theory#danganronpa v3#shuichi saihara#analysis#mini analysis#theory#ramblings
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I have a lot of feelings about s2 of arcane but the most prominent, I think, is actually just the sheer dread of what Iām going to have to do to convince my dnd players that I didnāt just straight up rip off the plot of arcane for our campaign. Seriously.
An inventor who has previously dedicated themselves to improving the lives of others gets fused with an eldritch horror power source (thatās spherical, no less) that they created in the pursuit of their dream, comes to the conclusion that all the problems in the world are caused by the faults inherent to humanity (in my campaign, itās specifically that people have free will, i.e. if people have the choice between good and bad, thereās no way to stop them from choosing bad, so the solution is to just take away the ability to choose) and becomes a god-like figure with a cult following that aims to strip people of their personhood.
Thereās even a desolate cityscape full of the empty husks of once-people (they donāt move in my campaign but god would it be awful if they did) that the partyās going to have to travel through as they learn exactly what will happen if they donāt stop the bbeg because sheās trying to accomplish this again but at a much larger scale. So itās not a literal glimpse of the future the way it is in arcane but it serves basically the same purpose.
And itās going to be impossible to convince my players that this was an accident because my practice as a DM has always been to steal as much as possible from other media properties I like. Iāve ripped off so much from the magnus archives, thereās a non-zero amount of shit I took from fmab in there, and heck, Iāve even stolen stuff from arcaneā the design of the main city in my setting being pretty heavily influenced by piltover/zaun in the show.
This campaign has been my brainchild going on five fucking years, with the main premise being locked in for a solid half of that. But it doesnāt even matter because one day one of my very observant players is going to look me in the eye and say āIs the big bad basically just Viktor from arcane?ā and Iāll have nothing to say for myself except āYeah, I guess so.ā
#itās not a bad thing necessarily#but it was a total accident which it makes it feel worse#when I steal things on purpose I can be very intentional about it#what parts I keep what parts I donāt what parts I retrofit etc.#this is just a case of convergent evolution and I donāt know how to feel about it#arcane#arcane league of legends#arcane spoilers#arcane s2 spoilers#arcane season 2 spoilers#dnd#dnd campaign#dungeons and dragons#viktor arcane
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Why "The Life and Crimes of Scrooge McDuck"'s Message Doesn't Work
Ducktales 2017 is one of my favorite cartoons of all time and used to be my No. 1 favorite until I saw TOH, but I still hold a very deep love for the show, especially when it comes to a lot of the character writing. That being said, the showā¦isnāt perfect, and I think the third season has a few problems that make it weaker than the first two (though Iāll have to finish rewatching the season to be fully sure).
The Life and Crimes of Scrooge Mcduck especially isnāt a particularly good episode with how it handles itās whole message about "accepting responsibility for your actions" and in this post Iām going to analyze why it falls apart.
As I said before, this episodeās message that its trying to send is that you should take responsibility for your actions rather than make excuses for it. The premise of the episode is that Scrooge and Louie are transported to a magical courtroom thingy where Scrooge is accused of being responsible for Glomgold, Ma Beagle and Magicaās turn to villainy, and Louie has to prove Scrooge innocent.
The episode has Glomgold and Beagle show proof of how Scrooge "made them evil" and Louie refuting those claims, proving Scroogeās innocenceā¦until Magica comes along and shows her first time facing Scrooge, where, he ended up getting Magica to accidentally turn her brother into a bird and refused to catch him for her, leading Magica to lose her brother forever and never be able to find him.
The show treats this as a big moment where, Louie CANāT defend Scrooge here, being an example where Scrooge DID have a part in one of his enemies turning evil because of him, and after that, he says that he might have some influence on each of his enemies becoming evilā¦
ā¦except for the fact that Scrooge did not make Magica evil. Scrooge had no effect on Magica turning evil; Magica was already directly shown to be evil to begin with, mainly with how she and her brotherā¦ya knowā¦literally in slaved a town into giving their goods to them and then made a spell that attracted money directly to them?
Was Scrooge not catching Po a dick move? Yes. Does that mean he is inherently responsible for Magica turning evil? No, because Magica was already evil to begin with and Scrooge changed nothing about her.
