#not a fan of the composition here but nevertheless

[xixovart]

tartarus percabeth :)

woooo the pookies!! first ever percabeth fanart :)

[galarix]

Day 15. Favorite adaptation

Finally! Writer's block, begone!

If asked before 2024, I would have definitely said that my favorite adaptation was the 1924 film by Fritz Lang. Don't get me wrong, I still love it, and I'm sure I'll watch it again. But you see... Gosh, I remember it so well. It was May 7th, 2024, I was browsing nibelungen-rezeption.de instead of going to bed and saw a line in the list of Nibelungen novels that said: 

Lili Vogel: „Der König von Burgund“. Bd. 1. „Der König von Burgund und die Geisel“. Roman

And I thought, omg, a whole series called "Der König von Burgund" and a vol. 1 that has "hostage" in the title??? I know what it's gonna be about! I need to check it out! So yeah, surprising to absolutely no one, I will talk about the König von Burgund series by Lili Vogel.

A couple of details in case this post will be seen by someone who's never heard of these books. First, you can buy Kindle or paper copies on Amazon. Second, it was initially planned as a four-part series, but only three books have been published so far. Nevertheless, they work as a trilogy in terms of plot and composition so you won't be left wondering about what happens next. (Just go and read them already! ;))

Honestly, I don't even know where to start. I understand that, technically, it would be fine to simply say that KvB is my favorite adaptation, period, and proceed to the next question. But I can't do that! I feel a burning need to elaborate and explain, even though the explanation might get quite incoherent ^^"

First things first... THE AUTHOR IS A FAN OF HAGEN AND GUNTHER AND THIS IS WHY I LOVE THESE BOOKS SO MUCH. Yes, I had to write that in all caps!

Ahem... So anyway. As the title suggests, this is a prequel to the Nibelungenlied focusing on Hagen, Gunther, and their relationship. This is exactly the story I once wanted to write—and exactly the one I've always wanted to read! I've been really intrigued by the events that were only briefly mentioned in the Waltharius—Gunther ascending the throne and Hagen coming back to Worms—and often wondered about how Hagen and Gunther became who they are in the NL (and who they are for each other, too). Well, Lili Vogel offers her version of their "origin story", and it's a really captivating one!

Speaking about versions, it should come as no surprise that KvB deviates from the Nibelungenlied in numerous ways, some of them very significant. At the same time, it was clearly the author’s intent to be very respectful towards the NL and stick to it in many, many aspects, but like… with a twist that adds a lot of dramatic tension. Isn’t this something we’re all looking for in a good adaptation—a careful but inventive exploration of the poem's interpretative potential? There is no doubt that Lili Vogel is thoroughly familiar with the NL, with other Middle Ages renditions of the Nibelungen material, with the key works derived from/based upon it, as well as with more obscure ones, and with the range of readers’ typical interpretations of the NL that took place over time. So the more allusions/references you can recognize, the more enjoyable your reading experience will be!

There are so many things that I love about these books... let me name just a couple. For example, it's fascinating to look at character development. Both Gunther and Hagen here have their iconic traits that we recognize from the NL or from other adaptations ("Gunther did what he did best: he hesitated"), but they still have a long way to go before they grow into the characters we meet in the NL. Another thing that I enjoy immensely is Gunther’s POV (yes please!!!), these are my favorite chapters, and I love Vogel's characterization of Gunther. And a special mention goes out to a beautiful and vibrant recreation of High Middle Ages mentality and material culture! It's so refreshing to see a story based on the Nibelungenlied set in the time when the poem was actually created!! We need more of those <3

Okay, I can talk about Lili Vogel's books for HOURS and literally to the point of losing my voice (yes, it has happened). They make me INSANELY happy, and there are days when I can't believe that someone wrote something like that about my favorite NL characters. If we ever get to see Book 4 come out, I'd be so happy I might die. XD

[boodanga]

A Detailed Timeline Of Taylor Swift's Relationship History

Overview

One of the world's most well-known and successful singers, Taylor Swift, is notorious for her past relationships. Over the years, she connected with many famous men, some of whom impacted her most significant compositions.

Love it or hate it, there is an actual fixation with Taylor Swift, whether it be with her past relationships or trying to figure out who her lyrics are about. Starting with the most recent updates, here's a look back at the pop star's past relationships, all the way back to her high school sweethearts. You can get the most recent look back at Taylor Swift dating history with the help of this blog.

2008's Teenage Romance

In 2008, Joe Jonas and Taylor Swift dated for roughly three months. However, their Relationship also ended very poorly. Swift said that Jonas ended their phone relationship in 25 seconds during an appearance on The Ellen DeGeneres Show. In addition, she wrote melodies about him, including "Mr. Perfectly Fine," "Forever & Always," and "Last Kiss." Later, Jonas regretted how he handled the breakup and declared that he and Swift were now friends.

Leading Men in Hollywood: A-List Relationships

In 2010 and 2011, Jake Gyllenhaal and Taylor Swift had a brief but intense affair. Although they were seen together on Thanksgiving, their romance ended after a few months. Swift is said to have written multiple songs about Gyllenhaal, such as "The Last Time," "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together," and "All Too Well." Theoretically, according to fans, Gyllenhaal broke up with Swift over the phone and failed to return her scarf, which she had left at his sister's house.

2012: Dating Conor Kennedy

In 2012, Taylor Swift and Conor Kennedy, the famous members of the Kennedy dynasty, enjoyed a summer romance. While dating, Swift even purchased a home close to the Kennedy complex in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, where they first met. Unfortunately, their relationship ended in October 2012, with reports citing their distance and hectic schedules. According to rumors, Swift wrote the song "Begin Again" about Kennedy, talking about how he gave her hope following a difficult breakup.

Relationship between the DJ Era and Calvin Harris

Swift's Relationship with the DJ era and Calvin Harris received much media attention. The couple appeared to be having a happy relationship as they shared pictures of each other on social media.

Despite the initial euphoria after their well-publicized breakup, Swift and Harris wrote the powerful anthem "Shake It Off."

Relationship with Tom Hiddleston

Shortly after Taylor Swift's breakup with Calvin Harris in 2016, she briefly dated Tom Hiddleston. Nevertheless, their brief three-month romance raised questions about whether it was a publicity gimmick. Swift is said to have written the song "Getaway Car" with Hiddleston in mind, likening their union to a disastrous escape route.

Having a relationship with Joe Alwyn

Holding onto it Very Private: Taylor's longest-lasting and most committed relationship was with Joe Alwyn. They began dating in late 2016 but maintained a low-key, discreet relationship. Aside from a few hint posts here and there, they also refrained from discussing each other on social media. They were a steady, quiet couple who supported one other's careers while living together in London.

Love Songs with Lyrics: Swift composed numerous songs, including "Lover," "Delicate," "Call It What You Want," and "Willow" about Alwyn. Along with Swift, Alwyn co-wrote songs under the alias William Bowery, including "Exile" and "Betty."

In summary

The intriguing story of love, heartache, and self-discovery that is Taylor Swift's dating past. Swift's romantic history is extensively chronicled in her music, from her early high school romances to her turbulent Hollywood relationship. As Taylor Swift's artistic and personal development continues, her followers eagerly await the subsequent development in her ever-evolving love life. You can visit the Boodanga website every day to get informative news.

[opera-ghosts]

OTD in Music History: Austrian-Jewish composer Ernst Toch (1887 - 1964) is born in Vienna. Although he was an accomplished and creative artist, today Toch is not generally considered to be a terribly “innovative” composer. Nevertheless, like so many of his Jewish colleagues, he was broadly lumped into the “musical avant garde” by the Nazis after they rose to power in the early 1930s… and seeing the writing on the wall, he wisely decided to flee to America. A self-taught composer, Toch studied piano at the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt before realizing that composition was his true passion. Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, Toch taught at the New School for Social Research in New York and the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. After his retirement from higher education, Toch continued to teach privately, spending most of the 1950s living in Switzerland before returning to Los Angeles for his final years. Notwithstanding the rather “traditional” nature of his mature style, Toch did experiment with some unusual compositional techniques – most notably, in his “Gesprochene Musik” (“Spoken Music”) for spoken voices (1930). Although Toch is best remembered for his chamber music and his film scoring efforts, he also wrote five symphonies (his 3rd Symphony actually won a Pulitzer Prize) as well as several small-scale “chamber operas.” PICTURED: A formal portrait photograph of Toch which he signed and inscribed for a fan in 1957.

***

From The Guardian:

Ernst Toch - my grandfather the forgotten composer who fled the Nazis

Ernst Toch was one of Weimar Germany’s most celebrated composers. Fleeing the Nazis for California, he continued to write, but found his work overlooked. Today, his grandson writes, his compositions are finally being reassessed and getting long overdue recognition.

Back in the late 30s and early 40s when scores of Europe’s leading cultural figures escaped Hitler’s depredations and settled along the Pacific shores of Los Angeles, exiles as it were in Paradise, the Germans among them used to regale themselves with the tale of two dachshunds meeting beneath the breeze-wafted palms on the Santa Monica palisade, and how one confided to the other that “Here it’s true, I’m merely a dachshund, but back in the old country, I was a St Bernard.”

One such schnauzer, the writer Bruno Frank, used to make regular evening pilgrimages to that very palm colonnade, where he’d occasionally startle strolling passers-by. “There,” he would announce plaintively, pointing out over the glistening water toward the setting sun, “there lies Germany!” No one had the heart to tell him that, well, no, actually there lay… Japan.

Oh the other hand, Thomas Mann, that undimmed greyhound, betrayed no such wistfulness. “Wherever I am,” he’d frequently proclaim from the gardens of his elegant Pacific Palisades fastness, “there is Germany!” to the hearty (if dubious) concurrence of his fellow emigres. If only it were so. For Los Angeles was very pointedly not Berlin. The rich tradition of popular immersion in high (and in particular avant garde) culture that had grounded creative life over there (four orchestras and three operas in fertile competition almost every night of the year!) was replaced in LA by what the composer Ernst Krenek once characterised as “the echolessness of the vast American expanses” or what conductor Henri Temianka often described as Southern California’s overriding characteristic: “an unlimited indifference and passive benevolence toward everything and everybody.”

Such at any rate was the melancholy experience of my own grandfather, the composer Ernst Toch, a dachshund who really had been a St Bernard back in the old country. Vienna-born (1887), largely self-taught, Toch had grown into one of the stand-out fixtures on Weimar Germany’s modernist Neue Musik scene during the decade and a half after the first world war. A fervent experimentalist (though one firmly planted as well in the Great German tradition of his heroes Mozart and latterly Brahms), he was regularly featured in all the avant garde festivals, where among other things he virtually invented rap music by way of his hugely popular 1930 composition “Geographical Fugue” for the new medium of spoken chorus (“Trinidad, and the big Mississippi and the town Honolulu and the lake Titicaca…”), a piece subsequently championed by no less a figure than LA High School’s own John Cage.

He virtually invented rap music by way of his hugely popular Geographical Fugue for the new medium of spoken chorus

His chamber operas and string quartets were in regular rotation (as were his pieces for mechanical piano), his cello concerto had been premiered and then regularly performed by Feuermann, and his piano concerto was performed over 50 times by Walter Gieseking (and indeed slated to have been thus performed in London late in the spring of 1933, that is until Hitler ascended to power, at which point the dutiful Gieseking dropped the piece from his repertory and never performed it again).

Toch seemed to realise instantaneously upon Hitler’s rise to power in January 1933 that it was time to leave, and taking advantage of the fact that he’d been selected to represent Germany at an international musicological conference in Florence that spring (one of two such envoys, the other being Richard Strauss), he simply never returned, travelling instead to Paris, from where he sent his wife Lilly a pre-agreed all-clear cable signalling that she should join him with their young daughter, a cable which read in its entirety, “I have my pencil.” As if that was going to be all he was going to need.

Alas things would not prove so simple. From Paris the family made its way to London (where Toch got some work scoring films, notably including the Bertold Viertel-Christopher Isherwood Little Friend, the collaboration that would later prove the basis for the latter’s slim novel, Prater Violet). But there wasn’t enough work to live on, so by the autumn of 1934 the family was on the move again, first to New York and then to LA where he threw himself into teaching (Andre Previn, among others) and film-scoring (the studio heads quickly pegged his modernist idiom as perfect for chase scenes, such as the sleigh chase at the end of Shirley Temple’s Heidi, and horror effects as in the Hallelujah chorus in Charles Laughton’s Hunchback of Notre Dame, with its screenplay by the aforementioned Bruno Frank). Toch’s efforts in this regard were all the more frantic in that – back home his large family (he had over 60 cousins) were now clamouring for help in escaping, and every single such affidavit had to be secured by a separate surety bond (in the end, fully half of the cousins would nonetheless perish).

He'd sometimes refer to himself as 'the world’s most forgotten composer,' a wistful joke with a certain painful validity

Meanwhile, pencil or no, Toch’s personal creative wellspring began to run dry, and by the war years he was producing hardly any work of his own. On the far side of the war, however, his inspiration began to resurge, specifically around a series of works that summoned the image of the rainbow on the far side of the flood. He affixed lines from Eduard Moerike, a beloved German romantic poet – “Only through my tears can I see the beloved light of the sun” – as motto to a fresh string quartet opus 70 in 1946 (and you can almost hear the dapple).

And then, following his survival of a shattering heart attack in 1948, which he took as a sign, he gave up all his extraneous pursuits and poured himself back into his own work, in a veritable 15-year frenzy, as if making up for lost time, generating seven symphonies, a final opera, and countless chamber pieces. To his highly autobiographical Third Symphony, which garnered the Pulitzer Prize in 1955, he appended a motto from Goethe’s Young Werther, “Of course I am a wanderer, a pilgrim on this earth, but can you say that you are anything more?” (thereby seeming to meld both his Wandering Jewish and Classical German origins).

Notwithstanding Toch’s late life surge in productivity, which lasted through to his death in LA in 1964, he would sometimes refer to himself as “the world’s most forgotten composer,” a wistful joke that betrayed a certain painful validity. Perhaps owing to the fierce independence of his creative path (he was a follower of no school), his work got dismissed as too traditional by avant-gardists and too avant-garde by traditionalists. But with the passage of time, those artificial distinctions are beginning to fade, and Toch’s oeuvre is being reassessed, as it will be this coming weekend, 19-21 June when it will form a featured part of the Continuum Ensemble’s “Swept Away” Festival at London’s Kings Palace, which will feature no less than nine British premieres of Toch works from his Weimar prime.

Not included in the festival, though certainly also worth a fresh listen, will be a piece Toch conceived in London, his last night before boarding the ship to America, when walking the fogbound streets, he meticulously recorded the exact sequence of the Big Ben chimes, which he then used as the basis for an extraordinarily evocative set of orchestral variations, op. 64, which he composed on the journey out – by turns evincing melancholy, hope, anguish, despair and a guttering affirmation. Like almost all of Toch’s orchestral and chamber music, it has been freshly recorded over the past several years, and it can be heard here.

[chill-pills-yandere-haven]

Dreams of Coffee and K-pop pt.2

Pt.1

An: I found the emoji!

Tw: yandere, implied murderous intent

Disclaimer: Yanderes are abusive, this is not love.

