#reposts and will not be seen by a majority of the viewers i ended up giving a less than quality thing to.

[cozymochi]

Literally just a re-upload of an animatic I already posted on my youtube channel 4 months ago, so it’s been seen enough. HOWEVER! This version has HD audio (that I only realized had stashed away prior not long after my initial upload but it’s too late to fix it now), and slightly better timing by a whole half a second. So it’s kind of for my own sanity that I’m re-posting this.

Also shoutout to Book 7 Chapter 5 finally dropping on the server I and two other people read in. 🗡️🐉 Source: Maleficent (2014)

ko-fi (maybe)

[adridoesstuff]

Czech Schatten (explained for people who haven't seen Czech Elisabeth fully)

With the concert recording of Schatten I reposted gaining some traction a while ago, I felt like I needed to make this post because if you haven't seen this production in it's full iteration, I feel like you can't truly appreciate just how genius this staging is within it's full context. I'll separate this post into a few sections, so it's a bit more coherent

Content warning: the following post contains mentions of drug use

The characterizations of Smrt and Rudolf

I oftentimes like to call this production "what Schonbrunn Elisabeth could have been if the creative team weren't afraid of trying out new approaches" and I think the nuanced portrayal of Der Tod in this production is one of the most telling of that. The Tod of this production, Smrt, is unlike any other Tod I've ever seen.

A big difference between the Der Tod most of us are familiar with and Smrt is while Tod takes souls with kisses, Smrt kills merely on touch. And while written out, it might sound like a gimmick that will just hinder the actor during a performance by limiting his range of interactions, I feel like it did the exact opposite and only helped to flesh out Smrt as a character. Sure, some of us might not be a fan of Der Tod being portrayed as a physical supernatural entity, but this way, Smrt ended up a complex self-contradicting being, who despite not being a human had all the human capacity for feeling and who was consequently full of angst due to this, since there was no way for him to properly fulfill his deepest desires for human connection. Anything he touches gets destroyed, yet he must put on a front of indifference.

The characterization of Rudolf was also unlike any production before. I think what played a major part in that was the entire company and creative team doing extensive historical research into everything surrounding the show's characters and time period, so both of the show's Rudolves indeed felt more historical than all other Rudolves I've seen. I can't really put it into words, but there was just this feeling like the way they acted could have happened in the historical time period.

The Rudolf and Smrt relationship dynamic

A unique take on this relationship was that these two felt more like companions brought together by circumstance rather than a physiological pull. When they first meet, both Smrt and Rudolf are full of angst and yearning for a genuine human connection, which draws them together. Both of them have been abandoned by Elisabeth and they find solace in one another. Yet, despite this, despite them equally being fascinated and drawn towards the other, there's also this underlying fear and unsureness they both have.

Also, an important addition: in general, this production, from an outside perspective, very much favors an asexual reading on the source material, especially when it comes to the approach to Elisabeth herself and Smrt as well. The type of outward attraction Smrt shows for both Elisabeth and Rudolf is in no way outwardly sexual, but it's driven by the yearning for a companion, for being understood and for romantic attraction to some degree, but the most prominent is just the simple need for someone who just understands.

Rastlose Jahre

Another very creative choice this production did was making Rastlose Jahre a sort of foreword to Schatten. The two scenes flowed seamlessly into one another and by Rudolf getting included in the scene, we as viewers got more insight into him.

One touching idea the scene had was the way it showed the progression of time (since this single scene spans 18 years). The scene was staged with Franz sitting at his table downstage right and Elisabeth flitting around the stage in the back, followed by a giant entourage of ladies in waiting. During the first verse, little Rudolf appeared downstage left and tried waving at his mom, trying to catch her attention, but after she ignored him, he looked hopelessly into the audience and ran back into the wings. And a few moments later, adult Rudolf ran out in the same manner, showing just how quickly the time went by.

Adult Rudolf tries to catch his mother's attention and she still ignores him. He looks out into the audience again before he suddenly takes off his jacket, rolls up his sleeve, ties a tourniquet above his elbow and pulling out a syringe from his pocket, he injects the contents into his arm with pained gasps before throwing the syringe away. This is a reference to Rudolf IRL actually taking morphine as a drug and this staging cleverly incorporated the historical detail into the transition into Schatten. Rudolf ashamedly rolls his sleeve back down and puts his jacket back on. He tries calling out for his mother, but she once again ignores him (Michaela's Sisi didn't notice him at all, while Soňa's Sisi did notice him, but decided to run away rather than console and help him).

What happens during Schatten?

The lyric translation stays very close to the original, while adding some interesting spins to some sections (like Smrt saying that he promised to Rudolf to always be his guardian angel and that he will gladly stand by Rudolf's side).

Rudolf stumbles around the stage, still calling out for his mother, as the drugs take effect and Smrt appears at the back of the stage, holding a whip in his hand and cracking it. The hydraulic platform Smrt is standing on gets raised and a stucco decoration resembling a rearing horse can be seen to the side, making a hint at a carriage.

Rudolf is at first afraid of Smrt arriving, but by the first chorus, he gladly climbs up onto the carriage and lets Smrt lead the ride. But, after a while, he begs Smrt to slow down or stop the carriage and jumps back down.

Smrt sees Rudolf being dejected about how powerless he is when it comes to the political situation and making use of the whip, Smrt lifts Rudolf's chin up with it. But, to Smrt's surprise, Rudolf snatches the whip from Smrt's grasp and runs to the carriage, taking control of the ride himself. Smrt jumps up after him, seeing how Rudolf visibly can't manage the chaos of the situation.

Meanwhile, Rudolf is just trying to get a hand of having control over the carriage while evidently being delighted over actually having control over something for the first time in his life. Smrt tries reasoning with him and offers Rudolf a gun with the words "You can defend yourself".

Rudolf takes the gun, almost sobering at Smrt's words, while Smrt takes his whip back. Rudolf approaches the audience as the Death angels crowd around him and he raises up the gun to his head as he and Smrt sing the lyrics "We are only guests in this world, one must remember that". Rudolf looks almost ready to pull the trigger, but realizes what he was about to do and tears the gun away from his head at the last minute.

Smrt looks at him with a longing look of "I wish I could help you escape the pain now and spare you of any other suffering" before he exits. Rudolf looks after Smrt, both horrified over what he was about to do, but also somewhat contemplating following after him, before he turns back to the audience with tears in his eyes and once again clutching his arm over the spot where he injected the drug. He is left completely alone on the now empty stage, helplessly looking into the audience for any sort of hope he could find.

[harukadrawsthings]

Japan (and many international viewers who watch the original audio) has just seen the end of an era that lasted a quarter of a century. I haven't watched the episode yet as I'm awaiting the release of the English subtitles tonight from the team responsible for the translation but I have no doubt I'll need a lot of tissues. But since the outcome is already known in the land of the rising sun I've decided to reveal my art tribute to Ash and Pikachu in T-Shirt format that I've been preparing for at least a month but was reserving it for today!

I vividly remember the moment when the Pokémon series premiered in Portugal in October 1999, when I was still at primary school, and introduced us to an ambitious 10 year old boy who fell asleep on the 1st day of his journey in pursuit of a dream and who at first did not get along well with his electric mouse partner. There wasn't a single child or teenager at that time that would be indifferent and wouldn't talk about that universe inhabited by hundreds of creatures with magical powers and how different that concept was in an animated series for that time (and in videogames too because there was also a rush to Nintendo's handheld consoles!).

I never imagined that 23 years later I would still be following this story of friendship and how remarkable the protagonist would be in my life after being with me almost the whole time. He was the one who introduced me to a franchise I'm a big fan of and that same exposure has influenced my artistic path. He decompressed me on the daily train journeys I had to make to college, making me laugh and go to class with determination and optimism. He has been my psychologist these past six years which have been particularly difficult for me and has been a major element in my emotional stability. I also owe thanks to Ash for several important life lessons he has given me along his journey by demonstrating his virtues such as kindness, honesty, helping and being tolerant of each other. I have very happy memories of waking up in the morning and watching his adventures on television before going to school, and of watching him in the evening on television in more recent years including the present time.

Portugal will still have Ash on the small screen until the end of this year and I will follow him to the end and wait for the local dubbing of the remaining episodes to be broadcast (and cry again with the disclosure of the Pokémon Ultimate Journeys and this special 11-episodes mini-series) and enjoy his company for a while longer. I will miss this duo that won my heart and of millions of viewers of several generations all over the world that we will certainly never forget and that their memory will be eternal. It was a privilege to watch this story as everything happened in the moment.

So this stamped illustration is a homage and a gesture of gratitude to one of the most influential and impactful characters ever in the history of Japanese animation and who leaves us a legacy that I hope future generations will come to know and recognise his cultural importance. You'll be forever a legend! 🧢⚡

Thank you, Ash Ketchum and Pikachu, and so long!

Do not repost. Do not modify. Always credit me!

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Commissions now open on Ko-Fi!

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Ash & Pikachu © Nintendo/TPC

Art © HarukaDrawsThings

[elisemcarlucci]

Global Awareness Initiative

For my global awareness initiative, I am campaigning for women's equality. All throughout history, there has been unequal rights and opportunities for women. Despite the protests and speaking out, for many years there was no change. In this day and age, social media has had an incredible effect on spreading information and news. Millions of women of the past have stood up, and women are still fighting. For my campaign, I made sure to utilize the tool of technology that we have in the year 2024.

Online Campaigns

There is no doubt that the fastest way to spread information is online, through social media, news articles, podcasts, and more. Instagram, for example, is a great social media platform for spreading information and awareness. Sharing posts that can be seen by billions of people, using hashtags that push the posts in the algorithm, and the easy-to-share mechanisms of this app are why online campaigns can work so well. Another social media platform that would be very effective would be TikTok. There is definitely a huge audience in the TikTok community, ages ranging. By using trending sounds, this is one way that I could help women have a voice and show that inequality needs to come to an end. Viewers can repost, stitch, duet, and share TikTok videos and that happens all in an instant. The last example I have is a podcast, such as on Spotify. Podcasts are super popular for people to listen to when they are driving, working out, cleaning, and doing other activities. During a podcast 2 or more people can discuss current events, gossip, stories, and so much more. I think that a podcast where women share their stories, share their voices, and share their ideas is a way to stand up and bring awareness to this ongoing issue.

Community Engagement

As a current sophomore in college, I am a part of many communities, including dance, my school, my dorm building, my major, my clubs, my hometown, and many more. By starting smaller in my own communities, my initiative can eventually reach bigger communities. For example, taping flyers in the hallway of my dorm building to events can help advertise and bring awareness to my campaign. For dance and clubs, we have a GroupMe, which is a perfect way to send a message to a large group of people. I can send flyers, information, and more in these GroupMe chats and be able to directly communicate effectively with many people. Since I am in college, this campaign would lead me to starting a club with the mission of fighting for women's equality. We would be active on campus, striving for everyone to be educated on the women that still need help and what we can do to help share our voices and take a stand.

Educational Outreach

As for an educational outreach, I believe that there should be a discussion about how there is unequal opportunities for women in the work force and how women are constantly overlooked in the work environment. By starting a discussion, this brings to light the problems that women all over the world are continuing to face. Some women are not even able to attend school, but the women that can need to be educating others on what we can do to help take initiative. Throughout college, there needs to be equal opportunities for men and women, and as part of my campaign, I would take the initiative to call out any inappropriate behavior. At Sacred Heart University, we have colloquia, which I believe to be another opportunity for an educational approach of my campaign. By having this presentation, it opens people's eyes to issues, events, and what needs to happen next. By becoming educated, we can gather what we need to, to take action and fight for what is right.

[sleepingcrisis]

Sk8 The Infinity: Thoughts

I- like many- have finished Sk8 and have a lot of thoughts about the show. I was going to make this three parts but opted for just one. This is split into three sections though: 

Adam’s “Redemption”

Character Relationships

Overall thoughts

Adam’s “Redemption”: 

Okay let’s not get it twisted, Adam wasn’t really redeemed. At least I don’t think he was. When I initially pictured a redemption I pictured an ending where he got along with Cherry and Joe and the three were skating together again or something. That would be super badass for a shot- but it wouldn’t work and would have ruined any tension between the three in my opinion. So in the eyes of our main six Adam isn’t redeemed which is nice. If anyone wants to argue that he is then… sure? You can do that- I don’t really care though because it is quite clear that he isn’t redeemed in their eyes. 

This doesn’t mean I like what they did with Adam’s character though. First of all, he was never going to jail. They set that up to build suspense but it was never really going anywhere which I hated. Despite him not getting redeemed in the eyes of our main six, he still didn’t face any consequences for what he did. I understand that him going to jail would not have been him facing consequences for his actions at S, because they weren’t related, but he got off. In the eyes of the viewer him going to jail would have been consequences for everything he did at S even if that wasn’t why he would have been goin to jail it still was supposed to serve as consequences. Instead he faces no consequences for what he did. He was never going to jail either which is what really pissed me off. The writers of the show made it so that the threat of him going to jail was sorta a red herring. It was something that was under developed and that a lot of viewers really cared about, but if you went to the bathroom during the episode you might not have even known about this subplot at all. The least the show could have done was make this a genuine threat and not something that was just used to build suspense- and it wasn’t even done well. 

I get not wanting to send Adam to jail though, I really do. He is a central character who a lot of people really like (even I really like Adam as a villain- I think he makes a really effective villain and his character is explored decently well). Perhaps sending him to jail would have been an ending to his character that was too clear cut. The ending they did decide felt too good for him though. In my opinion he hadn’t earned it. While I’m not entirely sure if I wanted him to go to jail, I think that he should have faced more consequences for how he behaved. Again I think if anything the end of the show paved the way for him to have a larger character arc.

Character relationships: 

Oh what probably everyone is here for: the topic of queerbaiting. 

If you are reading this in hopes that I support the idea that this show was queerbaiting then you won’t find that here. I don’t think the show was queerbaiting in the slightest. I think that it is incredibly obvious that Cherry, Langa, Adam, and Tadashi are all queercoded as gay characters. Every other character is up for interpretation, yes Reki and Joe are included even if I personally headcanon them both as bi. 

The show presents some beautiful friendships and handles them in a way that I love. Reki’s breakdown and self doubt feels realistic and how he and Langa reconnect was handled well and I think the pacing was good too. Langa and Reki contrast one another really well and obviously the same applies to Joe and Cherry. I have said it before but a spin off show with Joe and Cherry as central characters would be *chef’s kiss*. 

Had these two pairings been explicitly flirting with one another then yeah we would have been queerbaited. Does that mean you can’t interpret romantic undertones from all of this? No it doesn’t mean that at all, I interpret both relationships as romantic- but they also make really well written friendships. 

Where the show falls flat on its face and where I do take issue with the queercoding is the ending. By the end of the show I think it is quite obvious that Tadashi/Adam is canon. Their relationship isn’t normal by any means but they are in a relationship. Do I think it is a healthy relationship? No. Like k*nks aside- Adam treated Tadashi like shit through the bulk of this show. Adam is the most heavily queercoded character in the show so it rubs me the wrong way that this relationship is the one they make the most explicit. It rubs me the wrong way that Cherry and Langa’s sexualities are made more clear after having interactions with Adam. It presents the narrative that gay people turn other people gay and by having Adam be a flamboyant gay character it pairs gay with the idea of being evil and promotes sterotypes. Someone made a really good video covering this and I can’t find it- If I do I will repost this with a link- or if someone else wants to comment it then I’ll repost and add it into post. Flashbacks aside I wish we had gotten some scenes where it was a little more obvious that Adam cared about Tadashi. Don’t get me wrong- I know he does- but Adam acted like an asshole towards tadashi for the majority of the show and then pulled the “all is forgiven” between the two right at the end. Healthy relationships aren’t needed in a show and I don’t think these two need to have one, but having it be the only/most explicit relationship in the show is upsetting. I would have loved to see a healthy queer relationship be made canon. 

Not having these other relationships be made canon is fine. I understand wanting representation, but it is just eh- 

I get both sides of this- the side that desperately want’s queer rep that they are willing to settle and thirst over the crumbs they get and then demand an explicit relationship when we aren’t handed one. I also understand the argument of the cultural differences and how I can only ever look at this through a western lense. Japan has a vastly different culture and their media reflects that even if obviously they do try and appeal to a wider audience. I am very conflicted on this and am totally fine with matchablossom and renga not being made canon even if I do understand the appeal. Again what rubs me the wrong way is the relationship they do decide to make pretty much explicit. Anyone who wants to argue me that Tadashi/Adam is a healthy queer rep can- but from what we have seen… it really isn’t.

Overall Thoughts:

I love sk8 the infinity and I hope they get another season. The difficulty it must be to tell a full story with fleshed out characters in around four hours of run time is something I can’t imagine. Every single character feels fairly well done and they are all loveable in their own way. I understand the appeal people have towards any character. In fact there isn’t a single character that I actively hate. At the end of the day Sk8 The Infinity is meant to be a light hearted anime about having fun skateboarding. The animation is amazing, the music is wonderful- in fact I don’t think it could have been better- the characters that fill this world are all incredibly lovable, the show is so much fun to watch. The creators did that, they gave us a beautiful and fun show. Ending the show with Adam going to jail would have pulled away from what the show was trying to accomplish. The show was trying to have fun and I sincerely hope they get a second season so we can see every single one of these loveable characters again. I hope I got my thoughts across in this show but I am definitely willing to clarify if anything is confusing.

[gohyuck]

note: this is a repost because tumblr is a BITCH

pairing: lee donghyuck (haechan) x reader

genre: ANGST, really, it is a lot of Sadness

word count: 3.9k

warnings: MAJOR CHARACTER DEATH, portrayal of what seems to be a toxic relationship, puking, alcohol consumption and drunkenness

a/n: this is written … backwards like it goes from 30 days after an event backwards to the actual event but then it flies forward at the end so be prepared for that

part of a series?: yes, 37.5% viewer ratings, my hyuck bday celebration

🎵 bodyache - purity ring

☀️ not everyone gets a happy ending

30 days after, 11:52 p.m.

“you’re really leaving?”

mark’s voice is soft, softer than usual as he leans against the doorframe. he’s reluctant to come into your studio, but you find that you can’t blame him. after all, donghyuck really is his best friend, even through all of this. even if mark can’t look said best friend in the eyes right now.

their relationship will heal. you can’t say the same for yours.

“i accepted a position in america after saying no to them for, like, 3 times,” you say, forcing down the flaps of the cardboard box underneath you so you can tape them together. “and it’s for 88rising, so i can’t really say no, can i, now that my biggest reason for staying has diminished to nothing?”

mark nods in understanding, pushing himself off of the frame only to stand, hands stuffed into his jeans’ pockets, in your doorway. his expression is unreadable, though you can see the slightest hint of a downturn in his lips. you feel sorry - mark lee is a good man. he’s been an even better friend to you.

“i didn’t say no to my dream job either.” he says eventually, and mark allows you a small, genuine smile before his face returns to resting, a half-worried, half-confused look he sports consistently. you’ll miss teasing him about it face-to-face: texts won’t have the impact your lighthearted disses are meant to have. you find that your heart is suddenly in your throat.

still, you force down the new, overwhelming urge to cry. you should’ve run out of tears by now, you tell yourself. if you’re going to cry, it won’t be in front of mark. not when he’s been so good to you this whole time.