Same thing goes for the other villains as well, who the episode also tries to say that Scrooge mightāve had an influence in becoming evil as well after saying the exact opposite up until this pointā¦?
Scrooge is not responsible for turning Glomgold or Ma Beagle evil either, Scrooge was trying to give good advice to Glomgold, its not Scroogeās fault Glomgold was a brat, and Scrooge won the wrestling match far and square, and, like the episode shows, Ma Beagle was also always a brat from the start.
So the episodeās message of accepting responsibility for your actions doesnāt work because Scrooge was not responsible for any of them turning evil, they were ALWAYS bad people from the start.
The same thing applies to Louie who the episode has learn this same message, with him accepting responsibility for how his actions might have hurt Doofus Drake, which would be fine if it werenāt for the fact that Doofus was shown to a spoiled brat from the beginning and the first time him and Louie met he literally tried making him his "best friend".
Iām sorry, is Louie seriously supposed to apologize to Doofus for getting his parents to grow a spine discipline him just a tincy bit? Cuz I donāt think so.
Really, The Life and Crimes of Scrooge McDuck has a decent message on paper but it falls apart when you actually think about it for more than five minutes. The episode has other issues like introducing a major revelation near the end of the show, or just how underwhelming it is as the penultimate episode of the show which just further solidifies it as my least favourite episode of the show, but this is the biggest issue with it to me.
So ya, thatās why this episodeās lesson doesnāt workā¦goodbye.
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Ok dude I've been going nuts thinking about this show /pos
Since she's your fav, tell me about your favorite MIST moments PLEASE
ok hi sorry this took so long to answer i was overthinking everything and then i got distracted but this is literally the best question iāve ever been asked omfg
honestly the main reason mist caught my eye is because iāve always liked characters who are misunderstood by others. maybe itās just projection but thereās something so compelling about character who can be surrounded by people who love and care for them, yet still feel isolated. when s2 finally released, i went on reddit (ew) to see how people reacted to her and it was split between āsheās cute i like herā and āoh my god sheās so annoying and terrible.ā after that i loved her even more cause i got defensive lmao but all in all i just really like the premise of her character and i think sheās adorable and fun and she spices up the cast because sometimes they get a little monotone idk
so i donāt really feel like screen recording a bunch of videos and stuff so hereās some silly moments that i really liked in no particular order and then iāll talk about other stuff
isnāt she adorable :)))
ok so one part that i really like is her convo with maddie about nostalgia in yair. something about this scene just hits really hard because sheās trying!!!! sheās really trying to connect with maddie in the only way she knows how. and itās just never going to happen. thereās such a large gap between them that makes it almost impossible to fully understand one another. like. ok so maddie had been willing to empathize with her dad because while his upload was drastic, it was still her dad. she still has those bonds from before his upload and she can understand that he was once a person. but mist doesnāt have anyyy of that. sheās completely different and maddie canāt reconcile her digital-ness with her humanity because thereās not much to begin with. thereās a constant disconnect between the two and oh my GOD is it compelling your honor i love them so much
another thing that has always stood out was her fight with holstrom during apokalypsis and the aftermath. she immediately approaches holstrom with such fervor and she argues from a logical perspective, aka āyouāre planning genocide, hereās the definition of genocide, my name is mist kim you killed my father prepare to dieā type shit. but what ultimately gets her to rethink her views on him is that he frames his plan as saving a doomed society rather than committing genocide. the argument boils down to the main message of the show, āare UIs (and CIs) actually human and not just glorified corpses?ā holstrom weaponizes her disconnect with nostalgia against her by calling it humanityās fault rather than a Normal Human Emotion (also itās super interesting how much he uses āusā when talking to her idk). and mist really struggles to reconcile the 2 perspectives sheās heard when it comes to nostalgia. she needs someone to inform her on things like social cues and human experiences because sheās never felt them. she tries to connect with maddie once again by saying āwe talked about nostalgia, just like you and iā but maddie is obviously upset because sheās annoyed that mist simply canāt understand a lot of nuances regarding the importance of the physical world. i think maddieās biases really shine here because of how quickly she shuts down mist rather than caspian whoās just like. sitting there the whole time lmao. sheās so set on labeling holstrom as genocidal because the two options heās giving humanity are death or uploading, both of which are underneath living normally to her. mist, being a CI herself, gets that uploading isnāt necessarily the end all be all of life, and is āmore openā to holstromās ideas of nostalgia being the true genocidal factor. i think this line from the short stories also adds a little flavor here, specifically āthe way the shapes of her decision algorithms seemed adapted for the methods of warfare.ā
obviously thereās a lot more expansion in the show but i feel like itād be cool to mention this. she charges at holstrom harshly, but upon learning more information, she heads back to maddie and caspian to rethink the plan of attack, which is pretty warfare-y to me but idk i just thought it was a fun little connection.