Art cred: Kackaorz1 on Twitter

It was the day of the concert. You had been listening to the 4NEMO music that your friend had been recommending you and had gotten quite familiar with it. Now, you were dressed in your favourite outfit, ready to attend the concert with your best friend. It was two hours before the concert started, but Venti advised you to come early so you and your friend could hang out with them and watch them warm-up. 4NEMO had gotten closer to you in the time before the concert. The boys texted you constantly and you got attached, welcoming them into your tight little circle of trust. You even all had a group chat with just you and the boys. They proved to be a pleasant way for you to blow off steam from your classes and relax so you welcomed them. Just a week after you all had met, 4NEMO had a new hit album called "Coffee Dream". It had become your new favourite album from them, containing all of the things you loved in music. Almost as though it was made with you in mind. You even set your ringtone to the instrumental of one of the album's songs. A beep resounded from your phone as you looked yourself over in the mirror. A text from Venti, " Hey cutie, just wondering if you need a ride to the concert, I'd be happy to give you a ride!" The nickname 'Cutie' had been something that sort of just happened, no inside joke, just Venti teasing you. You smile and chuckle a bit then answer him. "Yeah sure, I'm already ready so you can come now and I'm sure that they're ready too so you can pick us up now." Five minutes later you received another text telling you that Venti was now at your apartment. Making sure to fix your hair, you went outside. Outside was a black limousine waiting for you. "Get in, cutie! The others are starting warmups!" Venti called to you as you got in the limo, admiring the interior of the vehicle. Vent pulled you to his side, thighs touching. You were confused at his actions but then Venti slung his arm around your shoulder and explained. "Well we've got to make sense for your friend, right? Ehe." He giggled at the end. In return, you shrugged but it did make sense so you didn't mind. Plus, this was Venti, he's always like this. Once you got to your friend's house you saw them with a 4NEMO glow stick in hand and wearing a 4NEMO tee with the group's logo on it. "Hey, bestie! And Venti!" You laughed at the stupid nickname and replied. "Ok, you know you are my best friend and I love you platonically, and that I would die for you if necessary, but do not call me bestie. You can call me anything else, hell I'd even prefer if you called me your 'stupid butt-kicking partner in arson,' than whatever that was. Now, let's pretend that never happened and erase that from our memories. 'Kay?" This was just harmless teasing as you two had done much more stupid things and had many more inside jokes that no one except for you two knew about. "Aye aye, captain!" You talked about random subjects as the car ride went on. And Venti held onto you the whole way, almost as if he thought you might disappear. Maybe even a bit more than usual. Once you got to where the concert would take place, Venti escorted you both to the private room where the boys were practicing. "Hey, guys, I brought a little something!" Venti called to the other 4NEMO members, a hand on your shoulder tugging you to him. All the group looked up from what they were doing. From Kazuha trying out different chords on the electronic piano to xiao going over some dance moves that you hadn't seen yet, to Aether doing vocal exercises. Aether and Kazuha meeting you with soft smiles. Xiao looking away from you after he met your eyes. "So that's what you went off to do, and I almost thought you were trying to skip out on practice." Xiao retorted. "Well it is nice to have you here with us, and you too." Aether addressed you and your friend. It was surprisingly relaxing watching them warm-up for the concert. The practice was flawless, clear that everyone had already gotten everything down to the most minuscule detail. "4NEMO, you ready? Shows about to

begin." One of their workers called, you fairly remember her name being Rika or something along those lines. The boys nodded already dressed in their beautiful yet casual costumes. "Wooh! Go 4NEMO!" You called to them as you and your friend headed for where the audience had already situated itself. (On the other side) That past week, they had been almost three times more productive with you as their inspiration. Starting and releasing a new album dedicated to you in just a week. With you on their brains, inspiration was abundant. They were more devoted to you than even some of their superfans, Kazuha even stalking your social media in secret so he could make sure that his next compositions were to your taste. 4NEMO had been trying to express their love for you in the clearest yet unsuspicious way they could. Even referencing the day you met with the album. Nevertheless, you seemed to be only interested in friendship. No matter, everything would go their way in the end. Venti had put in so much effort to have you by his side, even if it was for just before the concert. Having to sneak away from the group without being noticed to go get you, paying the limo driver extra as he was only supposed to have driven 4NEMO there. Even holding back what we wanted to say to make you ditch that lousy friend of yours. Just for you to voice your feelings of devotion for them while he was in the same car!? So oblivious, so innocent, he had to protect you. The other boys were also surprised to see you but welcomed your presence. They all thought you would only show up at the concert, not before. But they all loved to indulge in you, so no one really minded Venti's little stunt. 4NEMO appeared on the stage. Smiling at the crowd with meaningless movie star smiles. At everyone except for you of course. All their eyes scoured the crowd for you, happy to see that you were close to the stage. Close enough, to tempt them into pulling you up to be with them. But, they had an image to uphold. So they held off on the longing looks at you and just focused on impressing you. "Hey, guys! Who's ready for a 4NEMO concert!?" Aether grinned and asked the crowd? The audience wooed back, even you, something the boys genuinely smiled at. "Well then, we've ought to get this party started!" Venti cried as the first song started. The boys knew that this had been your first concert as you preferred more quiet, secluded ways to spend your time while your friend was the one dragging you to interact with the outside world. And they were determined to make it special. Make this day the one that makes you as head over heels in love with them as they are. They started with a fast fan favourite, the one that you had as your ringtone. The one they created as a way to only express a fraction of the passion they felt for you. Xiao moved beautifully and elegantly as he sang. Venti hit a flawless high note that even most female singers couldn't reach. Kazuha harmonized with them in such a beautiful way that it could take one's breath away, rapping clearly and rapidly. Aether was the one who pulled it all together, he was the leader after all. 4NEMO was pleased to find that you were enjoying the change of environment. Moving your head and singing along with some of the songs you knew. Just one small problem. Though it was an irritation, the boys kept up in the perfect way only they could achieve. The problem was that you just had to bring your friend with you, Venti told the others what he had heard in the car, about how you would even die for them. And they just had to separate you two, it was too much jealousy to handle. It drove them even further, made them crave your praise even more. Even just a small compliment would suffice. So they worked their hardest at this concert. Making sure you have the time of your life. The concert was finally over and now you could be reunited with the boys. They swarmed around you once you had arrived at their private room. Asking you how the experience was and was delighted that you said that it was "absolutely

surreal" and that you loved it. It might not have been a direct 'I love you.' But it would work for now. Though they couldn't be with you in public due to their status, they would still have you. They would still make you theirs. They would remove anyone to make that happen. And it seemed like your friend was going to be the first.

[historia-jaeger]

What causes Shipwars

I am talking here about the ships EreMika and SasuSasu or NaruHina. I've heard that the Ship KenTouka also has this problem, but I don't know too much about Tokyo Ghoul. And it's about me that the fan wishes significantly influence the final composition of the couples. With Attack on Titan, it struck me particularly strongly because at the end the story didn't make any sense to me at all. Roughly summarized: It was about the fact that Eren Jäger saw no other solution than to wipe out humanity outside the walls to protect his friends and family inside the walls. He was able to achieve this by getting Ymir Fritz to make her powers available to him. Ymir was a slave of King Fritz and Eren practically made her understand that she is free and no longer has to obey the royal family. the scene ended with Mikasa overcoming and killing Eren to stop further killing of humanity. And that's where I think the story should have ended. Instead. But the mangaka used the last chapter to take the story completely out of context. Suddenly, the titan curse was lifted, because Ymir was in love with King Fritz and needed Mikasa to break up with him. So what Eren said was...meaningless. And Eren only murdered humanity, because he saw the future and couldn't find any other way. And suddenly he was oh so in love with Mikasa. Yes... But then I wonder why Ymir released the pigs. So that's how she expressed her desire for freedom. And why she had so little will to live that she didn't regenerate after being wounded with a spear. Yes. She must have been in love with the king. Definitely... The chapter was celebrated so hard, despite the rude logic errors, because the majority of the community was EreMika shipper. But because the other side has generated so much headwind, the mangaka thought: I'll just put Mikasa in a new relationship with an unidentifiable man. When it became loud, that the mangaka might have been persuaded by his publisher to end the manga with EreMika, this was painfully denied. Supposedly, Mikasa and Eren were about to kiss when the Grinning Titan attacked them. Then I wonder why it took Eren YEARS to ask Mikasa if she loves him. Never mind that he confessed his feelings to her. It couldn't be overlooked that she likes him. Apart from the fact, that there were hints in interviews, that the mangaka wasn't a particularly big EreMika supporter.

In the case of the Naruto series, the change in shipping was not significant. At least it didn't detract from the actual story. Nevertheless, you realizes that NaruHina cannot have been a planned shipping. No matter what the mangaka wants us to know. In the very first info volume of the Naruto manga, there was already a small hint that Sakura might fall in love with Nauto, might already be in love. It is also striking that Naruto's mother is very reminiscent of Sakura's character and background story and would have wished for her son to have a woman like her. Which Hinata definitely isn't. There are also many scenes that could indicate a soon-to-be-followed romance of the pairing. Especially because Naruto was obviously in love with Sakura. Hinata, on the other hand, seems very strange to him at first and he only sees her as his friend. Even after she confesses her love to him, it takes him until he even reacts to it. In the last Naruto film and the sequel Boruto, attempts were made to make this pairing more logical. Namely, by giving Hinata freaks that were reminiscent of Kushina. Trying to implement a romance where there wasn't, and in return making the pairing look bad for NaruSaku by suddenly saying Naruto only fancied Sakura because she fancied Sasuke and he wanted to rival Sasuke... As if it If there weren't 100 other girls in love with Sasuke. First of all, Ino. In addition, elements that were previously used for Sasuke and Naruto were incorporated. When allegations were made that the mangaka had changed his pairings in favor of his fans, it was said: No. Hinata was planned for Naruto from the start and Sakura was supposed to be a supporting character. As evidence, we were shown a picture of Hinata holding Uzumaki symbols, with Naruto sitting in the background. So. If there had been a picture of the two doing some couple activities. But that's not proof for me. But if Sakura should have been a supporting character. Why wasn't Hinata in Naruto's team? Why did Hinata have so little screen time and most of it with Neji? Why did Neji have to die? Why did Neji even have to play Cupid when Naruto loved Hinata from the start? If the mangaka had NaruHina planned from the start, he really paid very little attention to a believable romance build-up. No. I think NaruSaku, NejiHina and maybe SasuKarin were planned, but decided in favor of the fans. And that's why there are so many shipping wars. Because the most popular non-yaoi shipping wins in the end. And why? Because the mangaka or, for that matter, the publisher, wants to sell the manga in the best possible way. And of course it makes more sense to then target the largest target group. In this case the EreMika and NaruHina shipper. Just. Then you should also be honest, stand by it and not hit and say: No. I planned it that way from the start. This and this is the proof. Then I ask myself why so much rubbish has to be added, in order the pairing make any sense at all. Basically, as a fan, I can stop reading or watching, if I ship a pairing that is not so celebrated by the majority of the community. Because I know exactly which couple it's going to end up being. And that's the sad thing about the story. Instead of putting value on writing a good story, with pairings that also make sense and were probably planned, they prefer to ensure that the work can be sold in the best possible way, and I just think that's a shame. And in that case, I have zero sympathy when fans go, burn manga volumes and merch and threaten the mangaka and his team. Because such fans will be attracted to such things as well. You really don't have to be surprised.

Thanks for reading.

[deep-hearts-core]

2007 - final

originally published 7/18/20

Bosnia & Herzegovina It's very pretty. The staging is really nice to look at and Marija has a lovely voice. It doesn't evoke a whole lot in me emotionally, maybe because I just don't understand Bosnian, which is not necessarily a bad thing but when this song sounds and looks like it's trying to be emotional and I'm just not feeling it it does temper some of my enthusiasm. Spain Really energetic and catchy, and all the DNASH boys have good voices. The background with the "I <3 You" text background did strike me as kind of tacky, but like it's fine. It was 2007. What can you do. Ireland OOF. I hate the singer's voice here - it's not a particularly pleasant timbre, it's sort of nasal and she seems to be very flat much of the time. Nevertheless, this one is one of the more memorable numbers for me. I like the style of music and it just strikes me as a very happy, hopeful song, which is honestly what I need right now.

Finland I love it! You know I'm not a fan of harder rock, but this is just masterfully done. I love the staging and the camerawork and the composition, and Hanna has one of my favorite voices from this year's competition. Lithuania It's ok. I liked the simplicity of it, and I thought the staging was cool with the background musicians behind a screen and in shadow. The song itself is kind of boring, though. Greece I really like this song, it's a jam! The chorus is especially catchy but I like all of it. However, I feel like Sarbel was relatively low energy - like he wasn't even that low energy it's just this is a song where the performance needs REALLY high energy and idk I just don't think he was able to bring that. Sweden I like the song, but I'm a little confused by the styling. A quick Wikipedia search informs me that this is "glam rock", popularized by David Bowie and Elton John, which is fine. I don't have anything against David Bowie or Elton John. However, I really do not like these singers in their 2000s-style womens' clothing. Mostly because 2000s-style womens' clothing is ugly on everyone. France This is not very good. The first half of the chorus is the only thing I really like about the song. The styling is ugly and the vocals are poor, and much of the song isn't anything impressive. Russia Feels like we don't talk about this song enough. I mean, it placed third, but whenever I see people talk about 2007, it's always either Serbia, Ukraine, Bulgaria, or Finland... never Serebro! This isn't my favorite song of this year but it's still very good. I think Eurovision, in general, needs more girl bands.

Germany Roger Cicero steht ins Eurovisionskabarett! This man has truly drunk his share of respecting women juice... I'm really enjoying the song, his voice, and the 1920s-30s influences in the music and the staging. Enjoyable by all. Ukraine Like Molitva, I'm a little desensitized to this. As joke entries go, this is better than Ireland 2008... and better than some more serious songs like Turkey 2012 or Croatia 2017. But between the extreme camp of it all, the fact that it's a joke entry, and the sexual overtones, I just have a hard time liking it. United Kingdom This is not entirely unpleasant to listen to, if you're not listening too hard or looking at it. The sexual comments from two of the singers are A Lot for me, and I think the whole airplane concept is really just... not wise. Romania I'm enjoying their whole concept of "the same verse in six different languages and they just mix and match the words". It's cute, but it has that kids music feel... idk, some songs I can just clock as bad without listening all the way through, and when I saw the clip of this in the semi that's the vibe I got. It's okay. It's just not good. Armenia It sure is dramatic, and Hayko has a good voice (at least... I think...), but the song is a very generic ballad. I like the tree set piece. My top 42

Finland

Cyprus

Hungary

Bulgaria

Greece

Sweden

Serbia

Georgia

Netherlands

Norway

Germany

Iceland

Belarus

Latvia

Moldova

Russia

Spain

Romania

Israel

Ireland

Portugal

Switzerland

Bosnia & Herzegovina

Turkey

Ukraine

Austria

Poland

Slovenia

Albania

Lithuania

Czechia

North Macedonia

Denmark

Armenia

Montenegro

France

Andorra

Croatia

Belgium

Estonia

Malta

United Kingdom

Voting/intervals ...Santa Claus is not Finnish. Interesting to see that showing artists in the green room during the recap actually dates back to here and maybe even earlier... I wonder why that wasn't brought back until 2014/15? Why was the audience so mad at Svante Stockselius this year? They booed when he came onscreen and I'm 99% sure someone yelled "fuck you" from the audience while he was talking. Is there lore I missed? That voting was really close right up until the end - it looked like Ukraine could still win right up until Macedonia's vote, which was second-to-last. WILD. Thoughts after watching I love so much about this contest! Such a strong year in terms of song quality, I loved the hosts, and the stage design was awesome! I think it's definitely one of my favorite stages, up there with 2014. The visual design for the year was also really cool, not just for its time but in general.

