#random subplots

[catinfroghat]

I think the biggest grievance I have with severance season 2 was they still gave reghabi absolutely nothing and I think this goes along with the no black writers criticism quite well because you have this morally grey genius neurosurgeon who is also an older black woman so of course she literally just turns up to help the protagonist out of nowhere acts mysterious and then disappears again. We know nothing about why she turned against Lumon how she developed the reintegration technique how she managed to get in touch with Petey/convince him to reintegrate. It's a mystery show and we don't need all the answers straight away but even just some interiority for her would have been nice what are her beliefs is she feeling anything after the murder she committed how about after accidentally killing a patient does she have a family where has she been living all this time if she's on the run what's her history with Cobel just a crumb please

[kevinsdsy]

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kevaaron (crack) socmed au (pt. 2): the first sebastian tweet is inspired by @minyard-05’s inbox— i’m obsessed with orpheus’ sebastian & aaron dynamic it keeps me thinking 24/7 hehe you guys will definitely see more of their dynamic in this au but i’m also trying to establish the places of the future foxes & katelyn in the au

tag list: @kevindavidday @minyard-05 @afidiofobia @aceadoxography @glendover @mooniism @candydancey @starbrrr @heartstringgs

[greatwyrmgold]

So, after the Dandadan dudududes beat up a kaiju, it shrank to human size and a girl popped out. That girl promptly kissed Okarun, causing chaos. Once they borrow a semi-functional translator from their local friendly alien, the girl says that her name is Vamola and she came to Earth looking for a powerful person to fight, and if she lost to that person she'd marry them.

Kinta butts in, pointing out that Okarun did not actually beat Vamola, emphasizing his contribution. Momo and Aira later bring up their critical role. Beating Vamola's kaiju suit was a team effort! Vamola ignores them and sticks with Okarun, because that produces the most romantic "drama," and that seems to be the entire reason for this plot point.

The two big problems I have with this are that it doesn't seem to go anywhere (which may be a premature judgement so I will not mention that again in this post) and that I've seen it before. Not only is "new character threatens to start a romantic relationship with one of the leads" something I've seen a million times before—three to five times in the Ranma½ reboot alone!—it's something that's happened before in Dandadan specifically, with a girl expressing romantic interest in Okarun, and with Momo reacting in a similar way.

If Vamola's going to introduce romantic complications, it should be something new. For instance:

Vamola: [...]and if I lose, the powerful person and I get married. Okarun: But I didn't beat you on my own. Heck, I fell out of the giant robot pretty early. Everyone beat you by working together. Kinta: Especially me! Vamola: Oh. I see. Vamola: So all of you beat me together? Momo: That's what Okarun said. Vamola: Then I guess all of you will marry me together.

[booksandpaperss]

the annoying thing about romantasy is that it’s using fantasy’s name is vain. it’s literally just a romance book with a fantasy backdrop like fuck offffff ur exactly the same as those ‘enemies’ to lovers that are rlly just petty rivals to lovers in a coffee shop books. which I have nothing against there is a place for trashy romance novels but DO NOT. try to undercover slip that shit into my beloved fantasy it has taken over my fave genre and it’s annoying as hell

[distractionpie]

the thing is the sensible thing to do from the start would be what they eventually did: go direct to the mom and kid and explain and ask for a DNA test so they could prove to the bereaved mom that it wasn't her child and resolve the conflict. and the family were willing to do a DNA test and that did resolve it so there was no reason the investigation couldn't start with that much simpler approach rather than exhuming what they believed would be corpse of an infant in search of physical evidence preserved for nine years, what exactly was the point of padding the episode with all the empty coffin stuff??

[thebestbobaflavour]

if i told you i had been writing a fic that is an AU where Dragon Age 2 and Poldark (2015 series/books) happen simultaneously and it would be told from a PoV of Ross' and Francis' half-elf cousin (who holds a fragment of Andruil bc i gotta tie it to my Inquisitor's plotline) who tries to live out their quiet life in the outskirts of Kirkwall (which replaces Truro) and somehow gets mixed into the shenanigans of a fellow named Hawke – would you be mad at me?

it feels illegal and it's SO NICHE i am gonna cry. i could do anything productive and here I am thinking about how to incorporate a magical terrorist into 18th century Cornwall

[prettyboysdontlookatexplosions]

btw if you are interested in specifically the "people developing emotional 'bonds' with things that are not real alive human or sentient" element of some of the more extreme but real and troubling chatbot use cases, sherry turkle's alone together was kind of billed as a book about the problems with social media when it came out but the first half, which i found much more interesting when i read it, was actually about human-robot interactions and the already documented reality that it's very hard for many people to interact with something that behaves in what is perceived as a lifelike manner without mentally grafting qualities of life-having onto it. really interesting stuff!