finally i wanted to mention her plot line with the CIs real quick because it felt like a culmination of her whole character yk???? sheās fighting for a world where she can be with the UIs and humans she cares about, but she can also be with those who can fully understand her. itās such a defining cause for her character and itās just so well done. anyways i think thatās it for now but i just think mist is really neat and so is her sibling dynamic with maddie :)))
#oh my goddd i love her so much#i only made this account in march so iāve been writing all my thoughts about this show to myself#tysm for the ask i needed to get this out there#letās go pantheon fans šŖšŖ#pantheon#pantheon amc#i mightāve written more but also itās an ungodly hour of the night and iām tired#iām due for a pantheon rewatch ngl#weāll see#m
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Agents Reacting to Deadlock Joining the Valorant Protocol
Another of Evieās headcanons that Iām slowly but surely going to do some more of and hell, probably more of my own stuff. Thanks again @eviethelesbian for the ideas!
Gekko
He ran up to meet her at first when she got released from the medical wing after being stabilized and allowed to walk around the premises
When Thrash appeared behind him, she panicked and grabbed a nearby kitchen knife to defend herself
Gekko had Thrash revert to a globule and instead grabbed Wingman to show Deadlock that there was nothing to fear
Wingman waddled up to her and kicked him away
Gekkoās reassurance didnāt work and she called him childish for keeping the radivores around and made it clear she wanted nothing to do with them
In his eyes, she was being cruel and he didnāt let her off the hook for reacting with hostility
Neither tried to back down in this confrontation and it was broken up only by Killjoy insisting Gekko go to Neon for training and that she needed Deadlockās measurements for the prosthetic
Afterwards, she would often consider killing Gekkoās pets if she saw them. The only thing stopping her is the retribution from the protocol
They hated each other for a while, passively avoiding each other and trying to keep their distance as much as possible
It wasnāt even that they got off on the wrong foot, they have fundamentally different philosophies a wedge issue
Wingman is used to wandering the headquarters, and whenever she sees him she canāt help but remember the events at the facility
She and Gekko didnāt have respect for each other and a mixture of Deadlockās trauma and Gekko being unaware of this meant they would continue their conflict
Skye
Her and Iselin are on a first name basis, but initially she was a hesitant to get to know Kirra
Because of the animals she could create, Iselin initially thought that there was some kind of tie to the radivores
Then when out hiking, she met Kirra and to be accommodating Kirra dismissed one of her summons
Additionally, Kirra and her started hiking together to let her get out of the facility. It was Kirraās idea because she knew Wingman never leaves the building if Gekko is inside
Both of them bonded over a shared love of nature and also from working out together. Iselin could easily see Kirra being on the Staljaeger team and that gives her some comfort
When Kirra showed her ability to heal, Iselin got somewhat intrigued by the regenerative process. Both of them were thinking the same thing
They attempted to regrow Iselinās arm, but it wasnāt effective and both walked away with with disappointed looks
That evening they both apologized to each other one of the overlooks on their typical hiking path. They agreed that it was nobodyās fault and they just got their hopes up too much
Iselin trusts Kirra with her life, and has even asked for her to produce the totems before so she could see how they worked. Kirra being able to influence them fully and use them as an extension helped Iselinās anxiety
The pair like each other, enjoy each otherās silence while hiking and have deep respect for the other
Sova
When Deadlock woke back up at the HQ, Sova was in the room with her and one of the first faces she saw at the Protocol
Sovaās understanding nature and general compassion helped to ease her during some of the initial shock
Also there was a lot of gratitude towards Sova because of him finding her and taking her to medic immediately
When she received her first active mission, it was with Sova
Yeah they have a lot of sibling energy, but weirdly nobody can tell which one is the older sibling
Example: Sova will absolutely have no idea whatās going on if he zones out in a briefing and Deadlock will grab his attention
Other Example: Iselin will completely focus in on something so intently sheāll forget things around her and Sova will remind her
Sheās literally forgot one of the fingers on her prosthetic before, back when it was being adjusted
Theyāre both capable, mature people but together they have no brain cells
Also drinking buddies, especially cause Sova isnāt a lightweight and neither is she so they take their time sharing progressively funnier or sadder stories
Deadlock and Sova donāt use first names though, which is strange considering how close they are
The āthumb incidentā at Sunset is the perfect microcosm of their entire relationship. They are basically brother and sister and have no shortage of loving and confusion for one another
Deadlock feels safe around him, and trusts his judgment when things get difficult and she needs a confidant
Fade
Her and the Protocol were on ok terms and the Radiants there convinced her that Radiants were just human, and above all could be dealt with if needed
Fade was another matter entirely though, as she not only had Nightmare but also the knowhow to blackmail Valorant.