“my flight leaves tomorrow at 2,” you tell him, forcing your emotions down into whatever depths they rose from. “i’ll email and text you all my details in the morning, if that’s cool with you.”

“already got the american airlines app,” mark fishes his phone out of his pocket and raises it, lockscreen of yuta’s zoomed-in face staring back at you, as if to prove to you that he’s downloaded what he says he has. a corner of your mouth lifts up on impulse, and that’s all it takes for mark’s shoulders to relax before his own smile reappears. he finally steps into your room, crossing it easily to pull you into his arms. you fall into his hold, arms snaking over his broad shoulders to bring him closer.

you’ll miss all of your friends, but you’d be lying if you said you wouldn’t miss mark the most. if you’re the earth, he’s your moon, always there for you and at your side.

you try your damnedest not to think of the sun.

“call me before you board and after you land, okay?” mark mutters against your hairline, and you nod as best you can in the position you’re in. he steps back, and you do the same, to look up into his eyes for the last time before you leave.

“get a good night’s sleep, lee,” you say, grinning up at him even as tears prick at the corners of your eyes. “or else you’ll look even more confused with all the drowsiness weighing your gigantic head down.”

mark furrows his brow at this, faux indignance crossing his features as you snicker gently at his expense. “damn,” he says, gently flicking your arm. “maybe i should ship you off myself.”

you laugh at this, and he spares you a quick chuckle before sobering up. mark grabs both of your elbows in uncharacteristic seriousness, and you’re forced to look into his eyes as he speaks next.

“i’m really going to miss you, you know.”

you sigh, resting your hands against your close friend’s chest.

“i’m going to miss you, too.”

23 days after, at 2:17 a.m.

“you’re drunk,” jeno says matter-of-factly, wrenching the almost-empty bottle of soju from donghyuck’s tight grip. “and i don’t want to deal with your hangover tomorrow. why are you here again? you don’t even live here.”

“be nice, jeno,” jaemin reprimands from the kitchen table, picking at his dinner with his chopsticks. “he’s heartbroken.”

“he did this to himself.” jeno remarks with ease, and donghyuck wants to smack him upside the head for it. he’s a little far gone for that, though, and resorts to groaning instead, loudly. jeno, in turn, flicks him in the forehead for his noisiness, forcing yet another, longer, groan to spring forth from between the drunk man’s lips.

“what are you doing here?” jeno asks again, tone kinder than donghyuck expects. “your bed is at the 127 dorm, or do you not remember this?”

“i’m drunk.” is all hyuck can say, though he means to say a lot more. i’m drunk, the voice inside his head echoes. drunk and sad and lonely and my bed is empty even though it shouldn’t be on a saturday morning and it’s kind of my fault because i said some really stupid and awful shit and all the 127 hyungs are pissed off at me and i can’t spend another night alone in a cold bed getting the cold shoulder. everything’s too fucking cold. that, and the alcohol is better here.    

“i’m drunk.” donghyuck says again, more insistently this time. he leans forward to try and get the bottle of soju - it must be his third or fourth, though he sure as hell isn’t counting - but jeno, who hasn’t had even a drop tonight, avoids him easily.

“you’re drunk,” renjun acquiesces from the couch, a magazine opened and forgotten in his lap. “and you’re here, for whatever reason. i love you, and all, but you’re getting pathetic… unless, of course, you want to talk about it. we can do that.”

“talking doesn’t fix everything,” jeno interjects before hyuck can respond, though he doesn’t dare to say anything else under the withering glare renjun sends him. typically, jeno would use this to start a fight. hyuck makes a pass for the liquor one more time, though, and he decides that he has other hills to die on right now. that, and renjun, for whatever reason, really does have a soft spot for donghyuck. jeno equates hyuck to renjun’s jaemin, and he decides that maybe renjun does know what’s best here.

“nothing to talk about. it’s -” donghyuck hiccups, falling backwards onto his chair once he realizes that he won’t be getting his soju back. “-it’s for the best. we’re bad for each other.” his words come out as only mildly coherent babbles, slurred with his jeju accent slipping in, but renjun, jeno, and jaemin have known him long enough that they’re able to understand everything he’s saying with little deciphering.

“(name) and you are perfect, you idiot,” jaemin says, materializing out of thin air beside hyuck. it seems he’s given up on finishing the rest of his noodles. “i’ve never seen anyone else look at anyone the way you two look at each other. you fucked up big time, yes, but it’s fixable. with you two, it has to be.”

“looked.” donghyuck corrects as if on auto-pilot.

“what?” jeno asks, and hyuck looks at him through tired, hooded eyes.

“looked. the way us two looked at each other. not look. not fucking look.”

the other three men share glances between each other. the heartbroken idol says nothing more, only slides into his leather jacket, pulling his bucket hat over his eyes. before anyone can press him further, he makes a soft snuffling noise, and the other three simultaneously realize that he’s fallen asleep.

“he’s going to feel like hell when he wakes up,” jeno finally says, and renjun lets out a disappointed sigh before speaking.

“i’ll get the puke bucket. someone get his hat and jacket off. if we really try, we can put him on someone’s bed. jisung’s probably - hopefully - asleep already, and we shouldn’t wake him up.”

“you think they’ll get back together?” jaemin questions, slowly pulling the denim bucket hat off of donghyuck’s head as he does. the sleeping man in question shifts slightly, but doesn’t wake back up. he’s always hated sleep, but he’s always been a quick sleeper when drunk.

“with the shit he said to (name)?” jeno asks, getting the aforementioned bucket from the linen closet in the hallway. both jaemin and renjun nod, regardless of the fact that it’s a rhetorical question. jeno heaves a heavy sigh and shakes his head as he sets the bucket down beside the chair.

“not fucking likely.”

14 days after, at 5:03 p.m.

“i’ve been here for, like, three hours, and you’ve barely said a word.” johnny’s tone isn’t unkind, but you can’t help but bristle at what he says. he’s lounging on the loveseat you have in the back of your studio, feet kicked up on your coffee table, while you’re hunched over your electronic keyboard, practically hemorrhaging over melodies. something is flat, so very flat, about the progression you keep trying.

usually you’d have donghyuck sing it out loud for you to see what you’re missing, but that isn’t an option.

“i have work.” is the dry response you offer up, and you can practically feel johnny roll his eyes into the back of his head in exasperation. he sets the can of coke that’s been dangling between his thumb and middle finger down - mindful of your coasters, thankfully - before pushing himself off of your couch to come and stand over your shoulder.

“you guys will have to talk it over eventually-” he starts, and you shake your head vehemently, hard enough to force johnny’s words to die in his throat.

“there’s no talking it out. he said he doesn’t love me, that he wished he’d never met me, and that i detract from his life,” you say, incredulous, and you see the last hints of johnny’s smile die out in front of your eyes. his jaw drops open slightly, and you realize that donghyuck hasn’t actually told the members what had happened.

“he - what?”

“yep,” you say, popping the p as if you’re responding to someone asking you if you’re okay with their movie choice. you turn your head away from johnny, moving your focus back to your music. this isn’t something you want to re-live.

he teeters between choosing whether or not to say something for what feels like eons. you can feel johnny’s anger engulf him, and even though it’s not at you but for you, it makes you feel small. you wish desperately that johnny wasn’t mad, that his reason for being so horrified and disgusted and enraged didn’t exist. you wish you were still happy and in a relationship with your one true love.

but you’ve come to find that wishes are not reliable.

johnny, for his part, settles on saying nothing. you think that he’ll sit down again, seething to himself, but you’re surprised when he wraps his arms around your shoulders from behind you in a backhug over your chair. he’s always been good at knowing what you need - you think it’s his ingrained older brother instinct.

it’s been a bit too long since you’ve been held so tenderly. you use this as your excuse to yourself when you realize that you’re crying. the excuse no longer stands when you double over into yourself, sobs wracking your body, but by that point you aren’t thinking of it.

johnny, for his part, pulls you closer to his chest.

you thank him in your mind. you know he gets it.

5 days after, at 7:47 p.m.

“you fucked up a record-breaking amount of times today,” mark remarks playfully as he wipes the sweat off his face with a short towel. donghyuck gives him no scathing response, and that’s when mark knows that something is wrong. it can’t be that he’s upset - hyuck is a great dancer, and he picks things up quick, so it’s okay if he messes up too much during a dance practice. he definitely knows mark means nothing by his teasing.

still, mark realizes that hyuck hasn’t really done much today - no fake kissing pranks, no loud screaming - and he suddenly feels awful.

“you okay?” mark asks, voice gentler this time. donghyuck looks up from his phone, finally making eye contact with his friend, before nodding shortly.

“yeah, i’m-”

“he’s fine, dude,” jaehyun says, smirk evident across his features. “i’m sure he’s just antsy to go get laid. the dorm auntie said (name)’s over there right now.”

before mark can say that, no, he’s sure it’s something else, donghyuck speaks up, voice hard as steel and cold as ice.

“we broke up. (name)’s just getting stuff.”

the room stills immediately, as if everyone stops breathing at once. after a beat, two, and then three, doyoung finally speaks up.

“what - and i cannot stress this enough - the fuck?”

it’s as if a dam breaks - suddenly, all 8 members other than donghyuck are rushing to ask questions, to give their opinions, to find somewhere to sit down and internally process this new information. mark’s grip on his towel tightens without him realizing, though his mind is elsewhere: no wonder you haven’t responded to his texts for the past week.

he’d assumed you were busy with work. after all, you are helping put the finishing touches on 127′s upcoming album’s b-sides.

“we just… we didn’t work out.” donghyuck says, and the way he speaks implies that that’s the end of the conversation. when the youngest accidentally makes eye contact with mark, the latter searches his eyes desperately for something, anything.

he comes up empty. donghyuck, for the first time ever, is unreadable.

mark realizes that, for the first time ever, donghyuck wants it to be that way.

the end of it all, 2:22 a.m.

“what did you just say to me?”

your eyes are narrowed, your fists clenched so tightly that your nails are digging into your palms. your boyfriend glares back at you with equal venom, though while you’re standing while facing off with him, he’s manspreading on the couch, his body relaxed while his face is angry.

“i said that i wish i’d never met you.” his voice is even, and this makes yours waver even more. he’s never - never, not ever - been this cruel, and you’re almost taken aback by it. sure, your relationship has been slowing down greatly in the past month, with both of you unable to make time for the other, but you’d assumed it was due to album preparations. with you in the studio days and nights working on producing tracks and donghyuck perfecting his performances, there’s been almost no overlap between your schedules.

you thought everything would be fine. evidently, you’d thought wrong.

“what the hell is that supposed to mean?” you throw back at him, voice rising, getting higher-pitched in disbelief and exasperation as you continue speaking.

“it means that i haven’t seen you all fucking month and it’s been the best month of my whole year. you’ve been actively - fuck, i don’t know - keeping me down, keeping my mood down. i can’t live like this, knowing that you’re - you’re adjacent to me. i can’t do it anymore.” donghyuck responds, both bark and bite, pushing his shoulders off of the couch and pulling his legs in slightly. his brow is furrowed and his stance is hostile as he yells at you, but there’s no hint of remorse in his eyes, and you realize that he must really, really mean what he’s saying. it feels sudden to you, of course it does, but this must be something he’s sat on for days.

your heart shatters. suddenly, your throat is dry, but your water bottle in the kitchen seems too far out of your reach for you to get. without meaning to, the ending of your first fight with hyuck, ages ago, comes to mind.

“it’s difficult to articulate yourself during an argument, isn’t it?” donghyuck sighs against your hairline, and you nod, not trusting yourself to speak through your tears. your fight had ended with both of you unable to explain yourselves, and you’d burst promptly into tears because of this, causing donghyuck to drop his anger in favor of comforting you. as he runs his hands up and down your back and allows you to cry onto his shirt, he has an epiphany.

“we’re both musical people, right?” he asks, and you pull away from his grasp to look up at him, confused, through your tear-heavy lashes. “i mean that you’re a producer and i’m a musical artist. we’re music people, right? we get music?”

“i - i guess.” you sniffle, unsure of where your boyfriend is going with this. he smiles down at you before pressing a soft kiss to your forehead.

“whenever you think you can’t explain yourself to me, give me a song or songs that says what you want to. i’ll do the same if it’s vice versa. that way, we’ll always understand each other, yeah?”

you nod against his chest, and he wraps his arms tighter around you.

“yeah.”

the overwhelming urge to get the hell out of the situation you’re in consumes you, suddenly, and you take a long, shuddering breath before snatching your car keys off the coffee table from where they are by donghyuck’s boot-clad feet. his expression defaults to bored, and he barely looks at you through hooded, pissed off eyes as you shrug your coat back on. you don’t even know how this argument had started, but you have a feeling that it’s over, just as your relationship is. the kind of seriousness donghyuck has shows you that there’s no going back to him. never.

you swing open the door, but right before you leave, you look back at him one last time. the words come out of your mouth on their own accord.

“bodyache by purity ring.”

donghyuck doesn’t say anything, doesn’t even show that he’s heard you, but you know him. you know he’s heard you, and that he’s seen you. with that knowledge, you shut the door of the 127 dorm and turn away, turning your back on lee donghyuck forever.

31 days after, 6:06 p.m.

the dorm is only almost silent whenever donghyuck is there. nobody’s told him this, but he’s sure of it - after all, all of his members had loved you. you’d been a close friend, a confidant, and he’d taken that from them. he isn’t sure how to feel about this - about you, about himself. did he make the right call? now, as he faces a stillness he’s unused to, he’s not quite sure.

he’s pouring milk onto cereal as an afternoon snack when jungwoo breaks the silence by turning on the news. there’s something frantic about the way he grabs the remote, the way he presses the on button, that forces everyone’s eyes onto him. jungwoo’s phone, which had been in his hand and was likely the source of his rush, drops from his hand and onto the couch beneath him.

“mark,” jungwoo calls, voice shaking. the man in question looks up, his gaze landing on his hyung before it can land on the tv. “mark, you- (name)’s flight info.” jungwoo manages to get out, his own eyes trained on the news channel. slowly but surely, mark’s gaze - and everyone else’s, donghyuck sets the milk down and twists the cap on - turns to follow jungwoo’s.

none of them could have expected the headline they see.

FLIGHT AA1116 ICN TO LAX CRASH; OFFICIALLY NO SURVIVORS

donghyuck’s world stops.

he watches as mark pulls out his own phone, almost dropping it in his haste to see if your flight number is the same one that’s flashing across the screen. he watches as mark, upon seeing what’s on his phonescreen, lets out an ungodly groan, stumbling into jungwoo as his own knees give out. yuta grabs mark’s phone out of his hand, and donghyuck can only observe as yuta’s shoulders tense up completely before they start to shake. before he can process what’s happening, everyone around him is in hysterics - some members are holding each other, wailing loudly, others are staring, steely-eyed, at the reporter on the tv as if doing so will change the past.

donghyuck watches, and watches, and watches. it feels as if he’s frozen in time.

it’s only when mark, overcome with grief, composes himself enough to push donghyuck against their fridge, that time unsticks itself. it’s while mark berates him, blames him wholly for the fact that you’re gone, that the feeling returns to donghyuck’s body.

he’s barely able to push mark off of him and rush to the bathroom before he’s doubling over, emptying the contents of his stomach into the toilet. you’re dead. he heaves again, more bile coming up. you’re dead because you left for america. you left for america because he left you. donghyuck sputters out more foul-tasting liquid, barely able to weakly pull the handle and flush everything down. you’re dead. he dry-heaves.

he dry-heaves once more before he manages to pull himself up using the corners of the sink. donghyuck washes his mouth out as carefully as he can afford. it’s when he catches sight of his reflection that he has to grasp onto the sink for fear of collapsing against it.

you’re dead.

you’re dead, and it’s his fault.

as he forces himself to look into his reflection’s eyes, donghyuck feels sick beyond the physical realm. he’d broken up with you over nothing - it was a split-second decision backed by hollow but harsh words following a grueling, grueling month of work. he’d broken up with you and been too stubborn to try and get you back, and now you’re dead because you’d chosen to move on and take the leap to the next phase of your life. he’ll never feel your hand in his again, your lips against his. he won’t hear your laughter or hear from mark about your endeavors. you’re dead, and he’s alive, and he knows that he’s being punished by the cosmos for his sins.

donghyuck searches back to your last words to him, reaching for some semblance of a relationship with you where there is none. his memories fall on a song, and he remembers your recommendation. he fishes his phone out of his pocket - the news app sends him a notification of the plane crash that has his heart feeling as if it’ll stop beating immediately - and opens his music player, typing bodyache into the search bar.  

he places his phone on the counter and heaves a shuddering sigh, and as the music washes over him, so do the years he’d spent with you, the years he’s now lost. as the lyrics wash over him, so do his tears.

You said, you said "Turn the lights down, I wanna be alone” I ran your head away I couldn’t stand how it pleaded I needed to take Take a break, take me down, take me down there I wanna stare at the tears, how they water your years Take a break, take me down, take me down there I wanna stare at your tears, how they I, I, I lied, now I’m lying awake I, I, I cried ‘til my body ache I, I, I lied, now I’m lying awake I, I, I cried 'til my body ache

[viroro-kun]

My Review of the Pokémon Sun & Moon Anime (2019)

[The following post is a repost of a thread originally published on Reddit in November 17th, 2019, titled “My final review of the Pokémon Sun & Moon Anime”, which I’m sharing here again for archival purposes. I may eventually do a new one and this post is meant to only reflect my thoughts at the time. It will also not be updated with later information to keep it consistent with the original] About two weeks ago, the Sun & Moon series of the Pokémon Anime concluded after a run of three years, ending up as what's probably one of the most controversial entries of the show, with fans either loving it as a fresh take on the series or disliking it for several issues that cropped up over time. Now, after reviewing the series for the length of the aforementioned three years and at the eve of the beginning of the newer series, I'd like to pass my personal, final judgement of the Alolan series. Now, first of all, I think a preamble is necessary: all of what I will explain is my opinion and nothing else, and this isn't meant to be senseless bashing of the Sun & Moon series, either. I treasure striving to be objective and analytical above all else, and while I of course can't claim mine will be an absolutely perfect and objectively correct review, I will do my best to share my thoughts on the matter, while explaining why I feel this specific way.Secondly, I'd like to address an argument I've occasionally seen brought up, that due to Sun & Moon's seeming focus on comedy and slice of life it's not possible to compare it to previous seasons. And while that may apply for some specific choices it made, I don't believe that's the case: it was still set in a new region of the Pokémon world, still had Ash undertake the local region-wide challenge, still had a structure involving unimportant self-contained episodes (which we could call 'filler' in an useful but technically inaccurate definition) surrounding the plot-based ones, and still ended up with a League at a climax for it all. Therefore, at least on a structural and plot standpoint, there are enough commonalities to make a comparison possible, and that's where I plan to dig in particular to explain my stance.

