#middle of the night rambles

[lazylittledragon]

story time

i was visiting my boyfriend and we were running out of youtube to watch so i suggested we watch a film because i have. a list of films i specifically want to watch with him

and his laptop is on her last legs and half frozen when she boots up and neither of us pay for streaming services so i said "well, i really want to watch skinamarink but we have to pirate it and i don't want to kill your computer"

and he just looks at me. and proceeds to pull up his adblock, his vpn and his bookmarked collection of piracy websites

so anyway i'm going to marry him yesterday

[zxmbigirlfriend]

stuilly week day 1- au

i will take literally any excuse to draw gross evil lesbians. if only i could draw them the whole week💔💔

[minimonimind]

I wish that the entirety of TSC by Cassandra Clare was more popular and well known. Don’t get me wrong, I know that it is an incredibly successful franchise and she has been hugely successful from them, but I hardly know anyone in my real life who loves those books like I do, or even know about them. Those who do know about the books only know it as “oh isn’t that that one series with the incest plot line?” and every time I hear that I want to SCREAAAAAAM because it’s SO much more than that and its so much more nuanced than that. sure it may be weird at times but I wish people could just see past surface level hate for it and give it a chance. These books are so lovely and well written, I just wish it got the same level of love as other series like ACOTAR or something. A series that also has weird ass moments sometimes but can still be well beloved.

[aficionadoenthusiast]

yeah there's some obvious problems with ares in the pjo series but i think some of them are actually on purpose. the greek gods are first and foremost the embodiment of their domain, i.e. poseidon isn't just god of the sea, he is the sea, or gaea isn't just goddess of the earth, she is the earth. ares isn't just god of war, he is war, and he lives in the us now. modern warfare in the us now is a lot different than ancient greece. it has nothing to do with glory. it's opportunistic. it's capitalist. it's gross and slimy and goes to the highest bidder, and it doesn't like to take responsibility. it takes and takes. if that's not ares in the og series, i don't know what is.

[chronicowboy]

no but the way death was almost an indulgence for bill and frank like. and i don't just mean that their chosen weapon was a bottle of wine or that they got to spend their last few moments in their bed in their home in each other's arms knowing how loved they are, but i just mean the indulgence of a death of old age on their own terms in a world that's basically all death. it may have been tragic to watch but it was their happy ending.

[misc-obeyme]

Sometimes I really long to see some card art where the characters don’t look like they’re chiseled out of stone.

Like give me strong man weight lifter Diavolo with a round belly & juicy tits. Give me awkward lanky Levi and dad bod Lucifer. Give me sweet soft Asmo, renaissance painting style. I want perfectly average Solomon, covered in pact marks but otherwise just normal. I want old man Barb with crows feet and a little belly from eating too many pastries.

I know we would never get such official art and I absolutely headcanon them however I like. But I sometimes think about it when so much of the official art is all abs all the time!

And of course I worship the artists who draw the characters with different body types. You are doing the real work 🫡

[post-it-notes7]

What caused Mirror Falspar to fall off the deep end so quickly here? Was it simply DMK's presence alone?

the last time he put himself at mercy it didn't go so well

[realmsalot]

Ok ok ok so in class today we had to write a journal about what we thinking about at the time and I was FINALLY able to put this in words it has been eating my mind for a while

It is so fascinating to me that Peri/Poof is such a stickler for Da Rules, because the reason he exists in the first place is because of a loophole. Like literally if Timmy didn't realize there's nothing in Da Rules that says a God Child can't wish for his Godparents to have a baby Peri wouldn't exist.

And like yeah okay we all know that but the part that really eats my brain is it's (unintentionally?) implied that Peri's continued existence is due to an exception to Da Rules.

In Channel Chasers when Wanda is explaining to Timmy what happens when he grows up she says that "...and all the remnants of their magic dissappear forever..." which I interpret as all still active wishes are undone. And if you remember, Peri is a wish.

In order for Peri to continue exist and be able to grow up, either an exception to (or another loophole in) Da Rules had to have happened.

So I find it so fascinating that he sticks so closely to rules as written because he himself is by all means a loophole and an exception.