It didnāt exactly help that Nightmare fed off of Iselinās fear at times, tendrils and sinew crawling up her while she dreamt
Fade noticed the Prowler she let around sniffing around Iselinās room and when it took the appearance of a bear she decided to investigate
Iselinās terror had been sent into overdrive by Nightmare, visions of the Landfall facility and the bear leaping out at her, severing her arm
She woke up to Fade holding back Nightmare and shaking Iselin awake
The two didnāt talk much before, but seeing as they needed to have a discussion about what happened they retreated to Fadeās room
Fade explained to Iselin that Nightmare fed on fear, and the stronger the fear the harder it was to control and Iselin confronted her about keeping it away from her
What made this difficult was the fact that Fade knew Iselin was still holding on to enough terror that it would haunt her regardless of what Fade did
Thatās when Iselin decided she was done with the constant nightmares, and because Fade was the only one who could help she was basically forced into triggering an episode
Fade and her held hands throughout the ordeal, Nightmare coming within inches of the two but Fade reassuring Iselin it couldnāt harm her if she controlled her fear
After about an hour, Nightmare couldnāt get energy and slunk back into shadows. Iselin and Fade just kinda talked about what happened at Landfall after that
The following morning, the two shared some coffee and began talking more. Very goth kid meets jock kind of relationship
Since Fade saw Iselin at her most vulnerable and kept it between them, Iselin feels at ease around Fade more than she lets on. The two of them keep the other emotionally well
#valorant headcanons#valorant imagines#valorant agents#valorant deadlock#valorant gekko#valorant sova#valorant skye#valorant fade#valorant game
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Iām triggered lol. My son sent me the following text:
One of my friends said that Katniss sucks and when I asked why they said āKatniss is manipulative, shallow and a coward. Throughout most of the books her character as well as its development is stagnant. She doesn't learn, she does not change and she doesnt grow as a person. She becomes a catalyst for a revolution and while I understand that starting a rebellion was not in her intentions but it is undeniable that she is the head and perhaps heart of a movement that could potentially change their world.
Most information is kept from her, hindering her ability to act at times that I cannot fault her for. It is the fact that even when she has information about both events and people he hides and leaves others to pick up the slack. She becomes the literal head, the symbol of this revolution yet does nothing to lead it, to change it. Most of the time it's people telling her what to do and her failing or refusing to do it. Her whole premise is to sit and look pretty, to at least act the part and she fails to do that much.
Not to mention the love triangle between Peeta, her and Gale. Gale is her childhood friend and has been at her side for years. He has shown to be compassionate and protective but he is also possessive. Gale was never a good fit for Katniss, no matter which way it turned. In the books he is described to be a burning fire, and inferno. A fire that held nothing of what Katniss needs. His actions ultimately meant the death of Katniss' sister, Prim.
Katniss and Peeta didn't really know each other until the Games. But throughout the games Peeta has shown himself to be resourceful, caring and a manipulator of words, getting people to believe almost anything he says. Peeta has always been a wonderful character and it is truly awful that a side love interest has more development that the main character herself.
