#overall it was great

[alicentsultana]

I don't usually post anything beside hotd, mc, the tudors, but

Today I fell in one of my favorite obsessions from when I was younger, this brazilian soap novel called O Clone (the clone), it's a 2001 novel and I watched it much later when I was a teen, but I remember how it influenced and still influences generations and other novel productions.

A quick dive into the plot: Jade lives in Brazil with her mother, who is sick, but her entire family is from Morocco and still lives there. Her mother dies, she goes back to Fez to live with her uncle Ali , cousin Latifa and his governess. Latifah is a little older than her and is like ideal muslim girl (this is an early 2000 production), uncle Ali is arranging a marriage for her, and his chosen groom is Said, it is revealed that Said and Latifah can't marry because plot reasons and so, to not lose the contract, uncle Ali marries Latifah to Said's older brother and later arranges Jade marriage with Said as a way to punish and keep her in line, however she is in love with Lucas and doesn't want to get married. Many events later, she is still married to Said and has a daughter with him, she still is in love with Lucas, and her run away plots always fails because Lucas never moves a finger to be with her. They end up together anyway.

The thing is - Jade, the main character, should have been with her first husband, Said.

So Said is far from the ideal man, he can be forceful and even threatening (as most galant men were written to be at the time this was made), but he was crazy for her and loved Jade very much. Jade often times deceived and used him, but he never left her without anything and always forgave her, until he too got tired of it.

When they got back together in the second half of the novel it was like -- the novel could have ended there I wouldn't mind because they actually worked to get through their differences and were fighting to get back together, they would get over their grievances and past fights to make the most of their story, because Said still loved her, and because Jade finally saw how great he actually was and how she can actually fall in love him.

And then of course she is impulsive once more and goes after one of the other guys (the clone) because she wants her teen fantasy back.

I cannot blame her but the entire novel she passes as childish and immature because of a dream, that already proved to be an illusion, something she couldn't have had. And she could have been better written and better worked if the screenwriter had allowed it.

At the time, the director and screenwriter, the brilliant Gloria Perez was going through a heavy and harsh moment in life, and she wrote the clone as a way to cope with this moment (the death of her daughter), also, Jade's actress was dating the actor who played her romantic interest, and I believe Gloria didn't want to ruin the public preference over them against a better plot of Jade accepting Said over Lucas.

Anyway, Gloria kind of redeemed herself with another great prodution of hers years later so I will let it pass. Call me too rational but, in my head, Jade should have always been with Said.

[nitw]

i've been waiting for gravity falls to become relevant again so i could share one of my favorite underrated bits from the entire show. like it's only episode 2 but this whole segment just makes me lose my shit. i think jason ritter's exasperated line delivery is what makes it

[bixels]

It's crazy how Dungeon Meshi's manga can feel more cinematic and emotional than the anime to me, even when they're practically the same. Compared to the anime, this moment is such a heartbreaking gut-drop. The way Kui uses negative space and flat compositions to create a sense of horrific stillness is so key.

The way the text (Senshi's monologue) is sequestered to an empty corner of a panel or huddled away from the edge of its text box is not only a great way of showing Senshi's headspace (fearful, isolated, dissociating), but creates a visual representation of pause, as if you hold your breathe after each line. The first panel puts us directly in Senshi's perspective too (compared to in the anime, which puts us as an outside observer over Senshi's shoulder). The detail of the door and bricks so effectively implies that he stared at it for so long, waiting and hoping, that its image is burned in his memory. The wood grain, the brick arch, the number of rivets. The lack of dialogue in the second panel shows a moment of realization too –– "he's dead" (also a great example of the Kuleshov effect). And it's that pause that creates a beat and sets a great rhythm to his headspace, like a music rest: "He never came back." (oh god.) "I'm all alone." Finally, the third panel's negative space, cropping Senshi, shows how truly alone he feels. Without his family, the world ceases to exists. Under shock, he traps himself in a 1-foot radius, too scared to even perceive a world outside its boundaries; a world that can hurt him, kill him, make him disappear with it. There is only his body, the stone beneath his feet and against his back, his thoughts, and that awful bowl of soup.

Even though they're a series of flat images, there's an implicit reading of silence in Senshi's realization and horror. Kui influences your experience to slow down and take your time.