Before I move to the meat of it, however, I want to spend some words of praise for some things I feel this series did right or at least deserves some compliments for, overall. First of all, I think that Sun & Moon does great in mantaining a chill, comfy atmosphere which to a degree makes it stand out from previous seasons, and I understand why this was appealing for some previous fans of the series. Most of the cast is pretty likable on the whole with particular props to Ash's Alolan Pokémon team managing to mantain lots of expressivity in all situations, and the series has a decent willingness to explore some concepts previous seasons only lightly touched on. The show also foregoes a lot typical Team Rocket shenanigans for different kinds of plots, making it great for people who find their usage stale and played out by now, and the simplified art style allowed for some pretty good sequences both in battle and out. At its best, the series can produce some of the best moments of this Anime as a whole, and it was at least the first series to let go of some limitations that were just weighting the show down at this point. While I think several of these pros also have indirect cons attached to them (especially in terms of tone and character usage), these are all things I feel need to be pointed out in positive for the series.With that said, I'd like to begin my proper dissection of the Pokémon Sun & Moon Anime.

Pokémon Sun & Moon - A Pokémon Anime in an Identity Crisis

1. Plot Pacing and Development: The Problem of the Stationary Setting and the "Happy Bubble"

Everyone who has heard of the Sun & Moon Anime is probably aware of its biggest break from tradition: rather than being an adventure series, this entry in the long-running Pokémon series decided to take place in a single location with occasional detours by having Ash enroll in the Pokémon School, shifting the general tone of the series towards a more slice of life approach. This had a significant effect on how the story developed, but in my opinion, if there's a fundamental issue of the Sun & Moon series, it's probably this one. Because rather than committing to the change, the writers appeared to want to have their cake and eat it too.

Specifically, adventure series and slice of life have radically opposed mission statements: for the first, progression and rising action are an important, consistent story engine moving the plot forward; the second is instead far more laidback, focused more on enjoying the moment and offering low stakes and drama more often than not, especially Sun & Moon's chosen brand of it that's closer to a sit-com than a proper slice of life. Pretty much, adventure series have a degree of development in them, while slice of life is defined by the lack of said development.

Now, I'm not saying Pokémon characters were always amazing examples of character development, or that every series prior was well-written. But the structure itself was sound, as you had Ash embarked in a defined goal of winning the League as part of his vague dream to become a Pokémon Master, having filler adventures on the way, but always undertaking rising action from the first to last Gym and occasional rivals, until the climax of the journey at the League (and in Kalos' case, the Team Flare arc). We see Ash, and occasionally his friends, actively train, fight or improve on the path to their goals, while the narration itself always reminds us of what the current major objective is. Even when the episode doesn't actually contribute to the larger story, the viewer always has a reassurance that the next objective will be reached eventually.

The structure of Sun & Moon, by comparison, is inherently more passive more often than not, as you have Ash and the others waiting for the plot to happen to them. Instead of having Ash actively seek a new challenge, you see him sitting down and wait for something specific to make him go and progress, and so does everyone else, with only rare exceptions. The characters are effectively static until the plot decides to move them, and while this could superficially resemble the previous structure (as both have a progression that could be defined as arbitrary), the Sun & Moon series barely, if ever, reassured the viewer to still remember the goals it set up, or even what the next one to come is.

Now, inherently, the characters being passive recipients of plot isn't a bad thing, it's just how slice of life stories tend to work. The problem of Sun & Moon, however, was that beyond the vague and SoL-friendly concept of Ash at the Pokémon School they still had Ash pursue the Island Trials (and in fact, he's impressed by the concept of mastering Z-Moves before he even enrolls in the school), which gave the show a problem: it wanted to be a chill story focusing more on small time hijinks than big adventures, while still taking on a structure that demanded to follow the rules of an adventure series, creating an inherent contradiction.

What I mean is that, since the Island Trials were still part of Ash's stay in Alola, the show was still supposed to abide to the rising action leading to a climax, giving the show a direction that it had to fulfill by its end rather than have an open premise with occasional plotlines (example: GeGeGe no Kitaro, where the open premise is 'Kitaro deals with evil Yokai' with every other longer plotline spinning from there). It's something that pretty much prevents the viewer from fully enjoying the more quiet romps, because in the mind of a viewer expecting progression, these are just a diversion over the more important goal Ash has in the region. Now, in fairness to Sun & Moon, the show seemed aware of the tension and made sure to tie each Trial Ash did into either school trips or wanting to get specific Crystals, but beyond making it seem like Ash didn't care much for something he claimed he wasn't interested in (especially with wanderlust being a previously estabilished character trait of his), this ran into another big issue of Sun & Moon: rather than a sense of rising action, pretty much every Island Trial Ash did was narratively unrelated to each other, especially once it was revealed that Ash didn't need to complete any of them to access the Alola League, in contrast with how every badge was important and necessary in previous regions.

This specific issue wasn't however unique to Ash, but rather a persistent problem in pretty much every element and story arc of the series: be it Ash's quest, Guzma's struggles, Rowlet's rivalry with Hau's Dartrix/Decidueye, Lycanroc's rage issues, Lillie's goal to be able to touch every Pokémon again, the Necrozma and Aether arcs to even the Alola League and anything in between, almost all of them had only the bare minimum of buildup and either ended as soon as they got teased or happened to be sidelined for a large amount of episodes before they got their due focus, if not both at once. While some of these arcs ranged from alright to pretty great (Litten's pre-capture arc dealing with Stoutland's passing, or the Guzma-related segments of the Alola League), there are quire a few (chiefly Necrozma) that were ruined by a combination of lacking setup work and the feeling that, simply put, nothing mattered that much. Sure, the arcs could be mentioned here and there, and some can set up things for the future (like how Aether leads to the Ultra Guardians), but on the whole, the arcs are effectively done-in-one in terms of lasting impact. Unlike how in previous shows you could've had stuff like Ash's and Dawn's intertwined journeys, here you have Stoutland lose relevance in terms of influence to Litten as soon as he dies, where save for Stoutland brief cameo as a spirit on Poni Island his storyline got shifted in the unrelated rivalry with Kukui's Incineroar.

This last example, in particular, brings up another of the big issues of Sun & Moon, one that can be divided in three parts: plot pacing, plot segregation, and the "happy bubble".

In regards to plot pacing, one of the most notorious problems brought up for this series is the fact that, to put it simply, each plotpoint will only progress when the show decided they have to, which led to things like Lillie going almost an entire real time year between getting her Z-Crystal and then her Z-Ring, or Ash doing absolutely nothing about his Lycanroc's raging issues for getting dirty for close to thirty episodes before they happened again in the Ula'Ula arc, during which neither character gave any hints of even thinking about these lingering elements in any way even if it was clear setup to be followed on. This, coupled with the aforementioned lack of a constant reminder of the next destination, just made for a frustrating waiting game in terms of the next major point of progression.

A related issue is the plot segregation, or specifically, how each major arc is effectively removed from the others, from Kiawe and Sophocles' occasional focus episodes to more important stuff like Lillie's Pokémon phobia, her and Gladion's later interest in finding their father, Lana's desire to create a balloon to explore the ocean with, Ash's Island Trials, and so on. It made these characters feel like they exist in their own separate paths, never to intersect, something the evolution episode in the Poni Island arc somewhat exemplifies since Sophocles' and Lana's efforts happen on completely distinct plotlines and locations. As I explained above this also happens with major arcs, like how the Necrozma arc's only contribution to the wider narrative was sending Poipole home (and given its later offscreen evolution and power up, one could make a case the arc had a negative impact on the series). The segregation also had the effect of having the plot act like something flat out doesn’t exist unless it has been directly showcased, leading to such goofiness as Kukui's best friend Molayne not being invited at his wedding in spite of being Sophocles' cousin, or how absolutely no one was in Poni Island during the Manalo Festival buildup. A good example of the difference, I feel, is this: in previous series, we could've had Serena relate to Ash with her Master Class loss at a significant point of his character arc during the Winding Woods episode; in this one, Mallow only revealed her mother issues after Lillie's entire arc revolving around her mother was resolved, with the two never comparing notes. The closest we get is Ash relating to Lana for his problems with Lycanroc using Continental Crush in Ida's first episode and Lillie trying to help out Ash during his fallout with Rotom, both of which refer to things that happened to them either mostly offscreen or entirely there.

The plot segregation was, in particular, noticeable with the decision to associate three of Ash's Alolan Pokémon (Torracat, Dusk Lycanroc and Rowlet) to specific characters as rivals, with the Pokémon driving the rivalry rather than Ash himself (who had otherwise rather civil, mostly friendly interactions with Kukui, Gladion and Hau). On paper, this should've guaranteed that every Pokémon had their moment to shine, but effectively, it meant that each of them were restricted to mostly their specific rival in terms of focus post-Aether. Lycanroc got Olivia's Grand Trial, the Ula'Ula arc to itself and then the rivalry with Gladion's Midnight Lycanroc, but no other significant usages; Rowlet got roles in the first two Grand Trials, but then spent almost one hundred episodes before its second focus episode, and beyond his friendship with Meltan it only got Hau's battle and a part against Kukui to itself; Torracat was the one absolutely done dirty here, as beyond the Stoutland appearence in Poni Island and the Totem Lurantis battle pre-Aether, all his following focus moments rely on the rivalry with Kukui's Incineroar, with only occasional minor scuffles to its name and a bit of the Guzma battle to its name. That would already be bad enough, but the fact that until the League there's no battle that requires Ash to involve more than two Pokémon (with most of them requiring him only one), Ash's team never actually gets to act as a team until the very final battle of the series, furthering the lacking sense of cohesiveness. Year two of the series was particularly bad in this sense, as most major battles were fought with either Pikachu or Lycanroc while Torracat and Rowlet barely did much.

And lastly, one persistent result of both the plot pacing and the plot segregation was a phenomenon I like to refer to as the "happy bubble," or the tendency of the Sun & Moon series to confine major conflicts and bad moments for the characters only to their specific focus episodes. In previous shows, you could have moments of self-doubt or worry linger even outside dedicated episodes (Dawn's depression for her losing streak, Ash's rivalry with Paul affecting him, and his increasing worries in the latter part of XY being clear examples), but due to Sun & Moon's commitment to fun times before everything else, it means the characters aren't allowed to have any conflict or moments of darkness to later conquer unless they're the focus, and even then resolving them quickly. See how bubbly Lillie is even when she's scared of Pokémon unless the episode is specifically about her, how she never even thought about her father until Gladion reminded her, how Ash's confidence and his relationship with Lycanroc are only focused on in Ula'Ula and then never again, and most noticeably the fact Mallow's dead mother was treated as something that tore her for years but it was only ever directly dealt with in one episode, to the point she's the only family member on Bulbapedia listed under characters of the day. The problem of this bubble is that it pretty much makes it hard to invest in the emotional struggles of these characters because they end up feeling like throwaway moments which are then functionally forgotten, with no sense of constant growth. Characters get their moments, the audience gets invested, and then it's forgotten, with only few and far-in-between moments of exception, and that's another thing making each conflict feel segregated from each other.

If I could sum up everything in one sentence, I'd say this: Sun & Moon is composed by a myriad of pieces, some excellent, some average, some awful and everything in between, that all exist mostly in a vacuum. I'll return to this topic in a bit, as there's another important aspect to touch first.

2. Characters and Their Development: Too Many, Too Little, Too Late

Another aspect of Sun & Moon that's often brought up is the decision to have a main cast of six counting Ash, with the game Trial Captains Mallow, Lana, Kiawe and Sophocles alongside plot-important character Lillie turned into Ash's classmates. These characters have been as much a point of praise as they were of criticism, with some fans absolutely loving this group while others couldn't absolutely stand them. I feel the best way to tackle this is to first list how I feel each character was handled in terms of planning and development, before going into their relationships and the rest of the cast, starting with the humans and then going through Ash's Pokémon before closing on Ash himself. I will say to start with, however, that none of these characters is inherently unlikable the way they started as, and most of their later issues came solely from their handling down the line or flaws in how they were approached.

2.1) The companions

Among the companions, Sophocles was probably the one that made the poorer first impressions, as beyond sharing the same type specialty, his game background as an inventor and his Anime presentation as a programmer that sometimes built things gave him a number of unfair comparisons with Clemont, not helped at all by an introduction episode that ranks among the worst ones of this group. That said, I feel by the end he actually ended up being one of the best characters of the group in spite of heavily scattered focus, for one major reason: he's one of the few characters of this group to have a consistent character growth that plays in his dream and that's easily noticeable as the story unfolds. Early on, he starts as the timid, insecure kid that gets easily scared of the dark and needs people and Pokémon's support over everything, but between his first few episodes and the later clarification of his interest in space, it's clear that his development was actually aimed towards him growing into a more independent and confident person and trainer. He goes from being unable to tell his friends that he's not actually leaving Alola after a misunderstanding and only getting his second Pokémon as a gift from Ash to slowly take an interest in rising Charjabug, first with a race and then by evolving it, then deciding to gain a Z-Crystal and a Z-Ring, learning to use it, and ultimately take part in the League in spite of knowing to not be on the same level of his friends, yet still putting his all, with a nice interlude where he takes things into his own hands during the Celesteela mission, and with the race he does to gain his Z-Crystal leading him to confront and surpass his fear of the dark. While still pretty scattered and sidelined, I feel he's a character that's been developed well-enough and that in his post-series aim is actively working towards his dream in a new but productive way by visiting Mossdeep City's Space Center, and definitely my favorite of the Alolan kids as he clearly developed into a better person by the end through a straightforward, traceable progression.

Lana is probably up there with Sophocles in terms of being one of the best characters of this group, and I'd go as far as saying she's probably the best non-Coordinator/Performer Pokégirl out there. While Sophocles ranks high due to getting good personal development, Lana ranks high because, while on paper her dream of creating a big balloon to explore the ocean with is simple and a tad silly, it is something she puts clear effort into and that she never loses track of through the whole series, even with a fairly noticeable void of attention in the mid-series stretch. Between being the first of the non-Kiawe classmates to get a Z-Ring and a Z-Crystal, learning how to use Hydro Vortex, then evolving Popplio to Brionne and then Primarina (while dealing with a Kyogre along the way) while also getting Oceanic Operetta, she's consistently focused on her improvement, and always the best female battler of the bunch. The only thing that really penalizes her is that while her dream is technically achieved, she ultimately gets Oceanic Operetta with offscreen training and they never make a point to highlight that as a big moment, and while her skill development is solid, she remains exactly the same character throughout the series from the first and last episode. An entertaining character for sure, but one that just gets stronger and not much else. Still, she's easily one of the best female leads this series ever had, and a good example of how to make a non-Coordinator-esque female character work well after the pitfalls Misty and Iris fell into.

Kiawe is not far from them, with a pretty solid run slightly marred by a few issues. Specifically, he's probably the best battler of this group that isn't Ash, but he's distinctly characterized as having two "modes" as a character: either the serious, spiritual follower of Alolan traditions, or the one that started popping out more often later in the series where he's an overreacting ham to rival Cilan. I personally feel Kiawe's better moments tends to come from the first mode, not only because he stands out better in a funny sense by being the straight-laced guy in a cast of wacky people, but also because he's the best character to explore the more spiritual angle of Alola, the element that truly makes the region stand out compared to previous ones featured in the series. Unfortunately, beyond the fact the slice of life romps tended to favor his wacky angle more than the serious one, Kiawe is penalized by not quite having a true arc to develop through: he wants to become a stronger trainer and claims so, but all his episodes ultimately end up involving unrelated matters: he catches his Marowak, learns to use a Z-Move with him later on, and ends up getting his Charizard back into working shape after he undertakes Fini's trial to save Ash, but while each of these are overall good showings and he's probably got the best League run of the cast in terms of prowess and skill, they tend to remain isolated instances. It also doesn't help that while his hot-blooded rivalry with Ash can be fairly entertaining and it's teased from episode 2, it ultimately culminates into an underwhelming showdown in the penultimate episode that barely feels like an afterthought. I'd hardly call him a bad character and he still does pretty well even with his issues, but one that could've been handled better on the whole.

A far different story is Lillie, a character that, I feel, suffered from several different issues all at once. To address the elephant in the living room first, let it be said that while they share traits, Anime Lillie and Game Lillie end up being fairly different characters by the end, and while I think Game Lillie is probably one of the best creations of GameFreak, my opinion on her Anime self couldn't be more different, and it's not due to straight comparisons between each other. Now, Lillie doesn't actually start badly: the fact that she has a phobia of touching Pokémon from an unknown source at first actually gave her a nice direction as a character in a way similar yet different from Lana, but it didn't take long for Lillie's major issue to show itself: things happen to her rather than her working towards stuff proactively, and the majority of the time her struggles are resolved by feeling sad or believing really hard with extremely few exceptions. This started already before the Aether arc, where while her episodes were good, they all relied on the exact same formula of Lillie unable to touch Pokémon, being unable to do so and feeling sad about it until she can in a spur-of-the-moment situation, which started to make her episodes feel stale.

The Aether arc seemed to finally change things as it heavily revolved around Lillie, but to anticipate some things I'll delve into more detail later, the changed circumstances ended up weakening both the conflict and her character, making her come across as too unlikable. But beyond that issue, the problem of the Aether arc is that it ensured that Lillie was completely healed of her phobia due to the actions of others rather than herself, which killed off all her character potential and left her with nothing to do for the rest of the series (while the conflict with her mother was completely brushed under the rug after this arc introduced and hastily attempted to resolve it). Sure, she 'grew stronger', and got a Z-Ring and Z-Crystal, but the majority of important things of the Mohn arc were actually dealt with by Gladion, while her own help ended up amounting to still, once more, feeling really hard rather than active work. But the biggest problem of her character is that all of her major achievements derived from either someone else (Silvally healing her phobia by saving her, Gladion actually defeating Totem Kommo-o, her Z-Ring being borrowed from her father, Gladion finding Mohn's Zoroark) or facilitated by outside assistance (her one victory in the League's Battle Royale coming from effectively killstealing a Salamence Kiawe weakened, her battle with Tyranitar having the assistance of a Totem Sandshrew) which made it hard to think she earned her development or truly grow stronger when she ultimately always ended up relying on someone else, especially given her tendency to never act unless prodded (see how she seemed perfectly fine not touching Pokémon for years until Mallow and Ash actively tried to get her to do it, nor try to learn why she has the phobia in the first place, nor thinking about where her father may be). This, alongside the tendency of the series to play up game moments like the Lillie and Solgaleo moment or her change in dress and hairstyle to show her resolve while sapping all the meaning they had in the source material and the habit of the characters to praise Lillie for anything she does no matter how minor or trivial, ultimately made her a character that was borderline insufferable to follow, especially for the classmate pushed as the most important beyond Ash.