[natromanxoff]

Circus Magazine - January 19, 1978

And here is transcription, including missing parts on the photo, from brianmay.com:

QUEEN DESERVES ROCK'S ROYAL CROWN? by Rosy Horid

Freddie Mercury and Brian May Hawk their ‘News Of The World’

Freddie Mercury is no longer the leader of Queen. Has he been fired, you ask, or is he off to pursue a solo career? No it’s simply, with the advent of News Of The World LP (Asylum) the personality of the music and of Brian May, drummer Roger Taylor and bassist John Deacon have come across more strongly than ever before.

Those who have seen them on the recent US tour notice more than ever before that they’re a group comprised of four separate identities, not just a lead singer and background band. Freddie Mercury is delighted to hear it.

‘I’ve never considered myself the leader anyway,’ says irrepressible Freddie. ‘The most important person, perhaps.’ And guitarist May agrees.

‘Our separate identities do come to the fore on this album, on which every cut is completely different from the one before it and there’s no concept at all. Apart from each having contributed two tracks to the album, Roger and John have been much more involved in the playing. Roger plays rhythm guitar on some of his cuts (‘Sheer Heart Attack’ and ‘Fight From The Inside���) which makes sense, because he had a better idea of how he wanted it to go. John plays acoustic guitar on one of his as well (‘Who Needs You’). I played maracas on it. While we may not do it that way on stage, in the studio that makes more sense.’

Brian also does a lot more singing of his own songs on News, but he’s content to let Freddie do the singing on stage.

‘He’s a natural performer,’ asserts Brian. ‘He acts on stage as if he was born doing it. That’s great for us. We wouldn’t want it any other way.’

As May and Mercury emphasize, it’s not just musically that shifts occur in the group.

‘John keeps a very close eye on our business affairs,’ says Freddie. ‘He knows everything that’s going on and shouldn’t be going on. If God forsakes us now the rest of the group won’t do anything unless John says it’s all right.

‘Roger is very important to us in a different way. He’s always been an out-and-out rock & roll fan with no time to stop and think about music and that’s very good for us. Instinct. He’s also the one who is most aware of facets in music, and that’s essential in the band. If you listen to ‘Sheer Heart Attack’ on the new album you’ll see what we mean. It sounds like a punk, or ‘new wave’ song, but it was written at the same time of the Sheer Heart Attack LP. He played it to us then but it wasn’t quite finished and he didn’t have time to complete it before we started recording. That was three years ago and now. . .almost all these records you hear are like that period.’ And Roger now? ‘He was into punk for a long time, but he’s tired of it.’ More about the album later.

But if you still don’t believe no crown of ladership rests on the mercurial head of Freddie, it’s worth repeating his comment about the composition of the group.

‘If anyone left Queen, anyone of the four, that would be the end of Queen. We are four equal, interwoven parts. And the others just couldn’t function the same without each quarter.’

Queen have just finished a special tour of the states. Not the longest they’ve ever undertaken, by any means, but special nevertheless.

‘It was the first tour we’ve ever done without the support band,’ Freddie explained. ‘There was so much going on on stage that I doubt there would have been room for another band anyway. We have so much material we want to play for people now that it would have been far too long a concert. It’s hard enough anyway to know what to leave out: we’d like to play all the new material, but there are some things we just would not dare leave out or I think the fans would lynch us.’

It was the sort of tour most rock bands dream of doing. Brian agrees: ‘We’ve managed to get some of the most sought after halls there are, even though the tour was short. Most of them are places we’ve played before. In some cities we had to settle for second, alternative choice auditoriums – the thing was set up so fast. It was also a very compressed tour – 35 dates in six weeks. We did very large halls because we wanted to do a fuller show and our rig was about twice as big as ever we used before.

‘It provided a complete stage environment, with an extension stage, three trailers and enormous lighting gimmick not just for New York and Los Angeles. That’s why we booked big halls, so that we could give everybody the complete show. We first used our crown centerpiece at London’s Earl’s Court concert over the Jubilee. At the time, we didn’t envisage being able to take the crown on tour with us, but we managed to have it demounted into a portable object. And so we had it for all the gigs. It made the most ambitious backdrop we’ve ever attempted, but it was worth it. The fans seemed to enjoy it and they are what matter.’

That last remark of Brian’s is typical of the group’s attitude towards their fans, for they have one of the closest rapports with the fans of any in the business. The same cannot be said for their relationship to the music press, however, especially in Britain. In fact, many people thought the chart-popping single ‘We Are The Champions,’ was Queen’s way of telling the press in no uncertain terms that they’ve made it without them. Others thought it an arrogant statement about their rock supremacy. But how do they feel? First Freddie, who wrote the song:

‘Certainly it’s a relationship that could be, but I was thinking about football when I wrote it. I wanted a participation song, something that the fans could latch on to. It was aimed at the masses; I thought we’d see how they took it. It worked a treat. When we performed it at a private concert in London, the fans actually broke into a football chant between numbers. Of course, I’ve given it more theatrical subtlety than an ordinary football chant. You know me.

‘I certainly wasn’t thinking about the press when I wrote it. I never think about the British music press these days. It was really meant to be offered the musicians the same as the fans.

‘I suppose it could also be construed as my version of ‘I Did It My Way.’ We have made it, and it certainly wasn’t easy. No bed of roses as the song says. And it’s still not easy.’

Brian concurs, ‘You know, songs aren’t always about what the words say. Messages in songs can appear different. I always see that as the difference between prose and poetry. Prose can mean exactly what it says, while poetry can mean the opposite. That goes for this song. Freddie’s stuff is often tongue-in-cheek anyway, as you know. This song is very theatrical. Freddie is very close to his art. You could say, he’s married to his music, whether it’s ‘I Did It My Way’ or his ‘There’s No Business Like Show Business.’ I must say, when he first played it for us in the studio we all fell on the floor with laughter. So many people in the press hate us because we’ve side-stepped them and got where we have without them.

‘But there’s no way the song says anything against our audiences. When the song says ‘we,’ it means ‘us and the fans.’ When we did that special concert, the fans were wonderful. They understood it so well. I know it sounds corny, but it brought tears to our eyes.’

Freddie and Brian are unanimous on that: the spontaneous responses to ‘We Are The Champions’ really move them. But that is the kind of general response News Of The World has received because, as Brian may says, ‘It’s a spontaneous album. I think we’ve managed to cut through to the spontaneity lacking in our other albums. I have no apologies to make for any of our previous albums. We’re proud of them and wouldn’t have let them out if we weren’t. But I now feel some may have been over-produced, so we wanted to go with a more spontaneous rock & roll based album. It was nice to do something that didn’t need such intensity. For example, with ‘Sleeping On The Sidewalk’ we did it in one take because it just seemed right the first time. We like to think of the album as a window on an unguarded moment, not a set piece. Each cut seems to do that, from the participation songs to Freddie’s mood pieces. Even his numbers on the album are different, from his heavy ‘Get Down, Make Love’ to ‘My Melancholy Blues,’ which is just what it says.’

Brian admits that his own material is different too. But he still tries to keep his private life separate and out of his songs as much as possible.

‘If you don’t keep something back, it can be very bad for you.’

But for the band both the album and the tour are in the past and they have to look at the future. They got back to England on Christmas Eve.

‘My mother would have killed me if I wasn’t home for Christmas. I haven’t missed one yet,’ says Freddie. And the others felt the same.

It’s time for some stock-taking. We’ve all become businessmen,’ admits Freddie, ‘even though it’s against our better judgment. It’s something that always happens if you get successful. Being a musician is not just cutting discs, unfortunately. I wish it was. We’ve all got companies now, some connected to music, others not. I’m producing Peter Straker, I have my car company. . . and lots of other fingers in other pies. We must take some time off to get things in perspective, or things will start to go wrong.

‘Then there’s been talk of doing a big world tour – Britain, South America, Japan, and of course the States as well as lots of other places. But that won’t be until later in the year.’

So, American fans will have a chance to see Queen in 1978.

‘You must tell them not to be too greedy, thought,’ warns Freddie. They’ve already seen more of us than any other country.’

And what about a message for the American fans, Freddie?

‘They know we love them. Apart from that, oh, say something outrageous for me.’

[seance]

› gif maker appreciation tag

rules: answer the first half of the questions with gifsets of your own, then answer the second half by tagging gif makers you love!

in honor of dia’s wonderful two years gif-iversary ♡ i was tagged by a bunch of cuties: @iridescentides / @flynncarter / @molinareggie / @miriammaisel / @juliesdahlia / @madeline-kahn / @malikjavaddzayn / @faeryglass / @winterfrosted

LINK A GIFSET › 

Link a gifset you’re really proud of:

on this old ass five gifset, i don’t know there’s something about it i guess, the fact that i managed to keep it simple (i have a problem with overcomplicating things, making them way too messy) but still got the point and the feeling i was going for across › NEVER FINISH A WAR WITHOUT STARTING ANOTHER

Link a gifset where you tried something new:

I WANTED TO BE STRONGER › this was one of the first gifsets where i really went all the way with the style experimentation and where i had the idea of the ‘blubble frame’ as i like to call it, which i love using from time to time

SHADOW AND BONE MAIN CAST › i actually first used this particular style in one of my assassin’s creed edit (NO BOOKS, NO WISDOM) but that never on my main so!

THE UMBRELLA ACADEMY EDITORIAL › i still like this edit a lot, completely different from my usual style but it came out neat!

JATP SCRAPBOOK › experimenting with textures and blending modes!

Link a gifset that features your favorite character or celebrity:

WICKER PEOPLE › my favorite chaotic disasters and special mention to THE RAIN WILL EVENTUALLY COME because this poem just kills me.

Link a gifset that you want more people to see:

i think maybe my last shadow and bone one? HERE COMES JUDGMENT DAY just because it took forever and i’m kinda proud of that first gif + i made it feeling super ill so it’s double the value agsgs- 

Link a gifset that you had fun making:

this JATP + BODIES OF WATER one, cause i absolute love finding things to associate characters to and i’m very happy how the blending turned out in the end!

Link a gifset that you created as part of a meme, challenge, or series:

FAVORITE S1 EPISODE › when i still used to gif somehow normally ahah 

Link a gifset of yours that makes you smile:

YOU WERE ALWAYS GOLD TO ME › this song and these characters just mean a lot to me and i poured my whole heart in this gifset!

Link a gifset that you made for someone else:

the love i feel for my friends is stored in the random gifsets

READY OR NOT for @overzonen

NO LULLABY / PARANORMAL INVESTIGATORS for @number5theboy

ON LOVE AND ANGER for @evakant

TAG SOMEONE WHO ›

Tag someone who inspired you to start making gifs:

Oh gosh, I think I started around 2011 so I really can’t remember. I never really stopped but I had some kind of renaissance last summer, in july and I owe that to all the amazing creators in the Umbrella Academy fandom.

Tag someone who makes great vibrant gifs:

@captainheroism @meliorn @ughmerlin and @nina-zenyk all make such unique use of colors, in their own personalized styles but with such consistency and I never fail to recognize their edits on my dash, they stand out in the best of ways!

Tag someone who makes great pale/pastel gifs:

I’m not really a fan of pale or bw gifs, I live and breathe colors but! @ciriofcintras is the only one I follow who edits  like that and the only one I need because everything she makes is amazing, neat, and sharp. Always the right balance of shades. special mention to my girl @mariathorpe use of muted colors that always fit the mood so well!

Tag someone who gifs for a fandom you love:

Well, too many to count I think. If we’re mutuals, there’s a good 90% chance that’s because you’re gifmaker too and we share fandoms! To name a few, @number5theboy you already know I’m ride or die for lizzie but the thoughtfulness she puts in each gifset makes it extra special! @andyoudoctor myra is constantly improving and dishing out amazing content

Tag someone who uses text/typography really well in their gifsets:

becca @inejz-ghafa engy @alina-mal and ava @anya-chalotra are my go to for this particular type of inspiration! their careful placements and gradient and font work is always lovely, you can feel the effort behind it. typhography is the thing i waste more time on when i gif so i can really appreciate their art!

Tag someone who motivates you to step up your game:

miss ava for sure, becca again, @ogaferoga is a artist in their own right and no one does it like them. honestly ALL the people i’ve tagged here are the reason why i always strive to try new things and experiment more, i feel like we’re all learning together, at our own pace but together nevertheless and that’s so inspiring and comforting ♥

Tag someone who you have taken inspiration from:

again, i won’t ever deny the huge impact @anya-chalotra had on my current style. i try not to go with the exact type of edits of other gifmakers, unless it’s a particularly popular trend that doesn’t involve a particular attention to composition both out of respect and because i like to experiment on my own. but that’s exactly what ava pushed me to do, her edits showed me how much potential photoshop had that i wasn’t really exploiting so i got down to learn more about it! she remains my # editing goals for sure ♥

Tag gif makers who you admire and appreciate!: i love you guys so much, keep doing your thing and being awesome! @arnos @alethiometry @milkovivhs @allisonshargreeve @rockyblue @evakant @dykejaskiers @arthurpendragonns @starkkov @jessiemeili 

[dreamersleeps]

Hey, have been reading your blog and it is the kind of goldmine I’d brave the dangers of the Klondike for. It is SO GOOD. But I’m also curious on your thoughts on Endeavor playing god, but not understanding the science behind his creations? He seems to think Shouto has an Icyhot Quirk when it’s more likely Shouto is a Chimera. He has two phenotypes, thus one side can only use Icy and the other can only use Fire. Shouto like has TWO Quirks instead of a combination of both. And Enji seems to think Touya inherited Rei’s constitution, yet that might not be the case as according to the Singularity Theory, humans’ Quirks are evolving at a faster pace than the body can keep up with. So Touya might not even HAVE his mother’s constitution but Endeavor just THINKS he does. Also, there is his rivalry with All Might that is completely one-sided. Allmight as All For One which is the Quirk of not a single person but more eight Quirks in one. Endeavor thinks he’s going up against a single man when in reality he’s facing eight men in one.

Hello! First of all I’d like to give a huge apology for how late my response is. Due to the start of the spring semester and some other unexpected life events, this took way longer than expected. 

Thank you so much for your kind comments! 😩💕 It really did put a huge smile on my face and it made my day! It makes me feel very giddy~ When I first started posting on Tumblr, I wasn’t expecting people to actually like or even read the stuff I was writing about or send messages to my inbox since most of my posts kind of make me look like the guy in this meme here: 

I very much appreciate all the comments and asks I receive in my inbox, so thank you for sending yours in. 

