#please at least one person write this

[im-not-a-l0ser]

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Michie page 80—

[sunnyyflowerrs]

i wish more people watched link click (shiguang daili ren) bc it’s genuinely so peak in every single way.

art style? beautiful, so many soft colors and pastels and the design is so nice.

animation? so clear and beautiful (it’s bilibili)

soundtrack? absolutely fire. i would listen to it in my free time even if it wasn’t an OST, its all lofi beats type and the theme songs are actually so beautiful and bangers

concept? so intriguing - deals with the ramifications of time travel, and the time travel world fits so nicely into our own.

plot? exquisite. i won’t say more.

strong female characters? ✅✅✅

well written? so well written that i cried multiple times.

fanservice or weird stuff? NONE

homoerotic friendship between the two protagonists that would do anything for each other and have a grumpy x sunshine dynamic? ✅✅✅(x10000) they may not have invented it, but lu guang and cheng xiaoshi have perfected it. (dynamic wise they remind me of high school satosugu)

i would give ANYTHING to watch this show for the first time again, and this is my manifesto as to why you NEED to watch link click if you haven’t yet, this show deserves all the love and more

[right-there-ride-on]

I hate being obsessed with diejoni because it’s like the ultimate what-if of a relationship. what even happened here. ten bazillion hints of something we never got to see. why is johnny apparently the only person diego trusts or is even unprofessional with. why can johnny read him like an open book. yeah johnny treats him like a cheating ex don’t question it. for some reason diego is kind of obsessed with him. they know exactly what the other is going to do all the time in any circumstance despite allegedly not spending all that much time with each other. it’s natural okay! it’s like all the puzzle pieces are there but there’s never actual closure. unless there is. but not with each other. i feel insane

[thejadearia]

Speaking of Shimazaki, I learned a lot about myself this week making these terrible memes so I could drop them in the discord chat as I made my friends watch MP100. What I learned was, I have a terrible sense of humor (actually I already knew that, I just didn't realize it was this bad) and that the only thing I enjoy more than watching Shimazaki kick ass, is Shimazaki getting his ass kicked. (I'll have more of these for next week when we get to Serizawa's stuff! Sorry!)

[tea-cat-arts]

"Madam Yu would be a Karen/ treat minimum wage employees like shit-" literally the only servant she's shown abusing is Wei Wuxian (and that's because he's the victim of a proxy war between her and Jiang Fengmian around the idea of him being adopted into the family, not because of his class). Madam Yu's two handmaid's love and respect her, and Madam Yu actually defends them when Wang Lingjiao tries being a Karen to them. She also tells Wang Lingjiao to fuck off when she demands the Jiang servants bring her tea.

Also, Karens are unpleasant women, but not all unpleasant women are Karens. That term is about entitlement and being unreasonable (and often times, racist). Madam Yu is mean and unpleasant to talk to, but she keeps most of her interactions brief and probably doesn't have the time or mental energy to be a Karen or hold a grudge that long. If you want an actual example of a Karen in mdzs, Wang Lingjiao is right there

[hanzajesthanza]

dandelion is indeed the worst but if he’s not present in the next book i would legitimately be sorrowful as the whole thing will become a slog . you basically cannot have the “short stories” era-of-the-timeline iteration of geralt without dandelion, it would be like eating unbuttered bread.

though it’s not like season of storms did them dirty, i wasn’t disappointed with it (… with regards to them), but since it’s literally been over 20 years since the saga was finished i’m trying to prepare for any potential reality

[gojoest]

at the end of the day i am so very picky about the satoru content i choose to consume :,)

[laniidae-passerine]

catch me laughing in the club awkwardly because this season has a 19 year old blonde female companion from London, a space travelling left of law brunette queer boy who flirts heavily with the doctor, absolutely zero writers of colour and no mention of sensitivity readers…….and next season the new companion is a woman of colour. uh oh!

[itsmistyeyedbi]

There's so much I want to write and so much I want to read, but I can't fully engage with much of anything right now and it's killing me😭

[charlesreedscoolhat]

Charles: and how do I contact you in the future?

