#or something to do with the directors?

[glitch-in-space-time]

OKAY, so I have these two friends.

One does NOT like action movies, especially super hero movies and stuff like that. (This is the kind of friend who refused to watch any Fast & Furious and has only watched one LotR because I managed to prompt her.) HOWEVER the one super hero kind of deal she does like (and LOVES by the way) is Deadpool.

The other friend doesn’t like gore and such. They’re not a big fan of violence. HOWEVER their exception is ALSO Deadpool.

So just to confirm with people: Deadpool is the exception to the rules right?

If you then put into play the fact that that second friend (the gore no-goer) actively enjoyed Six Underground, featuring Ryan Reynolds, and I KNOW that my other friend (super hero no-goer) enjoys films featuring the aforementioned movie star (save for F&F: H&S because they REFUSE to watch it), there can only be one conclusion.

Ryan Reynolds is the exception.

Or am I just crazy?

[somegrumpynerd]

Does anyone else hc that Nightmare can like, absorb his tentacles back into his body sometimes? Like the way Stitch does with his extra arms?

[eightspringdays]

tatsuki fujimoto paneling is amazing, the way he composes his work is fascinating and really showcases his love for movies. sometimes it makes me feel like im watching a movie rather than reading a manga.

[unremarkable-gods]

in honour of being promoted to Deputy Stage Manager in my school's theatre department, top gun high school/sixth form au:

Dr Kazansky rules the drama department with an iron fist. always wearing black turtlenecks. never seen without his glasses, his coffee, and his terrifying glare (which earned him the moniker Dr Iceman). do not show up to rehearsals if you don't know your lines. death be upon the poor students who fuck around during tech and dress, because they will find out. he loves the crew tho.

Mr Call-Me-Mav Mitchell is the head of sports. you name it, he's played it, and he could absolutely give you pointers, also, do you want a protein bar with that? it's chocolate flavoured :) even the kids who Hate (capital H) sports love him. he is sunshine and adrenaline in human form. endless energy. no one knows why he is called maverick, but even the principal does it, so.

Mr Kerner is the principal. he is also the only person who can interrupt rehearsals and survive. dr kazansky loves him. inexplicably, maverick hates him. nough said.

Jake Seresin is the school's golden child, not even because he's Kazansky's nephew. he’s head boy. he’s on the school’s football/rugby team. he writes regular articles for the internal magazines. and this year, he’s playing Orpheus in the school’s production of Hadestown. everyone thinks it’s nepotism. it is and it’s not, jake just lost a bet to his Uncle Tom, and must now reap the consequences to said uncle’s delight.

Bradley Bradshaw has been stage crew since he was thirteen and an overworked runner, thank you very much. it’s his final show, he’s the DSM, and if fucking seresin ruins this for him, he will riot. dr kazansky should never let that happen. however, this is the same man who, last year, laughed when revealing that a screen on stage had turned off and bradley had to go on stage during the show to fix it. hm. maybe bradley should have re-thought his life choices. also: the turntable. the goddamn turntable.

other characters include: phoenix as eurydice, bob doing lighting, payback and fanboy as ASMs who flirt over the comms to everyones misery, cyclone as another drama teacher/stage manager,

maverick keeps turning up to rehearsals and trying to help because his favourite (cough only cough) godson and his favourite player are both interested in this stuff, so he should at least try, right? kazansky hates it until he doesn’t. kerner thinks it’s all fucking hilarious. bradley is embarrassed but its kinda endearing do NOT tell him i said that.

kazansky and maverick both bare witness to A Moment between their respective pseudo sons and decide the two simply must get together for their sakes and also so they never inflict that on another person ever.

bradley and jake both bare witness to A Moment between their respective pseudo fathers and decide the two simply must get together for their sakes and also so they never inflict that on another person ever.

kerner is cackling. Cackling.

[some-pers0n]

People watching The Game Awards thinking they'll get Half-Life 3, Silksong, or Bloodborn on PC when the only reveals are more hyperrealistic AAA slop, quirky lol random "erm did that just happen?" games, and a new The Last of Us Ultimate Remaster (which is different than the last remaster)

[sasaranurude]

Okay. I've been playing Tokyo Debunker today, since the release happened to catch me on a day when all I'd planned to do was write fanfiction. I just finished reading the game story prologue (it was longer than expected!), so here's a review type post. If you're reading this post not having seen a single thing about this game: it's a story-based joseimuke gacha mobile game that just released globally today. It's about a girl who suddenly finds herself attending a magic school and mingling with elite, superhuman students known as ghouls. If you look in the tumblr tag for the game you'll see what appears to be a completely different game from 2019 or so: they retooled it completely midway through development, changing just about everything about it due to "escalating competition within the gaming industry."

