#q reviews

[qrious-k]

I just finished watching Dungeon Meshi Season 1!

Before I started this show, I had no idea Emily Rudd voiced Marcille! I really enjoyed her voice-acting work, even a more than her acting as Nami in the live action One Piece. I can't wait for season 2!

[qloverreviewsfilm]

"nah. i'm gonna do my own thing."

spider-man: across the spider-verse (2023) - 97%

when i first saw spider-man: into the spider-verse (2018) in theaters with a dear friend of mine, it was an amazing experience. i had been a lifelong fan of spider-man noir, and seeing him on screen made me so happy. that was my expectation going into it: "i hope noir is good." little did i know i was in for one of the most innovative movies of all time. not even most innovative animated movie (which it was) or superhero movie (which it was), just one of the most innovative movies i'd ever seen.

that being said, when they announced a sequel, i wasn't surprised at all. i wasn't surprised that it kept being delayed (animation at that level, yeah, it'll take a while). i was surprised, however, when they announced it was going to be in two parts- as opposed to just a second movie and a third movie. trilogies seem commonplace enough in modern film, but a trilogy where two of them are part of the same story... it was interesting! (godfather being the exception because part one and two really do feel like two whole stories on their own).

so, i saw spider-man: across the spider-verse (2023) in an empty theater at noon. i wished i could've gone to a packed showing, but i'm glad i got to have the one on one with the story. it allowed me to feel more immersed. immediately i was astounded at the movie, with gwen's world's colors and style, with the familiarity of her story as a spider-person without it feeling trite at all. i was immediately engaged, and it didn't ever stop.

i think, structurally (anyone who knows me knows i'm in love with the study of story structure), the movie takes a few blows. no scene feels out of place, but some feel they overstay their welcome. some of the overlapping dialogue didn't hit as well as i feel like the movie wanted, to me.

but those being my only critiques, i think that this movie (and its predecessor) are two of the most important movies in the meta-modern era. not only are they built on the expectation of referential storytelling, but they don't take themselves too seriously- they know what they are, 50% fun superhero rollercoaster, 50% serious storytelling. and they balance that so, so well.

and i don't even know what to say about the animation- it surpasses the first one tenfold. it's the most beautifully animated movie i've ever seen. i think this movie and the netflix show arcane are quite literally changing the animation industry for the better. i think animation in media can tell stories that lend themselves to the abstract, to the existential, to the philosophical in ways that live action may have trouble with. not that live action can't do those things, but it takes more skill and intention, in my opinion. i think it's easier for animation to tap into visuals that evoke emotions that aren't as familiar, and therefore more memorable.

maybe i don't know what i'm talking about. but what i do know is that i wish spider-man unlimited got some speaking lines, or more screen time at least. here's hoping he gets a good scene in beyond.

love, q <3

entertainment - 22/24

writing/characters - 17/20

acting/direction - 18/20

cinematography/aesthetic - 24/24

music/sound - 16/16

[soracities]

Fady Joudah, on his new poetry collection "[ ... ]", in an interview with Aria Aber for The Yale Review [ID'd]

[strawbbcake]

I loved this movie so much

when is it my turn to have someone look at me like that smh

[sealingstaff]

【カードキャプターさくら】Qpotcafeとさくらちゃんのコラボカフェ前期に行ってきた！潜入レポ！

[crow-caller]

my anonymous assumption is that you read warrior cats as a kid in an attempt to fit in with all the other kids reading it but you never really got into it. you liked the roleplaying at recess that came from it though

you're nearly right but underestimating my autism. cats were my first special interest (*i highly doubt this is unique for autistic babies). my first word was kitty. I made a songbook where I wrote out the lyrics to varuous public domain singalong songs and changed most of the words to 'Cat' or 'Kitty'. I made a warrior cats role playing card game and played it on my own. I was roleplaying at recess and friends' houses until we were 'too old'. I missed it terribly.

my username is based on an incident that happened when I was in the woods pretending to be a cat.

I belong with the warrior cats.