The worst of all main characters, however, is without a doubt Mallow. While I have several issues with Lillie's handling as a character, at least her faults come with how the show decided to approach her, while I feel by contrast Mallow was only allowed breadcrumbs of just about anything, something already shown by how she had to wait until episode 18 for her first true focus episode. Back in the earliest episodes I thought her interest in making Aina the most popular restaurant in Alola could've given her a drive as a character similar to the one Lana and at the time Lillie had, only for the story to be content with leaving her where she is. Between the fact her Bounsweet evolved twice in ways that were respectively too sudden and rather unrelated to her and the habit of her focus episodes past her first to focus away from her more than on her (having to share screentime with her brother 'Ulu and Oranguru, specifically), it felt like she was added to the cast because they had to, and while the last year of Sun & Moon tried to put a patch on the problem by giving her emotional moments with her mother and her League match with Lana, said patches had the effect of not feeling very genuine since her mother, as I mentioned above, only really figured in one episode, while Mallow suddenly being afraid of Tsareena getting hurt when she fought in Ultra Space and in other instances just fine just feels like an awkward attempt at giving her an emotional moment that doesn't gel with her characterization too well. If we add onto it that she only mastered her Z-Move during the League itself, her Z-Crystal was gained just by making a burger, and the Shaymin she cared for after meeting her mother effectively did nothing afterwards until its deal was resolved at the last possible second during the final credits of the series because 'Ulu found some Gracidea with no input from Mallow proper, Mallow ended up feeling like the most mishandled characters of this crew, whose character and development felt more like isolated moments than anything cohesive.

The Pokémon of the cast outside of the major ones don't really warrant much talk, the best of the bunch being Kiawe's Marowak for his vibrant personality and good feats, while everyone else ranges from pretty much not too focused on (Turtonator, Charizard, Tsareena, Togedemaru), useful for development but otherwise kinda dull more often than not (Primarina, Vikavolt, Snowy), cute but pointless in spite of heavy buildup (Sandy), and pretty much useless (Shaymin, Magearna outside of being a McGuffin), mostly getting occasional cute moments than anything substantial or productive for their trainers.

2.2) Ash's Pokémon

Beyond the classmates, there's the matter of Ash's Pokémon as well, and I'd like to spend a few words on the Rotomdex. On the whole, he was never the most important character, but I'd say the best way to describe him is that he's a likable character that happened to star in some rather poor episodes: while his overreactions could get annoying sometimes, for the most part he was likable enough, and his existence ensured that Ash would lose his oft-criticized trait to scan Pokémon he already saw that made him come across as dumb, and some of his moments and hobbies made him pretty endearing. His only real problem is that his focus episodes usually tended to focus on rather stupid plots aimed only to comedy, and while three of them are at least arguable, his last true focus episode happened to be one of the worst episodes of the series due to how out-of-character Ash acted under the possibility of Rotom leaving. None of the issues of these episodes were Rotom's fault, but as a minor character, it was somewhat unfortunate for him to receive such a short end of the stick focus-wise.

Going back to Ash's actual Pokémon, beyond the eternal Pikachu, I'd say the one most worth of consideration overall is Torracat (or Incineroar, but he never fought under the form), both in terms of praise and criticism. I say so because, before his capture, Litten seemed to be given unusually large focus, including being the first of Ash's Alolan Pokémon to debut and appearing for several episodes even between his major pre-capture arc, which being among the most tragic and involved capture circumstances seemed to point towards Torracat being the 'ace Pokémon' of the region, only for things to change once Lycanroc entered the picture. To put it simply, Torracat has some rather solid episodes and a personality that very much matches Ash's own, but he often feels like he's only given breadcrumbs of focus. Between only taking part in one minor trial and no Grand Trials, not getting his own associated Z-Crystal until right before the League and having it used only twice counting the test run of it, and his rivalry battle being the only one in the Alola League to happen in the middle of a match rather than at the end of it (which lead to a rather goofy division of him getting declared winner and then fainting after evolving just so it couldn't technically be considered a tie even if it functionally was to preserve his triumph), it feels like the poor Pokémon is never given enough of his due, and while I enjoy his drive to surpass Kukui's Incineroar and especially the way the plotline was figuratively used throughout the Ash VS Kukui battle, it just seems like Torracat is always last in priority in terms of Ash's Pokémon, which makes even his good moments feel like afterthought even with nice bits like his relationship with Lycanroc, especially with how, as touching and well-executed as it was, Stoutland's effect on Torracat is forgotten as soon as it happens, between Fire Fang being mastered exactly one episode later and Stoutland himself only being brought back twice, once as a thought by Ash and only in the second with Stoutland meeting Torracat again in Poni Island, mostly for the purpose of teaching him another move. So, in my opinion, Torracat is a case of a conceptually solid-enough character, that's however penalized both by how little the narrative gave him focus, and the fact that his arc with Stoutland and his later rivalry with Incineroar are pretty much unrelated (for why I consider this a flaw, consider that fellow Fire starter Infernape was able to have a memorably tragic backstory that did dovetail into his major rivalry perfectly, so just asking for a degree of connection isn't outside the realm of what this show can do).

And then there's Lycanroc, the Pokémon that the series wants us to consider the regional ace, which had several issues associated with him. To put this simply, I feel like he was a much better character as a Rockruff than he was after his evolution, mostly for being the perfect mix of adorable, focused, and having actually pronounced rage issues that occasionally popped up but were treated completely seriously, alongside having a pretty good showing in the Olivia battle as a rare final bout to completely not involve Z-Moves in a period where their usage was starting to become excessive. However, after the evolution (which is treated as a rare, one-of-a-kind event due to Rockruff evolving during a rare green flash yet is never actually remarked on beyond very occasional comments that he looks odd that are never treated as much), his handling changes for the worst, specifically for two of his rather ace-worthy moments: its rage form arc, and the way his rivalry with Gladion's Dusk Lycanroc was handled. The first is overall the biggest issue, because it's also symbolic of Sun & Moon's tonal issues since his major challenge to overcome as a Pokémon is the fact that, whenever his fur gets dirty, he goes on murderous rampages, always after acting goofily shocked in a way intended to be humorous, creating a whiplash effect that doesn't make clear how the viewer should find the scene given it first asks us to laugh at Lycanroc and then to be scared of him. This is also only introduced once in the middle of the Aether arc and then never revisited until the Ula'Ula arc, where it's ultimately solved by Ash bringing back memories of how Rockruff used to act about getting dirty that happened completely offscreen, only for the writers to then milk the drama some more two episodes later by now handling the rage mode completely seriously in terms of reactions and using actual rage as the trigger instead of just specifically the fur, in an episode that ultimately relied on Ash not trusting his Pokémon (when he was already somewhat out-of-character by being scared by Lycanroc's rampage after he was willing to hug his blazing Chimchar to calm him down back in Sinnoh). It's all handled in an extremely brief arc and then never again, feeling like an arc that takes elements from both the Infernape and Ash-Greninja arcs while missing the slow buildup and non-regressive development that made those two arcs work (and I'll elaborate more on it in a bit). Beyond this, his rivalry with Gladion's Lycanroc suffers of being extremely sidelined in spite of being the 'major' rivalry of the series: while the two Pokémon did fight three times, the first time was interrupted by Team Rocket (something they stopped doing for major rival battles for quite a while beforehand), the second relying on some very weird resilience by Midnight Lycanroc by not only tanking completely Dusk Lycanroc's Splintered Stormshards to seemingly no damage but also snapping out of confusion to deliver a finishing Z-Move of his own, and the third relying on a battle that was overall not too bad, but felt more like a mid-series squabble than Ash's victory at the Alola League (which is then completely outclassed in spectacle by Ash VS Kukui). Dusk Lycanroc's rivalry isn't actually too bad, but considering how Gladion's Lycanroc is the only major opponent Ash's ace got to fight post-evolution outside the Ula'Ula arc, Kukui's Pokémon (none of which he defeated) and occasional training bout, it did restrict a lot of his feats and ended up with him feeling more like an okay Pokémon than the powerhouse the writing wanted him to seem like. Coupled with a lackluster personal arc, this makes him closer to the Krookodile tier of 'possible aces' than one of the major ones like Charizard or Infernape.

And then we get to Rowlet, the last of the major Alolan four counting Pikachu, and probably the most problematic of the bunch. Much like Torracat and Lycanroc, Rowlet isn't inherently a bad Pokémon, with the first episodes neatly estabilishing two things: yes, he is dopey and loves to sleep a bit too much, but he's also a serious and competent fighter in battle that never fails to impress, making sure that neither side ultimately hurt or diminished the other. His problem is ultimately revolving around two things: he's spent a long time out of focus, and his later focus didn't exactly paint him in a good light. The first is probably the major issue at hand: while both Rowlet and Torracat were heavily sidelined midway into the series, Torracat did at least get a few token episodes to himself, while Rowlet's first real focus episode after his capture one only really comes almost one hundred episodes later. While in the early series this was mitigated by having Rowlet take part in two minor trials and two Grand Trials, this focus is all but forgotten by the second year of the series, with Rowlet reduced to solely a gag Pokémon whose greatest achievement ended up being learning Razor Leaf by sitting on a magical tree. This had the adverse effect of making his gag tries, which previously only showed either in minor matches or not during serious parts of battle, to slowly become more and more prominent. The other issue is that Rowlet had without a doubt the weakest rivalry set up and buildup of the three major Pokémon Ash obtained in Alola, as Hau and his Dartrix only appear in one episode before the League and two of the three battles Ash had with Hau involved major, non-strategy related writing contrivancies to reach the desired outcome (Ash slipping his Grassium-Z and getting distracted to fetch it for Rowlet to lose for the first one; Rowlet's Decidueye hoodie tanking a Z-Move, the overturned loss, and the sudden learning of a Feather Dance that doesn't act like the one Rowlet was trying to master for Rowlet to win in the final one). The way Rowlet acted in the Ash VS Hau battle is kinda emblematic of this, as the oft-debated overturned loss moment involved him falling asleep in the middle a match he was supposedly fired up for just for the sake of a joke and nothing else; regardless of how one wants to justify it, it doesn't change that such a thing never happened before in the series, and it ultimately involved Rowlet betraying the trust Ash put in him just for a scene the writers deemed funny, in what was supposed to be his finest hour (while Rowlet fell asleep in the Hala Grand Trial, it was only after his part of the match ended). Considering also that two of the moves Rowlet learned required the help of his adoptive flock without as much input from Ash and he ultimately ate an Everstone just for a variation of Seed Bomb that turned out to be more a liability than asset throughout the series, not even a cute relationship with Meltan and the fact that he won his last important matches of the series makes up for some of the worst excesses of tonal imbalance and inability to let jokes go in a context that absolutely have no space for his brand of incompetence-based humor.

With the major Alola captures gone, there's just the other two latecomer to discuss, and I'd like to start with Poipole/Naganadel, specifically because he's probably one of the worst handled Pokémon Ash ever owned. While the second year of Sun & Moon had several issues, none are as glaring as Poipole being the major Pokémon of the period, only to not actually do much of actually important. Starting with the fact that Ash only bonds with Poipole by proxy to begin with since Poipole interacts with and loves Pikachu before Ash even actually enters the picture, Poipole's biggest contributions to the series afterwards are acting silly for the majority of episodes and never actually getting involved in serious fights beyond one small bout with the Team Skull trio (which is estabilished as even more pathetic than the Team Rocket trio), making the fact that Ash captured him feel like a waste, especially when his focus episodes dealing more with his emotional side end up being just two, and ultimately not doing much of helpful during the Necrozma arc except leaving at the end in what at the time felt like a rather permanent farewell (as he was stuck in another dimension rather than somewhere Ash can readily access). Now, if Poipole's story ended there, he would've been odd but not too bad all things considered, but the problem comes from the fact that Poipole eventually returned right at the end of the series for no adequately explained in-universe reason during an unrelated Guzzlord attack, not only evolved but also presented as a competent and useful battler in spite of the fact none of it happened either onscreen or by Ash's efforts (unlike how Gliscor and Goodra, Pokémon in similar situations, did prove their worth onscreen before being put aside for a time), making this turn come across as an undeserved boost for Ash just so he could have six Pokémon, alongside removing the beauty of the permanent farewell Ash had with Poipole because the sheer coincidence of Naganadel's arrival and then his departure means that they may as well see each other again in the future. Among Ash's Pokémon in Alola, Naganadel is probably the crowning example of the series wanting its cake and eat it too in terms of wanting to be cute and fun and then rushing to make battles matter without the required buildup.

Meltan shares a lot of issues with Poipole, but overall to a lesser degree, mostly because his biggest problem is just coming way too late in the series and, much like Poipole, he only really bonds with Ash by proxy due to starting to like Rowlet first. Much like Lycanroc, his existence is supposedly important as a new discovery but this trait of his is barely called to attention, and coming too late in the series he only gets a few battles to his name with his contributions mostly amounting to gags rather than skill and serious fighting, alongside having the dubious honor of being the only Pokémon of Ash's Alola team to never use Z-Moves in spite of Ash fetching a Steelium-Z as a result of his final Grand Trial for no other reason than the out-of-universe one that Melmetal has never been in a game where you could use Z-Moves. Adding to the fact that Meltan only evolved right before the League finals for reasons outside Ash's guidance or influence conveniently before the last match for the victory, only to give indirect help at best and then winning a battle against a Pokémon with no feats, it's hard to consider Meltan's power boost earned and even harder to tell if he even had a significant power boost to begin with considering how little feats we have for both him in particular and Alola battles in general. All in all, a Pokémon that's been more shortserved by how late he came than actually any inherent issues.

2.3) Ash, Pikachu, and the Team Rocket trio

And with all those characters breached, we have to move on to the Sun & Moon take on Ash himself, which is, to put it simply, rather complicated to discuss. Another one of Sun & Moon's biggest talking points was the decision to amp up Ash's typical childishness to higher degrees than usual, with even his voice actress Rica Matsumoto confirming in an interview for the next series that she was explicitly instructed to play Ash as younger than usual for the Alolan series. Now, yet again, Ash having a goofier and more relaxed personality is neither unprecedented (as he was always silly to a degree, even in XY) nor inherently bad, and the problems mostly came from how the series decided to handle him later. One good thing at the start was that the take this series seemed to go for was Ash being a battle shonen-esque hero stuck in the wrong genre, with his typical behavior clashing with the more relaxed nature of the setting, which actually worked well in ensuring he didn't feel reset while fitting the new mission statement of the series. The problems really came up with how, ultimately, Ash became the series' biggest target of butt monkey-related humor (with the rest of the cast either being treated far more seriously or only occasionally being given the same treatment) and his initial competence in battling lead the way to an overabundance of 'silly regular kid'-related humor with even battles treated as mostly laughing matters, something later battles and important matches overturned to a degree that started to make Ash's handling feel arbitrary.

And arbitrary is the best way to describe Ash in this series: he can either be as good a trainer and master planner as he always was (Ash VS Olivia, Ash VS Misty, Ash VS Kukui), a heroic young man willing to go to good lengths for people he cares for (Tapu Koko rematch, most of the Guzzlord arc) while being scared and intimidated by his own Pokémon (Ula'Ula arc), a regular kid screwing up on daily tasks and willing to cheat his homework (Sophocles' early focus eps, the open school episode), a whiny little kid (the Stoutland treasure hunt episode, the Rotom farewell episode), a surprisingly thoughtful and serious boy (Stoutland's death episode, Minior episode) and everything in between, with the changes being so jarring that it feels less like this show is attempting a nuanced take on Ash and more like the show is simply not caring to stick to any portrayal depending on what the episode requires, especially when as I said above the entire premise of the show hinges on Ash not falling for his typical wanderlust (which is the inability to sit still for long and explore the world, so 'school and daily life adventures' doesn't cut it) without ever adequately explaining how, and seeming strangely uninterested in looking for new chances to grow stronger unless they happen to come his way. Arbitrary is also a great way to describe his impact on both his friends and the region, where in spite of appearing in every single episode, it often feels like Ash is irrelevant to his own show: he has nothing to do with either of Lillie's family deals, nor Sophocles' growing independency beyond occasional sidelines support and kickstarting it indirectly with the Charjabug gift, he barely did anything to support Lana's achievements beyond being there when they happened, his rivalry with Kiawe was nice but ultimately wasn't given his due, and Mallow and him barely got to have significant interactions throughout the story. Most of his rivalries in the region were carried more by his Pokémon than himself as he only shared amicable relationships with all of his supposed rivals with no real competitivity at their core (aside from Kiawe, which as mentioned was done dirty), and even when he got to be a hero it was either as part of an effort by everyone (Necrozma arc, both Guzzlord instances, technically most Ultra Guardians episodes), relying on questionably justified plot devices (Aether arc, and once again the Necrozma arc), or ultimately moving the focus away from him and his influence when you'd think the story would do the opposite (Guzma's parts in the Alola League). Adding onto that that the amount of times his Pokémon gained moves in the heat of the moment without training (a series staple that previous series tried to downplay with more onscreen training) and how his Pokémon ended up learning moves more for the actions of someone other than him than because he helped them, and Ash's handling in this region really adds up to strangely inconsequential, which is particularly bad considering how the League tried to go the other way, making his eventual achievement at the end feel hollow in the face of lacking buildup in the region and the several boosts and narrative aids he got to get there.

There's also the elephant in the living room that is Ash's development. Early in Sun & Moon I've seen people claim this series was more about Ash developing as a human being than as a trainer, which would be true... if not for the fact stuff like Ash doing chores was also alluded to and shown in previous series like AG and DP, and that during the Alola League (which should be the culmination of the series) none of it is actually remotely involved except for Ash talking of his love for the region during the final attack, while it never actually showed in previous matches (even against Guzma, which should be where this should come up given Ash's declaration at the start of it, the narrative wants us to stay in Guzma's head instead). The 'love for the region' thing also seems weird to bring up to me considering he actually spent less time exploring the region and more being holed up in one city with very occasional detours, with most of the plots ensuing around him being the sort of thing you'd see in "filler" episodes (like taking part in some competitions, taking part in a play, etc). It feels more like the series wants us to pretend the typical filler hijinks now are part of character growth rather than being just small adventures for fun. If we consider that learning to love the region, then Ash didn't really do much of different from previous series beyond sitting still this time around. And ultimately, the fact that Ash is back to adventuring now in a similar way to previous series means that if Ash ends up winning a League again in the future (which is not unlikely now that the ceiling was broken through), none of the reasons given to make his stay in Alola significant would really age well. The only arc that I feel actively tried to develop Ash as a trainer was Ula'Ula, and that still relied on some very significant moments of out-of-character behavior from Ash.

2.4) Relationships, and Everyone Else

I think at this point one recurring issue has cropped up: specifically, there are so many supposedly important characters that none of them truly got their due in terms of focus, either having to be satisfied with a number of focus episodes that barely amount to an arc or with their involvement into things reduced to just their specific deals and barely little else, especially with how this was the first series to not have all of Ash's friends necessarily involved in every episode. I feel this had a pretty adverse effect on the series' dynamics, as the already diluted interactions between the cast due to the large group ended up being even less focused on given that not all the characters were always there. As a result, we barely know stuff like Mallow's or Sophocles' relationship, or Lillie's and Kiawe's, and so on, with their own relationships to each other mostly falling into basic friendship (the ones with Ash in particular mostly falling into respect, friendliness and occasional snark at his expense), with only a few like Kiawe's competitiveness with Ash or Lana and Mallow being revealed halfway in as childhood friends having particular focus, otherwise being content with splitting the cast into 'the boys' group' and 'the girls' group' whenever they needed focused attention, and the rare occasions where the characters had some interactions. For the most part, perhaps emblematically of this series, characters mostly shared moments rather than actual relationships.