I'll talk about how this looks like a blatant twst clone at the end.

Starting with the positive: The story is charming. I enjoyed it thoroughly the entire time and am excited to read more. The mix between visual novel segments and motion comics was really nice--it broke things up and added a lot of oomph to the action or atmospheric scenes that visual novels generally lack. I like the art in the comic parts a lot. the live2d in the visual novel parts is... passable. Tone-wise, I think the story was a little bit all over the place and would like to see more of the horror that it opened on, but I didn't mind the comedic direction it went in either. The translation is completely seamless. The characters so far all have unique voices and are just super fun and cute. Of the ones who've had larger roles in the story so far, there's not a single one I dislike. It's all fully voiced in Japanese and the acting is solid. (I don't recognize any voices, and can't seem to find any seiyuu credits, so it seems they're not big names, but they deliver nonetheless.) Kaito in particular I found I was laughing at his lines a ton, both the voicing and the writing.

He's looking for a girlfriend btw. Spreading the word.

The problem is like. The gameplay is the worst dark-pattern microtransaction-riddled bullshit I've ever seen. Hundred passive timers going at all times. Fifty different item-currencies. Trying to get you to spend absurd amounts of real world money at every turn. There's like five different indicators that take you to various real-money shop items that I don't know how to dismiss the indicator, I guess you just have to spend money, wtaf. Bajillion different interlocking systems mean you have zero sense of relative value of all the different item-currencies. I did over the course of the day get enough diamonds for one ten-pull, which I haven't used yet. Buying enough diamonds for a ten-pull costs a bit under $60 (presumably USD, but there's a chance the interface is automatically making that CAD for me--not gonna spend the money to check lmfao), with an SSR rate of 1%. BULLSHIIIIIT.

There's like a goddamn thousand-word essay explaining the dozen different types of character upgrades and equippables and equippables for the equippables!! Bad! Bad game design! That's just overcomplicating bullshit to trick people into thinking they're doing something other than clicking button to make number go up! That is not gameplay!

In terms of the actual gameplay, there is none. The battle system is full auto. There might be teambuilding, but from what I've seen so far, most of that consists of hoping you pull good cards from gacha and then clicking button to make number go up. There's occasional rhythm segments but there's no original music, it's just remixes of public domain classical music lmao. I'd describe the rhythm gameplay as "at least more engaging than twisted wonderland's," which is not a high bar

At least there's a cat in the rhythm bit.

And like, ok, I gotta remark on how derivative it is. Like I mentioned in my post earlier, this game is unabashedly aping twisted wonderland's setting and aesthetic. (That said, most of the stuff it steals from twst is magic school stuff that twst also basically stole from Harry Potter, so...?) However, it isn't exactly like twst: in this one, the characters say fuck a lot and bleed all over the place and do violence. Basically, the tone is a fair bit more adult than twst's kid-friendly vibe. (Not, like, adult adult, and I probably wouldn't even call it dark--it's still rated Teen lol. Just more adult than twst.)

Rather than just being students at magic school, the ghouls also go out into the mundane world to go on missions where they fight and investigate monsters and cryptids. Honestly, the magic school setting feels pretty tacked-on. The things that are enjoyable about this would've been just as enjoyable in about any other setting--you can tell this whole aspect was a late trend-chasing addition, lmao. So, yeah, it's blatantly copying twst to try to steal some players, but... Eh, I found myself not caring that much. Someone more (or less) into twst than me may find it grating.

Character-wise, eh, sure, yeah, they're a bit derivative in that aspect too, but it's a joseimuke game, the characters are always derivative. Thus far the writing & execution has been solid enough that I didn't care if they were tropey. If I were to compare it to something else, I'd say the relationship between the protagonist and the ghouls feels more like that of the sage and wizards in mahoyaku than anything from twst. There's some mystery in exactly what "ghouls" are and their place in this world that has me intrigued and wanting to know more about this setting and how each of the characters feels about it. I have a bad habit of getting my hopes up for stories that put big ideas on the table and then being disappointed when they don't follow through in a way that lives up to my expectations, though.

So, my final verdict: I kind of just hope someone uploads all the story segments right onto youtube so nobody has to deal with the dogshit predatory game to get the genuinely decent story lol. Give it a play just for the story if you have faith in your ability to resist dark patterns. Avoid at all costs if you know you're vulnerable to gacha, microtransactions, or timesinks.