Peeta is always there when Katniss needs him, even when he himself is in a deal of pain yet she repeatedly takes him for granted, even being fully aware of this. She takes both Gale and Peeta for granted, only choosing Peeta when Gale is unavailable. Katniss has shown herself to be an absolute coward as well as a ruthless manipulator. In one of the books while they're in hiding Peeta and Gale have a conversation while Katniss pretends to sleep. Gale tells Peeta that Katniss will choose "Whoever she belives she cannot live without." Katniss is clearly upset by how Gale could think of her like that. That she would choose who ever offered her a better chance at survival.
But that is absolutely what she does. When she finds out it was Gale's bombs that killed Prim she cuts herself of from him and chooses Peeta when she shows up to help her. She chooses who ever she believes she needs. Katniss has shown several times that she understands her faults yet does nothing to change. During the first books when they have to be 'entertaining' she refuses to comply with any of the glamor, the acting, even if it raises her chance of survival. By doing so she endangers herself and people helping her.
She does this a lot. When people withhold information she acts against the best interest of the plan, but shes unaware of the plan so that blame cannot fall on her. But when she does have the full picture she still refuses to comply, acting against orders as well as her superiors. She actively plans against them, endangering them on more than one occasion. She refuses to learn, remaining stubborn and withdrawn. One of her biggest faults is noncompliance, something she is well aware of. She seeks to assume command but is completely unfit for the position and when she realises she's unfit she still tries to lead, causing the deaths of dozens.
In trying to make sure she's not a Mary Sue, she is actively written as weak, undermining her character as well as her actions. She is mentally and emotionally too unstable to be a reasonable and functional main character, again something she and other characters are aware of but never change. She starts a revolution and becomes the face of it but is unable to lead it, having other characters pick up the slack. And when she does assume control and command, she is bad at it. Endangering dozens and killing just as many. She became her own antagonist
If i was Snow, i'd want to kill her too.ā
I sent back a series of texts lol. My son had to tell me to slow down. For context my son and his friend are 14. I told him to read the books and form his own opinions after I quit my tirade.
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yes yes yes i totally agree. also it reads like such surface-level storytelling and that is just. boring? like oh yay jon got all the powers and heās mastered them already! time to go be a superhero on literal day one! and lois actually went along with that?? my lois lane??? what?? she was ready for him to take up that mantle so quick, meanwhile her other sonāwho has been struggling with this and working towards this for years, who has made mistakes but who wants this so badlyāis just, like. not even a thought in her mind. and i donāt fault any of them for thinking jordanās not quite readyāhe is not, he has not been doing well for a long timeābut she also makes no attempt to even justā¦ talk to him about that? help him figure things out so he can get to that place he wants to be so badly? they scolded him in s3 for using his powers for the wrong reasons and heās already been dealt the consequences in s4 of not thinking things through before acting, but they have never actually sat down with jordan to figure out what is going on with him. not in any way that doesnāt feel like an interrogation, or an accusation. and it just feels like such a cruel writing choice to have jon swoop in and take that role and get the El crest (which i think weāre heading towards, based on what iāve read some of the producers say) after we spent such a long time watching jordan put so much effort into it too, and it is just. disappointing! because it was such an interesting story and they had such complex characters but it feels like theyāve given up on getting to the core of those characters and the things that made them so human and real (their connections with each other, the way they just want so badly to take care of each other, more than anything else) in favor of pleasing a particular set of the fans. and the presentation of it just feels so shallow. jon has always been such a compelling character and really carried a lot of the heart of this show. it is a disservice to take all of that hard-earned development and strength away from him and turn him into some less complex, āchosen one saviorā character, and erase all of that time he spent learning to be a hero in his own way, on his own terms. and yeah maybe jon is ready for this in ways jordan isnāt, and thatās fine, but to just not even acknowledge that this is something he wants too, desperately, and to not have these characters understand each other anymore like they always used toā¦ woof.
quite literally ^^ and to be real the whole 'this feels like destiny' thing that both sam and jon and lois brought up is not the flex the writers think it is. it's because he's superboy in the comics, and it just feels like a dumb meta commentary about how this is how the show SHOULD have gone in the first place.
but having him be a generic chosen one whose destiny it is to save the world feels so minimizing in this context because theyāre undercutting THEIR OWN premise. itās like theyāre throwing up their hands to the hater fanboys who have been screaming to give jon powers since season 1 and going fine you were right we were wrong, instead of sticking by their own pitch for the show and seeing through the storylines they've been setting up for 3 seasons.
