#my first thoughts on this

[mooncaps]

I do enjoy being pandered to with nostalgic imagery, but it also would've been neat to get something brand new.

What an absolute delight to see Hotaru happy after all these years of grim duty and tragedy.

More nostalgia.

Okay, I think I ship this. Unless they're supposed to be siblings, but they seem extra cuddly. I feel like I rarely know in this franchise when the cousins are actually lesbians and when the devoted and emotionally intimate men really are brothers even in the original. The 90's dub left lasting doubt in me.

This affected me a bit.

This also stirred something in me, which caught me by surprise.

And this affected me a lot.

If I'm being honest, I don't think my deepest heart is truly awake enough to fully appreciate this, but I definitely enjoyed it.

I'm probably gonna need repeat viewings, supplemental materials, and meta analysis to fully understand all of the details. The time travel seems to be a confusing mix of Back to the Future rules and Trunks rules.

I'm thankful that the story was able to be finished at all, but I still would've preferred seasons over movies. There's something to be said for that time spent between episodes, dangling on a cliffhanger, hyping and theorizing about what's to come, as well as for the time spent falling in love with the character and transformation music as it repeats each week.

Yasuharu Takanashi has definitely left a lasting impression on me. I caught half an episode of Boruto that my mom and step-dad were watching and immediately both recognized his style and enjoyed the score. And I definitely loved his work in Cosmos, even though I'm realizing that having time to sit with the music between episodes and hear certain themes repeat lets me savor the flavor even more.

Then there's also the time to let story beats breathe and the time to let characters make more of an impression.

It's been about ten years of hoping to see the missing Animamates fully realized, and most of them got the approximate screen time of a 90's monster-of-the-week (or less.) And I'm assuming their roles weren't very big in the manga (I can finally let myself read that now!) either, like how the Spectre Sisters had smaller roles in the Black Moon Arc than in the 90's counterpart, but I still feel like even they had a bit more presence than most of the Animamates got in this movie. Maybe it's more due to the time in between with the fandom making posts and art than the actual screen time, but either way I don't feel like I got enough of them.

At the end of the day we got what we got and I'm still grateful for it. When I first got on Tumblr in 2011, Crystal hadn't even been announced. As far as any of us knew, the 90's anime was all we would ever get and those manga-exclusive characters and scenes would forever stay in the manga. I remember the hype for this. I remember the bickering about this. I remember when we weren't even sure if the third and fourth arcs were going to happen at all, let alone the fifth. I remember the long and bumpy ride it's taken to finally get here. (Much as I've come to appreciate a little time between installments, ten years for five arcs is perhaps too far in the other direction.) This franchise had already given me a lot of memories and the last ten years with this reboot series have made even more.

I look forward to binge-rewatching the series as a whole, probably the English dub next time. It's gonna feel weird not having a new installment of this reboot to look forward to anymore. I'm really not sure how to process that fact right now.

[paintedimagery]

This is stupid, I spent too long on this lmao

[jemmalynette]

Maybe all the things you thought made you you aren’t really…you. Barbie (2023) / Fight Club (1999)

[karda]

i miss science class bro. we dont put things under microscopes as much as we should

[stealingpotatoes]

i love comparing the fake stories that each twin was told

(commission info // tip jar!)

[summikomi]

"four arms and two faces, and this is what you're fascinated by?" sukuna said, watching with feigned disinterest as you poked at the mouth on his stomach.

"you've gotta admit it's really weird. and i'm fascinated by plenty of things about you, believe me. you have no idea how terrifying it was when you pulled out two dicks instead of one." you responded drily, a finger pulling at the crease of the lips, showing the pristine teeth inside.

"does it have a mind of its own or do you control it? is it a subconscious thing?" you asked before he could reply to your dry wit, genuinely curious.

"i don't know, why don't you stick your hand in there so we can find out?" he responded, showing the fangs of his top mouth in a growl.

"you're gonna try to eat my fingers again. does it lead to your normal stomach or is it a different thing? can you even eat with it? can you swallow?"

"i didn't know when you asked for my time i would be teaching an anatomy lesson. again, give it a try, let's see what happens."

"you should be studied in a lab, seriously."

before he could protest to the (frankly, offensive) statement, you shifted a little closer, and with one hand pressed to his navel, placed a gentle kiss on the lips on his tummy.

"what." he hissed, but you didn't offer an answer and instead moved up on your perch above him so you could cuddle up to his chest instead.

"you're so interesting, kuna."

"you are arguably stranger." his voice seemed strained, but you knew well that was just his own stilted reaction to being flustered.

with a contented sigh you snuggled closer to his rapidly beating heart, deciding to give him the mercy of not having to hide his blushing face.

[frownyalfred]

thinking about the expert masseuse Alfred hired for the family that is paid a small fortune annually to provide massage services and ignore so, so many things. No questions, no remarks, just quality service and an ironclad NDA that, if broken, would probably topple said masseuse’s entire family line.