Johannes: you don't 🌟 bye you soggy bitch ✨️🕺✨️🕺🟨🟨🟨

[suddencolds]

almost done... 🙏

[daisywords]

I will do my best but at the end of the day "good representation" is always going to be secondary to my quest to create the most specific Little Guys in the world sorry

[clownjacket]

If Kipperlilly DOES end up betraying Porter/Jace as part of a secret other scheme she has (whether good or evil) and it has to do with saving Lucy, I just know she’s going to be a bitch about it and pull a ‘sorry, I only save High Five Heroes’ before leaving her other friends to die or some shit. And then she will take her final form: Magic Betty from Adventure Time, betraying her allies and saving her frost gf at the expense of the world. It would also parallel what Ankarna is going through (‘your girlfriend’s out of town, it sucks’, becoming a little imperialist rage machine under the influence of Porter/Sunstone but not being able to fully turn on Lucy despite going against her values and turning into a violent weirdo). This is my wish. My dream. I am manifesting it. Magic Betty Kipperlilly I believe in you.

[nyatbinary-81]

i feel like im going insane has anyone else noticed the sheer amount of times faded is associated with the puppet in the logbook. or asked how faded knows cc well enough to ask such specific questions if theyre supposedly a stranger who shares an animatronic with cc. does anyone question why the vengeful spirit is a random kid.

[houkagokappa]

My Desucon Frostbite 2025 report

Although it's been a year since my last convention, I've been attending Desucon and Desucon Frostbite religiously for more than a decade by now, so I have the whole con experience down to a routine. While the convention these days may not be as exciting as it once was, I still very much enjoy going twice a year!

Here's a day-by-day recollection of what I got up to under the cut since it got long.

My schedule for this year was mostly the same as it's been previous years, except I went to more programs than usual. On Friday I listened to an introduction to Nendoroids. I haven't been collecting any since a friend of mine gifted me the NO. 6 pair in 2023, or I found Utsutsu at the Desucon Frostbite flea market in 2019. The friend I was with now stopped collecting even longer ago, but there wasn't much else to do on Friday evening. Since we weren't new to Nendoroids we didn't expect to get much out of the program, but we did have one distant dream for there to be a mention of the SB69 Cyan Nendoroid. The presenter was very enthusiastic and had a great stage presence so it was fun to listen to her talk. I was a little grossed out hearing there are currently around 2700 of those little guys and then a miracle happened - one of the slides had Cyan on it!!!! We both squealed!!!!!!!!! 10/10 presentation, would fangirl over Cyan again.

The main event on Saturday was the guest of honor program, an interview with Tsubasa Yonaga. I mostly associate him with Nagisa from Free! and not much else, so I wasn't super excited to have him in Finland, but he was very cute and fun, as seiyuu's tend to be. During the opening ceremony on Friday he knew how to play along with the hosts by accepting a challenge to try Finnish/Lahti specialties (a Runeberg torte, a semla (I can't believe that's the English name for laskiaispulla) and a 'nikumagu' "meat cup", a Lahti city specialty of kebab meat in a cup (don't ask, I've never tried it and never will). Also, going to the sauna and ice swimming, which he seemed somewhat concerned over (as he did over the meat cup, the way the audience laughed at it).

During the interview I liked how he kept looking and waving at the audience, making heart signs with his hands, aiming to connect with his fans. As for what he shared, he told us he decided to become a seiyuu after being bullied and developing a complex about his voice in elementary school, discovering the profession when his teacher wrote down the kanji for seiyuu (lit. excelling with your voice) and realizing he could turn his weakness into a strength/weapon. He revealed his good taste as he mentioned Akira Ishida as his favourite seiyuu growing up and one of his current role models. He said he got the role of Nagisa without an audition, which was apparently the case for most of the cast on Free! except Haruka, and during recordings Mamoru Miyano would be a (fun) nuisance (as expected). A performance he got a lot of praise for and was particularly happy with was Nagisa during the 2nd season of Free! when he opens up about his feelings. A role he'd like to play that he hasn't already would be a mascot from Precure, or a last-boss type villain. He wasn't able to pick a favourite role of his as they were all equally precious to him. Something relating to the production side of things I found interesting was that recordings for games are done individually, as opposed to groups like anime recordings are, which makes them more challenging when you can't play off anyone else's lines and presence. Lastly, Yonaga wasn't (politely) exactly thrilled to visit Finland in January, cautiously mentioning how everyone had told him it's a nice place to visit in the summer, but said that the views were pretty and that Suomenlinna (which he was brought to before the con) was impressive. Unfortunately his wishes for what to do before leaving were seeing the Northern Lights or Santa Claus, and those things are NOT happening in Lahti. Either way, I hope he enjoyed his time because he was a very nice guest!