All that's left to discuss in this area is the rest of the cast, and let it be said... for a series supposedly about exploring the people of Alola, the majority of the non-main cast ranges from forgettable to rather dull, especially once we move to the lesser recurring characters. Lusamine's reduction to an overworked mother who only gets involved in matters explicitly tied to her children and occasionally the Ultra Guardians missions was a rather noticeable waste of an interesting game character, and while Kukui does have a nice presence and good usage throughout the series, the same can't quite be said of his wife Burnet, who beyond some good presence in the Aether arc and minor bits of exposition when dealing with Ultra Beasts (and in particular Necrozma) is effectively sidelined in housewife position for most of the series as Ash's 'second mother' (a position that, unlike Kukui who actively acts the part, mostly seems to come from cooking for him and being married post-Aether) with most of her funny moments coming from being a Royal Mask fangirl. Wicke has very little going for her, while Faba is probably one of Sun & Moon's worst misfires in that, after making his villainy far worse than his game self, the story acts like he should be forgiven while never actually learning his lesson, in spite of the show telling us he caused trauma to Lillie for years and how most of his contributions to anything end up boiling to minor help at best, and attempting to cheat his way to what he wants (the League) at worst. It's a horrible lessons for kids to have, and I'm not sure what the writers had in mind with this aside from keeping him around because the games' more snively and heinous Faba (even accounting for his more evil USUM iteration) also did.

Then we have the Kahuna, which are for the most part okay bit characters (even if Olivia's take was pretty weird, coming from her game self), with Nanu as the obvious standout even between the issues of the Ula'Ula arc as a jerk trainer with a point that doesn't really get 'taught his place', close enough to his game characterization, and Hapu having a decent track to development in the Poni arc (even if much like Olivia, it sacrificed her game characterization along the way). The other Trial Captains not part of the main cast run the gamut between nice to see but not particularly deep (Acerola, to a degree Ilima) and pretty much borderline pointless (Mina). Ash's rivals are a similar deal, with Hau being nice but having not too much to himself with how late he enters the series, while Gladion is an alright character whose rivalry with Ash mostly suffers of being a tad vanilla: they're on friendly terms, are strong, and like to battle each other, but beyond that Ash doesn't have much of a reason to be a rival (something even Alain had by being interested in facing Ash even if he was as separate otherwise), like the student-teacher relationship Sawyer had, or the foil status Paul shared with him, or simply being an old friend he wanted to surpass the way Gary was. Their lack of connection alongside the fact that Gladion would barely think about him unless the plot required him to only contributed to them feeling a tad distant from each other, and why their final bout at the League felt for many viewers just 'okay' rather than the earned culmination of their relationship.

And then there are the lower tier recurring characters, ostensibly Sun & Moon's selling point as, unlike previous series, only rarely did the series happen to introduce 'characters of the day' that never came back afterwards. The biggest problem is that, ultimately, all of these lower tier characters are still as flat as the characters of the day of yesteryear: in spite of appearing several times, all we know of Anela the old lady is that she used to be a dancer and likes Litten/Torracat a lot, Ulu is pretty much an even more flanderized Brock that seldom pops up, Anna the reporter mostly stuck to that role, most of the parents and relative of the classmates that weren't Lillie's remained minor characters with little of note to themselves, and so on. The only noticeable recurring guys among the bunch are probably the Skull trio (which mostly acted as a second rate Team Rocket while was even less recurring than they were in this region) and Viren as a recurring antagonist, mostly for being the kind of villain you usually saw punished at the end of the series in previous series (like Dolan the Pokémon merchant) except made recurring in spite of being arrested in his previous appearence, with no real explanation beyond 'kids' show logic'. Even supposedly important characters like Ida and Horatio mostly remain rather regular mentors and rivals with not much else to them, and are unlikely to stick to anyone but the most diehard fans. There are of course some good characters among this bunch, especially the borderline characters of the day like two-episode-wonders Dia and the Kanto weaboos in the Malie City arc, but overall, if Alola truly wanted to make this a lived in and more developed region than previous series, its inhabitants didn't give this aim any real favors, in my opinion.

3. A Dissection of the Series: What Went Wrong, How, and Why

With the biggest parts of important elements of the series analyzed, I'd like to use this final part of the review for some extra analysis of how the series went down and why, in my opinion, it ended up changing for the worse as it went along, since there's one important thing to point out: Sun & Moon, conceptually and fundamentally, wasn't a bad series. But what it does have is, beyond some big flaws, several small ones that continously added up.

Now, let's start to dissect everything, dividing everything by their year of airing.

3.1) Year One: Beginnings, Akala Island, Aether Foundation

When I say that, I have to start with saying that my opinion of Sun & Moon wasn't initially this negative, and in fact, the first twenty-to-forty episodes were actually pretty nice: while the setup is slightly different than usual and humor is definitely prevalent (in particular the oft-mentioned 'funny faces', which would go on to become one of the defining elements of this iteration, far more than any prior series), there's a steady influx of plot-important episodes, development and setup for the future to help making the series a breezy watch, with each slice of life romp feeling either productive or simply fun diversions. Among the good things estabilished here that stand out as good even at the end of the series there's definitely the spiritual angle of Alola, an angle that whenever explored truly does make the region feel different than previous ones and like Ash is effectively experiencing something he never did before, and with stuff like the first trial and Grand Trial alongside Litten's capture arc and Gladion's introduction help keeping ther pace going even in the absence of a more overarching goal in the League. Now, this stretch is hardly perfect, considering that it already shows several cracks that later expanded: Ash only decides to move to the Island Challenge when he happens to remember about it in episode 9; a lot of battles end way too quick and barely get focus except for Trial and Grand Trial (which still have a somewhat lethargic pace); Gladion's decent rival setup is ruined by an unnecessary Team Rocket attack; some Idiot Plots and empty episodes that are just dull to watch happen; certain setups and developments are rushed to the finish way too fast; and, most importantly, the removal of Trial Captains from the lore and Team Skull as a consistent presence beyond occasional moments ended up removing tentpole parts of Alola's nature in the games that the show barely fills adequately, and it opens the door to call anything the show wants a trial, no matter how unrelated to battling it is, giving a feeling that the Island Challenge is hapzardly put together. But, during these early episodes, the problems are negligible or made up for, and even nowadays, I'd heartily reccomend everything up to Stoutland's death as legitimately good.

The first crack, overall, comes from the Akala arc. At the time of its airing, it looked to be a breath of fresh air as it finally moved away from Melemele Island after a rather noticeable dip in plot important events for more filler-y hijinks, and due to prior experience with the series, it was easy to assume the cast would've remained there for a while. However, that didn't end up happening, the arc ending mere episodes after it began, after rushing through equivalents of the three in-game trials (with Ash only effectively taking part in the Grass Trial from the games while Kiawe and Lana ended up gaining his Marowak and her Z-Ring and Waterium-Z instead) until it culminated in Olivia's Grand Trial, with one extra episode dealing with evolution-related issues for Lycanroc culminating into Dusk Lycanroc. This arc already started on a bad note by only allowing Ash one of the in-game trials for a Z-Crystal, which while to a degree understandable on the reasoning of wanting him to only have Z-Crystals he'd effectively use and the seeming decision at the time to not have overlapping Z-Crystals among the main cast, ended up solidifying the 'whatever counts' feeling of the Anime Island Challenge, and a first proper episode that seemed to relish into making Ash into an even larger butt monkey than usual, including him crying like a baby upon losing in a way that would've been immature for his OS self. Kiawe's episode was the standout of this batch, as it focused on him confronting an opponent he couldn't beat and with Ash giving him support into improving, estabilishing a good challenge to overcome in a way that had become rare for the series and was good to see again. Lana's own Trial wasn't bad either, but suffered of having more challenge put into it during the fishing part than the battling part, and Ash's Grass Trial being a battle that suffered of both misplaced comedy (an example of tone imbalance I'll address more later) and an opponent that barely even moved in Totem Lurantis. Olivia's Grand Trial was also probably one of the best battles to come out of Sun & Moon, putting a focus on strategy even in an extremely slow battle and with a more-than-decent finish, with the only blemish being that Rockruff's signs of evolving only really come one episode before they develop further into him evolving, and the already-mentioned problem of Dusk Lycanroc being supposedly a new discovery that nobody paid much attention to, after which we moved back to Melemele to resume the rhythm of seeming slice of life (with at least three episodes of good importance and one nominally important).

After another brief stretch, we moved briefly to Kanto for an arc that was ultimately just nostalgic fluff for old fans bringing back Misty and Brock, which was nice even if transparently OS-pandering (to the point Misty's Azurill and even Tracey were not even as much as mentioned during the episodes), with the only really important contributions to the series beyond two cool fights in the second episode was the first mention of the Alola Pokémon League (with Kukui being reminded he'll need badges, something he seemed to not pay much attention to later) and Misty and Brock getting a promise of a visit to Alola that didn't really do much for the series beyond further fluff. After this, however, we finally moved to one of the first truly major arcs of the series: the Aether Foundation arc, or, in my opinion, where the series really started to fall apart.

At first, the arrival of the Aether arc seemed to be rather promising, seemingly keeping the slice of life nature of the series but starting to delve into the elements of the games for what people presumed to be a slow burn to a payoff loosely covering the game events. Except... that's not really what happened. Instead, this entire arc turned into about a dozen of episodes harshly abridging the entire villain arc of the games and cutting everything they couldn't fit, while seemingly following the conflicting mission statements of making the arc as loosely close to the games as possible while trying to be as different from them as possible, and this was clear from the very beginning, with the introduction of Lusamine as an overbearing mother with none of the deviousness of her game counterpart. This, however, isn't necessarily a problem as the Anime has often rewritten game characters before, but what the problem is is the fact they changed the conflict of Lillie dealing with the emotional abuse Lusamine inflicted upon her into Lillie simply being annoyed at being treated as a child and, most importantly, being annoyed at how her mother evolved her own Clefairy, something Clefairy itself didn't have a problem with, that makes her come across as a spoiled brat and losing most sympathy (especially when no one but maybe Burnet reprimand her for her callous behavior), especially when Lusamine is treated as legitimately loving her and just being too busy rather than having any malice. The problem is also that, throughout the arc, the only one blaming Lusamine for never wondering how did Lillie develop her phobia of Pokémon is Gladion, while true to form Lillie doesn't seem to hold her mother accountable for it, and in fact, only wants to uncover the truth after Nebby teleports her near Type: Null by sheer coincidence, reverting her development from her focus episodes. Nebby is another big issue, as its ownership moved from Lillie to Ash for no reason other than giving him a reason to be involved in what would've otherwise been 'the Aether family show', yet the episode wants to still play into the game by implying Lillie and Nebby have a special relationship when they share their moment.

What I feel was the biggest issue of this specific arc, however, was shuffling the actively villainous role of the plot towards Faba, where he actually manages to be menacing for a brief while before the show decides to fully portray him as a silly villain hard to take seriously (including a magical girl routine to activate an Ultra Wormhole-creating machine) even as he's responsible for Lillie's trauma in his attempt to make Lusamine happy and finding an Ultra Beast for her and tried to wipe out Lillie's memories when she seemed to be able to reveal what happened. In the midst of a sea of confusing plot holes by adaptation (why was Type: Null fitted with the mask when as Silvally he did exactly what he was asked to do and Lusamine seems unaware it even exists? Where did the RKS System ROMs come from? Why the heck did a random Solgaleo and Lunala entrust their child to Ash to begin with?), the biggest problem of this arc comes from how, in Faba's aborted attempt to wipe out Lillie's memories, Silvally's attempt to save her reminds her of what really happened when she developed her phobia (a mere two episodes after it was revealed what caused it), giving her back the ability to touch all Pokémon again, making her previous attempts to do so feel retroactively pointless and only there to milk viewer sympathy for when she lost the ability to again, alongside ensuring to keep her development path directionless after this episode barely one third of the way into the series.

The biggest problem after this, however, comes from Faba's subsequent plan that ends up with Lusamine defending her children from a Nihilego and ending up dragged into Ultra Space due to her act of selflessness, with Lillie, Gladion, and subsequently everyone else moving on to Poni Island to rescue her. Along the way, Lillie changes into what the games called her 'Z-Powered Form', which in the games symbolized her moving away from her mother's shadow, while here it means... pretty much nothing, voiding it of its significance and making it come across as either a game-pandering move or something just done because the source material did it. Another significant issue of this stretch is Ash's upgrade of his Z-Ring into a Z-Power Ring, under the absolutely important reasoning of his Solgalium-Z not fitting in his regular Z-Ring. Meaning that Ash needed a magical, seemingly important ritual to obtain something whose usefulness boils down to borderline cosmetic reasons, especially as we later see Z-Power Rings doled out regularly like they're nothing important (including one to Team Rocket and Gladion's regular Z-Ring turning into a Z-Power Ring with no one remarking about it), which is probably one of the most blatant cases of marketing dictating plot flow in the history of this series.

We then moved on to the final battle, which was admittedly decent enough beyond some strange issues of power creep (like Sophocles one-shotting Lusamine's Milotic) and some occasional bits of tonal imbalance (Teether Dance hula in the middle of a serious mission by Sophocles, Mallow and Lana), but was marred by two issues of significance: one was the decision of having Lillie's big moment with her mother possessed by Nihilego involve her giving a speech of how she hates her and how she allowed herself to be possessed by an Ultra Beast for how self-absorbed she is, which while definitely meant to come across as "the mother I respect would never fall for it" has the problem of Lillie and Lusamine never getting a softer reconciliation before this moment (with said softer reconciliation seemingly happening offscreen after everything was over, which we never heard of until almost episode one hundred), which just further makes Lillie unlikable. The other problem is the grand debut of 10,000,000 Volt Thunderbolt, a move that was only used three times that was either poorly explained or never actually received an explanation depending on how you interpret the part where it's employed in the very last major battle of the series, completely out of nowhere except for perhaps Ash's Electrium-Z shining briefly a lot of episodes ago, which was never fully explained, as is the fact Ash's Pikashunium-Z reverted after use.

And thus, after a wedding between the four-times-dated Kukui and Burnet and with Nebby deciding to leave for no adequately explained reason, with Lusamine estabilishing a task force for Ultra Beasts which involves the classmates and Lillie in the closest thing this series gave them to an onscreen reconciliation, after an arc where Lillie supposedly grew... things returned to be for the most part exactly like they were in previous episodes, almost like this arc never happened, including Lillie reverting to her regular clothes. Pretty much, this supposedly character-focused arc ended up coming across as ultimately not so important, especially when Lillie's personality remained roughly the same with the only real problems she developed from being the ones this arc itself introduced, except for now being able to touch every Pokémon.

Things seemed to just return to normal, even if this was just a prelude towards the structure of the series completely collapsing on itself.

3.2) Year Two: Ultra Guardians, Ula'Ula Island, Necrozma

Year two is the one to which I, personally, trace most of the problems of the Sun & Moon series, as the major focus of the series throughout this period ended up being the 'Ultra Guardians', a Sentai-esque team formed by the main cast under Aether Foundation supervision tasked with dealing with Ultra Beasts, and the biggest problem of this arc is that it really wasn't an arc so much as it was a loose connection of monster of the weeks plots that occasionally was brought up outside of them, but was otherwise completely separate from everything not just in terms of structure, but also in tone, as a parody Sentai with barely threatening monsters clashed heavily both with wanting to be a chill slice of life Anime and with wanting to be a battle-based Pokémon Anime. It's an arc that never fully gelled with everything else (the only I'd save being Celesteela, a good Sophocles episode and a rare character-driven Ultra Guardians romp) and ultimately ended on a pitiful note with a rather dull episode with no real oomph to it, but ended up taking the 'main arc' position and leaving the rest of the series pretty much directionless, with several major arcs stalled and, beyond Lillie obtaining her Icium-Z and an Ice Stone that then disappeared completely, Torracat and Steenee evolving, and the Ula'Ula arc for Lycanroc, and Poipole leading to Necrozma, pretty much little of major happened. Teams remained frozen, and development seemed to hit a dead end, beyond officially introducing the Masked Royal.

Between the Ilima episodes (which felt like a waste considering his main purpose at the League ended up being effectively jobbing to Guzma) and the beginning of the Ula'Ula arc proper, the viewers and the students were properly acquainted with the idea of Alola soon getting a Pokémon League, with both Ash and Kiawe expressing interest in it. This didn't send any weird looks yet, as Kiawe was estabilished as the other major battler and to have taken the trials, but this was in hindsight an important omen of things to come. In the meantime, however, Ash departed for Ula'Ula in what turned out to be a solo arc, and one that started up promising only to run into big issues along the way.

I already mentioned part of it when talking of Lycanroc, but the problem of the Ula'Ula arc is that it works on the assumption that Ash would be scared of Lycanroc's rage issues to the point of not acting, with Tapu Bulu's training giving them a moment to surpass those issues that, even with Rowlet suddenly learning Razor Leaf by sitting on a magical tree, could've even worked if it wasn't for the fact that to calm down Lycanroc and reaffirm his trust in him Ash ended up involving a flashback to Rockruff that we never saw before, making the whole affair come across as insincere. After an interlude where Ash undertook a 'Trial' that was technically the in-game Ghost one but was effectively a phony one involving Team Rocket (just furthering the 'whatever goes' sense of the Anime Island Challenge) that resulted in no Z-Crystal, the debut Electroweb, and a strange appearence of 10,000,000 Volt Thunderbolt again in spite of the whole thing being a relatively down to earth affair even with Team Rocket about to win with Mimikyu's Z-Move, this arc reached its conclusion with Ash VS Nanu, a battle that's been in equal part praised and mocked, and which I had a friend describe in the most accurate way as a well-written and interesting battle... for anyone but Ash Ketchum.

Seeing a battle taking on a more psychological bent with Nanu toying with Ash and trying to force him to give in to Lycanroc's rage mode is an admitedly interesting choice and Nanu is absolutely the best part of this battle for it, but the problem is that this requires the assumption that Ash would unconsciously not trust his Pokémon after they put the rage mode under control with trust to begin with, alongside the battle being rather visually boring and with a 1 VS 3 set up that makes it more seem like Nanu is weak than Ash being strong (especially with Tapu Bulu tossing in a Sitrus Berry mid-match). This is supposed to be Ash's big development moment as a trainer in Alola, but it requires Ash to have a regressive mindset that doesn't fit how far he's come (something Sun & Moon does in quite a few things big and small, like completely forgetting Jennies and Joys are families of clones after the Kanto episodes) and, much like the Aether arc before it, begins and ends in the few episodes it takes to happen, I already covered Poipole's issue in his character dissection, so I'd like to move on to the most important part of this year: the Necrozma arc, which among the major arcs of the Sun & Moon series it's probably the most irrelevant. Coming in after only minimal foreshadowing (including a fairly interesting hint of a connection between Nanu and Giovanni that the show never really dealt with adequately), this arc was effectively as standalone as it gets, involving events that were only briefly mentioned after it (Rotom depositing the data of Necrozma in the Stufful episode, Naganadel's return, the stadium where the League was held being called Manalo Stadium), and that tried to make a big dangerous deal without actually having much happening: beyond the biggest damage of the episode being adults feeling comedically down as a result of absorbed energy, the introduction of an Elite squad of Team Rocket led by Giovanni's secretary Matori (here revamped as a Team Rocket trio hater in spite of originally being the one reccomending them to Giovanni in DP's last episode) that ultimately did nothing significant except maybe causing injuries to Nebby that wasn't clear if they happened or not with how stiff the animation was, the baffling and unexplained return of Nebby alongside an out-of-nowhere Lunala, and a general sense of big deal where nothing much of dangerous for the cast happened (and that bafflingly replaced the Ultra Recon Squad and Ultra Megalopolis with a talking Naganadel and a generic quarry that achieved effectively the same purpose), this arc ended up feeling like a snoozefest that only resulted in Poipole staying behind in his now healed world in an overall beautifully permanent-feeling farewell, except that, in the light of future events, this choice felt like one that effectively harmed the show in the long run. Also, with Matsui being the headwriter, one might think resolving the arc with everyone sharing their energy borders on self-plagiarism considering she was also the headwriter of Dragon Ball GT, which had a similar climax (itself inherited from Dragon Ball Z).