Anyways here's how I originally worded it in class.

[strawberricakeandpie]

I can’t believe Ryōko Kui accidentally created a character that is such a (in my opinion) good representation of the autistic experience with Laios. Like I could go on about how he fits the diagnostic criteria for autism, but also how his experience interacting with others feels so similar to my own. Genuinely, Laios’s autistic traits appear so similar to mine and it makes me so happy.

TL;DR, Laios is so autism and I love him dearly.

[valhallavalgrace]

Have you used your powers at all since getting to Hotel Valhalla?

Leo hasn't used his powers once in battle and it's probably costed him a couple losses. (The dreams are likely both from the gods and also from genuine demigod PTSD.)

I've posted a flashforward in-universe valgrace fanart about this arc here... he'll be happy again one day I'm sorry

prev ask

[oneread]

Really into the idea of side characters first interacting with the crew and assuming Sanji is the chef though some sort of default? Like clearly he's a powerhouse fighter so that's his main job right? They're good but it's a small crew and many already have primary jobs (Chopper=doctor Franky=shipwright Robin=general menace) so having a few dedicated fighters makes sense. He must be the best chef, or get out of doing other chores for it or capable of not burning the kitchen down or something.

The dawning realization that, nope, the fighting is just kinda something he does, being the crew cook is the living, beating heart of who he is, to the point that he's actually limiting his fighting style in order to focus on his cooking. They watch him kick someone's ass without blinking, then stress over saving dinner from getting burnt because of the fight while they come to terms with how actually fucking unhinged these people are

[lazylittledragon]

ok so storytime: while we were at the con, we discovered that my boyfriend can do an almost perfect impression of gale and throughout the weekend he'd say increasingly cursed things publicly in the gale voice, so obviously my response became (loudly) "babe, not the gale voice, the gale voice is just for US at home" because either both of us are public weirdos or neither of us are

[helenofblackthorns]

if you think about it, Livvy wanted to be like the Julian that was the mask, the version that he presented to the world. but it's Ty who is like the real Julian underneath.

[hotwaterandmilk]

I'm seeing "Wedding Peach was unsuccessful" trotted out on Twitter again and it's honestly kind of funny to me. You can dislike the series, but you're rewriting history if you suggest it was a massive commercial flop/astronomical failure — it simply wasn't.

The Wedding Peach TV series maintained viewership throughout its run which is why it aired an entire year's worth of episodes (the full length it was intended to run) and didn't get cancelled like Nurse Angel Ririka SOS, for example.

I'm not going to pretend it did Sailor Moon numbers, dear god, it absolutely didn't get close hence why it wrapped as it did. I would suggest looking back now, that it was the definition of a mid-performing title for the time period. It sold toys decently but not outrageously, it got viewers but not an outstanding number, and it garnered a small but dedicated fanbase of male otaku. All of which is par for the course when it comes to a mid title in 1995.

Wedding Peach DX was produced because the TV series LD sales were decent enough to warrant it. Children were not buying LD box sets at this time, adult fans were and it was this interest that justified the creation of the four DX episodes as direct-to-video releases. If a series doesn't sell well they don't make more episodes, let alone higher quality deluxe episodes specifically for the home video market (and thus for older audiences with spending power).

It is very important to point out that Wedding Peach DX had NO INVOLVEMENT from the original creative team. Tomita Sukehiro and Yazawa Nao did not contribute to its creation, Tadano Kazuko didn't provide designs. Yuyama Kunihiko was the driving force behind the production of the DX episodes and he served as both director and writer for all four episodes (bringing on Wedding Peach animator and soon-to-be frequent Pokémon collaborator, Ichiishi Sayuri to serve as character designer).

What inspired these to be fanservice dreck to the level they ended up being is honestly beyond me. I mean the otaku market definitely wanted more episodes featuring the characters (and more songs featuring the seiyuu, if you want to see how keen otaku were for FURIL please see this post) but part of what they liked about the characters at the time was their (barfbarfbarf) perceived purity and innocence. The DX including panty shots and swimsuits kind of threw them for a loop. Even now, if you look at discussions about the DX among otaku there's a bit of a divide in opinion.