[jessieren]

An artsy Moustache Monday today featuring Director Shaun and his beautiful framing, reflections and use of colour. With bonus Morsetache

[bird-inacage]

Love Sea Post-Episode 8 Thoughts: Fortpeat are the MVPs

I cannot emphasise enough how Fortpeat's chemistry is carrying this show. I commend the sheer conviction and commitment these two clearly have in their characters and the relationship they are portraying. I am thoroughly enjoying the boldness that has emerged in their roles as Rakmut. Their efforts have not gone amiss.

The downside for me is that Love Sea's plot has (largely) been far clumsier in it's writing compared to the Prapaisky storyline in LITA. I think what worked in LITA's favour was its much simpler trajectory. Fortpeat are doing their darned best with the material here, but the story beats aren't landing quite as well as they could. My hunch is MAME tried to up the ante with her narrative, which hasn't quite paid off in terms of execution. (I'll refrain from reviewing this definitively until the series has finished but this is a reoccurring observation).

Regardless, Fortpeat's phenomenal chemistry is doing a tonne, if not the bulk of the heavy lifting. And if they were a less compelling duo, the story would probably be at risk of falling flat on a number of accounts. MeMindY have a lot to thank them for here.

I have to give a honourable mention to the actress Nina who plays Meena. The girl has been an absolute delight to watch, especially in her exchanges with Fort. She's cute and endearing but also incredibly natural on-screen, which is a breath of fresh air. Some of her adult counterparts could even take a note or two. I'm very impressed at her ability to competently keep pace with the cast in the serious scenes. The moment where she intercedes Mut and Jak was wonderfully delivered, considering her age.

Now, I haven't delved much into the discourse surrounding how Fortpeat as a duo deserve better than the treatment they're getting from MeMindY. All I would say is Fortpeat have clearly shown themselves to be an incredibly valuable asset as an acting duo, and I'm very intrigued as to what their next step will be post-Love Sea.

[lesbiancarat]

for anyone wondering, what about Han Sungsoo? 🤔 it seems that he hasn't been the CEO of Pledis since early 2022, the role until now was filled by Lee Dahye, a former VP for Bighit. HSS has still remained in the company but was demoted to an internal director

if you're wondering how you missed this, don't worry, there was never an official announcement! 🙃 carats had to find this out more than a year after the fact by doing some digging

but now Lee Dahye is being replaced by Kim Yeon Soo, who's the original VP of Pledis before they were acquired. He's the one that appeared on SVT Club, and he has historically had a good relationship with Seventeen. the way I always thought of it is Nu'est was HSS's project group, where Kim Yeon Soo oversaw the creation of svt. after the acquisition, he was put in charge of Hybe Labels Japan. it seems now he will remain in that position while also taking over as Pledis CEO

personally, I don't know what to think of this yet. on one hand carats have always had a positive view of Kim Yeon Soo, and he's always seemed to have a close relationship with svt. and I would say I'd rather have him in charge than a hybe plant

but the timing of it is very convenient. this is pure speculation on my part but with Seungkwan's Instagram post recently and all the stuff going on with hybe, it wouldn't surprise me if hybe was bringing in Kim Yeon Soo to try and appease the members (and possibly other Pledis employees). it definitely feels like they're trying to appease /somebody/ with this move, and I can't see it being the fans since most carats didn't know about Lee Dahye being the CEO in the first place. so I can only assume it's people within Pledis they're trying to appease 🤷‍♀️

[finehs]

Cal thinks he's Xavier's best friend when he definitely isn't. Then Billy comes along and actually becomes Xavier's best friend and Cal seethes but there's nothing he can do. What do you do when your pussy footing lost that guy his wife and doomed everyone else who wasn't handpicked for Paradise?

[knifefightscene]

Unironically Captain America: The Winter Soldier is more of a love story/ghost story than an action movie.

[artfilmfan]

The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed (Joanna Arnow, 2023)

[peachcitt]

text from thirteen by @anna-scribbles

art by me :)

read thirteen read thirteen it’s everything read thirteen read thirteen read thirteen read thirteen<3 happy thirteen day. have you read thirteen yet. read it again if you have. prepare for your life to be changed if you haven’t.

[thesarcasticism]

as promised, here is the flashback scene from p3wm act 4 where strega escapes from the kirijo group

[morsesnotes]

I watched the first couple episodes of The Bay S5, and it's so obvious Shaun Evans directed them it's quite funny.

[thevalleyisjolly]

One thing about early 2005-2010 Doctor Who is that they will just put David Tennant in a harness to do rope stunts. The writers' room really looked at this 6'1 theatre nerd and went "Oh, bring out the padded bicycle shorts, we absolutely must get this man up on wires."