[yikes077]

Happy Pride! Remember to catch all of your favorite queer shows this month, with all of your favorite queer characters! Shows such as canceled, canceled, canceled, canceled, canceled, canceled, canceled, canceled, canceled, and rupaul’s drag race!!! 

[sealrock]

so this guy hit me over the head with a baseball bat looney tunes style and his place in the story is kinda funny—meet paris' former fiance, agamemnon 'aggie' tiryns. some lore in no particular order:

second son to a mining empire, good-natured but spoiled

has dalmascan and mhachi ancestry, has a natural talent for spellcraft

the tiryns are rivals of the tatlongharis thanks to a 150 year long political feud a la romeo and juliet

elder brother is a soldier for the immortal flames. his name is menelaus and they don't see each other often

was promised to paris when they were kids by the elders of their families as a marriage of convenience to end the bad blood between them

completely ignorant (or at least in denial) to paris' visible disdain of him

showered paris with gifts, praise, and public displays of loyalty and devotion

was meant to marry paris when they became adults, only for paris to run away from home to become an adventurer, and later the warrior of light

despite being rejected, aggie doesn't hold that against paris. he is probably paris' biggest supporter

can you feel the love in the air?

[datshitrandom]

Darren Criss | 2023 | Random

[aleapintoreverie]

days at the morisaki bookshop (2003) by satoshi yagisawa

july reads // summer vacay // rain sounds in the background

[fearandhatred]

@knifeforkspooncup wanted angst fics so here's a rec list from the very few fanfics i have had time to read lmaoo. some of these are in my other rec list but that was a shorter and more general one so i'll put them here again

mourning doves by sleepyimpulse (22k words, 7 chapters)

“I’m sorry,” he registered himself saying between heaving sobs. “I’m so sorry, Crowley, I’m so sorry. Forgive me, please, please forgive me.” He hadn’t meant to say it like that, he knew the words were all wrong (he would never find the right ones). But the pain was coming at him in every direction and something, something had to give, and so he clung to Crowley like a life preserver. Crowley bent his body over Aziraphale’s and slowly, surely, pressed a kiss to his bloodied forehead. “I can’t,” he whispered, and Aziraphale went unconscious. (Aziraphale falls, post season 2)

i've recced this before and i'll do it again! this is my very first bookmarked gomens fic and it's so delicious. perfect amount of angst and such a thoughtful exploration of forgiveness

Ouroboros by midnightdragons (7k words, 1 chapter)

“Oh.” Muriel had frowned again, their voice confused. “Then . . . if they were special, why did he leave them?” Crowley thought that his expression must have spoken louder than any words ever could have, because Muriel had rushed to change the subject, and they hadn’t mentioned Aziraphale after that. An obligatory ‘Crowley coping terribly and Aziraphale coming to his senses’ fic because I finally watched s2 and I have a lot of Feelings (ft. Crowley being a sort-of parent to Muriel, sort-of friends with Nina and Maggie, and drinking enough alcohol to kill at least an entire civilization)

it is not a good omens angst rec list without a crowley breaking down post-season 2 fic :) and this is that fic. she is that girl

Zmija by Himitsu_no (3k words, 4 chapters)

Aziraphale would laugh and his fingers find their way into the red locks with practiced ease, and he'd bend to kiss the top of his head. "Did they do that, though? The evil deeds." Crowley would smile despite himself, eyes closed and leaning into the caress. "About a dozen, maybe. The rest were just... ordinary humans doing ordinary stuff." There'd be a long pause in which the angel would take it all in, and the demon would replay many of it in his mind with unease. Then Aziraphale would speak again, voice barely a whisper, "How long were you in Mesopotamia after the flood, my love?"

if u asked me to talk about this fic i would say 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂 bc oh this hurt. idk if it's just me though because characters with kids is my sore spot lmao i have read this fic once and never again. gorgeous beautiful poetic heartbreaking don't even talk to me

Diffusing Lights, Confusing Times by snek_of_eden (15k words, 3 chapters)