Thankfully, even if this year was really not the greatest, the following one brought as much improvements as it did other problems to deal with.

3.3) Year Three: Poni Island, Hints of Mohn, Alola Pokémon League

The third year of Sun & Moon did not start on a good note, as after the Necrozma arc the show ended up on a shortage of things to look forward to, with several arcs still stalled and only the still no show Guzma and the League left to check out. During this period, perhaps to lead into Let's Go marketing, we started getting some shorts at the end of each episode dealing with an Eevee getting to Alola, which everyone assumed would eventually go to Ash, only to unexpectedly go to Lana in a move that made some fans sour. Sandy didn't end up doing much else but being cute and possibly allowing Lana's arc to resume by giving her another cute Pokémon to hold in Popplio's stead, but that was it for a while alongside Hau's debut as a character, in an episode infamous for being at the same time an okay rival introduction where Ash lost a fight by fetching his Z-Crystal and getting distracted to take it back, and where Rowlet ate an Everstone for a move that turned out to be more trouble than it was worth.

Beyond Misty and Brock visiting an Alola (which involved an episode where Brock's womanizing gag was blown even further than ever before) and an actually pretty decent arc starring Ash tossed into a post-apocalyptic alternate Alola to deal with Guzzlord in a rare instance of an Ultra Beast being presented as an actual force of destruction, the show finally started to move again with the Poni arc, or as some people called it 'the ultimate development arc', as the focus of this arc seemed to be the opposite of Ula'Ula being an Ash solo act by putting the focus back on the neglected companions, giving them either a new character direction, Z-Crystals evolutions, new Pokémon or in Ash's case his final Grand Trial, all tied together by Hapu opening up to the crew after starting standoffish and distant. Overall, Poni isn't on paper a bad arc, and there are quite a few episodes that are actually pretty good (Kiawe's trial among them for sure), but cramming all this development on the same island one after the other only had the effect of feeling jarring (unlike how Akala was not only still early enough, but only gave significant new things to Ash, Kiawe and Lana), most noticeably by cramming two completely separate evolution plots in the same episode in a move that slightly hurt both of them (Sophocles' feeling a tad impersonal, while Lana's lost the actual training part of it), Shaymin was effectively even more irrelevant than Sandy in the series, the Mohn arc estabilished here had some problems I'll get into soon, and the Hapu Grand Trial ending up as one of the worst 'Gym battles'-like matches Ash ever fought by utilizing the same strategy to victory as the extremely derided Brock battle by dousing Mudsdale and using an Electric attack on it, only adding the patch that 'it was just like Soak' even if no Pikachu can access that move. Ultimately, a well-intentioned arc that felt a bit too little, too late, and came at the expense of Ash's own focus before his final Grand Trial (to the point unlike the previous islands he didn't even do any unofficial trials before this one).

Following this, the next major episode (excluding a two-parter introducing Ash's Meltan that arguably ran one episode too long) was one that was both long awaited and caused some issues and improvements for the series going forward: Guzma's debut episode, alongside the formal announcement to the world of the Alola Pokémon League... and more specifically, the fact that it would be open to everyone with no requirements whatsoever, on the justification that it's not important who wins. Now, I've seen way too many debates on the topic, so I'll put it simply: regardless of if you think an open League is a good idea or not, it does mean that the various trials and Grand Trials Ash took on lost a lot of their meaning since they became self-sustained achievements that don't mean much outside their bubble if Ash didn't need to do any of them to enter the League, and this structure did cause several problems that lowered the general quality of the Alola League for a decent part of its length. When Guzma is being painted as the bad guy for considering the League just a schoolyard fight between weaklings, the viewers shouldn't be inclined to agree with him.

Another big issue of this decision is that, otherwise, it caused the structure of the series to come under scrutiny: before, and usually, since Ash is the only character taking part in the League, it's only his growth in skill that is under scrutiny, and everyone else is free to be as strong or as weak as necessary, but opening the door to everyone to join in also meant that everyone in the series came under scrutiny, and to put it simply characters like Mallow just weren't made to be involved in it even under the guise of a League for fun, something that showed in the actual execution of the Alola League and that I'll get to in a bit.

The episode after this one started the further estabilishment of the Mohn arc, and let me just say... this arc is, on the whole, probably the most disappointing of the various arcs of Sun & Moon, and that's saying something after everything I explained so far. Specifically, the biggest purpose of this arc was for the Aether family to find out about the whereabouts of the seemingly dead patriarch of the family, and supposedly show Lillie as being 'strong' after the events of the Aether arc, but in actual concept, it was just a convenient way for her to get a Z-Ring after conveniently ignoring the possibility for almost one real life year, getting it 'on loan' for almost getting a Z-Move to work in spite of everyone else requiring to pass a real trial to get theirs, and with her contributions effectively ending up still needing Gladion's help and amounting, once more, mostly to feeling sad to catch audience sympathy, while Gladion gets a Zoroark to be only used in one round of the League. But the worst part of all is that this arc, to put it simply, doesn't end. After Magearna finally wakes up and we get the not explained reveal that it knows where Mohn is, the Aether family embarks on a journey to find him... only for the series to end at that point. After spending six months teasing this storyline, just leaving it hanging like this is poor storytelling, and even with the justification that Pokémon 2019's world-hopping premise would mean the new show can end it for Sun & Moon, the series shouldn't have to rely on another one to resolve its own plots, especially one on which supposedly significant moments of the late series hinged on.

The rest of the series, however, does gain something from the open League premise, and that something is a consistent direction by having everyone get boosts in preparation for the League, which at the very least leads to some alright moments for Sophocles that play nicely in his arc and the technical resolution of Lana's arc, among a sea of strangely persistent legendary appearences that only got more and more contrived as the series went on considering they were entirely separate from each other, even the ones that led to ultimately good episodes (like the one where a Celebi led to Ash and Torracat meeting a young Professor Kukui), since it felt like a move to ensure attention that was wholly unnecessary to the story being told. But over time, everything came to a close with the start of the Alola Pokémon League, probably the most talked about arc of Sun & Moon, for good or ill.

The Alola League is unique in several aspects, both in terms of the Sun & Moon series and the Anime as a whole: for the former, it's a battle-focused arc in a region that didn't want battling to be the focus as the climax of it; for the latter, it's the longest League arc in the series' history. clocking at roughly sixteen episodes. Being a tournament arc, you'd think such a good length would benefit it, but the way the series decided to execute things left a lot to be desired, most specifically because Sun & Moon has a very mixed track record in terms of battles and for the decision to show every battle of the tournament even if just partially. There is a lot that could be said about this arc, but I'll try to aim for the big ones first: for starters, beginning the League by reducing the contestants to just sixteen using a Battle Royale was a rather poor choice, as not only that's a format that allows characters to reach high positions by just surviving rather than being strong (as seen by how James got to the Top 16 even if he explicitly didn't face anyone), but confining it to just one episode meant that pretty much every battle of it was reduced to just a series of one-hit KOs from every major characters, with all of them ultimately surviving. After that, another problem was how a lot of the early rounds of the arc ended up averaging between okay to poor battles, with the dubious honor of having Ash's first battle being completely for laughs against Faba, the only character beyond Jessie and James to get one in this League in spite of being the eventual winner. I already mentioned the specifics of Mallow's attempt to quit her match coming out of nowhere from a character standpoint and the issues of Ash VS Hau, so I'll just say that Lillie's battle against Gladion was okay but done dirty for what was supposed to be a huge moment for her in terms of development, and that Sophocles', Lana's (sans Mallow's) and Kiawe's battles ended up being okay to great on the whole. However, the fact that the first two rounds of the League only used one Pokémon each didn't help the sense of escalation at all, nor the sense of Guzma being correct in describing this League as 'a schoolyard fight between weaklings'.

From the Semifinals onward, the League improves in quality due to only good battlers remaining, though it does run into problems of a different sort: Guzma, which was built up as the major threat of the League with Ash vowing to stop him due to what Alola did to him, is not only dealt with in the penultimate round rather than in the finals, but in a battle that makes that statement ring a tad hollow since the perspective we follow during the fight isn't Ash's, but rather Guzma's, shedding some light into his confidence issues and his Golisopod's habit to use Emergency Exit whenever scared (which beyond being only halfway foreshadowed, also ends up with the bad side-effect of giving Ash a free win through Torracat, turning Ash VS Guzma into a 2 VS 1 in Ash's favor), but effectively making Ash interchangeable as a result. It's a good fight with some nice moments, but it just makes his build up as possibly ruining the League for everyone ring hollow when his presence didn't seem to ruin the League for anyone in any way, and the threat wasn't even considered worthy of the finals. Kiawe VS Gladion, by contrast, is mostly a good fight with not much else to it. However, one thing that starts to be noticeable in this part of the League is the sheer reluctance of the show to start any matches before the halfway mark or close to it, padding the airtime as much as possible with not always necessary scenes and stretching the battles along two episodes even when not necessary.

The finals having three Pokémon each meant that Ash VS Gladion ended up having a bit more meat to it in terms of battling, but Ash once again ended up getting another boost in the form of Meltan's evolution into a supposedly powerful mythical Pokémon, which would already be bad since he shouldn't be getting these kinds of boosts at the very final stage of this story (and yes, just to be clear, Kingler's deal was poor writing back in OS as well) but also comes after a gag battle rigged in his favor, a battle that required several contrivancies on his side to be won with Rowlet, and another battle with a facilitated victory in Guzma, making it feel like Ash ended up getting into each of these matches with the writing rigged on his side. The Gladion battle has some fairly good moments both from a character and battling perspective, but between the unearned evolution right before it and just the way they built up to things, Ash's victory here ended up not really feeling as impressive as you'd think this first League Conference victory should be, all things considered. A battle that just ends up as 'okay' rather than the amazing it should've been.

However, after a somewhat dull interlude involving a Guzzlord attack that's probably comprised of more stock footage than action just so Naganadel can come in to make number, we moved on to Ash VS Kukui, probably one of the best battles of this series. That said, while it is pretty good and better written than the majority of them, especially in terms of how Torracat is handling for its first three episodes, it is knocked down by being an exhibition match, meaning that beyond 'fun' and offering a good fight, Ash doesn't need to win this battle (unlike how every other major battle at this stage usually comes with adequate stakes), and most importantly how Tapu Koko forced his way in in place of Kukui's last Pokémon (after Kukui allowed Naganadel in on the pretense of being part of the family, ignoring that three-to-four of Kukui's Pokémon in this match were never seen before and his supposed Pelipper was completely excluded just because the local deity wanted some fighting), which given how Koko wasn't part of this particular equation comes across as scrunching two battles to save time. It also doesn't help that then Tapu Koko interrupts the match again just to allow Kukui and Ash to use Z-Moves again, with Ash ending up using 10,000,000 Volt Thunderbolt for the final time while praising the region, which while making for a cool finisher it ultimately makes Ash's supposed aim to master Z-Moves to defeat Tapu Koko resolved in a poor way when he only won using the Z-Crystal he never actually trained to use and that only conveniently showed up whenever it needed. Accounting for yet another boost in the form of Naganadel's return, this battle is ultimately marred once again like most of the League by the writing apparently wanting him to win at all costs and look good while doing so, strategy and skill be damned along the way.

After this followed two episodes of closure, that had some good moments (especially in regards to the Team Rocket trio) but ultimately involved a lot of contrived instances (like an Ultra Wormhole for Naganadel to return home coming just above Kukui's house) or poorly executed moments, most importantly the completely offscreen adventure of Ash and Nebby in Ultra Space, the way Mimikyu decided to let go of his killer instinct towards Pikachu, and most importantly the fact that Ash decided to leave his Alolan team behind for reasons the viewer wasn't made privy to, and which ended up having negative implications for either the Alolan team or the previous Pokémon depending on how you read it.

And that's ultimately how Sun & Moon ended up feeling for me, with several small issues that kept adding up, until the show just couldn't handle them anymore.

3.4) The Problem of Themes and Other Technical Issues

Before to move on the closing statement, I'd like to quickly address something I've often seen brought up in Sun & Moon's defense, generally its themes justifying a lot of what it does alongside exploring the region of Alola by having Ash live there. Usually, the biggest themes I see brought up about this is that Sun & Moon is about family and meeting a world and learning from it... but while the first might have some merit, the second is very much what the show has always been about, arguably moreso than Sun & Moon has been since Ash actively travelled to meet said world rather than wait until the world came knocking at his door, and there were a lot of family-oriented moments in previous series, be they siblings or relatives. I'm sure there are other, different themes that one could bring up here, perhaps some that are indeed unique to the Sun & Moon series, but there's something important to say about themes: no matter how good the message you want to spread or explore is, if the narrative has issues, you can't excuse them on the pretense of themes, especially if it starts to be applied to every single imperfection one finds in a story. Themes are embellishments that make stories better, not substitutes for good writing.

And in terms of narrative issues, Sun & Moon has, in my opinion, quite a few of them, not just the ones I explained in the first paragraph but also some important ones involving both the way episodes are written, and how battles were handled, including the way the generational gimmicks were used. In regards the way the episodes are written, there's the fact that several of them end up involving a strange structure where the plot doesn't actually begin until the halfway mark, and while this may perhaps help with a slow pace and relaxed atmosphere, it does have the side effect of making quite a few of them feel dull to watch, especially older fans used to the rhythms of the series before this iteration.

Bigger, and most pressing, are the problems of battle writing this season ran into, which go deeper than just the absolute downgrade in battle presentation, but go straight into how the battles were written. One noticeable thing that feeds into how slow the battles ended up being is the fact that commentary became just as commonplace as it used to be in the earliest series, constantly breaking the action on a regular basis rather than letting the scenes flow more often than not. Beyond that, the biggest problem is that, more often than not, the battles aren't decided by skill or strategy (though there are occasional skill-based bouts), but rather who feels a bigger drive to win or happens to fire their Z-Move last, which coupled with the removal of most of the minor battles that could go either way to mostly focus on the big ones that have to absolutely be resolved a certain way, leading to such gems as the already mentioned battle with Hau where an otherwise good Ash ended up slipping his Z-Crystal just so he could be distracted and lose due to it, or one where Gladion managed to completely tank a Z-Move only to reply by his own, out of nowhere new Dragon-type Z-Move. It made battles dull to follow more often than not, especially with battles often falling more on shows of strength or exchanges of moves with no real rhyme and reason rather than giving the impression that the trainers had any real plan behind their orders (Ash constantly falling back on relying on an incompletely learned move in Ash VS Hau being a particularly blatant case of it showing).

And relatedly, another major issue of the series overall is the way it choose to handle Z-Moves. Compared to Mega Evolution being a fairly consistent 'have the stones + have the bond = Mega Evolution' in the previous show, Z-Moves depend on several factors, from getting the pose right to having a correct amount of focus and bond with the Pokémon to if the Pokémon used them before, and as a result, the entire idea of mastering Z-Moves feels wholly inconsistent: sometimes you can have characters with perfect relationships with their Pokémon completely failing at using their Z-Moves, sometimes characters like Mallow that first chided others for not getting the Grassium-Z pose right and then ended up unable to master Bloom Doom well until the League match, sometimes you can have characters that get Z-Moves right with Pokémon they never even saw before, and everything in between. It feels extremely arbitrary, and makes 'mastering Z-Moves' feel less down to the characters' agency and more down to whether the writers feel like having them master them or not.

But, if I may say, the real biggest problem of the series is that, simply put, it often raises questions it never manages to answer satisfactorily, just creating a situations were things are left so vague everyone has to either remain confused at what happened or supplant it with their own headcanons. Counting just some of the important questions: Why did Ash choose to go to school instead of a typical journey? Why was Tapu Koko so interested in Ash? Why did Ash receive Nebby from that Solgaleo and Lunala? Why did Nebby leave at the end of his arc? Why do Giovanni and Nanu know each other so personally? Where did that Lunala come from? What's the deal with Dusk Lycanroc and Meltan? Why does the Pikashunium-Z manifest? Why did Naganadel return? Why does Magearna know Mohn's location?

I have no clue. And frankly, I'm not sure if Sun & Moon knows, either.

4. Conclusions

And with this, I reached the end of this long dissection. It probably got pretty ranty, and it may sound excessive considering this is all the result of overanalyzing what's ultimately a kids' show, but I think I covered most of everything I wanted to. So, in the end, with so much said, what are my final impressions of Sun & Moon? Well, I'd say the amount of fun you'll have with it will depend exactly from what you want of it.

In spite of all my critiques, I'm fairly aware of how people just looking for a good time to cheer themselves up with occasionally emotional moments will find definitely stuff to like. Less critical-minded viewers will also definitely find something for everyone in there, and perhaps enjoy what the series has to offer. My personal opinion is that, ultimately, at its best Sun & Moon can be one of the best entries of the Pokémon Anime, while at its worst, it can be even worse than entries like the Best Wishes series. And as someone who likes consistency in terms of what a series has to offer, I found Sun & Moon a quite irritating watch to do, and probably my second least favorite entry of the series even with its good moments.

Overall regardless of which opinion you will have ended this read in, I hope you found my thoughts interesting to read about, and whatever opinion you hold of the Sun & Moon series, I respect it, and, in case you enjoyed it more than I did, I'm glad you did.

As for me, I officially consider the Gen VII Anime a closed book. With the new series starting soon enough, I'm optimistic that things will only look up from there. Not just for me, but for every other watcher as well.

So, regardless of what the future may hold for this show, I'm looking forward to continue my journey reviewing it with all of you, hoping in better stories to be told.

[lady-of-disdain]

Does Fiction Lead to Grooming, and The Effect of a Relationship Like Sessrin on a Child Audience.

Ok, so I posted a response on a lengthy thread some time ago that I wanted to update some of my points on, and also repost to be more easily visible since that post ended up disappearing due to some shenanigans.

I also wanted to update this argument, because I’ve started seeing some pro-shippers argue that even if sessrin became canon the romantic portrayal of this relationship wouldn’t affect child viewers. I posit that this is untrue. The very nature of the effect children’s cartoons/media has on the views and social behavior of children is still a field with much academic study going on in it. however, the idea that children like to emulate what they see in cartoons, and the notion that positive portrayals of characters and relationships of diversity in cartoons can lead to a higher rate of acceptance among the child audience to these ideals in real life has so far been a very real, and tangibly proven fact.

