#not ONLY does he fling the protagonist off a cliff (I thought they were brothers?? JUICY)

[yutaan]

:bangs hands on the table: JIUJIU JIUJIU JIUJIU. Teeny waist, dressed to kill, whip in one hand nephew in the other, happy birthday you beautiful disaster man you’ve ruined my whole life

[kegareki]

e2!

the episode opens to tanjiro asking for a basket and some bamboo and straw and the worker is like “sure? the basket’s full of holes though” and tanjiro is like “that’s fine, i’ll pay you” and they’re like IT’S FULL OF HOLES YOU DON’T NEED TO PAY FOR IT and tanjiro is like “i’ll pay you though!” and the worker is like “it’s alright! the bamboo and straw are free too!” and tanjiro is like NO!!!! I’LL PAY!!!! and he slaps money into the worker’s hand and yells “PLEASE ACCEPT THIS ALTHOUGH IT’S ONLY SMALL CHANGE!!”

tanjiro is the sweetest boy alive

he left nezuko in a cave and crouches in front of it and calls out to her. the cave is empty. he begins to worry. “ah?! she’s gone!” and then ... nezuko’s head pops out of the ground. she dug herself a hole in the cave. sweet girl

in the opening: are tanjiro and nezuko holding hands while boar head chases blondie with identical looks of  (´・_・`)??? so cute

oh! another hand-hold in the opening! i love family!!!! i love when families are allowed to be affectionate with each other in media!

“... nezuko?” she dug a hole? my kid sister’s turned into a mole...

I LAUGHED JKGJKLSDJKL TANJIRO

“can you fit in the basket?” she crawls into it headfirst and just fwumps onto the ground. 2/3 of her body sticking out of the basket. i love her

at tanjiro’s suggestion she makes herself mini and fits in the basket and he rubs her head and praises her

imagine turning child-sized to fit into a basket and your brother pats you on the head and goes “good girl! good girl!” this is the future that dogs want

HAND-HOLDING

is this their thing? do they just hold hands? am i going to get to see the two sweetest characters hold hands every time they’re together???

... so, like, the family that was murdered before tanjiro and nezuko could get there... they were depicted as attractive young men with dark hair and clean jaws and i mourn what we have so narrowly missed

oh no nezuko is salivating

she’s standing in the doorway, frozen, saliva dripping from her jaw, hands clenched and shaking at her sides, hunger awakened at the sight and stench of blood but trying so hard to resist it--

and it’s tanjiro’s cry of pain that snaps her out of it

and she IMMEDIATELY zooms the fuck over and KICKS THE DEMON’S HEAD CLEAN OFF?1?!! NEZUKO YOU SHOULD PLAY SOCCER I’M--

sh-she killed him...! ah, but, he’s a demon, so...

the body part of the demon reaches for tanjiro with trembling fingers and she kicks the body away too

we stan a protective sister

me, eating at the same time i watch this: (bites into my pepperoni roll) (sees the head scurrying over to tanjiro now with two muscled arms sprouting--not from the neck hole--but the sides of the neck)

me, with my mouth full: HA? WHAT?

okay 1) tanjiro’s thought processes are SO fucking funny. he’s like AH? WHAT’S WITH SPROUTING ARMS FROM YOUR NECK?! AUGH I DON’T HAVE TIME FOR THIS, I NEED TO HELP NEZUKO! and he headbutts the head and flings him and his axe into a tree and then runs off into the forest to find nezuko

nezuko is getting beat up by the headless body so tanjiro tackles him like D:< GET AWAY FROM HER oh no i’m falling off a cliff oh no--

nezuko: (grabs the back of his shirt)

thank you nezuko for his life

2) tanjiro’s thought processes are still funny but also so so sweet. there’s still the head of the demon to take care of, and he’s got a tanto in his hand but he’s hesitating. he’s telling himself that he has to do this, but he’s shaking

tengu mask man shows up and tells him that the tanto isn’t going to work, so tanjiro finds a large rock

but he’s thinking “... but, to completely smash his head, i’ll have to hit him many times, won’t i? he’ll suffer a lot. is there a way to do this in one blow...?”

like... this demon HAS killed people, and tried to kill him, and he needs to kill the demon, but he doesn’t want to make the demon suffer

have you EVER seen a sweeter boy in your LIFE?