Aziraphale pulled the door open slowly and stood in the entranceway. He wore an old-fashioned nightgown that was creamy in colour, and his eyes were cloudy with sleep. “Crowley…” He inhaled sharply when a drop of blood dripped on his bare foot, and Crowley winced. “Are you alright? Oh Heavens, are you bleeding?” Crowley mustered up a smile. He took a step forward, and his head began to spin. “Hey, Angel.” Then he stumbled into Aziraphale’s arms and everything started to turn fuzzy. *** Hell is terrible and Crowley turns to Aziraphale when he has nowhere left to go

basically what it says in the summary! hurt crowley and aziraphale comforts him. crowley is sad but aziraphale is also sad. angst and communication!! i don't usually read a lot of physical hurt/comfort but this is so good

when i knew love’s perfect ache by sugarskulled (1.8k words, 1 chapter)

A demon can't touch that which has been made holy by God. Crowley knows this well as anyone. And Aziraphale? Aziraphale is so holy it burns.

this is quite possibly my favourite good omens fic of all time i think about it so often bro. i love when problems don't just resolve themselves but they make it work. the angst is so good in both the fic itself and in the future implications of it (why does this sound like i'm writing a research paper)

something sweet and blue by perilit (7.2k words, 4 chapters)

Crowley’s not breathing. They don’t technically need to, but the lack of it is so jarring that for a minute, Aziraphale just stands there and trembles, overwhelmed. Lord, what have I done? Aziraphale returns from Heaven after a year away, and discovers Crowley has all but given up. Before he can put things to rights, he’ll have to coax Crowley back to living.

what? you want another post-season 2 crowley breakdown? fantastic. this is that but dialed up to 11. this is the kind of self-indulgent fic i search for because we will never see it in canon and it hurts so good

Haunted By Something Still Alive by WaitingToBeBroken (4k words, 1 chapter)

Aziraphale needs Crowley's help with raising the reincarnation of Jesus. Problem is, Crowley won't even look at him.

what's that? you want ANOTHER- ok no this isn't a crowley breakdown but it's him having to deal with aziraphale being back and the journey they take together. ft. nanny crowley!!!!!!! so many gorgeous moments in this

that concludes the angst recs for now. thank u for coming

[starriegalaxy]

Hello! :'D sorry for the anonymous ask! It's my first time making one and I'm rather shy-

I just wanted to ask incase you prefer y/n to be drawn or depicted the way they're intended to be just like in their character sheet or are we allowed to self-insert our ocs in fear factor when it comes to making Fanart? (just for the sillies and to draw the interactions in certain scenes). I've been wanting to draw Fanart of your au for quite some time now so i mustered up the courage to shoot an ask to clarify first!

I also want to say that I absolutely adore fear factor!! It's one of my favorites fics I come back to and read all over again (Even the oneshots, my favorite one being the comfort fic /silly). I love the way you portray each character with their personalities and mannerisms, I also love the interactions Y/n has with the Glamrocks and the other side characters too!

Aushshs I'm really sorry for rambling- I hope you don't mind- but thank you for taking your time to read through this and have a great day/night!

...

I. I . I!!!!!!!!!

Thank you so much OH MY GOSH????

I'm!!! 😭😭😭😭😭😭‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️

Sobbing at 4am when I saw this, I -

(experiencing various big emotions and is turning into space jelly while mentally melting down in a good way)

Okok I'm calm enough to answer now (inhale exhale flapping hands to dispel all the excitement slightly so I don't actually explode from how thoughtful and cute this is)

Okay firstly, it is a self-insert fic! So feel free to use an oc or your sona ^^ you may also include the original depiction (personally cuz I wanna see what my Y/N would look like in others style 👀✨✨✨) and no worries about going anon, if it helps for you to ask then all's good :] I'm just happy it's a nice message haha and yeah I don't mind if you wanna insert OCs too for a bit more variety in your drawings ^^

WHOA WAIT DID YOU SAY YOU WANNA DRAW CERTAIN INTERACTIONS IN THE FIC - (flatlines)

BY ALL MEANS, PLEASE BE MY GUEST AND ABSOLUTELY TAG ME PLSPLSPLSPLS!!!!