[incubationformadness]

[milesofstars]

i really wanna read more classics that are like,, weird and existential and still entertaining

like with the sort of wet cat protagonists you only get in dostoevsky novels (cough, rodya), mixed with the weird horror you'd find in a magnus archives episode or jsut some bizarre plot like a kafka novel, and so many underlying homosexual themes

but i have no idea how to actually find more classic books aside from the ones everyone seems to talk about (looking at you dracula and frankenstein and pride&prejudice... not saying theyre bad at ALL i just see them a lot)

where do you even FIND that sort of stuff? is it just pure luck? i will gladly take book recs

[coricomile]

Every pair of random attractive men get at least a half hour of romance/horny on main in this show for no reason at all but to see them kiss. This show is nothing but vibes and I love every moment.

[homeless-clefairy]

You know what would be amazing? If Princess Maker 5 had a remake and rather than have 30 year olds interested in your daughter and you having to scramble to prevent those from getting close, let the 30 years old get interested in you.

[greatwyrmgold]

On prior posts where I criticized/complained about Vamola (Dandadan) saying she wanted to marry Okarun, people said I didn't get it, that things would be explained later. "The translation is incomplete and a lot of context is missing from it." "You have to look beyond the surface, to understand Tatsu’s vision." That kind of stuff.

Well, I finished the Space Globalists arc, then the rest of Dandadan, and apparently I should have made this post after the Space Globalists arc, because they were talking about the really basic stuff in that arc.

I'll start with the people who implied there was some deeper reason for Vamola wanting to marry a strong guy. Chapter 105:

For the record, if you had asked me to guess why Vamola wanted to marry a strong guy when I read chapter 72, I would have said "eugenics" in a half-sarcastic way that refers to pretty much this exact scenario, except for it being something she wanted and not something her de facto mom told her to do.

Wanting to marry a strong guy to have strong kids is the obvious hack answer for why the super-strong lady wants to get beaten up and then marry the guy who beat her up. It's not interesting unless you find a new angle to dig at it from. It's especially not interesting if it's just something the lady was told to want.

Next, the people who said Vamola didn't just go for Okarun because she attributed the Great Kinta's victory to Okarun. Chapter 106 explains why.

So Vamola didn't decide to marry the person who beat her in a fight. Her suit says Okarun's power level is over 8,000 and decides that he must be the strong guy she should marry.

On one hand, marrying a guy you just met makes more sense than marrying a guy who spent several minutes beating you senseless. And it didn't make sense to attribute Great Kinta's victory to one of the guys who fell out before the fighting got serious.

On the other hand, this doesn't mate Vamola's interest in Okarun interesting. I was expecting something like "Vamola saw Okarun do something nice" or "Vamola saw Okarun being isolated and felt kinship," not "Vamola saw Okarun and his high power level".

That's the issue I had with Vamola's romantic declaration overall. Some people seemed to misunderstand that, arguing as though I thought it was illogical or a plot hole orunderexplained, or as though I just didn't like moving the Momo/Okarun romance plot forward.

That's just not true, especially not that last one. A big part of why I find Vamola's interest in Okarun uninteresting is that it's not moving the romance plot forward. Vamola saying she wants to marry Okarun doesn't really push Momo or Okarun towards their big confession, or add new character dynamics to the pot, or do anything that Aira trying to confess to Okarun didn't.

We saw how Okarun reacts to a girl expressing direct romantic interest in him via an unwanted kiss, and we saw how Momo reacts to a girl expressing interest in Okarun. The big difference is that Aira's an abrasive headstrong wannabe-protagonist who accused Momo of being a demon, while Vamola is a nice alien who doesn't speak Japanese but does want to be friends with people. Also Aira kept trying to convince Okarun to go out with her for a while, while I'm not sure Vamola mentioned marrying Okarun after chapter 72. Maybe Yukinobu Tatsu realized they were repeating plot points...

And not only had I seen this before in Dandadan, I've seen it before, over and over. Adding a third wheel to an unofficial yet obviously official couple is, like, Baby's First Romantic Subplot Complication. It shows up in series where the romance is a contractually-mandated detail shoved into one corner and where the romance is the whole point of the story. It shows up in web serials published by timid first-time authors and Broadway musicals produced by household names. It shows up in romances good and terrible. It is unavoidable.

Part of why I tend to dislike romance subplots and romance narratives is the laundry list of unavoidable clichés. Stuff I've come across in the past, that I continue to come across because it keeps being thrown into stories I otherwise like. That's why I dislike it. So unless you think a good romance story is definitionally comprised of cliché, do not hop into the notes to insist that I just don't understand Dandadan is a rom-com.