Anyways, I’d like to address this from the beginning but, unfortunately when it comes to quirks and how they work, I’m not too sure if I will be able to answer your questions properly. For example I am aware of the Quirk Singularity Theory but I don’t know if I have a good enough understanding of it to form a response I am confident in.. That being said, I will try to answer your other questions and comments the best I can. 

Endeavor Playing God

So, what are my thoughts on Endeavor playing god, but not understanding the science behind his creations? Back when we had the Touya reveal and we got more information about the Todoroki household from the perspective of Todoroki Enji, there were a lot of differing thoughts and opinions about the flashbacks that were floating around Tumblr. I think if I were to give a simple answer to your question, I’d say it was Endeavor’s youth and stubbornness. Looking back at Chapter 291, we can see that Endeavor looks quite young in the flashbacks with Touya, but I’m going to attempt to do the math. 

Seeing that we know that Fuyumi is currently 23, and that Dabi is older than her (I suck at guessing ages) and I’m guessing here that he’s going to be four years or older, since quirks normally manifest around four years of age. That being stated the youngest age Dabi may be currently is 27? Maybe 26.

Keep in mind that I may be off with the “math” I’m doing here but let’s guestimate Dabi’s age as being 26 or 27. Endeavor is currently 46 years old so that means he was 19 or 20 years old when he had Touya. For comparison, Natsuo is currently 19 years old as well. 

At that young of an age, he already had his eyes set on wanting to surpass All Might. His hero name, Endeavor, summarizes his career pretty well: an attempt to achieve a goal. 

With the hellflame quirk he has, and the wealth and power that came with his family name, he really was given a position to act as a “god.” For the sake of his ambitions, Touya, Fuyumi, Natsuo and Shouto were born, as his “creations.” 

Touya’s “Weak Constitution” and Shouto’s Quirk 

I’m not going to say that his youth was the main factor for why things happened the way they did because the answer is more complex, but I do think that a combination of his youth and stubbornness fueled Endeavor’s recklessness. He essentially bought his marriage with Rei in order to pass down some sort of combination of the hellflame quirk and Rei’s ice quirk to his children. I think when it comes to the question of whether he understood the science behind what he was doing, I think I can confidently say that he didn’t know in the beginning, or at least it was not something he really looked in to. I think he just saw it as hellflame + ice quirk = child with both quirks as we kind of see in the panel below. 

As you state, Endeavor does see the combination of the two quirks as one. We can see below that he refers to it as, “the ideal quirk.” 

I think that it is also important to point out that Endeavor was, I guess you could say, content when Touya was born even though he only had the hellflame quirk. From the first panel, Endeavor states, “the fire power he possessed was greater  than my own.” 

He continues to say, “He didn’t have a way to overcome the inescapable downside of overheating but... I nevertheless sought to raise the boy to be a hero.” 

That was until it was revealed that Touya’s body could not handle the extreme heat which came with the hellflame quirk. This is when Endeavor began to refer to Touya’s “weakness” as inheriting Rei’s weak constitution. 

Now, the Quirk Singularity Theory and just the genetic science behind quirks has always been kind of difficult for me to wrap my mind around so because of that I do not think that I will be able to give an opinion on it that I would be confident in. However, @/redphlox has a post which has some opinions that I agree with that have to do with Endeavor’s belief that Touya had “a weak constitution and Shouto’s quirk. I will link it here. 

As for Shouto’s quirk, unless the actual meaning and its nuances was lost in translation, his quirk is referred to as “Half-Cold Half Hot” in the English official translation which I think further reinforces the idea that it is not really a singular quirk but a combination of two separate quirks. I agree that Shouto is most likely a Chimera. 

According to Britannica, a chimera is: 

In genetics, an organism or tissue that contains at least two different sets of DNA, most often originating from the fusion of a many different zygotes. 

The term is derived from the chimera of Greek mythology: a fire-breathing monster that was part lion, part goat, and part dragon. 

As seen below we can see the white hair, gray eye and ice quirk on his right side (our left) that he inherited from his mother Rei, and then on his left side (our right), the red hair, teal blue eye and hellflame quirk he inherited from his father Enji. He can only use his ice quirk on his right side and his fire quirk on his right side. 

Shouto’s appearance reminds me of a particular tortoiseshell cat named Venus from a while back. You may have seen her back when photos of her went viral. Tortoiseshell cats are usually chimeras, however Venus was nicknamed the “Chimera Kitten” or “Chimera Cat” even though it is most likely that the chimera mutation isn’t the cause behind her unique (and cute!) appearance. 

Another definition of a chimera is: 

“A chimera... is a composite individual that was made up of cells from at least two different original embryos. If they fuse together early enough, they will become a single organism whose genetic input is from two completely different individuals. In a mosaic, there’s only one individual and it just happens to have different genetic components active in its cells. A chimera would be a much more unusual and unlikely event. - Columbia University Professor of Genetics and Development Virginia Papaioannaou 

The image above depicts Venus the cat however the original source of the photo is unknown. 

Considering that in real life, a chimera is an individual made up of cells from at least two different embryos I think we could kind of apply that sort of argument to Shouto although this is all speculation. To our knowledge, the other Todoroki children were born with only one of their parents’ quirks while Shouto was born with both. 

On Shouto’s fan wiki page, it states: 

If he overuses one element without utilizing the other, then his own body temperature will suffer; the ice half will cause frostbite and the fire half will cause heatstroke, Until his bodily limit is reached however, neither has any visible effect on his body. Shouto can easily negate his weakness by alternating between ice and fire. 

Endeavor had been training Shouto to use his fireside and I think he mostly saw the ice quirk as something that could be used for temperature regulation however, as you suggest Shouto has two separate quirks, both equally strong in their own right. If he used his ice quirk too much, he may have to rely on the hellflame quirk to regulate his body temperature. Both quirks have very high potential on their own and with the aid of the other. 

Anyways going back to the Chimera stuff, I think that although the movie, Heroes Rising isn’t canon, I do think that the inclusion of the villain, Kon Chojuro going by the name of “Chimera” with the quirk of the same name was interesting. He also fits the second definition of the Greek mythological chimera that we had above. 

Even more interesting was that it was with the team of Tenya, Kirishima, Asui and Shouto that took Chimera on, with Shouto making the last blow using his ice quirk. He takes his ice quirk to the extreme and we see his body covered in ice (frostbite?) as a result before he passes out. 

All Might and Endeavor’s One-Sided Rivalry 

Whenever I write about this particular character I feel that I must include a little note like this but everything you see above is not an excuse for what Endeavor has done but a little exploration in to the complexity that is Todoroki Enji. I personally think that he is a very interesting character to look in to.

As you mention, the rivalry between Endeavor and All Might was completely one-sided. I think a large part behind it had to do with their differing ideas of what it means to be a hero. It is from All Might where we tended to see the more ideal-focused concepts of a hero. He was the symbol of peace, the light of hope and an inspiration for children and people all across Japan. In simple terms, a hero is someone who saves, kind of like how we saw Midoriya throughout most of the series. 

As for Endeavor, he fits more in the role of the concept of a hero being an occupation. He had a hard time trying to figure out how to portray himself to the public after All Might retires and even asks him for some advice of what it means to be the number one. Endeavor wanted to be the number one because that meant he is the strongest man/person in Japan. He was constantly training and he was so focused on wanting to achieve his goal that if he was not able to then he wanted to make sure that his own blood would surpass All Might. For him, simple terms a hero meant someone who surpasses and wins. This is kind of like how we saw Bakugo throughout most of the series until recently. 

(I’m not going to go too deep in to this as many other blogs have written amazing analysis and meta posts on Tumblr already but the adults they are often compared to Midoriya and Bakugo’s storylines have been slowly changing to incorporate both saving and winning in to what it means to be a hero.) 

With this one-sided rivalry came Endeavor’s recklessness. I do not think that before and early stages after Touya was born that he really considered the science behind his “creation.” However as soon as it was revealed that Touya could easily get harmed by his quirk, Endeavor definitely should have recognized the consequences of his actions. 

As his hero name suggests, one of his main goals and purposes of being a hero was to accomplish his greatest endeavor, to surpass All Might, which he calls his “eternal goal.” There is an implication here that at the age of 19 Endeavor already believed that there was a good chance that he may not be able to surpass All Might with his own quirk and strength. That is why he sought out a Quirk marriage. 

“Because Toya had more potential than me... I placed my ambitions on his shoulders.” 

Endeavor has a bias towards his own quirk as he wanted an heir with his quirk and blood to become number one. Fuyumi was born and she had inherited Rei’s ice quirk but unless we get some sort of explanation, I think we can assume that Endeavor did not bother trying to training her. I think the same can be said about Natsuo. 

Then Shouto was born and this changed a lot of things. It seems that there was a highly likely chance that Endeavor either greatly diminished his focus on or halted Touya’s training and turned his attention towards Shouto. After all, he was born with what Endeavor believed to be “the ideal quirk.” He probably saw more potential in Shouto carrying his legacy than he did in Touya to become number one. It is likely that it was during this time that Touya “perished” in the fire. 

Now that Endeavor had lost Touya, he was only left with Shouto. Driven by grief and desperation he put everything he had now onto Shouto. Looking back to Chapter 252, Endeavor tells Natsuo:

“Believe it or not... I was never trying to neglect any of you. But... all I could do was blame others and dodge responsibility.” 

His actions and the past state otherwise however if we take his word, then I kind of visualize a man who was aware of the consequences and hurt caused by his actions and cruelty but had refused to actually acknowledge it: whether it was because he was afraid to confront reality, a mix of his stubbornness and desperation, the desire to become number one surpassing every other desire or a combination of all of this.

I always got a feeling from his character that he was someone who chose to believe that “the end would justify the means” as he “lost more” if that makes sense. “Everything that happened could not be all in vain” (although I’d like to point out that acting in this way is very selfish of him) which is why he continued to keep his eyes on the horizon at his goal instead of towards his family. 

As you state, Endeavor was going up against All Might, the carrier of the One for All quirk, and yes, it is interesting that kind of like All for One, it is the carrier of multiple quirks. One of the main differences between how the two quirks function is that one has the ability to pass on quirks and power while the other is the ability to take other quirks and powers. Unfortunately, unless the secret of AFO and OFA come to be known to the public, Endeavor would have never known what he was truly up against and in a nihilistic view, one can say that everything he was and did ended in vain. 

Although I would argue otherwise as this implies the assumption that the birth and existence of the Todoroki children would then had also been “in vain.” This is not true. This would imply that they would only be an extension of his legacy. We see the struggle to separate ones’ identity from their parent and their “destiny” through the contrasting stories of Shouto and Touya. 

In the end, Endeavor did become the number one hero although it was not in the way he envisioned it to be: it was given to him as he was the next in line as the number two hero due to All Might’s retirement. He didn’t win the position by surpassing All Might hence the embarrassment and anger he may have felt when the news was announced. Now that he is (ehhh maybe was? considering where we are in the manga) the number one hero, it seems like that everything he’s been doing and thinking keeps going back to the thought of “because I am the number one hero.” The position he worked hard for, trained hard for and hurt his family for across the decades of his life, forfeited to him by the previous symbol of peace. 

I always return back to the High End vs Endeavor fight whenever I talk about him but that is because there are great symbolic and narrative points that are made during it. Again, it is what establishes him as the number one hero but this is also where he acknowledges the past (however to what extent is debatable). 

I remember when the episode first came out back in 2020, anime watchers were going crazy. It felt like with some viewers, they focused more on the action than the narrative that was taking place. The reason why Endeavor flies so high and captures the hearts and support of the people of Japan in BNHA and a wide majority of us, the watching audience, is so that we can feel the blow later on when he plummets down. Even when I was watching it, I couldn’t help getting goosebumps while listening to the ost and seeing the way the manga panels were interpreted and animated. 

While I had been reading the chapters which I did first, I did not even really care about what was going on. I just kind of brushed Endeavor off to the side at the time. However when I was watching it I even got a little emotional, although I’d like to blame that on the fact that I had just finished a really difficult semester and watching the episodes felt like a cathartic release of stress (hahaha). It was only afterwards I went back to actually re-read and look at what was going on in the manga.  

I hope that I gave the answers, thoughts and opinions that you were looking for. Again, huge apology for answering your questions and comments really late. Thank you @thewilderstorm for sending your thoughts in, I truly appreciate it and loved responding to them!

[passionate-reply]

This week on Great Albums: we are FINALLY talking about the Pet Shop Boys! They’ve only been my favourite band since I was, like, eight. Whether you want to understand the hype or you’re already Team PSB, come check out this video and hear all about 1990′s Behaviour. (Or read the transcript, below the break.)

Welcome to Passionate Reply, and welcome to Great Albums! It’s time for me to finally do a video on one of my favourite bands of all time, and the very first band I obsessed over when I was a kid: the Pet Shop Boys! Their fourth LP, 1990’s Behaviour, is considered by many to be their best work, and it’s also one of my personal favourites of theirs, so it seems like a great place to start.

The preceding Pet Shop Boys LP, 1988’s Introspective, was their deepest dive into densely-arranged, nightclub-ready post-disco compositions. Nowadays, people tend to praise it for its more experimental and baroque qualities, but it’s also very much a party album, blending synth-pop with house and rave influences.

Music: “Domino Dancing”

At the cusp of the 1990s, there was certainly no shortage of interest in upbeat, rave-y party music, and the so-called “Madchester” scene was in full swing. But the Pet Shop Boys’ follow-up to Introspective would take their sound in a different direction. They went to Germany to work with Harold Faltermeyer, best known for his instrumental synth smash “Axel F.” There, surrounded by Faltermeyer’s collection of analogue synthesisers, they would create an album that was...well, kind of a downer.

Music: “Being Boring”

Behaviour’s opener, “Being Boring,” is a track whose reputation probably precedes it--it’s one of the best known Pet Shop Boys songs, and over the last thirty years, it’s become emblematic of its era. “Being Boring” is a stark and pensive reflection on the tragedy of the young lives lost to the AIDS epidemic, and the uncanny strangeness of getting older while knowing a lot of others didn’t have that luxury. But at the same time, there’s something surprisingly jubilant and triumphant about the way that chorus rises up, almost like exultation at having survived, even though the verses feel more downbeat. Lyrically, the focus on “having never been boring” puts focus on having lived a vibrant life moreso than it does the silence of the crypt. Behaviour might be a somber album, but it’s not without a sense of hope or optimism; just listen to the track “The End of the World.”

Music: “The End of the World”

While “Being Boring” deals with the very adult gravity of death, grief, and survivorship, “The End of the World” asks us to imagine the petty romantic squabblings of teenagers, and their magnified sense of importance. While its title is a bit ambiguous, the song itself is quite clear: what is going on here is, by no means, the end of the world! Like I said, Behaviour is far from all doom and gloom, though it has sort of gotten that reputation. While acclaim for Behaviour is certainly as common among hardcore Pet Shop Boys fans as it is anyone else, I’m tempted to think that some of the praise it receives from relative outsiders is connected to this perception of it as the “serious” Pet Shop Boys album, that deals with real issues instead of being packed with fun pop songs. While I like gloomy, serious music as much as anybody, and personally prefer it to the more light-hearted releases, there’s no reason to predicate appreciation for the Pet Shop Boys on their being cerebral or high-minded. But that seems to be a common plague of a lot of music criticism, particularly of that rockist sort. The track “How Can You Expect To Be Taken Seriously?” serves as its own sort of commentary on rock culture.