Also. That. Is. So. Mcfrickin. SWEET OF YOU ACKKKK 😭😭😭‼️‼️‼️Thanks so, so much for giving my fic a chance and even giving it a reread 🥹🥹🥹??? Like what!!!!! I never thought my fic would be something people reread for comfort even 😭😭😭😭 and the oneshots too!!! 😭💥💕🫂‼️

Admittedly, I personally still feel quite rusty with the interactions for the side characters but I'm happy you like them nonetheless!! Rn, the most difficult one to do is Roxy and Monty HAHAHA - Btw, I do hope this includes the kiddos too 👀✨ I really do wanna draw em' cuz they're also kinda like my pseudo kids <333

Oh and absolute pls ramble again, I'd be happy to read other thoughts you've had for the fic!!! And thank you again for sparing time to send me this, it seriously seriously made my day 🥹💖 have a nice day / night too !!

[soracities]

Fady Joudah, on his new poetry collection "[ ... ]", in an interview with Aria Aber for The Yale Review [ID'd]

[elfhunk]

justice for q force & high guardian spice

i was yelling on the bad bird website and i forgot i can also yell here now so i want to yell about the completely embarrassing legacy that we, the collective royal we, all of us hooligans on the internet, cursed high guardian spice and q force with.

this is for two reasons:

i think the way our cultural forums decided to burn these shows stake because we did not personally like them extremely sucked, especially if you were a queer person in those industries watching it happen, especially if you were one of the many queer people working on these shows.

they were just genuinely super funny if you gave them a chance and didn't prescribe preconceived notions of what good queer animation is supposed to be.

the cosmos is compelling me to yell about this. so i am. you cannot stop me.

so, both of these shows were burdened with a press cycle basically yelling at everyone from the hills, okay! hey! the new gay show is here! if you're gay you should like it!

anyone familiar with how media works should already be going like "aw geeze" if you weren't there for this in real time, but the resulting shitshow was heard round twitter, tumblr, youtube, and probably other places i don't use as much.

instead of cheering on these underdogs and politely recommending people give them a shot, or just politely stating if they were or were not to our tastes, it became like... a cool fad among posters on all platforms to explain why these shows were actively intrinsically, irreparably bad!

when the shows were perfectly fine, with some mediocre lows but overall high highs!

q force, for every softball joke about lesbian uhauls makes five more genuinely hysterically specific jokes while treating its cast with a huge degree of respect. if you did not get these jokes, that's fine, but lines like "call me miss congeniality honey cause i'm a femme top with a gun" and the entire endgame of eurovision hosted by a small european nation whose economy is based entirely around christmas (twink's favorite holiday from harry potter) live forever in my mind. it was a stupid little adult comedy, but the characters talked like me and my friends. characters like twink especially, was allowed to be funny and silly while still respected by the people around him. i cannot express to you how rare it is to find stories where a flamboyant drag queen twink is given his degree of nuance and development.

on the other hand, high guardian spice was doomed from the outset, but we all jumped at blood in the water instead of letting it exist as it was. it takes no research effort to learn that high guardian spice was yanked around through development hell for years and very clearly had no time or money to make their original pitch a reality.

i'm the first person to admit high guardian spice is, put kindly, a complete mess, but it's a mess with an unbelievable amount of heart and charm if you just engage with it organically instead of making fun of every little production error. i cannot stress enough how little time or money they had to make this thing. it was straight up unethical.

and despite that production hell... it was funny? high guardian spice was straight up just way funnier than most cartoons lately if you just engaged with the jokes as jokes and got the hate-watch stick out from under you. the character chemistry was super compelling, the voice performances had that bee & puppycat amateur charm, and it was a viewing experience so genuinely enjoyable my friends and i have literally watched it like three times from to back.

so, this completely mediocre and janky western anime should've just fallen by the wayside right? nope! it became political baby! it became about wokeness ruining animation, and we all participated in that narrative because we thought that one scene where a character says he's transgender very bluntly was awkward!