Things Alfred is paying them to ignore, in no specific order:

Bruce’s spinal hardware courtesy of Bane :)

weird amounts of muscle on everyone, even the kids (despite them allegedly not working physical jobs)

scars

FRESH scars

the fact that every joint in Bruce’s body clicks when moved/manipulated at the tender age of 42

Olympic athlete level physiques

rotator cuff injuries across the whole family

scars that are definitely from bullets and/or acid splashes

old signs of what looks like torture (Bruce)

Dick’s entire left arm is basically screws and plates (he “fell really bad” once)

every single family member takes deep tissue massage with max pressure with 0 complaints

calluses

no really, the weirdest fucking calluses

[mroddmod]

they are like puppies. 2 me

[hinamie]

to moving forward

[fairydrowning]

– Noor Unnahar, Instagram account "noor_unnahar"

[TEXT ID: / [Lemons] / My father's mother loved lemons. Years after her passing, / we run out of everything, but never / lemons. / Nothing else shelters grief / better than memory. / It's my father way of saying, / even in your absence, you will be / cared by me. / END ID]

[gossippool]

*steeples hands under my chin like i'm sherlock* so you see,

[mooncaps]

Sounds like Lemongrab.

That should end well.

😈

Why do I feel like them leaving stuff behind is gonna be significant?

Okay, that's definitely gotta be significant, right?

Kinda figured that's where that was going.

Okay, but I still kind of feel like this episode's gonna come back around somehow. If it weren't for the vague impression I have that the show gets complicated, I'd probably assume all of these episodes were just barely linked together episodic fluff, but I guess I've come into it biased to look for deeper meanings.

Dorito spotted.

Dipper. (grabs spray bottle) No! We just had an episode about how it's wrong to belittle people for not meeting certain gender standards.

Given that I've heard Disney made this show censor a lot of stuff, I'm surprised that this was allowed.

Well, that's a reaction image waiting to happen.

The game references are fun.

Wait...did other episodes have gibberish in the credits? Lemme just...

Oh shit! That's gotta be some kind of cryptogram! I love cryptograms! Now let's see...

ZHOFRPH WR JUDYLWB IDOOV QHAW ZHHN: UHWXUQ WR EXWW LVODQG KH'V VWLOO LQ WKH YHQWV FDUOD, ZKB ZRQW BRX FDOO PH? RQZDUGV DRVKLPD! PU. FDHVDULDQ ZLOO EH RXW QHAW ZHHN. PU. DWEDVK ZLOO VXEVWLWXWH. KZKVI QZN WRKKVI HZBH: "ZFFTSDCJSTZWHZWFS!" V. KOFIRYFH GIVNYOVB MLG S.T. DVOOH ZKKILEVW HLIIB, WRKKVI, YFG BLFI DVMWB RH RM ZMLGSVI XZHGOV.

Hrmmm, this is gonna be tricky. I'm sure there's probably a wiki or something that has it solved, but I wanna try it myself.

Okay, nothing's quite lining up. Unless there's some total nonsense, made-up cartoon words, or old-timey speak in here. Or I guess if there's more than one key. There are 3 journals, so maybe it's every third episode. Maybe if I just do episodes 1, 4, 7, and 10.

ZHOFRPH WR JUDYLWB IDOOV FDUOD, ZKB ZRQW BRX FDOO PH? KZKVI QZN WRKKVI HZBH: "ZFFTSDCJSTZWHZWFS!" HLIIB, WRKKVI, YFG BLFI DVMWB RH RM ZMLGSVI XZHGOV.

Okay, there are only so many four letter words that start and end with the same letter, so HZBH could be big. A, B, C, D, no dead doesn't fit, E, F, G, ... Oh, S! Says! That's why it's got a colon after it. Now we're in business.

[sorry, dipper, but your wendy is in another castle.]

Fits the episode. Okay. And I've cracked enough to reasonably say this one is just the alphabet backwards. So that means:

[paper jam dipper says: "auughwxqhgadsaduh!"]

Trolly writers, throwing that gibberish phrase in.

The reverse-alphabet key works on 7 and 10, but not 1 and 4. So I guess every third episode isn't the method to the madness. Let's see if it fits any others...

[e. pluribus trembley] [not h.g. wells approved]

So it only fits 7, 8, 9, and 10. Are the first six all one key then? Let's see...

Okay, I'm seeing QHAW ZHHN twice. That bodes well. KH'V is hella sus. It's? He's? We'd? And all these doubled-up letters. Hrmmm...

[welcome to gravity falls] [next week: return to butt island] [he's still in the vents] [carla, why wont you call me?] [onwards aoshima!] [mr. caesarian will be out next week. mr. atbash will substitute.]

Okay, that last one's a little out there, and I'm not sure who Carla is, but the rest of the letters made it say that. Maybe it'll make sense later.

So, this is pretty fun.

[itsscaredycat]

beware the IMPOSTOR

[paintedcrows]

Gravity Text Post (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

[puppyeared]

Bridge to turnabout doodles

[bajaja-blast]

you dislike Luke Castellan because he disagreed with an oppressive government system and actually took action to change the abusive ways him and his peers have been forced to follow for millennia.

I dislike Luke Castellan because in the Titans Curse he manipulated Annabeth, who he raised as his little sister, into holding up the sky, the FUCKING sky, for over 20 hours and had the audacity to walk away as though he was completely apathetic towards it while she begged and pleaded with him to help her.

we are not the same.