Music: “How Can You Expect To Be Taken Seriously?”

In “How Can You Expect To Be Taken Seriously?”, the titular question is posed to rock stars whose inflated egos make them think they have something meaningful to say about big issues like politics. The song’s rougher soundscape stands out against dreamier tracks like “Being Boring,” and perhaps kicks it slightly closer to sounding like a rock song. While I can certainly get behind a song that mocks rock and roll self-righteousness, it does seem a bit ironic in the context of Behaviour, an album that would see the Pet Shop Boys making a clear effort to tackle meaty, real-world issues. I suppose that any album released by artists who were already established in their career might be expected to include some consideration for the dilemmas that come with that territory. Another track that explores this theme is “My October Symphony.”

Music: “My October Symphony”

While never released as a single, “My October Symphony” is a popular track nonetheless. It was inspired by the life of the great Russian composer, Dmitri Shostakovich, and portrays the grave uncertainties presented to the artist by the collapse of Communism, and with it, the prevailing sense of mythology and moral values. Given the themes involved, many have interpreted it as a track that obliquely questions where famous queer artists like the Pet Shop Boys were going, in a world that had been devastated by AIDS. While it’s about a very different kind of musician, I certainly like to think it’s a track that “rhymes” with “How Can You Expect To Be Taken Seriously?”, in that it also questions the relationship between artists and the values of the society around them.

Behaviour’s cover art recalls that of the Pet Shop Boys’ 1986 debut, Please, with a strong emphasis on empty, white space, and a small design in the center. While the relationship of its four panels is ambiguous, it could be interpreted as a representation of death--as a face turns away, the human figures disappear, leaving the still, unchanged inanimate objects behind. As children, we quickly learn that not being able to see something doesn’t mean the thing is truly gone, but nevertheless, we sometimes have a tendency to ignore things we wish would go away. Perhaps the cover of Behaviour is an allusion to the way world governments buried their heads in the sand, so to speak, regarding the AIDS crisis, hoping it would conveniently die down and vanish when it wasn’t being observed.

The title of “Behaviour” is perhaps even more mysterious and up to interpretation than the cover. There’s something very detached and clinical about that word--an impersonal ambiance. I’m reminded of the seemingly unsympathetic narrators of several tracks, such as “The End of the World” and “How Can You Expect To Be Taken Seriously?”, that seem to cast judgment on the actions of others without taking an interest in their emotional internality. They discuss “behaviours” as cut and dry phenomena, and focus on the actions that people take. While neutrality can be cold and condemnatory, it can also be a welcome change when introduced to a subject traditionally treated with hostility. In that light, I’m tempted to think of the title as referring to homosexual “behaviour,” contextualizing sexuality as less of a fixed identity, and something that one intrinsically “is,” and more about an action, a decision, something that one “does”--a mentality that a lot of people find rather liberating.

In introducing Behaviour, I described it as an album that’s often considered the Pet Shop Boys’ best work. But their 1993 followup to it, Very, is also a strong contender for that title, in the hearts of many of their biggest fans. *Very* has a lot more in common with *Introspective* than it does Behaviour, going back to rich, dense productions and upbeat, poppy love songs. The fact that the Pet Shop Boys managed to pull off two very different, but both very acclaimed, releases back to back speaks volumes about why people love them as much as they do. Whether you like them or not, they’re undoubtedly one of those artists who some people can turn to in just about any mood, or any season of life, and that’s a powerful thing.

Music: “I Wouldn’t Normally Do This Kind of Thing”

My favourite track on Behaviour is its lead single, “So Hard.” It’s one of my all-time favourite Pet Shop Boys tracks, and almost certainly my favourite of their singles. With its wryly bitter narrative of two-timing lovers, and harsh, clattering analogue synthesiser soundscape, “So Hard” has a pretty different feel to the rest of the album--dark and ominous, without that wistful, sentimental aura. But that’s exactly why I like it. The Pet Shop Boys were among the first artists to deliberately adopt analogue synths for the subjective qualities of their sound, and this track employs them in a way that’s reminiscent of what artists tend to do with them nowadays. It’s punchy, with that clunky, mechanistic analogue quality to it. Not a typical Pet Shop Boys song, but a damn good one nonetheless! That’s all I’ve got for today, thanks for listening.

Outro: “So Hard”

[dweemeister]

Batman: Mask of the Phantasm (1993)

In American animation outside of Disney, no other studio inspires as much reverence as Warner Bros. The Merrie Melodies and Looney Tunes shorts precipitated into worldwide recognition for those series’ stock characters. Despite this success, Warner Bros. did not release an animated feature until the musical Gay Purr-ee (1962), in association with United Productions of America (UPA). Animators at Warner Bros. from the 1930-1960s knew they were not making high art, nor were they pretending to. Warners, since the 1930s arguably the most financially stable of the major Hollywood studios, has historically seen little need to bankroll animated features. With that in mind, it might come as less of a shock that Warner Bros.’ first in-house animated feature is Eric Radomski and Bruce Timm’s Batman: Mask of the Phantasm. Originally intended as a direct-to-home media release, Mask of the Phantasm – based on and made by the production team behind Batman: The Animated Series (1992-1995) – transcends those modest intentions. It is among of the best superhero films ever made.

In the wake of Tim Burton’s Batman (1989) and Batman Returns (1992), Batman: The Animated Series, unlike Burton’s efforts, affords time to characterize Bruce Wayne rather than surrendering ample screentime to thinly-written but scene-stealing villains. For that and many other reasons including the looming, vertical art deco-inspired production design of Gotham City; the distinctive and moodiness of its black paper backgrounds; and its balance of dark and lighter tones, BTAS remains a high-water mark among Batman fans – perhaps the best adaptation of the character there is. Mask of the Phantasm builds upon that foundation, in addition to crafting its own unique contribution within the DC Animated Universe (DCAU). As tired as origin stories are, Mask of the Phantasm is part-origin story for the Dark Knight – something largely avoided in BTAS – and somehow integrated here without distracting from the present-day scenes. Rarely is any Batman media a character study of Bruce Wayne, but Mask of the Phantasm proves itself a wonderful exception.

One evening, Batman/Bruce Wayne (Kevin Conroy) attempts to stop a gaggle of gangsters led by Chuckie Sol (Dick Miller) from laundering counterfeit money from a casino. Amid the scrum, Sol escapes from Batman, but immediately confronts a shadowy figure later known as the “Phantasm” in the parking garage – Sol dies in the confrontation. Batman receives the blame for the killing and the concurrent property destruction from Gotham City Councilman Arthur Reeves (Hart Bochner), who just so happened to be profiting from Sol’s racket. Across the film, Bruce reminisces about his courtship with Andrea Beaumont (Dana Delany), their breakup, and the lead-up to the creation of his Batman alter-ego. Juxtaposing Bruce’s past and present, we see how he channels his regrets and profound loss into being Batman. The past haunts him still, overhanging the high roofs of Wayne Manor and the ledges of Gotham’s skyscrapers. Back in the present day, the Phantasm has murdered another crime boss; a third murder involves the Joker (Mark Hamill), initiating an emotional dénouement that, because of the intricacies of motivation that the film develops, elevates the film beyond what might otherwise be sloppy storytelling.

The dramatis personae also includes crime boss Salvatore “The Wheezer” Valestra (Abe Vigoda); Andrea’s father, Carl Beaumont (Stacy Keach); the Wayne family butler, Alfred Pennyworth (Efrem Zimbalist Jr.); GCPD Commissioner James Gordon (Bob Hastings); and GCPD Det. Harvey Bullock (Robert Costanzo).

The screenplay by Alan Burnett (producer and writer on various DC Comics films and Hanna-Barbera productions), Paul Dini (head writer on BTAS and Superman: The Animated Series), Martin Pasko (a longtime DC Comics writer), and Michael Reaves (head writer on BTAS and 1994-1996’s Gargoyles) keep the film’s attention on Batman/Bruce Wayne, despite the introduction of various subplots and Joker – whose somewhat-questionable presence might seem to indicate a project going off the rails. Shadow of the Phantasm’s placement of flashbacks stems the awkwardness that Joker’s inclusion brings, assuring that the film stays grounded into Batman’s psychology. In past Bruce we see a charming young man with time, money, and looks to spare. His romantic side with Andrea is an element of his life, one that connects – inevitably, tangentially – to the trauma his parents’ murder. His most personal motivations – that which a younger Andrea could never see, and privy to only Alfred – are stuck in the past, circulating around that childhood loss.

The occasional reflections from Bruce Wayne on what his life has become make Mask of the Phantasm the most introspective piece within the BTAS continuity, freed from the constraints and expectations inherent of episodic television. No BTAS episode forces its eponymous character to confront himself to such extents. What Bruce Wayne and Batman have become in the present-day treads perilously close not to his style of vigilante corrective justice, but vengeance. The tragic paradox that lies at the heart of this tension is the soul of the Batman mythos. Anyone with the most basic understanding of who Bruce Wayne/Batman and the Joker are will at least have a glimmer of understanding of that paradox. This portrait of what Batman stands for is more maturely handled than any of the twentieth century live-action Batman films, and with less sensational filmmaking than Christopher Nolan and Zack Snyder could produce. But with the film’s screenplay and Kevin Conroy’s iconic voice acting as the Caped Crusader, it becomes an inquest into Bruce Wayne’s tortured soul.

If Mask of the Phantasm ran longer than its seventy-eight-minute runtime, Andrea Beaumont, too, might also have received similar character development as Bruce Wayne here. Even within those seventy-eight minutes, Andrea – with a great assist from Dana Delany’s voice acting (Delany so impressed Bruce Timm here that she was given the role of Lois Lane in Superman: The Animated Series) – is a nevertheless fascinating character. In a cruel irony, her ultimate role in Mask of the Phantasm is to be an incidental mirror to the violence that occurs in this film. Her decision is not an imposition, whether conscious or unconscious, from someone else, but hers and hers alone.

In this drama fit for opera, this Batman occupies a world of operatic proportions. The background and character animation are not as pristine as the best examples of BTAS due to some scattered bits of animation outsourcing. The animation of BTAS might seem stiff and janky to modern viewers expecting Flash hand-drawn animation or hand-drawn/CGI hybrids. However, Mask of the Phantasm retains the gravity-defying art deco of the animated series that somehow does not clash with the ‘90s-influenced and futuristic elements it integrates. Its primary inspirations are of film noir and the Metropolis seen in the Fleischer Studios’ Superman series of short films (1941-1943). The black paper backgrounds provide Gotham’s street corners and rooftops a nocturnal menace, immersing the viewer into the city’s seediness.

Composer Shirley Walker (orchestrator on 1979’s The Black Stallion, conductor and orchestrator on 1989’s Batman) was one of the few women composers in Hollywood at the turn of the twentieth into the twenty-first century. A pianist (she played with the San Francisco Symphony as a soloist while still in high school) who studied music composition at San Francisco State University, Walker would later become one of the first female film score composers to receive a solo credit for composing the music in John Carpenter’s Memoirs of an Invisible Man (1992). But it is her work in the DCAU that distinguishes her – of particular note is her arrangement of Danny Elfman’s theme to 1989’s Batman for BTAS and a wholly original main theme for Superman: The Animated Series. Though Walker could adjust her style to suit a more synthetic sound, she specialized in composing grand orchestral cues. That style was apparent in BTAS and is adapted here from the opening titles (the lyrics here are actually gibberish and are the names of Walker’s music department sung backwards). The foreboding brass and string unison lines seem to reverberate off the animation’s skyscraper-filled backgrounds. Numerous passages in Walker’s score, as if taking hints from Richard Wagner, elect not to resolve to the tonic – setting up scenes where tension escalates alongside the music, forestalling the dramatic and musical release.

One stunning exception to Walker’s ominous, atmospheric score is the gentle cue “First Love”, an interplay between solo oboe and synthesizer. Bruce’s flashbacks are not only a balm to the grimness of his present situation, but a musical reprieve from the intensity of the action scoring. That Walker can navigate between such differing moods exemplifies her compositional dexterity and overall musical excellence. Walker, who cited Mask of the Phantasm as her personal favorite composition for any film or television production, was one of the DCAU’s greatest under-heralded contributors. And how I wish she was given more chances to score different sorts of films.

Warner Bros.’ last-minute reversal on Mask of the Phantasm’s release strategy – abandoning the direct-to-home media debut for a theatrical release – meant minimal marketing for a low-budget film that made barely a dent at the box office. The film’s home media release would more than make up for the film’s theatrical release failure. Upon the success of BTAS and the critical acclaim lavished on Mask of the Phantasm, Warner Bros. kept the DCAU on television for another thirteen years, with infrequent direct-to-home media movie releases as recent as 2019.

For numerous DC Comics fans, the DCAU is an aesthetic and narrative touchstone. The limited animation is sublime for this period in animation history. In addition, one will overhear fans remaking that a certain superhero’s definitive portrayal might be thanks to the DCAU. The superhero benefitting the most from the DCAU’s characterization and storytelling is unquestionably Batman. And justifiably so, as Mask of the Phantasm shows due respect for Batman and Bruce Wayne – what molded them and how each persona intertwines with the other. The mythos behind any superhero is found not in fight scenes. Instead, it resides in the psychology and rationalizations that forces a person to directly confront another’s wickedness. Mask of the Phantasm realizes that such confrontations test Batman/Bruce Wayne’s remaining vestiges of humanity, and braves to ask moral questions that too many figures of superhero media would rather not think about.

My rating: 8.5/10

^ Based on my personal imdb rating. My interpretation of that ratings system can be found in the “Ratings system” page on my blog (as of July 1, 2020, tumblr is not permitting certain posts with links to appear on tag pages, so I cannot provide the URL).

For more of my reviews tagged “My Movie Odyssey”, check out the tag of the same name on my blog.

[happymetalgirl]

Five* Outside albums of 2020

I do this little list every year of my favorite albums that fall mostly “outside” the metal sphere and weren’t so metal-adjacent that I reviewed them formally during the year. The past three times I have written this little piece, I have kept it to five, but *this year, I’ve just had a hard time narrowing it down, so I figured, why do that? Well, I could go through a few dozen albums or so that I fucked with this year outside the metal sphere, but I’m compromising with the addition of a new, quick (we’ll see) honorable mention section.

So, in the interest of keeping my verbose tendencies in check, I’ll cut this introduction off and get into the honorable mentions.