the way that everyone, mostly without watching more than ten minutes of the first episode, decided to jump on a hate train spearheaded by 4chan to completely destroy the show's chance at survival was... quite frankly? pretty embarrassing! it was genuinely super awful to watch otherwise reasonable members of our community to act so callously because something was... cringe? annoying? even if high guardian spice was as bad as everyone was saying it was, this kind of behavior is kind of straight up cruel if you took a second to listen for the cacophony of dogwhistling and the way that the cast & crew of the show was being spoken about.

as these things go, it became an easy way to punch down and earn some sweet engagement by posting jokes you thought sucked or where budgets and production timelines faltered.

it was really stupid. i am not asking for an apology for these shows, but i am asking that you give them a chance if you previously avoided them or otherwise bounced off. if you don't like them, that's okay, i don't care. i just want these works by queer writers, artists, and actors to... actually get to exist on its own terms, instead of being swept up into a cruel and pointless circus of engagement farming.

because you know what the industry takeaway extremely is going to be moving forward? guess people hate this, let's make sure future products for this market receive less time and funding.

if they do get made? gotta make sure they completely avoid all of the meatier and mainstream alienating subject matters both shows genuinely got into if you gave them the time of day.

every time the next gay movie or television show comes out in this online fandom space i have my eyes peeled for the kind of buffoonery that we subjected q force and high guardian spice to because they had the gall to make queer cartoons that were not for everyone.

they were specific, they were weird, and they were rough around the edges. and they've stuck with me because of that.

so far, it does not feel great to see media with non-threateningly nothing representation where characters peck each other on the lips briefly and wave a flag but otherwise never engage with each other, their identities, or their communities, and have everyone praise it because it didn't dare say anything specific enough to alienate anyone.

i would rather not connect with a gay character in a movie or cartoon because they just weren't the type of character or story i connect with... instead of not connecting with a gay character because there was nothing there to connect with in the first place!

okay i'm done i love you goodbye.

[quartings-main-blog]

Pseudo Harem Reviews: Episode 12 (Finale!!)

To preface this review, I just want to add that if you somehow haven’t watched this anime yet- Absolutely do!! It’s one of the sweetest most wholesome romcoms you’ll ever see in your life, and I can’t recommend it more!! Now-

ALRIGHT ANIME ADAPTATION, YOU WIN!! YOU WIN!!! I’M SORRY FOR NEARLY EVERY PACING CRITICISM I GAVE Q_Q!!! Wow, what a show! What a story!! What a journey!!! I’m so happy with everything in this episode! Actually moving the confession all the way back here, giving us an anime-original onscreen kiss, giving us a brand new scene of the wedding reception! All so so good!

If I had to still critique a few small things- first, I’m a bit confused that they cut the penultimate chapter. Despite all the flak I hear about it from the fandom, I actually liked the bonus little moral that Rin might be busy with work sometimes but it’s never as bad as you think and she’ll always have time for Eiji, namely during their college years. Second, and this is even more minor, I would’ve sworn Rin’s response to Eiji’s proposal was partly as the personas- maybe the director got it wrong, maybe I got it wrong, who knows?

Sidenote- Kiri stays winning with the anime as they added lines where she says her acting career is taking off too! Sidenote- it was very vaguely hinted at in the manga but with these added scenes did anyone get more of the vibe that she had a crush on Rin and jealousy of Eiji?

Now, back to what I liked! As soon as I saw we were getting no opening to save on time, I knew we were getting something good this week. The animation while still not flawless, was much better than usual- the show seems to still struggle on 4/5ths angles (just like the manga, which made it kinda hard for me to do fanart) and every lingering shot on Rin looked AMAZING. I think the studio knew what they were doing, putting so much extra focus on this finale! The soundtrack was really nice and subtle and the additional scenes were great!

It's been such a wonderful journey following this series along with everyone! Now to pray that we get the full Rin and Eiji version of the opening, a good dub, and hopefully some amazing new series from the mangaka! Just like with Rin and Eiji, the journey is never truly over!!