Compare this to the anime, which fills every shot with dialogue. The pacing is fast; we never get to sit in silence like we do with the manga. The horizontal frame allowed the boarders to add Senshi, turning the composition into an over-the-shoulder shot, which takes us out of Senshi's POV. They also added a zoom-out in shot one, which adds unnecessary energy to a very somber scene. The tightening on Senshi as a close-up reaction shot also dulls the moment. In the original panel, Senshi stares ahead at the empty space to his left as a shadow surrounds his mind. It not only shows how Senshi's senses are dulling and his world is shrinking (setting up panel three), but shows how terrified Senshi is of what's in front of him, how the air itself becomes pitch black and opaque, how Senshi is surrendering himself to fear. The pacing is understandable and necessary; this episode packed a lot of story content together. It's just a shame because it really (imo) deflated one of the most nauseating moments in Dungeon Meshi.

[paradox-n-bedrock]

me in big fandoms: oh cool, it's so active and there's so many people to vibe with, this is amaz-

*finds my niche angle that appeals to approximately six people*

me: okay, folks, it's you and me now

[nyancrimew]

after the earlier coverage from Crikey on australian government use of mSpy, Matthew Petti now provides similar coverage for US government use instead! very happy to have helped with this coverage as well

once again my original broad coverage of the mSpy leak can be found on my website!

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

The Odyssey would have been a lot shorter if Odysseus gave the Cyclops weed instead of wine.

[fever-dreamer97]

New Illustration from Hori for the new upcoming movie

It’s like looking at a sweet child posing for his school yearbook photo 😭😭❤️

[bubblesbinxs]

it’s currently 2am where i am so technically 4th of april.. Happy 2 Years ISWM !!!!!!!

[noodles-and-tea]

A scene from this fic by @katherynefromphilly !!

[starcurtain]

A Closer Look at the Phaidei Memory

I've seen so many people talking about this scene with Phainon and Mydei and making fun of how blatantly obvious Phainon is about his... respect for Mydei's... conspicuous body, but one thing I feel like a lot of people missed (or at least I haven't seen anyone discussing) is that this memory seems to come from very early on in their acquaintance.

Looking at it closely, it's clear that the two aren't particularly familiar with each other yet in this memory sequence. For one, Phainon questions things that he should easily know if he was well-acquainted with Mydei already.

First, very comically: "Do you even bathe, bro?"

And second, Phainon questions why Mydei isn't immune to the black tide:

This suggests that, up to the point of this memory, Phainon had not been in enough battles with Mydei (or at least close enough to Mydei) to see him be affected by the black tide. Apparently, this memory-Phainon-and-Mydei don't have years of rushing into battle side-by-side to defend Okhema yet.

It's also hilariously clear that the Phainon in this memory has absolutely no idea how to talk to Mydei.

Breaking this scene down, it's literally Phainon just trying really hard to strike up conversation, doing his best to try to crack the tough exterior and get Mydei to actually interact with him. He jumps around through topics rapidly--the baths, the black tide, their personal sparring--looking for anything that will catch Mydei's attention.

Meanwhile, we can tell that Mydei is not particularly familiar or comfortable with Phainon yet because his dialogue is so different from any of his other scenes in the game. Although Mydei is obviously not the game's biggest yapper, he does always have full sentences to contribute to other conversations and banters readily with Phainon whenever he's baited into it.

In this memory, he instead starts off polite but also completely aloof:

This is the exact sort of response you'd have to a vague acquaintance coming up and trying to talk to you like you're best friends. Phainon skipped at least four steps of familiarity here, and Mydei is obviously at a loss for why the conversation is even happening.

He responds by blatantly stonewalling, answering Phainon's (slightly pathetic) attempts to start an actual conversation in nothing but single word answers:

You can even see Phainon recognize how bad he's failing half way through the conversation, which prompts him to vocally declare that he's going to make a complete topic switch:

And this time, it works!