Honorable Mentions:

Anna von Hausswolff - All Thoughts Fly

I did review Anna von Hausswolff’s previous record, Dead Magic, back in 2018 as part of my bunch of metal albums reviews that year, because it was kind of tangentially metallic. It wasn’t a lot at a technical level, only a few metallic elements here no there, but it had a lot of harrowing qualities that I thought metal listeners might appreciate. For the Swedish singer and pipe-organist, that album really was the closest she ever came to metal’s territory, and I don’t think any flirting with the genre was intentional on her part. Most of what she does is haunting, neoclassical, organ-based music that’s usually not as wild as what Dead Magic was, and this year’s album is a real scale back to her roots and an appreciation for the pipe organ. While I do miss her bewitching vocals on this entirely instrumental album, All Thoughts Fly stands well on its own merits as both a solid tribute to von Hausswolff’s organ playing and as a beautiful, incredibly immersive ambient album that does so much with its relatively small palette. I’ve talked a few times on here about really shitty ambient music that’s approached with a clearly lazy attitude because of its supposed background role. Rather than being made to be ignored, All Thoughts Fly pulls you in and around in a swirl of lush sounds that aren’t too common in ambient music, and with a relatively minimal approach, relying on the naturally serene tambre of the instrument to fill the space with a lightening, floating ambience and well-structured movements to do the gentle moving. It’s a beautiful example of what an ambient album can achieve if it’s actually made with a lot of love and care.

Shabaka & The Ancestors - We Are Sent Here by History

Okay, that first one went pretty long. I’ll try to keep the rest of these here relatively short. Sons of Kemet band leader, Shabaka Hutchings, takes his other group on slightly less chaotic Afro-jazz odessey that what Sons of Kemet have been delivering us. While more contained on the surface within the genre’s usual light grey areas, Shabaka & The Ancestors move with freedom and flexibility on this album in a way that highlights the natural appeals of the Afro-jazz sound pallet through constantly engaging arrangements from masters of the craft.

Lady Gaga - Chromatica

I know we’re all well aware of Lady Gaga, but the pop icon has been relatively quietly been making the best music of her career since taking the edge rather than the center of the spotlight, from 2013’s diverse Artpop to 2016’s more bare-bones Joanne. And now, after her mellower, more traditional Americana-influenced album in 2016, Gaga cranks the volume and the fun way back up. Chromatica is a blast of an album whose wide span of dance pop albums influences new and old keeps it varied and lively all the way through. This album feels very much like it’s Gaga unleashed, just doing her thing and having a good time with a bunch of dance music styles that she’s always loved, and it’s impossible not to feel that enthusiasm secondhand, and groove the hell out along with it.

Black Thought - Streams of Thought, Vol. 3: Cane & Abel

Black Thought has had nothing to prove since the relative inactivity of The Roots this past decade, but he has sure been rapping as if he does have something to prove on his solo work. The Philadelphia rapper put out a couple of EPs back in 2018 that showcased his impressive modern lyricism and flow, and the third, LP-sized installment in the series is just another offering of further proof of the man’s lyrical chops. There’s a little bit of an understated delivery in the music overall, but Black Thought really lets his words speak for themselves more than his moderate bravado. It’s not super flashy because it doesn’t need to be.

Phoebe Bridgers - Punisher

Indie folk has always loved to soak in the puddles of personal sadness, but Californian singer Phoebe Bridgers takes the style to whole new depths of personally gripping, bordering on the outright emo, and that is by all means a compliment for rather than a shot at. The album’s candid journaling of Bridgers’ personal struggles is so tangible and so genuine that it would probably rival Connor Oberst’s best work with Bright Eyes. It is just a beautiful, yet tear-inducing album.

Alright, now on to the five “main” “non-metal” albums of the “list proper”.

Hexvessel - Kindred

Hexvessel are a Finnish six-piece whose sixth album of psychedelic folk here manages to touch on the same haunting, gothic tones that groups like Opeth and Gazpacho do at their most forest-y. Indeed, Kindred is an enchanting album, with sprawling styles and a full-bodied sonic pallet to keep it interesting the whole way through. And it’s as strong in its more bombastic song like that which opens the album as it is in its more stripped back acoustic tracks like that which closes it. Songs like “Magical and Damned” straight-up evoke Mount Eerie, while songs like “Kindred Moon” hearken to The Beatles at their most minimal and folky, and there’s plenty of spooky, mystical energy to go around. Definitely one of the best finds of the year for me.

The Strokes - The New Abnormal

Coming at the end of a seven-year gap between it and their previous album, 2013’s somewhat fan-polarizing Comedown Machine (which I liked a lot), The Strokes’ aptly named return is a return to the spotlight, but hardly to normalcy or the musical roots in garage rock that so many of the band’s fans have been sweating for. Twisting the electronic alternative rock of their Angles era into some odd, but mesmerizing forms, The New Abnormal is a subtly wild ride of an album through lots of melancholic overtones and undertones whose impact is made all the more potent by the occasional teasing of sorts with the few more traditionally rockin’ moments on here. It doesn’t take long to pull back the seemingly preppy synth rock or 80’s rock curtains to find the melancholy beneath “Brooklyn Bridge to Chorus” and “Bad Decisions”, respectively. But the band aren’t even that subtle with the immediate depression of just the straight-up guitar melodies on songs like “Selfless”, “Not the Same Anymore”, and the chill-inducing soar of “Ode to the Mets”. The album’s prize piece, though, has to be the utterly gorgeous and empathetic minimalist synth song, “At the Door”, whose simple melodies and bare delivery make for one of the most gently heart-piercing songs I know and of my favorite songs of the year and probably my favorite Strokes song ever, as hard as it is to listen to. Welcome back Julien and company.

Rina Sawayama - Sawayama

Quite possibly the best outright pop album I have heard in a long while, Sawayama sounds simultaneously fresh and vintage in the landscape it was born into, making use of a lot of early 2000’s pop rock instrumentation, even some heavy metal guitars here and there, but most importantly, a real sense of passion that seems to be flat-out absent from so much of the pop that I (usually inadvertently) hear. I don’t want to overstate the prominence of the metal elements, but the album does have a bubbling, infectious energy both vocally and instrumentally from front to back that the occasional bursts of heavy guitars between Sawayama’s charismatic, dance-inducing performances do provide a good snapshot of. Furthermore, there’s a rich diversity of song types across the album that dive into the pop sphere beyond the standard trend-hopping that dominates streaming playlists and make for a dynamic and fun, rather than disjointed, pop album. And that’s all only possible with the consistently tight compositions o the album. Indeed, this is one of the best pop albums I have ever heard, certainly in recent years.

clipping. - Visions of Bodies Being Burned

clipping. are the second artist to be on here two years in a row after last year’s spectacularly spooky There Existed an Addiction to Blood, and Denzel Curry’s one-two punch of TA13OO and Zuu in 2018 and 2019 respectively. There Existed an Addiction to Blood was a thrilling and fresh take on many tropes of horrorcore with the band’s already forward-thinking and creative noise-driven instrumental production guiding harrowing stories of femme fatales and street violence in a more modern setting that often flipped the script on victims and perpetrators, as well as settings themselves. Visions of Bodies Being Burned is quite literally a continuing sequel to that explosive album, also released in time for Halloween this year; the material was recorded in the same sessions as the previous album and in the same unique vein. Consequently, there’s not really a whole lot I can say about this album in contrast with the last without getting way too in-depth and spoiling the fun. Whereas MC Daveed Diggs’ hooks were one of the biggest strong points of last year’s album, the creatively noisy production is the big star on this album. The fans seem to be leaning a bit more toward this year’s release, but I think I’m still a little partial to There Existed an Addiction to Blood. Nevertheless, Visions of Bodies Being Burned is a blood-pumping follow-up not to be missed.

Mac Miller - Circles

The posthumous release from Pennsylvanian rapper Mac Miller captures the man at his most chill and contemplative. The album is more of a minimalist ambient singer-songwriter sort of album than hip hop and its serene atmosphere becomes kind of inadvertently tragic in the posthumous context, but it serves as a beautiful swan song for the creative rapper whose struggles with addiction sadly prevented him from being able to bask in the deserved wide appreciation of his sixth album. Circles is a soulful, bittersweet cap to Mac Miller’s legacy that I think anyone will be able to feel the love and raw humanness of.

[muthaz-rapapa]

HealPre Final Review: Not terrible but not entirely laudable either...

*sigh* Where do I start?

Well, one thing I’m pretty sure of is that COVID definitely affected production somehow. By that, I don’t just mean the show needing to go on hiatus, resulting in a shorter run compared to previous seasons. I’m also talking about any possible changes that might’ve been made to the original narrative, if there was one.

Much like how Suite’s story had to be altered in the wake of the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami disaster, I believe Heal underwent a similar treatment in response to the pandemic becoming more widespread as 2020 went on.

Especially since it dealt with health and nature, HealPre is probably the season that has come the closest in relevancy to real life events.

Frankly, that can be quite scary because this virus was and is still a fucking nightmare on a massive global scale. From that view, I can understand why the writers/producers would be concerned of the anime hitting too near home. At least for their main demographic’s (children) sake, maybe they were compelled to shift to something lighter and less edgier so that the kids could find some comfort and enjoyment in the midst of the world’s current crisis.

So I can’t fault Toei for that, if that’s really the case. Going through a pandemic is terrifying, infuriating and exhausting and UGH. We could use something that can help ease our worries or momentarily distract us even a little bit. 

Though would it have killed them to dedicate one episode to the importance of wearing a mask or washing hands? (-_- ;;)

HOWEVER! Seeing as I am not a fragile child, I’ve still got several (oho~) criticisms to air out before I put this season behind me. This review isn’t particularly scathing but...there is a lot of discontent so you’ve been forewarned.

But first, let’s tediously review what structure means in Precure.

We all know that there are certain things that will forever (?) remain fixed in the series formula.

The plot is always going to be “magical girls fight evil doers threatening to ruin the world”.

There are plot points to indicate story progression but in reality, are put there to correspond with toy releases which are usually marked by these five: introductions, first power up, midseason Cure, second power up, and build-up to the climax + finale.

There is usually a specific message (a theme) to be told with every season and motifs (narrative tools) to aid in getting that across. For HealPre, the theme is “living is fighting” and its motifs are “health” and “nature”.

I left out “animals” b/c 1) it didn’t hold as much significance as the other two did, 2) animals are part of nature anyway and 3) let’s be real, it’s just a synonym for “mascots” which we already get every year. :P

Right. I’m probably forgetting something but for the most part, these are immovable pillars of Precure.

Story, on the other hand, has more variables you can work with.

Story is how you tell the plot, how you convey the message.

Precure, as a tv series, is unarguably carried by its main stars, the Cures. So it only makes sense that a huge percentage of a season’s success owes itself to how much of an impact its characters had on the audience as well as how effective their individual story arcs were as sub-plots tying back to the bigger picture (the message/theme).

Ideally, these arcs would shine the brightest in the filler episodes, where the plot  (“good guys vs. bad guys”) is less of a focus so there is more space for personal development and growth.

Also, not all character arcs have to be directly related to the plot but they ought to be written well in order to support the overarching message (the theme).

Now, has HealPre done that? Has each girl’s story demonstrated a good example of what “living is fighting” means?

...nnnnnnyyeeee... look, even I can’t give a straightforward answer on that because while technically they did, by virtue of Nodoka’s observance in ep 44 recounting it as such, there’s also actually not enough to make it feel substantial from a viewer’s standpoint.

At least, that’s what I thought while watching HealPre.

With the exception of Nodoka’s, there was a lot of saying but not much doing to convincingly back the other girls’ arcs up. The fillers themselves were very weak, loosely composed in relation to the motifs and, if I may be so blunt, downright boring that if Nodoka didn’t phrase those episodes as things that counted towards the theme, I probably would put up more of a fight on disagreeing. so shoot me, I’m soft for her :P

And I know that sounds confusing right now but I will elaborate as I continue.

Before that though, to be utterly fair, some seasons keep their respective themes shrouded in vagueness until they’re given a more concrete form in words around the finale. So it’s not like we can do much except make educated guesses on what they really are. Most of the time, we’re just measuring everything against our perception of a standard in the fog. Or maybe that’s just me?

Nevertheless, you can just tell, y’know? By simply watching and observing the whole show, you can tell if the characterization, the development, and the outcome (essentially the content given) really live up to what the season claims is endgame.

So let’s go through that first then. The characters, starting with our lead Cure...

Nodoka being the only Cure in her team to have an arc deserving of the praise “exceptional” should come as a surprise to no one.

She was the most solid in terms of direction on how her story was going to proceed. Out of all the girls, her journey had the greatest connection to the subject “health”, repeatedly delved into it every time the spotlight was on her and fulfilled everything it seemed to promise from her debut in episode 1.

Her struggles on the road to recovery from a long-term illness and the strength she’s drawn from that traumatizing experience as well as her time as Precure did more than establish her as the strongest character in HealPre.

She has also rose to become one of the most memorable Pink Cures in the entire franchise (personally, I rank her in the top 5).

And it’s not hard to see why she’s earned such high regard in a lot of fans’ hearts.

The writers clearly worked a lot on her character composition to the point where she can pretty much embody the theme of “living is fighting” all on her own.

She came into HealPre fresh out of the hospital and full of earnest desire to make the most of her newfound freedom but she also wasn’t without knowledge on what hardship is. From there, she only got stronger, even when she was stumbling and trying to figure things out along the way. She grew more fortified in her beliefs on what it means to be truly live a healthy life.

She bravely defied the ones who attempted to take advantage of her and twist her cause against her. And she learned that taking care of herself is equally as important as wanting others to be safe from harm.

It was never about winning or coming out on top. It was about protecting a fundamental yet precious truth. That one thing any decent human being should never have to concede: the right to live well.

Honestly, Nodoka is absolutely inspiring all around, as a fictional character, a heroine and a normal everyday person.

Everything about her arc went satisfyingly right like it was meant to and the best thing is, we don’t need to question it because we saw how it all happened with our very own eyes.

I sincerely wished I could say the same for the others but sadly, they were just too flawed.

And Pegitan can throw flippers with me all day if he wants but as undeniable as the above statements are about Chiyu, her arc failed to leap over the increasingly mounting disappointment I had with every episode that’s been assigned solely to her.

Two of which weren’t even about Chiyu. One centered on Pegitan’s admiration for his partner and the other focused on her brother, Touji. Which, while nice to give to supporting/secondary characters, is a fat waste of valuable screentime and not what I’m here for.

It also didn’t help that the conflict of her arc (the indecision over choosing between two dreams) started really late in the game and was resolved so quickly within two episodes. There was no time for me to get invested into it, there was no powerful sense of conviction like how Go!Pri or Hugtto handled theirs and really, it just felt like Chiyu was only following what the script dictated for her rather than genuinely awakening to her own competitive passion towards track and field.

It was almost like it didn’t matter. Almost as if the writers procrastinated in thinking up something worthwhile to further her development...but then settled on grabbing an old idea off the shelf without refining it to suit Chiyu when they ran out of time.

This happened similarly with Minami in Go!Pri and Elena in StarPre, both of whom left me angry at how their arcs were executed. Yet theirs don’t compare to how pissed off I am about Chiyu’s. Because while Minami’s took a while to arrive, it wasn’t done poorly and linked back to Go!Pri’s theme well enough. And while Elena’s was over crammed last minute, at least it was unique to her character and had lots of potential ways to play out if they actually started it earlier on in StarPre.