The original point of this argument was in response to someone’s statement that made a point along the lines that “media does not affect grooming relationships in real life”, and if it did

“it would affect not only the thought processes of the victim, but that of the potential predator as well.”

My response as follows.

The potential predator we are talking about here is a grown-ass-adult. We are talking about a person who is old enough to know right from wrong, and that children/teenagers are off limits because the law says so. Can pornographic materials stoke the fire of pedophilia, and make someone who is only fantasizing about offending actually take the leap and become an offender? Possibly? But I doubt seeing an abusive relationship on GoT is going to be spicy enough to be the tipping point for a potential future groomer. And even if it were, at this point in the adult’s life, it’s a little too late for them to stand up in court and say “your honor, a television show made me do it.”

In this house, we blame the abuser, no one else!

This is the important distinction though: that we can have intelligent discourse over the problems inherent in these kinds of relationships in adult media. Was ‘Lolita’ a book glorifying an adult man’s attraction to an underaged girl, or condemning it? Is ‘Cuties’ a movie about the dangers children face performing provocative dance moves for an audience of adults, or was it created to pander to MAP’s? Would the relationship between Jon and Daenerys really be ok just because the Targaryen’s traditionally married their blood relations, or would it still be wrong because it’s incest?

Children’s media doesn’t have these kind of deep, introspective themes because children’s brains are still growing, and learning, and these kind of messages can become muddled and confused. We are still constantly trying to find out just how much of an effect media has on the views, and thoughts that children develop as they grow.

From the discourse over marketing toys to children in the form of Saturday morning cartoons, to the use of cartoon characters to sell cigarettes, and the very real problem of the portrayal of race and diversity in children's programming, these are ALL points that have been the subject of scientific and psychological study.

A very quick search brought up MANY articles and peer reviewed theses on these subjects:

The American Psychological Association on Advertising and Children

Influence of Cartoon Media Characters on Children's Attention to and Preference for Food and Beverage Products

The Relationship between Cartoon Trade Character Recognition and Attitude toward Product Category in Young Children

Racial and Gender Differences in the Relationship Between Children’s Television Use and Self-Esteem: A Longitudinal Panel Study

Why Diversity in Children’s Media is So Important

A very interesting study I found was on the influence of Western cartoons on children in Kenya, found Here. It’s a 200-page peer-reviewed thesis, so I’ll try to condense it as reasonably as possible. 

The research was performed among primary school children in Kenya who were exposed to the following Western cartoons: ‘Spongebob Squarepants’, ‘Sofia the First’, ‘Lion Guard’, ‘Doc Mc Stuffins’, and ‘Ultimate Spider-Man’. The focus of the study was on the effect of children’s social behavior after viewing those cartoons. As such there were multiple factors considered, everything from the influence of the violence, and language shown, positive messages like friendship and generosity, to views on gender and race.

two of the most startlingly tragic results I read in this study are as follows:

“...a majority of the children preferred white cartoon characters as they have been conditioned to see "white‟ as the norm through the foreign television cartoon programs. This could further explain why the Doc Mc Stuffins was the least popular among the cartoon programs selected for this study as the lead character is dark skinned.”

and

“Having established that a majority of the children preferred white colored cartoon characters, the researcher sought to further establish whether the children would want to have an association with fair skinned children. 56.6% of the children strongly agreed that they would like to make friends with fair skinned children because white cartoon characters are better looking.”

Finally, an excerpt from the conclusion of this thesis:

“The study revealed extensive reliance of children on foreign television cartoons. The study therefore recommends that more local children content especially cartoons need be produced from the developing countries to substitute the current extensive reliance on foreign television cartoons for educational and entertainment purposes by the Kenyan children. There is urgent need for the producers to focus on content that will amplify children’s morals and values such as honesty, generosity, and respect among others; content that will help them appreciate their cultures and the diversity that comes with it.”

So what does all of this have to do with Yashahime and the portrayal of a romantic relationship between Sesshomaru and Rin?

Besides just affecting their views on the things we’ve already discussed, there is also a discernable influence children’s media can have on their views of romantic relationships.

There is a really interesting peer reviewed thesis I found here about the effect Disney movies have on children’s views of romance.

The paper describes interviews they had with children where they would show the children pictures of iconic Disney princes and princesses and would be asked three questions: Have you seen this movie? Are these two people in love? What does being in love mean? The thesis conclusion ended as follows:

“Consequently, this research illustrates the modernization of the oral tradition of folklore from moral messages of honor and duty meant to teach the lessons that will guide children into adult hood, to the Disney formula of love at first sight leading to romantic love. The augmentation of folklore tales in this way produces a new scope of inquiry to examine the potential influence and consequences Disney films have to inform children’s understanding of love relationships. The importance of this study is that it has found that children are creating meanings when exposed to romantically themed media and this influential media effects how children create meaning about their social world. This thesis has described the importance of children being affected by this media, how these meanings are identified and internalized and finally how children are expressing ideas of romantic love.”

A much shorter read over here on Bitescience talks about how even young teens can be influenced slightly by romantic media.

Indeed, there are still a lot of other things besides the media they consume that can affect a child’s views on things like material goods, food consumption, race, gender, sexual orientation, and romance. These views can and do change and grow as the child ages into adulthood, but people who prey on children do everything they can to avoid their targets from growing out of harmful views that benefit the predator’s goals. While many of us might have grown up with relationships like sessrin in media we consumed and learned after we grew older the wrongness of this kind of relationship dynamic, children, and teenagers who have not grown into this knowledge yet are targets for predators. So why do we want to make the predators work easier by spoon-feeding this kind of relationship dynamic to young people?

To close things off here I want to use a personal example. I want to show everyone my very first OTP:

This is Goliath and Elisa from Gargoyles. They are cute, and I fell in love with them as a wee little child of just 9 years old, and I still love them to this very day.

Are they the reason that these days I see creatures like this:

in movies and shows, and go all heart eyes?

I don’t know, maybe? Maybe not. But I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a connection to one of my earliest remembered favorite TV romantic relationships, and this weird obsession I have today lol.

[pidgezero-one]

Repost from facebook, in case anyone cares about Canadian sports TV

I usually try to take one or two days to think about a hot-button issue and avoid making kneejerk emotional reaction statements in response to it, so a little late to the party: Don Cherry, eh?

There's a lot to talk about here. I'm not going to tell you whether or not he deserved to get fired, because frankly I don't work for Sportsnet or have any first-hand exposure to anything he may have said in the past that led up to this decision. I can't tell you if it was this comment in particular that sent his employers from 0 to 100, or if it was just the latest in a series of flack-catching events that they're tired of doing damage control. I don't particularly care either way, that matter is between him and his former employer. I will tell you, however, that the Government of Canada was not involved in this decision, and his firing was not a violation of his (albeit limited by Canadian laws) freedom of expression, as a television network is well within their rights to dismiss a representative who is delivering content to viewers that is incongruous with what the network wants delivered on their behalf. Moving on.

I have seen some people argue that Cherry was addressing everyone in Canada, and not only immigrants, so since apparently some short-term memories are not so great, I took the liberty of transcribing his comments:

"...Downtown Toronto, forget it! Downtown Toronto, no poppy... How bout [running?] it for the people that buy them? Now you go to the small cities, and you know... you know, those p--... the [rows and rows?] ... You people love, you that you come here, whatever it is, you love our way of life, you love our milk and honey, at least you could pay a couple of bucks for poppies or something like that. These guys pay for your way of life that you enjoy in canada, these guys paid the biggest price..."

So, if you only heard every word past "you love our way of life", then I could understand the opinion that he was addressing all Canadians. But that isn't what he said, he used the words "you people ... you come here". Where is "here"? There were three places listed in this rant:

-small cities

-downtown Toronto

-Canada

He's clearly not talking about small cities, since he implies that poppies are everywhere in small cities.

Is he talking about downtown Toronto or Canada? In that case, who "comes here"? It's not Canadian citizens from downtown Toronto (since they did not "come to" a place they were already living), it's not Canadian citizens from outside downtown Toronto (since as mentioned, those people tend to wear poppies proudly in large numbers), so who's left? You already know the answer, it's immigrants.

So, some of you may now be wondering, "so what, what's wrong with that? Should people who move here not be expected to respect our military?" I would say, sure, if moving to another country means adopting some of their ways of life, and you believe patriotism in support of donating to the Legion falls under that, you could make that argument. But why single out immigrants to Canada, when just a few seconds ago people agreeing with him were entirely convinced he was addressing all Canadians? What purpose does it serve to single out immigrants?

Furthermore: why are we pointing fingers at new arrivals to Canada to blame for a decline in poppy sales? Full disclosure: I did not buy a poppy this year. That wasn't on purpose. The part of town I work in has been plagued with construction reducing major arterials to a single lane, so lately I've been resorting to "creative" suburban bus routes to get home.

Did you know that the Legion maintains a list (https://legion.ca/remembrance/the-poppy-campaign) of places where you can get a poppy? I didn't, and I also have not been passing by the listed businesses on my way home lately. It didn't enter my mind, as pretty much the only way I really remember what time of year it is on a day-to-day basis is "is my rent due today?" and "is there snow on the ground?" and I did not enter any of these businesses for any reason as of late, and just forgot to get one. There are countless other adults like me -- what changed over the years?

Compare Remembrance Day to other national days of importance like New Year's. Everyone knows when New Year's is coming up, because its presence is ubiquitous. Everyone talks about their plans, their resolutions, their parties. Remembrance Day is much less culturally ubiquitous in the days before it, meaning there are less frequent "oh yeah, I should do something" reminders entering your field of vision. 15-20 years ago, I would see commercials on TV frequently, and that was a good reminder. Today, I don't subscribe to any cable or streaming services, and I browse the internet with an ad blocker. A lowered frequency of passive reminders is a real factor in your day-to-day decision-making, and perhaps there's room for people much more knowledgeable about marketing than I am to discuss targeting demographics who weaned off TV in the information age. That's not for me to propose any solutions to, just pointing out a cultural source of decline that isn't pre-existing bias against immigrants.

Going back to the immigrants point -- not only is it creating a scapegoat, but it's also just plain wrong. "World War I" and "World War II" are aptly named, check out this table: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties#Human_losses_by_country

World War II killed military members from literally all over the world. Indonesia, Brazil, Iraq, Ethiopia, China, India, Thailand, just to name a couple. Countries like Mexico who suffered no military losses also suffered civilian losses. World War II ended over 70 years ago, but generationally, 70 years is not a long time. Children growing up without their parents and siblings lost to war, they have to live with that forever. Survivors living with PTSD, that is a condition that affects your entire life and those around you. Economically, that much loss in life and prosperity affects the entire world, and always hits the poorest the hardest. The effects of war on a person and their family last for generations, and this is true around the world. People immigrating to Canada, statistically, are probably already well acquainted with this fact first-hand. They do not need to be lectured on the importance of military service any more than a born Canadian citizen does, chances are they already know.

World War II also ended, like I said, a very long time ago, but as we are all already aware, it certainly wasn't the last military effort Canada participated in. While we honour the sacrifices made by veterans in wartime, the CAF and the Legion still need funding for things like supporting veterans living with PTSD (https://www.legion.ca/support-for-veterans/mental-health-ptsd), such as services like the Family Information Line (https://www.cafconnection.ca/National/Stay-Connected/Family-Information-Line/Connect-With-Us.aspx). If you didn't know those services existed, what separates you from a new immigrant who also didn't know about them?

There is a separate discussion to be had by people much more knowledgeable than me about the morality of the CAF intervening in some foreign regions or being involved with cracking down on illegal marijuana, but that's a discussion I won't open up here and am not confident in discussing. However, some of the existing services offered to veterans that are funded in part by poppy sales are what I would consider altruistic and good to know about no matter how long you've lived in Canada, especially if you know somebody who served in wartime.

So how does all of this relate to Don Cherry? Ultimately, it's disappointing that he chose to single out immigrants in this way, when immigrants have no less understanding than born Canadian citizens about what exactly wartime sacrifice means. Interestingly, I was browsing some discussions about this yesterday, and came across some comments from people who do not understand a word of Punjabi, but enjoy watching the Punjabi broadcasting of Hockey Night In Canada because of the genuine unbridled enthusiasm of the commentators for the game. A broadcast program like that exists to do an example of exactly what Cherry and his supporters are critical of "immigrants" for supposedly -not- doing, and that's integrating with and participating in Canadian culture. There is no widespread attitude from new arrivals to Canada to reject Canadian values and culture. Nobody goes to a new country with the intention of having nothing to do with the country around them, that's a miserable way to live and is not something anyone wants to do by choice.* Look at Sweden, the vast majority of people learning Swedish on Duolingo are refugees living in Sweden. His comments were unfairly targeting certain Canadians in a way that singles them out as "others", and that's really unfair for them to have to hear coming from someone who is a Canadian cultural icon commentating a game that countless people from all walks of life, from any part of the world, take great joy in watching as part of being in Canada. All he had to do was apologize, and he didn't, and that's really unfortunate and has made a lot of Canadians who grew up with him as a household name very sad.

* (This is not even getting into the unspeakably horrific sacrifices imposed on our Indigenous populations, which make the whole judgmental comments about "immigrants" an entirely different and gross flavour of ironic.)

It's even worse that it comes at a time of heightened political "us vs them" tensions. We don't need more of that. The line between left and right is getting wider and wider every day. You can even see a visual representation of this courtesy of our neighbours to the South in this video: https://youtu.be/tEczkhfLwqM -- not that you need to, really, just look at our election 3 weeks ago where suddenly a bunch of provinces threatened to leave the country because they didn't get their way. (Speaking of, the election was three weeks ago, holy. Your negative comments about immigrants in the wake of Don Cherry's firing contrasted with your faux-concern about Trudeau's racist makeup has been duly noted. Maybe note that Trudeau's damnable actions happened 20 years ago, aka what some of you consider to be "the good old days" when people were "not so easily offended", as in, a time when Cherry likely would not have been fired for his comments, like Trudeau wasn't fired for his racist makeup. Think about that for a second before sharing that nonsense meme.)

Cherry's words and a refusal to think outside the box or apologize to Canadians just trying to live in Canada and enjoy a hockey game were ultimately promoting political tensions that don't need any further promotion, and that's unfortunate. Ultimately, whether you were born in Canada or not, both you and your neighbours just want to provide the best life you can for yourselves and your loved ones, and some of you actively chose Canada as the best option to achieve that goal in. And that's a pretty special thing to reflect on and unite over in the face of tension and division.

[isabellariverablog]

Social Media Influencers

With the introduction of various social media platforms today, a new form of advertising and business model has emerged. Social media influencers have taken over virtually every feed that I am currently on from Instagram to Snapchat. From a study titled “Who are the social media influencers?” conducted in 2010, social media influencers (SMIs) are defined as “representing a new type of independent third party endorser who shape audience attitudes through blogs, tweets, and the use of other social media.” Since influencers have large audiences, brands usually reach out to them to collaborate on selling a product or becoming a sponsor. Kylie Jenner, a popular influencer and owner of Kylie Cosmetics, receives an estimated 1 million dollar per sponsored Instagram post. Influencers have become an important part of business brands today as they are marketers to their large audience.

  Social media influencers all have a large following which makes it easy for brands to get their product out quickly. Also, these influencers are trusted by their audience as these influencers are seen as role models. On Instagram, I have seen many ads for FlatTummyTea, Sugar Bear Hair and FitTea which are all brands that have gained business from the audience of influencers. I would be dumb to say that I think I don't pay attention to these ads and dismiss them. But,  I have occasionally thought about getting Sugar Bear Hair myself and only reconsidered after looking at the price tag. 

Digital Marketing is a new job to the 21st century that has evolved thanks to social media. Influencers likes, posts and audience are all analyzed to sell the goods of the company. In fact, at VidCon a huge social media convention there is something called the "Industry Track" which is specifically for YouTubers to meet brands to work with. Influencers are seen as more credible than celebrities as they are seen as more authentic by the viewers. According to a study called, The Impact of Social Media on Purchase Intention and the Mediation Effect of Customer Attitude, it states," celebrity endorsement are more instrumental in raising brand awareness among consumers, whilst social media influencers play a highly significant role in driving product engagement and brand loyalty" (page 2). Influencers, since they have an audience they believe they have connected with, will take the products they endorse more sincerely. Social media influencers are also sought out for new and small online business. I personally have seen this myself though the makeup brand, Morphe. 

Morphe is a brand that has been actively engaging with their consumers through platforms like Instagram and Twitter. Morphe launched themselves though the influencer platform and has now shown up on about everyone feeds. Morphe was founded on the principle, "a beauty brand created for creators".Morphe uses social media to market their products and uses things such as hashtags and you guessed it, influencers to share their products. Influencers and companies benefit alike as they both share their products to their own respective audiences. For example, James Charles, a popular influencer can post a picture in which a Morphe product is used and tag them in the picture. James doing so has exposed Morphe to his 15.8 million followers on Instagram. Morphe Instagram page than reposts James to their 10.4 million followers so James Charles has the chance to grow his audience and vice verse.

The cycle is never-ending. Morphe's major successes have come from big names in the online beauty community such as Jaclyn Hill, Jeffree Star, and Manny MUA. Viewers trust products sold by influencers as they feel as they can trust them. Morphe's James Charles Palette sold out internationally in ten minutes! James hasn't been in movies, tv shows or magazines like the typical celebrity. He just makes videos on YouTube but it goes to show that media as we know it as changed the very nature of what it means to be a celebrity. Media today has changed business and marketing as we know it.   

[estelofimladris]

Queerness and Death in The Magicians by SE Fleenor (The Removed Syfy Article)

[ NOTE: This article is being reposted in its entirety because it was removed by the Syfy website where it was originally posted. I (estelofimladris) did not write it, but still had it open after its removal. Please read and enjoy - send the writer, S.E. Fleenor, some love if you can. ]

by S.E. Fleenor

SPOILERS FOR THE MAGICIANS SEASON 4 FINALE!

By now you already know that The Magicians’ Quentin Coldwater died in the Season 4 finale. Yes, D-E-D, dead. There’s no resurrection in the works and no trick of astral projection or Niffin state of higher being can bring sweet, depressed, narcissistic Quentin back.

The decision to kill off a major character — the major character, if the Lev Grossman novels still mean anything (they don’t) — is almost always controversial. But we live in the day and age of Game of Thronesand The Walking Dead and Thanos snapping half of the Avengers (and the universe) into nothingness. Any character could die at any moment (and sometimes all of the characters could die at any moment) and that’s the brave, new, kill-happy world our media is made in.

So, why does it matter that Quentin is dead?

Well, my friends, let’s revisit a little trope we like to call Bury Your Gays. Throughout media representations of queer folks, reaching back to 19th-century Victorian novels, the formula has been about the same: An LGBTQ+ character is introduced, they reveal their sexuality or an attraction to a specific person, and then they die, die, die, often horrifically. This trope is also called Dead Lesbian Syndrome due to the overwhelming number of queer women who have been slaughtered onscreen — not exactly the representation queer women have been begging for.