The other program we went to on Saturday was a talk about vampires in anime and manga, because who doesn't love vampires? It started with a brief history lesson and overview of the most significant and popular works that molded the genre/myth in Western literature/popular culture and how it was brought over and continued to develop on its own in Japan. I thought it was interesting how certain trends appeared in the West and Japan at the same time independently of each other, like the more sympathetic/tortured soul portrayals found in Interview with the Vampire and Poe no Ichizoku, or the high-school romances with vampires popularized by Twilight, which were apparently also central in Vampire Knight, which started publishing right before the first Twilight book came out. The presenters spent most of the time going over different works like those and I became inspired to pick up a bunch of them, such as Vassalord. (which I rarely hear mentioned, but when I do, it's always someone's personal favourite), Trump (bad "Trump trigger warning" jokes aside, the art looks very nice), the Blood franchise (especially the CLAMP one, I think my boy Watanuki will make an appearance somewhere there) and DRCL Midnight Children (as the art is to die for). Goddamn, vampire works are hot.

On Saturday evenings, me and my friend have a tradition of trying out different restaurants in Lahti for the brief period of time they're in business. This year we went to Santa Fé, as it was close to our hotel. It was a bit pricey for what it was, but had good food and drinks.

A new thing we tried out this year was going to a café for a takeaway drink on Saturday and a proper breakfast on Sunday morning, which we think will become a new tradition for us!

Back to our old traditions, we always attend the AMV-competition on Sunday mornings, and this year was no different. The quality was very good and I was particularly happy to see AMV's for Mononoke and 3-gatsu no Lion right at the start. My favourite AMV might've been this mashup with NGE and Lain, even though I'm not usually a fan of combining two different shows like that. The editing looked technically challenging/tedious, fit both shows, was clearly inspired by/partially lifted right from NGE, but complementary and additive, with its own twist as well. Then I don't know how to feel about the winner of the audience vote, since that was a DMMD jumpscare. I'll never escape that BLVN, but at least I'm in this boat together with my friend, as we have a shared history with that game.

Soon after, and right before the end of the con, it was time for my most anticipated program, about the Monogatari girls and what makes a well written female character. My expectations were met, the presenter knew what she was talking about, had an academic angle and was actually analyzing the characters and the work. She talked mostly about Hanekawa and Nadeko and chara-type based writing as opposed to narrative-based writing, as described by Hiroki Azuma in his book Otaku: Japan's Database Animals. It's interesting how Monogatari keeps (at least trying) having its cake and eating it too, providing fanservice and sexualizing its characters, but turning it around by revealing something human about them as it does so. I never think about any of the main girls as "bad" people (in the sense of not being nice to be around), which is something the presenter said about both Hanekawa and Nadeko, but as a positive, since that makes them great female characters to her, as they're allowed to be flawed and fully fledged with interests and hobbies and lives that move forward even when they're not on screen. I also liked the way the presenter compared Monogatari to other works and had specific and appropriate examples to back up her claims. She did a good job narrowing the topic down when there's so much you could say and get into, but at the same time I would've loved hearing more about some of her claims and opinions (what do you mean Nadeko Medusa is one of the weaker arcs??????).

During the ending ceremony Yonaga reported having tried all three foods (the semla filling was jam), and enjoying them (even the weird lihamuki/nikumagu meat one), but skipping the ice swimming and sauna.

The most exciting part of the ending ceremony is always the announcement of the next guest, and this time around I was super excited to hear Kamome Shirahama will be attending Desucon 2025 in June! I haven't been keeping up with Tongari Boushi no Atelier / Witch Hat Atelier, but I adore her and I'm super excited to see and hear what she has to say!!!