like. i mean. technically this is a low bar to set--wanting to kill your enemies cleanly without inflicting more suffering than necessary--but like... i don’t remember the last time that i saw a protagonist with that concern? usually the protagonist ... gores the enemy unrestrainedly and comes back to themselves after, chest heaving with gasping breaths as they stare in horror at what they’ve done. maybe i’m just consuming the wrong media but what tanjiro does strikes me as uncommon

tengu mask man thinks to himself that tanjiro isn’t going to cut it because he’s too kind and i’m like “FUCK, if tanjiro’s crime is being too kind, i hope he remains a criminal for the rest of his life”

tengu mask man: “tanjiro. what will you do when your sister devours a human?”

me, out loud, offendedly: “she WON’T, though?”

tanjiro, running after tengu mask man whose name i’ve already forgotten: he’s so fast! just how old is he, anyway?!

i love tanjiro

tanjiro thinking about how nezuko’s always been patient and how she’s been setting aside her own needs/desires in order to take care of their siblings, like refusing to get a new kimono because they can use that money to buy more food instead, and tanjiro thinking to himself “i swear i’ll buy you a beautiful kimono. everything i couldn’t do for the others, i’ll do it all for you.”

i Love these siblings So Much?????

traps set by human hands have a different scent after all! but that doesn’t mean that i’m suddenly athletic enough to dodge all of them...!

i LOVE TANJIRO????

Okay yes this is good. this is a good anime.

[clarascuro]

Clara Reads City of Bones Part 3: Hogwarts Institute for Witchcraft and Shadowhunting

The Plot Thus Far

When last we left off, our lovable cardboard cutout protagonist, Clary Fray, had been attacked by a demon called a Ravener and taken to a place called “The Institute”. After three days of recovery, she has an uncomfortable (for us) conversation with Isabelle Lightwood, where we learn that Isabelle is hot and that we, the audience, should hate her for that, and also that Jace Wayland lives with the Lightwood family because his parents are dead. We are meant to feel bad about this. We are meant to feel sorry for Jace, which is a bit of a tall order, considering that Jace Wayland is the worst person to ever smirk and shrug his way through a YA book. If I were trapped in an elevator with him I wouldn’t even wait five minutes to be rescued, I’d pry those doors open and just drop. Death is cruel but quality time with Jace Wayland is crueler. 

So Clary leaves the hospital wing and goes down a long hallway, lead by the sound of someone playing a piano. Last time I said that it was Alec (Isabelle’s brother) who played piano, and that it was his only character trait, but nope!! It’s actually my favorite boy Jace, that sack of human refuse! So I guess Alec has no personality, actually. Anyway, they have some “witty” “banter”, and then Alec takes her to the library to talk to the head of the Institute, Hodge Starkweather, and, yeah. I think it’s time to talk about the Harry Potter stuff. 

The Harry Potter Stuff

You know how E.L. James made minor changes to her crappy Twilight fanfic and then published it as 50 Shades of Gray? Well, as near as anyone can figure out, this is basically the same thing that Cassandra Clare did with her Harry Potter fanfic The Draco Trilogy. Just change the names, tweak the backstories ever so slightly, slap on a crappy cover and publish that sucker! It’s technically not plagiarism anymore! This is how you end up with stuff like "The Institute”, a secret school to teach young magic kids to control their powers, or Hodge Starkweather, elderly magic professor, who, one could argue, is a crackpot old fool teaching our protagonists magic tricks. (Gosh, how does Clare come up with this stuff?) 

This obviously isn’t proof of any kind, but when the villain of your story is named “Valentine” and he’s an evil magic user who has been dead for sixteen years (the age of our secretly magic protagonist) and the main characters are afraid to even say his name...yeah, it doesn’t exactly take a genius to figure out where all of this comes from. 

Now all this is frustrating, but it’s also hilarious. I mean, the big bad of the story is called Valentine. VALENTINE. And I actually laughed out loud for several minuted when I first read the name “Hodge Starkweather” to myself. I still get a little chuckle typing this. Oh, and since the word “muggle” would have JK Rowling’s lawyers on her ass faster than light, the word Cassandra Clare uses for non-magic people is...”Mundie”. It’s short for “mundane”. Like...first of all this is objectively hilarious. Second, mundane just means “normal”. If the Shadowhunter society is magical, then aren’t they they mundane ones? I know humans don’t have magic, but we still figured how to like, fly and stuff. That has to count for something. If I saw a dog that taught himself how to read, I wouldn’t like, make fun of him for not also being able to talk. I’d be like “Shit! That’s a pretty impressive fucking dog!” like what the fuck?