The DX episode sales were (as far as I can tell based on magazines from the time) also mid, but enough to cover four episodes. Three and four don't seem to have sold as well as one and two, but again the stats from the time aren't comprehensive. I think the fact that there weren't any after episode four says it all, honestly. OVA episodes are expensive to produce and it was extremely common for them to stop immediately if the sales weren't there. DX didn't justify its existence beyond those four episodes and Yuyama moved onto a far more successful project in Pokémon.

On that topic, I think it's important to note that Wedding Peach was OLM's first television series (albeit a coproduction with KSS). If it and the studio's adaptation of Mojacko hadn't made some level of profit it would have been quite difficult for them to adapt Pokémon. Neither Mojacko nor Wedding Peach set records with their viewership or sales numbers, but they both did "OK". It was in Pokémon however, that that OLM truly found a successful property with the series still running today. Sometimes you've got to have a few runs at producing things before you find success. Wedding Peach was one of these early runs, a project where a lot of people cut their teeth but one that didn't justify its own continuation beyond a certain point. Just a very standard media mix from the mid-90s, in other words.

Wedding Peach is a problematic title with indifference through to outright objection to representing love outside of heterosexual romance. Looking back now it feels like an absolute dinosaur on so many levels. Between the anime's fatphobic episode and Momoko dropping some gender essentialism, I'm not surprised people want to relegate it to the dustbin of history.

However, I think it is very telling that Tomita Sukehiro, when presented with the opportunity to tell a similar story in the modern day, chose to represent not just queer love, but platonic and familial love in Wedding Apple. While he can't undo the regressive and cringy elements of the original series, as a creator he has progressed and I'd like to think we can all continue to improve our outlooks and output as we grow.

Disliking Wedding Peach in the modern day is completely understandable. I'm not going to pretend anyone should watch it in 2024 without knowing that it is a camp, cheaply made relic of a time when heterosexuality was considered magic. However, just because it pandered to all the worst things trending at the time doesn't mean it didn't sell enough products or hold enough viewers to justify its production. It did, it just wasn't a strong enough property to go beyond that and that's representative of mediocrity rather than mind blowing commercial failure imho.

[chiliger]

*stands with hands on hips, staring at the floor* Look, I know we love to have the Command Batch be close brothers in art and fics. I am a staunch lover of the trope myself.

But what about, like in real life, where the people we grew up with or went to school with, they just fall out of contact. The friends made in high school don't always remain lifelong friends.

Yeah, they can say "we'll call each other and message everyday," or "we should hang out when our leaves overlap." But the war gets in the way of everything, like it tends to do. Slowly but surely the messages in the group chat peter out. There are too many things to do, and duty takes first priority over keeping contact with the people they knew as kids.

It's not for wont of trying, the commanders would still send little messages to each other, but it could be hours, days or weeks before there's a reply because of conflicting zones, lack of signal, or other messages pushing the chat further down the list.

There's also just the fact that the commanders find their people. Meaning, through time and shared experiences with their battalions, other clones click right into place, possibly even deeper than their batchmates. The camaraderie in surviving a massacre with only two of your men surviving is different than the experience of constant dehumanization on Coruscant.

It comes to a point where the Command Batch become, for lack of thinking of a better word, almost strangers to each other. They still keeps tabs on one another, just to make sure they're still alive, but that's pretty much as far as it goes now. Maybe they'll chitchat when their battalions work together, but the mission has to come first, so most of the talking is planning and strategizing. Even when their leaves do overlap, the thought of messaging for a meet-up might feel like a nuisance, because surely your batchmates are exhausted and don't want to be bothered.

So it goes, the commanders may have been close once, but that connection has been stretched and warped by war and time. They still have love for each other and it won't ever be forgotten, because how can anyone forget the people you grew up with. They were the right people they needed back then, but they're no longer the right people now.

[lovethisfatcryptid]

Let me be your favorite plushie. I'm warm and soft and also make cute noises when you squeeze me.