Chiyu’s arc is like a discount version of the former with hardly any of the intriguing qualities of the latter. Sure, she had two early episodes that laid out the two most important aspects of her life (her family inn and her dedication to her sport) but after that, they weren’t brought up again until we were only weeks away from the ending. Y’know, just to fill up episode slots and meet the minimal requirement of saying they did give Chiyu some issue to resolve. 

It was not engaging at all.

Furthermore, the fact that her arc had very little to no relation with either “health” or “nature” hurt my appreciation of her character somewhat. I just...don’t think her kind of story really matches with the central topics of HealPre?

...but maybe I’m being bitter about this all wrong and that’s screwing up my rational thinking on this matter.

Because Chiyu’s arc is valid under the logic of the overall theme, I would never say it isn’t. And again, character arcs don’t have to be close to the plot nor is it necessary to employ the “suffering builds character” method to make them interesting.

Chiyu always does her best every day. That’s sufficient argument on why her story does fit within the frame of HealPre’s premise.

Guess I’ll just have to wrangle my resistance into acceptance somehow.

...still, her arc could’ve been done so much better than what we were given. Chiyu at least deserved that much.

Next, Hinata.

Since the beginning, I knew she was gonna be runner-up to Nodoka for having the (for lack of better term atm) “best” arc because it was heavily implied that she has ADHD and therefore, immediately checked off the “health” trait. She was even more obvious about it than Nozomi was.

Difficulty paying attention, hyperactivity, impulsiveness. Hinata didn’t just display all those signs, she also showed how hard it was for her to deal with the downsides to them on a regular basis.

She kept apologizing and put herself down excessively for inconveniencing her friends even though they never blamed her for her condition. Got them annoyed a few times, yes, but didn’t stop them from staying friends with her and definitely didn’t make them hate her either.

Everybody was understanding of Hinata...except Hinata because she always took her failures to heart and considered quitting several times to avoid the crushing dejection of making mistakes over and over again.

She got better, though, and no one could have summed it up more heartwarmingly than Nyatoran with the encouraging words he gave her at the conclusion of her arc. 

But it still feels like there’s a huge chunk of development missing between the start and finish. Or rather, it seemed like all of it occurred offscreen and we were only informed later that it did in fact, happen.

To recap, iirc, Hinata had around 5 episodes that focused on her (ep 9, 13, 23, 35 and 40). Ep 18 doesn’t count because that was a Nyatoran-centric filler more than anything.

Ep 9 and 13 did their jobs of introducing and highlighting the details of Hinata’s troubles while also suggesting she will eventually learn to overcome her insecurities. The ones after, though? They pushed those issues to the backseat.

In Ep 23, she had to share the (uneven) spotlight with Asumi. Hinata’s improvements were briefly mentioned but the majority of the ep went to teaching Asumi what “cute” meant and how to get along with puppies. I mean, I get that Asumi recently joined the group and bonding with her was mandatory by tradition. But since each Cure only gets a limited number of eps to herself, it would’ve been more beneficial for Hinata if she didn’t have to split screentime with someone else’s growth schedule.

Ep 35 is slightly better but not by a whole lot. Sure, Natasha was able to reconcile with Elizabeth which was very sweet and heck, it was the goal for that episode. But again, nothing was really done or addressed about Hinata’s main conflict. She tossed it back with the rest of her homework to deal with later. ahaha, a TroPre hint

Then ep 40 came to formally close the curtains on her story and apparently, Hinata screwed up lots of times since...whenever but she picked herself up every time after and kept on trying. Awesome. So WHY didn’t we get to see that? 

I’m not asking for the impossible here. I’m not asking for Hinata to be cured or anything miraculous like that. There is treatment available for ADHD but it is not curable.

Also, forcing Hinata to find a way to get better at studying, the thing she struggles with the most, is not the solution either because that would only make her more stressed and anxious over her own disorder.

What I want is to see how she moved from wailing “I can’t do it! I don’t wanna! I’m so scared of failing so why bother?!” to determinedly declaring “So what if I failed 1 or 100 times? So what if I fail another 1000 times? What matters is that I don’t let that stop me!”

That confidence is not something that can be built up overnight. It’s gradual and it takes numerous tries to reach from where Hinata was to where Hinata is now.

Telling me she grew emotionally stronger can only allow me to believe so much. I need to actually witness the changes as well.

If it weren’t for that, Hinata’s arc would have been a lot more impressive. Shame.

Finally............... Asumi.

Asumi, Asumi, Asumi, Asumi, Asumi, Asumi, Asumi... *sighs & drums fingers*

...she has no arc, ok? Seriously, what story is there to speak of, much less write a hefty analysis on?

A spirit born for the sake of Latte who just went along with the Precure ride because Latte didn’t want to abandon her duty. She made friends with those who aren’t Latte, extended her knowledge and understanding and gained valuable human experience during her stay on Earth. But ultimately, she will always define her entire existence around a puppy. 

Nothing is more important than this puppy.

...... to be honest, Asumi not having a storyline isn’t what bothers me. It’s her lack of depth that does.

Hell, even the giant burger she ate had more depth than she did!

Oh, Asumi does have a personality alright. She’s consistently and unfailingly polite, utterly devoted to her raison d’être and in crucial moments, gives pearls of wisdom when the girls are in a pinch. She’s good.

But if that’s all she is, then she’s also painfully dull.

She has nothing to contribute to the discussion of health or nature, despite being created through an element of the Earth so you’d think she’d have an opinion of her own. At least worry about the planet that gave life to her as much as she frets over Latte all the time. But nope.

She shares the exact same face as Teatine’s past Precure partner so you’d think we’d explore that connection to see if it would influence or affect her in any way. But nope.

90% of the time, her role was just being Latte’s constant, fawning satellite.

Not only did that irritate the hell out of me but it just reinforced my stance that this type of character is one of the worst you can ever insert into any narrative.

Because if someone keeps reiterating how much they’re obsessed with this one thing and seldom talks about anything else without bringing their obsession into it... then what’s so special about them on their own?

You’ve practically surrendered the different qualities you could have had for worship of something else. That’s not a fair trade-in.

Asumi’s character is so packed with Latte-related stuff that there’s not much space left for anything that can be considered uniquely Asumi.

I mean, maybe it’s because I can never see myself or any normal person comfortable with living like that.

Living for the sake of being together with the one you love? Okay. But living with your whole universe revolving around that one thing? Making most if not all decisions based on this one thing?

No. That’s absolutely crazy, alright? Nobody with a healthy amount of awareness and self-worth would live like that.

And you can counter that Asumi’s just born like that. That she can’t help her origins because Teatine’s wish to protect her daughter is essentially what brought Asumi into existence so of course, her biggest concern would be Latte. At least, she wasn’t forced into it, right? As long as Asumi chose of her own will to follow Latte, it should be fine, right?

You can even use the fact that Asumi isn’t human. That she’s a spirit and we shouldn’t apply our human standards too strictly to her.

Yea, but those are feeble defenses in the face of her being a good main character, a good main heroine. 

There are many ways to make a decent MC. The way Asumi was written proves she certainly does not possess traits that can classify her as true protagonist material. A protagonist has to be more than one amplified feature, which Asumi is not.

For the record, I don’t hate Asumi (she’s not interesting enough to generate a feeling that intense). I'm just severely let down because even if I don’t end up loving the midseason Cure for whatever reason, I can usually count on them to bring something intriguing to the table to dissect and analyze. At least I should find something to care about them.

Didn’t happen with her. :(

Oh god, I’ve been working on this post for days now and I’ve got a headache and with the baton pass happening in less than a few hours as I type this, I just really need to get it done and over with so please forgive me for speeding up through the rest, I’ll try to keep it as coherent as possible. NYARGH! (@_@ ;;)

Mascots.

Would you be surprised to hear that I’m not surprised that they were actually written very well?

Like I said early on, I suspected the return of fairy partnerships were going to improve the mascots’ significance in the story and, well, I was right. 

This time, they didn’t just fill in the usual expectations of relaying exposition, serving as the Cures’ transformation devices and looking cute for the merchandise. The Healing Animals had to make progress on their own training to become doctors as well.

And they did through their relationships with their human partners.

It was a refreshing take on the mascot aspect of the series because the friendships felt really symbiotic. When the trainees arrived on Earth, they relied on the girls to help them perform their jobs as well as provide them with shelter, food, the occasional peptalk about their trainee status, etc.

Then as the story continued and they got to know each other better, the mascots were able to return the favor by giving support when the Cures needed it. Rabirin when Nodoka was frightened and confused about how to deal with Daruizen, Pegitan when Chiyu was having trouble choosing between two dreams and Nyatoran who made sure to always lift Hinata’s spirits up when she got upset at herself.

In short, they achieved their objectives of learning what it means to be good doctors by being there for their friends! How wonderful! :D

My memory for Latte is hazy, unfortunately, since she’s coddled by everyone all the time (can’t blame them, she’s friggin’ adorable! <3) but I’ll never forget how she stood firm on the battlefield to see things through, to fight for the Earth like she promised her mother. She started out so babie but showed us all there was enormous bravery behind her cute face and ugh, we should all be very proud of her! <3

The only major issues I had about the mascots were these:

1) Too many irrelevant fillers went to them. They only needed a maximum of two for their entire mascot group.

2) Latte kept getting sick even after she acquired a Precure partner of her own. I was hoping it wouldn’t hurt her as much as it did before Asumi arrived or that she would build up a stronger immunity but noooo, they insisted on torturing the poor pupper! T_T

Villains + Finale Battle

Not a lot needs to be said for the first part. We’ve had mediocre antagonists before. HealPre’s just happened to be extra annoying as they were despicable. 

Which is worse because jerks you can just leave in the trash but assholes won’t stop harassing you unless you pummel them into their graves, set fire to their corpses and leave no trace of them behind! >:(

Y’all know who I’m talking about. Opinions on him continue to vary depending on who you talk to and if they’re avid fans of his face or not but whatever. The son of a bitch served his purpose and is dead now. That’s all that matters to me.

Anyway, the King was flat like his two lesser generals. He was neither intimidating nor distinguished enough in the brand of evil to really make us think of him as a serious threat and because of that, it ended up making the boss fight look like any run of the mill boss fight.

I know, they tried so hard with all that shiny animation but it just didn’t have that glorious sense of vindication that previous seasons (or ep 42) gave and I blame it all on this Rumiko Takahashi reject.

Also, this strategy was pretty useless?

They built it up like Earth was gonna sacrifice herself and die or something (she wouldn’t and even if she came close, deus ex machina would’ve kicked in to prevent that and COVID-induced caution too I guess). 

But there were no signs of pain (well, that’s a relief) after absorbing Shindoi-ne and they really pissed King Byogen off more than they did any damage with the absorbed byo-gen power.

...so yea, this tactic was just to kill some time and budget, nothing more. Meh.

By the way, did Asumi eject Shindoi-ne’s pathogen out of her body yet or did they just leave it in there to bounce around until it eventually dissolves on its own?

Because that’s eww. I mean, it’s obviously not gonna hurt Asumi they can both relate on hyperfocusing their affection for someone so maybe the compatibility helps :P but still, ewwwww.

Fillers + Underused Motifs

In hindsight, perhaps HealPre didn’t exactly promise the content we I wanted about “health” and “nature” if their objective was to teach that any manner of “fighting” can count towards “living”.

......but fuck you Toei, you’re still cowards! >:/

Fillers will be fillers but it’s always better to try and make some of them as meaningful as possible. And they wasted the opportunity to inform an impressionable audience (during a very crucial period of our time, I must add) on a lot of things related to the HealPre’s motifs. Especially about the environment which for some ridiculous reason, they chose not to touch on for the main stretch of the overall story.

Proper hygiene, good diet plan and sleeping habits, regular exercise (already done by the girls a few times but could use another example), meditation, counseling/therapy (especially for mental health!), etc.

Real life pollution, climate change/global warming (IMPORTANT!!), deforestation, preservation vs conservation, endangered species, recycling, volunteering to clean up your community, etc.

These just came off the top of my head but yes, there’s more and no, I’m not saying that the writers need to cover all of them in extreme detail or replace the slice-of-life episodes.

But they should be able to mesh both serious and light-hearted together in harmony somehow. Like those fillers where the mascots saw people cleaning up littering at the park or that interaction with that arborist who taught them about wild animals and trees when the group went to visit a lake.

For health, maybe let the girls visit patients with chronic illness in the hospital or have them converse with a medical professional on some matter. Particularly if it’s got something to do with mental illness because stigma in Japan on those who are afflicted with such conditions is still prevalent and has caused a number of sad and shocking tragedies that could have otherwise been avoided if people didn’t have such outdated, judgmental mindsets.

That last part might be too dark for a children’s anime but there’s a lot more out there that is doable.

Do that without reducing it into a footnote, Toei. It is so necessary for your target audience to be aware of these issues at the age they are now. You have an almost 20-year old franchise to serve as a very effective platform. Make better use of it if you truly care about the message you’re conveying through your show!

Also, what the fuck.

The last episode was a mess. Why are you only mentioning this now when the season is already over?

This should’ve been brought up months ago!

All the things we could’ve seen the Cures done to protect the Earth without magic.

The excuse of “I didn’t know humans were so horrible!” is a shit one because everybody knows humans are deplorable trash when it comes to abusing the Earth. All the more reason why you have to persistently drill it into people’s heads that they should not be like those who don’t care or choose not to care.

One crack episode isn’t going to cut that.

God, I so want to unsee this ep just so I don’t have to end HealPre on a more sour note than it already was. *big aggrieved sigh*

Lastly (and this really is the end of my long ranting, I promise), the missing undisclosed lore.

There are few Precure seasons without a past lore of its own in the recent years. Is it a wonder, though?

Lore is mysterious and fascinating. If it involves a past Precure, even more so.

Sometimes fans might just hang onto a show because they’re curious about what happened before the main story. We’d never get the full tale of those adventures but at least, it’s fun to imagine the “prequel”.

Also, past Precure are just badass. Fact.

Strangely enough, we didn’t get that for Heal. All we know is that she was called “Fuu” and was very close to Teatine. 

Hmm. Probably one of those changes caused by COVID interference cuz I can’t imagine the writers choosing not to tell her past in the original draft.

With all that finally off my chest, I’m ready to part ways with you girls until the next All Stars (Nodoka, I’m gonna miss you so much! T_T)

HealPre wasn’t the worst and it was nowhere near the best that it had the potential to be. But it’s passable. At least for those who loved it even with its flaws, I’m genuinely glad it was good for you.

For those who are thinking about picking it up (although why you would read this spoilery post before watching, I have no idea), if you’re looking for a standard magical girl anime to enjoy casually, then this is a safe pick. If you really want to invest your attention and heart into it, though? Then perhaps it would be in your interest to ask someone who saw it already to help you filter out the episodes that are worth watching. You don’t need to worry about the rest, they’re inconsequential. :P

Ok then! Thanks for reading as always, brave souls who have reached this point. 