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Hi ! So glad I find your master worldbuilding mind!
Quick question, how do you think we went from a clan-based village to actual Konoha where several clans (Senju, Sarutobi?, Uchiha, Danzo clan? , Hatake if it's a clan) have disapear? Did the village care ou try to protect them? Did other clans are treathen by the possibilities to be let down?
Because you said that Tobirama trust Uchiha with police force but Sarutobi was obsessed by clan balance and all. I know Sarutobi is old, so a lot could have happening.
Any thought?
Hi! Okay so this ask is actually based on a slightly flawed premise (not your fault it's Kishi's worldbuilding again) in that we do not actually see a lot of "wiped out" clans. What we see is Kishi not bothering to flesh out the clans he has because what is attention span. For example; the Sarutobi are not wiped out! There is exactly one shot of the Sarutobi clan in the 4th war arc that is in both the manga and the anime (in the anime the shot is actually narrower so you can't see as many as in the manga shot) where a bunch of their jounin and chuunin members (like easily double digits, I forget the exact number but I wanna say around 20ish? With more implied to be off screen) breathe fire at the juubi in sync. And it is confirmed they are all Sarutobi. There's like one guy who's essentially like: COME ON GUYS LET'S SHOW THEM THE SARUTOBI CLAN KICKS ASS.
So the Sarutobi clan is actually a decent enough/healthy enough size, we just literally never hear or see it until that one single shot. So it's reasonable to assume most clans are healthy and protected by Konoha. This is kind of implicitly supported by the narrative too, because things like the Uchiha and Hatake and Senju being nearly extinct are things that people comment on and find noteworthy, which means it's *not* the norm.
As for how the three clans we know of being wiped out *got* wiped out, I think that is less the fault of Konoha itself (tho Hiruzen is directly at fault for allowing the Uchiha massacre thanks) and more a side effect of that transition from clan based society to village based society. Namely the multiple shinobi wars. As I mentioned in my economics rant, the shinobi wars were something entirely out of the league of clan wars back in the day in terms of scale and destruction, so clans that got hammered likely were ones either already on the small size (like the Hatake probably were) or ones that would have been intentionally targeted by the enemy out of fear (Senju and Uchiha). The sheer scale of the conflict and clashing powers would have decimated targeted clans, and the villages would have been unprepared for that kind of issue until it was too late. After that, the surviving members could have easily died out without having kids post war, or if they were female members in the case of, say, the Senju, they didn't die out but the *name* died out, because it's still traditional in Naruto world cultures for the woman to join the family of the man and not the other way around (with the exception of the Uchiha and other regularly manifesting kekkei genkai clans I imagine).
We don't see anything about the Shimura clan either way beyond Danzo, which is again a flaw in the kishi worldbuilding, so we don't know if he actually has a clan still running around, or if they were just a small clan that got hammered in the multiple shinobi wars. On that note you can apply this same worldbuilding problem to almost every other village in the show. Kumo, Iwa, and Suna all have characters who are implied to be from a clan or have kekkei genkai that appear to be hereditary but no clan is mentioned. So we just do not know if there IS a clan of say- people with hand mouths like Deidara, or if they are one-off manifestations of a kekkei genkai, or if they are survivors of other villages' clans that got hammered casualty-wise by the wars like the Senju and Hatake presumably were.
Logistically speaking it would be beneficial for the villages as a whole to do everything they could to keep their clans alive, since their clans are where their powerhouses tend to come from while civilian-born shinobi fill out the ranks with more mid-level shinobi. There would probably be incentives and benefits offered by the village for clan shinobi to marry and have kids that bear the clan name, etc etc. And clans that are still a healthy size work hard to keep it that way.
I hope that answered your question?
#SE asks#maneeyansf asks#Secret Engima Rambles#naruto#naruto worldbuilding#ninja economics#for organizational purposes
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