Anyway, this is all just a roundabout way to say that obviously this used to be a HP fic that through some twist of fate landed a publishing deal. And you know, it’s not as brain-meltingly bad as 50SoG, so who cares? Cassandra Clare’s just having fun, so who cares if her writing gets published? 

Well...

The Plagiarism

So, yeah, she plagiarized lot. Like a lot. The Draco Trilogy has lines of dialogue taken directly from shows like Red Dwarf, Black Adder, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, as well as from Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett novels. Quoting shows apparently used to be pretty common in the early days of fanfiction, so there is context to consider here, but it gets worse. Cassandra Clare lifted almost a whole chapter, nearly word for word, from an out-of-print fantasy series called The Hidden Land, by Pamela Dean. On top of that, Clare was sued in 2016 by author Sherrilyn Kenyon, whose Darkhunter series predates Clares Shadowhunters series. (And for the record, Clare’s series was originally titled Darkhunters. Yikes.) You guys can read the full(ish) stories here and here.

I Guess I Have To Keep Talking About The Plot Now

Sigh. So after Hodge Starkweather (A+ naming there) tells them about Valentine, he explains that Shadowhunters are angel-human hybrids? Or something? They’re special, and they fight demons. Also faries, vampires, werewolves, all that stuff exists. We’re stuck with the Shadowhunters, however, because God has punished me for my hubris, and my work is never done. (Oh look, I just plagiarized Brian David Gibert. I’m a real author now, like Cassandra Clare!) The Shadowhunters were started thousands of years ago by a man named, I shit you not, Jonathan Shadowhunter. JONATHAN. FUCKING. SHADOWHUNTER. Why the fuck am I trying to come up with clever names for my characters? I should just name them all “Alex Clarasbook” and call it a fucking day. Fuck.

Anyway after a thrilling conversation with Alec-Who-Has-No-Personality, we find out that he does have a personality! His personality is that he hates humans. Oh, excuse me, “mundies.” Yep, that’s the best way to make a character relatable. Just make ‘em fucking racist. It’s okay though, it’s only magical racism so it evens out. Have I mentioned that this story has no poc?

(Oh also Clary’s mom was a Shadowhunter, but 1. I hate Clary                        and 2. literally a newborn baby could’ve figured that out, so)

Clary and Jace leave the Institute to go back to Clary’s house, and Clary slaps Jace, an act that brings me such joy that only the birth of my firstborn child will ever eclipse it, and even then, it will be it close tie. The moment is quickly over, however, as Clary immediately feels bad about it, because again, she is not a character. She’s a Walmart mannequin created for Jace to make out with. Then she sees two girls looking at Jace, and, in what can only be called the true essence of the book, “Clary turned instant traitor against her gender.” Just as a reminder, Clary sucks.

Anyway they get to her house, kill a giant, talk to a witch, yaddah yaddah yaddah. Basically nothing happens except the inevitable unraveling of my mental processes. I had to stop reading there because I have better things to do with my life besides destroying the few braincells I have left. I’ll post the next part soon, as soon as I can read more than five pages without wanting to fling the book off a seaside cliff into the frothing mist that obscures the swell and crash of the unforgiving waves. Until then, please enjoy some of my favorite bad lines.

Selected Passages (And Commentary)

“Jace chuckled. Clary could tell that he had come up behind her and was standing there with his hands in his pockets, grinning that infuriating grin of his.”                                                                                                             (She knew all that without looking?)

“Attacked. Clary wondered if this was a euphemism for ‘murdered’.”            (Clary you’re literally the dumbest person I’ve ever met.)

“Clary let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding in.”                  (This may just be me being petty, but I hate this cliche so much.)

“‘You may be the only guy my age I’ve ever met who knows what bergamot is, much less that it’s in Earl Grey tea.”                                                                   (Ah yes, that famous stereotype, that boys don’t know about tea. Oh, you like tea? Name three kinds. I hear sexist gatekeeping is a real problem in the tea community. I am not having a good time.)

“Dorothea chuckled. ‘It’s good to see a young woman eat her fill. In my day, girls were robust, strapping creatures, not twigs like they are nowadays.’ ‘Thanks,’ Clary said. She thought of Isabelle’s tiny waist and felt suddenly gigantic.”                                                                            (Cassandra Clare’s super feminist, guys. You can tell because she’s always pitting her female characters against each other.)

Rating So Far

3/10-Bad. Jonathan Shadowhunter gets an entire 10/10. I’m going to have my name legally changed to Jonathan Shadowhunter.