Stay healthy and safe out there and I’ll see you at the beach next week! Tropic underwater paradise here we coooooommmmmeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!! xDDD

[bubbyleh]

A Series of Shockingly Close Calls (ch.1)

oh no I fan fic’d a fan fic. I got thinking about soft monster au Boomer moments and it made my brain go bbbbrrrrr so then this happened. I’m woozy as hell because nobody told me that the antacids they were putting me on would make me not able to absorb my thyroid meds so I’m both very hypo, very potsy (cus hypo makes my p.o.t.s. worse) and in withdrawal so there’s no blood in my brain and I’m wacked out which makes me get suuuuuper purple with my prose so sorry for all the “forthright"s and "moreovers”. I’m just a little creature I cannot help this. Written in one sitting and probably a lot of typos and I’m sorry if I accidenally used ‘he’ for bubs in there somewhere I was having trouble with that. Once again, I’m p deep in withdrawal rn so bear with me. Anyway let me know if this is acceptable to put on ao3 as a gift fic to your fic. (yes I do plan on their being more than one chapter. no I make no promises due to aforementioned medical issues)

crocs here! sorry to put this in the middle of your submission, but i thought it’d get lost at the end. this is amazing! fanfic of a fanfic? i love this so much and i’m going to cherish it forever, thank you!

you can post this to ao3, i would be so happy if you did! i hope you feel better soon, i know health problems can be sucks. and don’t worry if you called bubby “he”, i write them using he/they pronouns (i just default to “they” for simplicity). 

also, i hope you don’t mind that i put a read more in! ________

Three months.

  Three months into Harold Coomer’s acquaintanceship with his eccentric and eclectic(in both taste and physical composition) companion was the first time the homunculus had begun to feel, as they’d put it, ‘drained’. 

  Bubby had explained to an enraptured Coomer,on more than one occasion, the nature of their state of reanimation, far different from Coomer’s own. They were a man-made construct of flesh, artfully pieced together from pieces of different corpses, stitched into a singular being and imbued with life by the great and terrible force of the heavens, in the form of lightning. 

  Coomer said it reminded him of Prometheus, sculpting mankind from clay.

  Bubby said it reminded them of a penny dreadful.

They existed in a state between life and death, though not quite undeath, either. Certainly each composite part of them, corpses as they had been, could be considered undead, but Bubby themself was a new creation that came into life for the first time upon the metal slab of their creators laboratory, never having ‘died’ and therefore not being themselves brought back from the dead, but nevertheless composed of reanimated parts.  

  They were sustained not by blood coursing through veins, but rather electricity, which was honestly a boon for Coomer. He was still fairly young, by vampire standards, anyway, and his self control could be…spotty at times, and it was nice to have a companion that he could sit beside and feel no desire to tear their throat out and drain them of their life juices. They could subsist without food or drink if they needed to, as well, which was also helpful, as it was often not possible for either of them to venture into civilization to obtain rations of any kind.

However, there were downsides to Bubby’s condition, as well, which began to make themselves apparent those three months in.

  Bubby’s escape from the lab of their creation was as unplanned as it was unorthodox. The whole thing had apparently been pure chaos from beginning to end, and Bubby didn’t seem to enjoy talking about it very much. Certainly an angry mob was involved, at least some pitchforks and torches, and a massive inferno of less than fully explained origin(‘Fire good,’ Bubby had said with a shrug), the last of which providing a convenient distraction for Bubby to make their escape into the nearby woods, but they hadn’t exactly had ample time to plan or provision their flight. They couldn’t take any of the tools or resources their creator had with them when they fled. They had no idea what they would need, nor any idea of what to expect when they were away from that lab for any extended period of time

  Three months after their escape, it began to become apparent.  

  Coomer noticed long before Bubby said anything, and, in fact, had to more or less force a confession out of them about it. 

  Bubby just began to…slow, the way one does when they’ve gone too long without proper sleep. They began to stumble more often, to take longer to think of words, and such. The difference was very slight, only so drastic as someone who had woken up an hour or so before they’d have liked to that morning, and generally only became noticeable when Bubby was themself tired, but sleep never seemed to completely chase away that fatigue and Coomer worried. 

  He especially worried when Bubby practically panicked at Coomer’s slight inquiry into the subject, insisting far too forcefully that nothing was wrong and changing the subject. Coomer was eventually able to wrestle(both metaphorically and literally) an answer from them.

  Energy of any kind, is finite, and that included the energy that maintained Bubby’s state of ‘half life’. Without supplementing it, it would eventually run out. Bubby’s creator had a huge contraption of wire and steel that Bubby would be attached to via the bolts on their neck. When lightning struck the lightning rod atop the laboratory roof, it would travel down those wires into the bolts and, by extension, Bubby, ‘recharging’ them, as Bubby put it. 

  “Why on Earth didn’t you tell me?” Coomer demanded.

  “Because I didn’t…Because it’s none of your business!” Bubby snapped. “I don’t go snooping into how you get your ‘fix’! When you disappear into a town for the night, I don’t pry into your sudden improvement in pallor. I don’t ask you about the screams!”

  Coomer flinched. It was a low blow and he was immediately inclined to take the bait, but the look in their eyes gave him pause. It was a fearful glint like a trapped animal, lashing out in fear, not anger. 

  He huffed out a small, unnecessary breath and crossed his arms.

  “What is this really about?” he asked, voice calm, but stern. “Why didn’t you…,” his voice wavered, ever so slightly, “Why didn’t you trust me?” 

  The anger in Bubby’s face drained in an instant, falling instead into a look of pain and remorse.

  “No, it’s not like that!” they insisted. “I just…I didn’t…I didn’t want you to think I couldn’t…I didn’t want you to…”

  “To what?”

  Bubby sighed, deflating. They averted their eyes, not meeting Coomer’s gaze. 

  “I didn’t want you to leave me behind,” they admitted at last, voice barely above a whisper. “There’s never been anything else like me before. I don’t know exactly how I work or how to keep myself working. I was afraid if you realized that, if you thought I couldn’t take care of myself, you’d…decide I was too much trouble.”

  Coomer burst out laughing.

  Any meekness to Bubby’s expression vanished in an instant and their bolts sparked with indignation. 

  “Why is it every time I bare my soul to you you laugh?!” they spat.

  Coomer wiped a tear from his eye. 

  “Forgive me, Bubby,” he said. “It just strikes me as so completely preposterous I can’t help but laugh!”

  “That I don’t even know how I can exist?” Bubby snarled. “That I don’t have any idea how this…hodge podge of flesh I call a body can even hold itself together? That I could just stop working one day and have no idea why? You find that ‘preposterous’?” they again cast their eyes to the ground, a mixture of shame and rage on their face.

  Coomer’s expression softened and he stepped towards Bubby to lay a hand gently on their cheek and guide their face up to meet his gaze.

  “That you could think there was anything that would make me want to not be with you,” he said.

  Bubby’s eyes went wide and his bolts sparked again, but with a softer sort of ‘hum’ of energy, rather than the earlier harsh zapping. 

  “You are one of a kind, Bubby,” he went on. “I’ve never even heard of something like you. I didn’t think something like you could even exist. It’s fascinating! You’re fascinating.”

  Bubby’s mouth opened and closed like they wanted to speak, but couldn’t find any words.

  “It’s easy, as an immortal, even one so relatively young as myself, to feel as though the world begins to stagnate.” Coomer continued. “That someday one will reach the point at which existence can yield nothing else but that with which one is already too well acquainted. But you…You’re something entirely new. Something unprecedented. There’s so much to learn from you. About you. I want to… understand you.”

  Coomer dropped his hand from Bubby’s face to their shoulder, this time being the one to avert his gaze.

  “Moreover, I want to…I want to see you experience this world, as new to you as you are to it,” he said. Had he not been long dead, a flush would have probably risen to his cheek. “There’s so much you haven’t seen, haven’t done. I want you to see them, to do them. And moreso, I want to show them to you, give them to you. The way your eyes light up at things I’ve lived in fear someday would hold for me only monotony and makes me feel as though I could never again find them mundane…I want to see that. I want…I want to never stop seeing it.”

  He braved a glance back up at Bubby, who was agape with shock. 

  “Nothing so trivial as a lack of energy could possibly deter me,” he said, voice resolute. “Even if I have to build a tower of steel and wire myself, there’s nothing that would make me leave you. For as long as…as long as you’ll have me.”

  Bubby’s hand clasped onto Coomer’s still resting on their shoulder, holding on like they expected him to disappear if their grip wavered. 

  “Forever!” they said, instantly, then seemed to panic at their own forthrightness. “I mean, for as…for as long as you’ll have me.” 

  Their bolts were crackling with electricity now, sending off small, glowing motes and arcs of energy. 

  Coomer smiled and reached out with his other hand to touch Bubby’s cheek again.

  Many years later, when Coomer would become fully educated on the idea of a ‘circuit’ and the ramifications of completing one by placing one’s hands on either side of what was essentially an openly sparking power source, the resulting occurrence would be an interesting and enlightening memory.

  As it stood in the moment, the resulting electrocution simply caused him to be rendered briefly unconscious and his hair to not lie flat for a week. 

[eldamaranquendi]

SILMARILLION by  ArlenianChronicles (full project)

1.  I've started a new project, as you can see! I was inspired by my Beren and Luthien project to illustrate the whole Silmarillion XD It's going to be a heck of a while before it's done, but I hope you guys enjoy following along on the journey! So here we have part 1 of my Silmarillion project. First is the Ainulindale, featuring Eru Iluvatar, the Ainur, the creation of Arda, and the standoff between Manwe and Melkor for the dominion of Arda.

2.  The second part of my Silmarillion project, Valaquenta. Here are the top three Valar, Manwe, Ulmo, and Aule; the top three Valier, Varda, Yavanna, and Nienna; their Maiar, Eonwe, Ilmare, and Olorin; and the Enemies, Melkor and Sauron.

3.  The third part of my Silmarillion project, chapters 1 to 4! I'll be posting one part each instead of two at a time from now on XD This part features the Two Trees, Laurelin and Telperion; Aule and Yavanna creating the Dwarves and Ents; five of the first Elves, Elwe (Thingol), Olwe, Finwe, Ingwe, and Nowe (Cirdan); and the lovers, Thingol and Melian. Phew, lots of Elves to draw! Also, some Tolkien fans might notice that Elmo and Lenwe are missing from the drawing of the Elves that awoke at Cuivienen. That's because I forgot, and then there wasn't enough space!

4.  The fourth part of my Silmarillion project, chapters 5 to 8, featuring King Finwe of the Noldor, High King Ingwe of the Vanyar (and all Elves in Valinor, and King Olwe of the Teleri; Feanor and Melkor, representing two events of the chapter; Feanor and the Silmarils, and the destruction of the Two Trees by Ungoliant and Melkor.

5.  The fifth part of my Silmarillion project, chapters 9 to 12, featuring a bloody Fëanor after having fought the Teleri Elves; Melian creating the Girdle (magical barrier) around the realm of Doriath; the Maiar Arien and Tilion holding the last fruit and flower Laurelin and Telperion (all respectively lol); and a family of the first Edain (mortal men).

6.  MASSIVE CREDITS TO CHRISTOPHER TOLKIEN FOR THE ILLUSTRATION OF THE MAP OF BELERIAND. My copy of the Silmarillion has a map, which I scanned and traced over in Paint Tool SAI so that it'd be high res. Tracing all those words was what took me so long! The sixth part of my Silmarillion project, chapters 13 to 16, featuring Feanor fighting balrogs (not shown lol), and Fingolfin crossing the Grinding Ice; the Map of Beleriand; Melian attempting to learn more from Galadriel about why the Noldor left Aman; and Maeglin and Aredhel escaping Nan Elmoth (his birth home). On the map, the words in red are the names of the lands, and the pale words are the Elven lords (and lady) ruling over hose lands. So for example, Thingol and Melian are presiding over Doriath, and Caranthir is presiding over Thargelion.

7.  The seventh part of my Silmarillion project, chapters 17 to 20, featuring Finrod's meeting with the Edain; Fingolfin and Morgoth during the Dagor Bragollach; Beren, Luthien, and Huan, with Beren's severed hand holding a Silmaril; and Fingon surrounded by balrog whips during the Fifth Battle. Originally, the Silmaril in Beren and Luthien's illustration was supposed to have a horizontal line to complete the geometric effect, but since it cut across their faces, I had to take it out. Also, I know that Finrod's meeting with the Edain technically took place in the middle of the night, but I have a lot of nighttime backgrounds in these illustrations already, so I wanted to do a dawn-like background!

8.  The eighth part of my Silmarillion project, chapters 21 to 24, featuring Turin, Nienor, and Beleg, with the sword Anglachel; Melian and the death of Thingol, along with the Feanorian banner (to represent the Second Kinslaying); Tuor, Idril, and Earendil, along with a dragon climbing the King's Tower in Gondolin; and Earendil and Elwing with the Silmaril, while their sons Elrond and Elros are taken by Maedhros and Maglor in the Third Kinslaying. The stories of Turin Turambar and the Fall of Gondolin are large stories, so I decided to go with portraits of the main characters, especially with Turin's chapter. I feel like I could've done something a bit more creative with the Fall of Gondolin, but I'm pleased with this one nevertheless XD Also, I'm really happy I managed to squeeze in my favourite Tolkien family -- Maedhros and Maglor with Elrond and Elros hahahahaa (If only showing their hands lol) This part concludes the Quenta Silmarillion, which I forgot to mention began at chapter 1. There are now two parts left in the Silmarillion to illustrate!

9.  The ninth part of my Silmarillion project, Akallabeth, featuring the Door of Night through which Morgoth is banished; Elrond Halfelven, his twin Elros Tar-Minyatur -- who is crowned the first king of Numenor -- and Nimloth, the White Tree of Numenor; Sauron in the guise of Tar-Mairon, councillor to the last king of Numenor, Ar-Pharazon; and Manwe with Iluvatar, the latter of which sends great waves to destroy Numenor. So I was looking back at part 8 of my project, and I have to say that the illustrations for Turin Turambar and the Fall of Gondolin are the ones that I am least satisfied with. I mean, I wish I had added a few more beakers around the King's Chemistry Beaker of Gondolin (cuz it looks like one, the way I drew it lol), to make it look more like a city XD So I hope this part makes up for that, at least with regards to visual interest Just one more part left to go!!

10.  The tenth and final part of my Silmarillion project, Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age, featuring Celebrimbor and Annatar (another of Sauron's forms) crafting the rings of power; two of the Istari, Saruman and Gandalf (there are three others, not just these two lol), and the Eye of Sauron; Samwise Gamgee carrying Frodo Baggins up Mt. Doom to destroy the One Ring; and the last (but not really the last XD) white ship sailing into the West. So we've finally come to the end! I want to thank all of you for sticking with me and supporting me through this big project! It took two months -- from June 10 to August 12 -- to finish! I'm very proud of my work, and also relieved that I was able to finish it, in a way XD I'm so happy that I was able to share this project with you all! I learned quite a bit about composition and lightning and shading in this project. For any who were wondering, I think my favourite illustrations out of them all are parts 4 and 7. I especially like how I drew the light of the Silmarils in those ones XD I feel like I could've done better on part 8, but I still like that one  If you like, let me know which ones you liked the most! I would love to hear your feedback!   Now is the time for a little break, in which I will finish up some other things. Then I can announce the next project that I've planned (which will hopefully be soon lol)!