Anyways, that's why I made the second post. I like Vamola, I want to like what she adds to the ensemble, but the very first thing she added was a romance-subplot cliché that couldn't do anything that Aira's didn't do and also kinda slid out of relevance.

If Vamola has to introduce romantic complications, they should be something novel. And the polyamory punchline I dropped into that second Vamola post (Vamola declaring that she'll marry the whole Great Kinta team) would be very novel! It wouldn't just be unexpected, it would open up a bunch of unique possibilities. For instance:

A low-key but continuous point would be members of the Great Kinta team trying to figure out what Vamola thinks it means for all of them to be her husband, what sorts of expectations she has of them. Vamola thinks this is all very straightforward and is amused by how clueless her husband is about this.

Vamola gets very distressed about any conflict between members of her husband-team, regardless of context. She's not familiar with Japanese (or Earth) culture and also didn't know anyone her own age on Planet Sumer, so she can't tell the difference between a potentially friendship-ending argument and Jiji acting like Momo's kid brother.

Vamola gets suspicious about a new character trying to join the friend group. They're not part of her husband, after all! What if they disrupt whatever makes them work together so well? Or what if one of them cheat on her?

Kinta Sakata is the only part of the Great Kinta team who's 100% on board with the marriage. He actively schemes to male Japan/Earth's wedding traditions fit the lopsided polymarriage, to the consternation of his alleged friends.

I kinda want to write fanfiction about Vamola's polyamory proposal. Pluralhusbandry proposal?

[aroaessidhe]

2024 reads / storygraph

The Principle of Moments

start of a scifi space opera series

a teen girl in the far future where humans are oppressed learns she has a destiny & a lost sister and escapes

and a young time traveler who’s given up trying to find his father through time, and is about to settle in 1812 with the prince he loves, but is unwillingly thrust into the future

they both learn their fates are entangled by a prophecy, and have to race across the galaxy, followed by a galactic emperor and the legacy of heroes from an ancient religion

[musubiki]

It feels like it was only yesterday I read about Oscar getting a mermaid girlfriend and now there's Ikasumi. I ship it, though! I'm curious what happened to the mermaid girl. Also, I think I'm experiencing what the rest of the guild is feeling when it comes to Oscar's lovelife, like since when was this a thing I want deets 😂

FUN FACT: HE STILL HAS THE MERMAID GF TOO!!!!!!!! this is what i mean when i say oscar has that playboy streak!!!!!!! hes like "Oh we have [problem]? I know someone who can help! ^^" AND ITS ONE OF HIS EX-GIRLFRIENDS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

and FOR REAL this is oscars running joke. he always has things going on that for some reason he doesnt tell anyone about and doesnt bring up?? 1) his girlfriend changes often and 2) his other running joke is hes always doing part-time work at some different job every so often. mochi and coco go outfit shopping, trying to pick clothes, mochi like "What do you think of this color on me?" and oscar, somehow working at that clothes shop, out of nowhere is like "Nice it brings out your eyes!"

mochi & lime after some magic commission exhausted in a far off town, go to get dinner and sit down and the server (oscar) is like "Hey guys! I can get you a discount since I work here!" when theyre like "WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU EVEN DOING HERE???" he replies "Oh me? My uncle lives nearby and im visiting him for the weekend so i decided to help out at their diner. Pretty cool, huh?"

they go to some festival happening in town, walking around stalls and theres oscar managing one of those hacked, rip-off game booths like "Hey Mochi! We have this fluffy cat stuffed animal that looks like your style! Maybe you can solicit Lime into winning it for you! (overworld challenge noise)" (which turns into an aggressive "I'm gonna win that fucking cat." vs "I own this damn game and you're gonna empty your pockets before I let you win it.")

anyway, oscar is a psuedo-cryptid in his own right.

[figs-oliomedley]

There’s no way Euphrasia isn’t going to be relevant again. Even the seemingly inconsequential magician Diorama because a hugely-important recurring villain. She’s too big of a Chekov’s breadcrumb to ignore after setting up.

[capinejghafa]

So, I'm finishing up Nora Goes off Script by Annabel Monaghan... I'm starting to notice a pattern of the author blaming the FMC for things the MMC could have easily followed up on (i.e., why didn't Leo text Nora after just to say congrats after Arthur text him and then she would be like on what? And then he would say on getting back with your ex! And she would be like I didn't??? Or something else because these only spent 3 weeks together and spent 10 months apart. So, their huge romance feels a bit like stale bread that was left out for the pigeons. Sure, someone is going to eat it, but it's not gonna be me.

I just want to know why the rating is so high and why I'm almost left feeling kind of mad? The problem is that it is written pretty well, and there are funny moments... but one of the reviews goes I cried, and I'm over here like logistically this story makes no sense, and no amount of miscommunication can save their relationship.