Some other fun things about the weekend include me dressing up in kimono and hakama for the first time for a con, which was super fun! A little stressful too, since I had to bring more stuff with me than usual and spend more time putting it on compared to regular clothes, but absolutely worth it and I'm planning on doing it again in the future :)

And then finally here's my con loot!! I always love getting some manga and this time I'm happy with my investment in a CLAMP oneshot for 2€. I got some more washi tapes for my collection and after sleeping on it, I got a sticker book with a Dungeon Meshi design that fits my aesthetics and doesn't scream "anime merch" in a way I love for usable products like these.

Thanks for reading all of this, or even just part of my report as it got obscenely long. I can't wait for the next convention in five months!

[unbearable-lightness-of-ink]

so anyway I really did start compiling a kinyarwanda/english dictionary/grammar guide out of all the random resources i've been hoarding on my phone (it doesn't have to be great, it just has to be better than searching multiple different files every time I'm looking for some obscure vocab or grammar detail) and one of these resources is some PDF uploaded to the internet archive and it's... not great. from the writing and contents it's clearly

old (my guess is mid-1900s. I don't remember colonial and post-colonial Rwandan history specifically enough to guess well here, but based on some of the typos, it was done on a typewriter and then scanned with OCR)

intended for missionaries (some examples of actual sentences in the "translate this" exercises include "I praise God because He saved me and He gave me peace and joy" and, I shit u not, "The blind man cannot see the Word of God, but he can hear and he can know the love of Jesus." it's. well for one thing this is basically useless vocabulary for me, and also it's cringe af)

written by someone who was not a linguist (at one point instead of just saying "if T is preceded by an unvoiced consonant, it turns into D" they give you a list of every unvoiced consonant and then recommend that you invent a mnemonic phrase to memorise the list?! why?)

written by someone who was shit with pronunciation (legit so many places where they're like "there's no way to describe how this sounds, you just have to ask someone to make the sound for you" my good bitch the phoneme might not be in english but I could describe it just fine. skill issue.)

but the thing that's really killing me about all this is that every time they try to explain tonal vowels or phonemes that aren't in english, they tell you to "ask an African to say it for you."

an. an what now? an African? babe there are approximately 1.5 billion people in Africa. Africa accounts for about 20% of the land on earth, it's the second-biggest continent, and it has an estimated two thousand living languages spoken throughout the continent.

and kinyarwanda? it has maybe 15-25 million native speakers, depending on which source I trust. it's spoken (almost*) exclusively in rwanda, which is the 9th smallest country in Africa--and that roundup includes islands off the coast of the continent. It has the second densest population in Africa but it still only has like 13 million people in it. and it's a very unique language. its closest relatives do not have the same phonemes that kinyarwanda has, and its closest relatives are also spoken by relatively few people. I don't know enough about kirundi to say much but I do know that it doesn't have the same vowel tones in all instances and it doesn't have some of the same consonant clusters. and the more widely spoken related languages that you're more likely to stumble on someone who knows how to speak? they're even worse for a reference; ask someone who speaks kiswahili to pronounce kinyarwanda for you and they will not pronounce the difference between, say, umuceri (rice) and umucyeri (berry), or the tonal difference between words like umusambi (floor mat) and umusambi (crested crane).

so, like. it's just absolutely sending me, this random white lady who was obviously a colonialist missionary, bothering to make a whole language guide to teach me how to proselytise in kinyarwanda, but along the way she's like "just ask an african--any african--how to say this" lady less than 1% of them are going to know this language but go off i guess

*almost because there's the diaspora of rwandan expats and immigrants in other countries plus the banyamulenge which is a whole aspect of it that has so much fraught history on all sides that I won't even try to say something intelligent about it, it's totally not my place/something i'm educated enough about, but to my knowledge most of them speak dialects that are more or less dissimilar to kinyarwanda; kinyamulenge and kinyabwisha are not the same as kinyarwanda. take it from my munyamulenge coworker who could never pronounce the difference between c and cy