When Phainon brings up their personal duel or spar, whichever it was, finally, finally Mydei caves and engages in the conversation with him:

Which prompts Phainon to laugh (in relief? lol) and flat out crow about how he's finally cracked the code and figured out how to get Mydei to notice him:

Poor Mydei, however, did not seem to realize his slight display of interest was going to lead him into a full conversation, and he responds to Phainon's blatant invitation to keep talking with a confused:

Witness Mydei accidentally turning down Phainon's request for a date in real time.

The only thing that complicates the situation is what Phainon says late in the memory: that they've battled "all this time." However, looking at his earlier comments, this last statement may just be in a general sense, as in "two Chrysos Heirs who have been fighting the titans for years," especially as the rest of the line "How do you train? Would you consider teaching me?" once again indicates a lack of close familiarity.

(It's also possible this line is just poorly translated in English, and was actually meant to refer to their legendary ten-day-long duel: "We battled all that time, yet I never saw you fatigued." Given the rest of the lines in the memory, I think "dodgy translation" honestly makes the most sense here, and would also just have really funny implications: Phainon and Mydei didn't fall in love at first sight; they fell in comically-long-duel at first sight. Okay, maybe for Phainon it was both.)

Phainon's earlier statements in the memory make it clear that he isn't very experienced with fighting Mydei specifically, with the overall implication of the dialogue being that they've just had their first duel against each other recently:

So anyway, where I am going with all this?

I know a lot of people got distracted by Phainon's (accidental?) pass at Mydei in the first line, but I think taking a step back and looking at the scene as a whole, in context, makes it even more hilarious and off-the-cuff:

Phainon and Mydei aren't well-acquainted in this scene.

Phainon literally walked up on a guy he barely knows and the first words that fell out of his mouth were "Dan Nicky your bobbies." "I would know that body anywhere."

Even Mydei was weirded out at first!

Like, Phainon has absolute foot-in-mouth syndrome around his new "friend." He spends the whole conversation narrating his own attempts to communicate ("Ah, I see I am unwanted. Instead of leaving, I shall try another tactic. Is it working yet?" and "Yes, yes, yes, it worked!") like this is a remotely normal thing to do around a person you're not even close with yet.

You can see his puppy tail wagging. He wants to be friends with Mydei so bad.

He is actively making up excuses to try to get Mydei to spend time with him here--first the comment about "Yay, you're here!" at the baths like he expects them to bathe together, then the whole "Why don't we go somewhere and have a long conversation about the insights we gained from rolling around in the dirt together?" to finally just flat out asking Mydei to train with him.

It's so charmingly earnest, straightforward, and even a bit awkward that I think this scene is really under-rated by the fans. It's not just another example of Phainon commenting on Mydei's muscles--it's a glimpse into what they were like before they were close and just how much Phainon wanted to connect to Mydei, how willing he was to explore to discover exactly what Mydei would be interested in so that he could seize that common ground between them.

Really a masterclass in showing us fans characterization right on the cusp of changing, and for showcasing both Phainon's charming audacity and Mydei's surprisingly-reserved-around-strangers behavior.

And, since we know the future that memory-Phainon-and-Mydei are headed toward... we also know it worked! Mydei is smiling by the end of the conversation! He and Phainon are going to become vitriolic best buds--er, rivals--and Phainon is going to get all the spars he wants.

Persistence pays off!

[unashamedly-enthusiastic]

Visited a cathedral today with the toddler

It was very odd that somewhere so deeply linked to my childhood is completely foreign to her

'so this is a church, people are quiet here, like a library'

'people have lit these candles as prayers'

'prayers are... prayers are where you wish and hope for something you really want'

'that's actually a very famous lady and a baby'

'look the baby grew up into that man there, lots of people think he was important'

'...no he's not really having a good time is he'

'not because he was naughty'

'ah no the lady wasn't naughty either'

[mikimeiko]

The Fall of the House of Usher | Miniseries (2023), Mike Flanagan

[tbgkaru-woh]

Having fun with MDZS's clan "uniforms"/ dresscodes

there are still hierarchies and some individuality in these that i will follow for the main cast, this is more like "place your OC here" lol

[rullikka]

wow! these gods gay! good for them good for them!

[abrielarnold]

i was able to snag a scene for the rephanimated project! (it looks SO good so far. everyone did an amazing job!!)(super excited to see the whole thing!!)

[sideblogdotjpeg]

post battle, one last short rest