Back when archaic censorship laws ruled the page and the screen, writing about queer characters was taboo and the only way queer writers, or folks who wanted to create queer characters, could include LGBTQ+ characters was by portraying them unfavorably. Queer characters could exist, but only as a warning of what a “perverted” life would bring you. So, in order to get some kind of representation, LGBTQ+ characters had to suffer.

Sounds a little rough, huh? Like who would really bury their gays? Oh, just Buffy the Vampire Slayer, True Blood, The 100, The Walking Dead, The Expanse, Jessica Jones, Xena, Smallville, Battlestar Galactica, Hex, Torchwood, Hemlock Grove, Teen Wolf, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Dracula, The Vampire Diaries, Arrow, Salem, American Horror Story, Ascension, Lost Girl, Scream, The Shannara Chronicles, The Exorcist, Van Helsing, Doctor Who, Gotham, The Handmaid’s Tale, The Purge, and last but not least (and not for the first time): The Magicians.

Let it be noted that I have only included science fiction, fantasy, and horror TV shows on this list and only those that I know about. The list is much, much longer when you include non-genre TV shows and film. (Autostraddle has a very complete list of queer women on TV who have been killed off, for those of you who feel like being sad.)

Oh, did you recognize a bunch of queer-friendly shows in that list? Does that somehow feel like a violation of the promise made when a series goes out of its damn way to present itself as queer and feminist?

EXACTLY. And, that, my sweet babies, is why people are pissed about the death of Quentin Coldwater, generally speaking. We’re sick of seeing queer characters die over and over again. But, what specifically about the death of Quentin is so frustrating? I’m so glad you asked.

Full disclosure: I'm not going to get into the creators' rationale for killing off Quentin. I've read all the interviews with the creators and with Jason Ralph, who plays Quentin, and they all read like a whole lot of familiar BS. (At least Hale Appelman, who plays Eliot, gets it.)

In the first season of The Magicians, Quentin, Eliot, and Margot have a threesome. It’s the first time Quentin has sex with a man, as far as we know, and it’s the first time we see him start to confront his queerness. In Season 3’s “A Life in the Day,” Quentin and Eliot end up in a different Fillory, from before they were born, where they must solve an unsolvable puzzle. As they spend a lifetime working on the mosaic, they fall in love, raise a child, and make their queer family work. Upon returning to the main timeline, barely a word is spoken about their encounter, and queer folks everywhere braced ourselves for that experience to be treated as an anomaly from another timeline. (Another weird queer trope where characters get to be LGBTQ+, but only elsewhere or else when or, or, or…)

Season 4 brought unexpected twists and turns, such as Eliot being trapped inside his own mind by the Monster. With that, many a fan prepared to let Queliot rest. And, then “Escape from the Happy Place,” took us into Eliot’s mind and — after exploring a lot of deep trauma that has a particularly queer flavor to it — back to the day Eliot and Quentin came back from their lifetime in Fillory. As they sit on the steps of the throne room, Memory Quentin and Memory Eliot talk about what happened between them. Memory Quentin asks Memory Eliot why they shouldn’t try to be together, saying “Who gets proof of concept like that?”

Eliot kisses Memory Quentin hard on the mouth and then walks through the door that will allow him to take control of his body for a moment. In the real world, face to face with Quentin, Eliot gets a signal out that he’s still alive. He looks at Quentin and repeats the question Quentin had asked him, following it with, “Peaches and plums, motherf*cker.” When he realizes who he’s looking at, Quentin hesitates, a look of surprise and longing washing over his face.

This deeply emotional and compelling storyline appeared at the same time that Quentin finally officially rebuffed Alice’s advances, telling her he no longer wanted to be together, that he could never see her the same way again.

Then, after all that work, after all the maturation the characters undergo, the series undoes everything, shoehorning in a last-minute declaration of love between Quentin and Alice and killing off Quentin when he uses magic in the Mirror Realm, without ever seeing Eliot again. Quentin then goes to the Underworld branch of the library and meets with Penny 40 while reminiscing over his life and pondering over whether or not he died by suicide. (The treatment of suicide in the episode is problematic and deeply offensive.)

There are probably as many critiques of this ending as there are people who watched it, but I’m going to focus on the main issues that stood out to me.

The series has gone out of its way to confirm Quentin as queer and tease the possibility of a queer love story.

Queer viewers are used to surviving off subtext and tend to be fairly generous in what we’ll accept. Seriously, many a queer considers Thor: Ragnarok to be part of the queer canon when it’s not even implied onscreen that anyone is queer, and have you seen people shipping Carol and Maria in Captain Marvel? Maybe it’s because we’re used to being served scraps that the Bury Your Gays trope feels so pointed. Oh, you’re not happy with the almosts and the could-haves and the alternate timelines of queerness? Well, then we’ll make your characters queer and just murder ‘em right up.

After Season 3, The Magicians could have never acknowledged the relationship between Quentin and Eliot that takes place in another timeline or they could have shrugged and been like, “Must have been the opium in the air!” They’d already done as much with the threesome in Season 1 and all but ignoring Quentin's queerness in the episodes that follow. The series didn’t have to confirm that Quentin wanted to follow his attraction to Eliot and give being together a try. But, The Magiciansdid. The series took the time onscreen to show Eliot and Quentin kissing again, to show Eliot declaring his love for Quentin in their own code, and to show Quentin dedicate his time to helping Eliot get free.

Furthermore, how messed up is it that the series spends a significant amount of time dredging up the trauma of Eliot’s queer youth only to make him realize his biggest regret is how he treated Quentin, just for Quentin to be forced back into the closet? An episode that was deeply evocative and affirming of queerness smacks of voyeurism when taken in the context of the finale.

At the last minute, after confirming his queerness, the series forces a relationship between Quentin and Alice.

It’s hard not to see the last ditch shoving of Quentin and Alice together as an attempt to shove Quentin himself back in the closet. Season 4 shows Quentin rejecting and wanting to be apart from Alice, only for him to decide that he loves her and wants to give their relationship another try because? Honestly, I’m not sure what rationale he uses because it MAKES NO SENSE. And, what the hell does he think of imprisoned-in-his-own-body Eliot while making this decision? To judge from the series, not a whole hell of a lot.

It’s totally cool if queer or bisexual characters date people of different genders — that’s not the issue. The issue is that without a moment of hesitation, Quentin whiplashes from his lover who he knows is trapped by the Monster and cannot see, hear, or reach him to his ex-girlfriend who he has distanced himself from due to her selfish behavior.

In the context of his death, I like to call this particularly messed up turn of events “Bury Your Gays and Stomp On Their Graves” because all the work that had been done to show Quentin’s coming to terms with his own sexuality is undone shortly before he dies.

There are other ways to write a character off a series.

A lot of people fall back on bad faith arguments like: what is a show supposed to do when an actor no longer wishes to appear in the series?

The answer, of course, is: ANYTHING ELSE. They could have done literally anything else to write Quentin out of the show and release Jason Ralph from his commitment. The Magicians takes place in a world WHERE MAGIC EXISTS, where characters leave the main story to go on their own adventures, and where average human beings can become gods. There’s no excuse for falling into lazy storytelling and reifying a trope that has been well-documented and mourned for a long time.

In the novels, Quentin gets kicked out of Fillory and decides to use his discipline, minor mendings, to build a new world for himself and Alice. He essentially walks through a door and never comes back. THAT WOULD HAVE WORKED and it wouldn’t do the work of retraumatizing queer audiences.

It comes down to this: To ignore the wider implications of making a character specifically queer, having him return to his prior unhealthy relationship with a woman, and then killing him off is a disservice to queer people everywhere. It is, at once, a declaration of the meaninglessness of the queer experience and an unforgivable reminder of the expendability of queer lives.

Series like The Magicians (and before it, Buffy the Vampire Slayer) trade on their reputations as queer and feminist shows. We watch them for their powerful women and their kickass queer characters and their storylines that affirm the power of survival. And what do they give us in return? They bury their gays.

Does that mean that all LGBTQ+ characters should be immortal? The rational response would be: of course not. Up until today I may have agreed with that argument, but right now I’m feeling a little less generous. It’s 20-f*cking-19 and there is no excuse for Bury Your Gays to pop up in a progressive TV show. Maybe until series and creators who make their money off queer characters and queer fandom take responsibility for how they use the lives and bodies of queer people, maybe until then, all LGBTQ+ characters should be immortal.

I’m pretty damn sick of watching every character who loves like me, who looks like me, who explores the bounds of their sexuality like me, die. I’m sick of watching characters bust down the doors of the closets that held them back only to have their queerness erased or elided through their deaths. I’m sick of watching relationships between men and women blossom onscreen only to see queer relationships torn apart by death.

Queer people deserve happy endings. We deserve them in real life and we deserve to see them onscreen and we deserve them now.

Until that’s the norm, you better damn well consider any queer character you create immortal. Because if you don’t, we queers will f*cking haunt your basic ass.

[astrogeoguy]

Sunday’s Super Blood Wolf Moon Eclipse Explained, and Venus Kisses Jupiter in the Morning!

(Above: Michael Watson of Toronto is an avid moon and eclipse imager. He captured the April 15, 2014 total lunar eclipse and assembled this beautiful composite that clearly shows Earth’s circular shadow.)

Hello, Stargazers!

Here are your Astronomy Skylights for the week of January 20th, 2019 by Chris Vaughan. Feel free to pass this along to your friends and send me your comments, questions, and suggested topics. I repost these emails with photos at http://astrogeoguy.tumblr.com/ where all the old editions are archived. You can also follow me on Twitter as @astrogeoguy! Unless otherwise noted, all times are Eastern Time. Please click this MailChimp link to subscribe to these emails. If you are a teacher or group leader interested joining me on a guided field trip to York University’s Allan I. Carswell Observatory or the David Dunlap Observatory, visit www.astrogeo.ca.

I can bring my Digital Starlab inflatable planetarium to your school or other daytime or evening event, visit DiscoveryPlanitarium.com and request me. We’ll tour the Universe together! 

My latest column for Space.com talks about using astronomy apps to enjoy Sunday night’s total lunar eclipse. You can find it here. 

(Above: Once the moon wanes and rises later towards the end of this week, enjoy the sights of the Winter Milky Way, which rises through Canis Major, Monoceros, Orion, Gemini, and Auriga.)

Public Astro-Events

If skies are clear on Sunday night, January 20, starting at 10 pm, York University’s Allan I. Carswell Observatory will host a free public viewing session for the total lunar eclipse on top of the Arboretum Parking Garage. Parking charges will apply. Details are here. 

Every Monday evening, York University’s Allan I. Carswell Observatory runs an online star party - broadcasting views from four telescopes/cameras, answering viewer questions, and taking requests! Details are here. On Wednesday nights they offer free public viewing through their rooftop telescopes. If it’s cloudy, the astronomers give tours and presentations. Details are here. 

On Friday, January 25 from 6 to 7 pm, the Royal Ontario Museum and the Canadian space Agency will hold a free session entitled Getting to Know Bennu: Updates on the OSIRIS-REx Asteroid Sample-Return Mission. It will be held in the ROM in the Signy and Cléophée Eaton Theatre, Level 1B. Details and registration is here. 

On Saturday, January 26, starting at 7 pm, U of T’s AstroTour will present their free planetarium show entitled Grand Tour of the Cosmos. Details are here. 

The Super Blood Wolf Moon (Total Lunar Eclipse)

Last week, I wrote about tonight’s (Sunday) total lunar eclipse and posted it with diagrams here. Read on for an update on that information.

You’ve probably seen references to Sunday’s lunar eclipse as a Super Blood Wolf Moon, or a permutation of those words. These dramatic terms might elicit chuckles and/or eye rolls from astronomers, but they serve a purpose – to capture the imagination of the public and get them to head outside and look up! There are valid reasons for using each part of that label. Let’s break that down. 

Blood Moon - The Earth is a solid sphere.  The sunlight shining on Earth casts a circular shadow into space opposite from the sun. When an object, such as the International Space Station or the moon, passes through that shadow, no direct sunlight can reach it, so the object darkens. Some of the sunlight streaming closely past Earth passes through our atmosphere. The air refracts (or bends) the rays of sunlight because it slows the light down a little, and that refraction allows a small percentage of the sunlight, bent around the Earth’s perimeter, to reach the moon and slightly illuminate it. If Earth had no atmosphere, the moon would turn completely dark during a lunar eclipse! 

During totality, only red light reaches the moon because our atmosphere scatters some wavelengths of light more than others. White sunlight is composed of a rainbow of component colours. The sky is blue in daytime because the molecules in the air scatter shorter wavelength blue light and lets longer wavelength red light pass straight through. Try this experiment. Shine a flashlight through a glass of water placed near the wall in a darkened room. You’ll see a distorted beam of white light on the wall. Now put a few drops of milk in the glass and the entire liquid will glow with a bluish light! If you didn’t add too much milk, you might also see that light on the wall is a now a warmer colour because the cool, blue wavelengths have been scattered throughout the liquid rather than passing through. The same effect causes sunsets to turn red, and only that reddened light can reach the moon during totality – colouring the moon a rusty red, or blood, colour. 

Wolf Moon – The moon has always shone down upon humans on Earth. Eventually, people began to seek to understand our natural environment and to take advantage of the annual variations in the seasons to schedule planting, harvesting, hunting, and to celebrate life events. The twelve (sometimes thirteen) full moons per year acted as obvious celestial markers. Full moonlight allowed people to be out at night; hunting, or working the fields for extra hours to get the harvest in.   

Each society around the world has its own set of stories for the moon and every month’s full moon has one or more nick-names. The Wolf Moon term is likely derived from North American First Nations traditions, although some think it has an Anglo-Saxon origin. In either case, it’s likely that hungry wolves were calling to one another in the dead of winter, and left an impression on people before our modern era. The January full moon, eclipsed or not, is known as the Wolf Moon, Old Moon, or Moon after Yule. It always shines in or near the stars of Gemini (the Twins) or Cancer (the Crab).  

Super Moon – The moon orbits Earth every 27.3 days. The shape of the orbit is an ellipse that brings the moon alternatively closer and farther from the Earth. The difference in distance between perigee, the point in the moon’s orbit when it is closest to Earth, and apogee, when the moon is farthest away, is about 50,000 km. That causes a perigee moon to appear about 14% larger than an apogee moon – about the difference between a Canadian $1 and $2 coin when held at arm’s length. It’s not that much – visually. The closer moon will also be slightly brighter. 

The term supermoon was coined to describe a full moon that happens while the moon is at or near perigee. January’s eclipsed full moon will occur fifteen hours before perigee, making it appear about 7% larger than average and generating high tides globally. 

The supermoon aspect of this eclipse actually works against us. When the moon is near perigee, it is moving faster in its orbit, so it will cross the Earth’s shadow in a shorter time. The closer moon is also larger, so it remains fully eclipsed for a shorter time. 

(Above:  NASA’s Lunar Eclipse Page lists past and future eclipses. Each event has a web page with diagrams showing the path of the moon through the Earth’s shadow, where on Earth the eclipse will be visible (white areas), and the times for each stage of the eclipse in UT (equivalent to  GMT). The partial eclipse stage will begin when the moon reaches position U1, and the moon will be fully eclipsed from U2 to U3 (about one hour). The second partial eclipse stage will end when the moon reaches U4 - 3 hours and 16 minutes after it began.)

Total Lunar Eclipse Visibility and Timings - This lunar eclipse will be visible start to finish in North and South America, the eastern Pacific Ocean, and westernmost Europe. Much of the eclipse will be seen in central and eastern Europe, but observers there will miss the later stages of the eclipse because they occur after moonset. For the western Pacific region, the moon will rise after the eclipse begins. 

The partial phase, when the edge of the moon begins to darken, will begin when the moon contacts the Earth’s umbra at 10:34 pm EST on Sunday evening in North America (or 7:34 pm Pacific time and 03:34 UT). Starting at that time, look for the darkness to creep over the moon, growing from along its lower left edge. 

At 11:41 pm Eastern time (8:41 pm PST), the last strip of brightly lit moon will vanish as the moon finally entirely enters the Earth’s umbra. The darkened and a coppery red appearance won’t be obvious visually or in photos until the moon is well into the shadow. The moon will stay fully within the shadow (referred to as totality) for 62 minutes. It will pass deeply through the shadow, and the moon’s southern half will appear darker than its northern half. 

Greatest, deepest eclipse will occur at 12:13 am EST. After this, most people will head to bed because the second half of the eclipse mirrors the first half. The total eclipse phase will end when the moon begins to leave the umbra at 12:43 am Eastern Time on Sunday. At that time, look for a growing strip of illuminated moon to appear along the moon’s lower left edge. The partial phase of the eclipse will end at 1:51 am Eastern Time. 

Now you know what to look for, and when to look. If you have a telescope, of any size, hold your phone’s camera over the eyepiece and take some photographs, or prop up  your tablet or phone somewhere and take a time lapse movie of the eclipse. Hopefully the skies will be clear wherever you are! Don’t let cold weather keep you indoors for this one. The next total lunar eclipse won’t occur for the GTA until May, 2022. 

The Moon and Planets

After Sunday night’s total lunar eclipse, the moon will spend the week waning and rising later. On Tuesday night, the moon will pass only two finger widths to the left of the bright, white star Regulus in Leo (the Lion). After mid-week, you can look for the moon in the western morning sky on your way to school or work. 

Next Sunday afternoon, the moon will reach its Last Quarter phase, when it will rise at midnight and appear half-illuminated – on its western side. (Directions on the moon are opposite to sky directions.) 

This week, Mars will shine as a medium-bright, reddish pinpoint of light in the southwestern sky. It will set at about 11:30 pm local time. Mars is slowly shrinking in size and brightness as we increase our distance from it. 

(Above: Mars is the only bright planet in the evening sky nowadays, sitting above Neptune and below Uranus, as shown here at 8 pm local time.)

Blue-green Uranus is about 1.5 finger widths above, and slightly to the left of the modestly bright star Torcular (or Omega Piscium). This week, Uranus will be at its highest point, over the southern horizon, at about 6:30 pm local time – the best position for seeing it clearly. Dim, blue Neptune will set shortly after 9 pm local time, so look at it before 8 pm, while it’s higher. Neptune is sitting about two finger widths to the upper left of the modestly bright star Hydor (Lambda Aquarii). Hydor, and a pair of stars to its east (upper left), form a sideways narrow triangle with Neptune inside of it. 

(Above: On Tuesday morning, descending Venus will pass very close to Jupiter in the southeastern pre-dawn sky, as shown here at 7 am local time. Saturn will be climbing higher every morning.)

Both Saturn and Mercury are too close to the sun to be seen this week, but next week Saturn will join the other two bright morning planets, Jupiter and Venus. Spectacularly bright Venus is now swinging back towards the sun, while not-as-bright Jupiter is being carried the other direction – west and higher. The two planets “kiss” this week. On Tuesday morning, Jupiter will be positioned only 2.5 finger widths south (to the lower right) of Venus. They will both fit within the field of view of binoculars. Look for the bright, reddish star Antares, the “rival of Mars” sitting a palm’s width to the right of Jupiter. 

Keep looking up, and enjoy the sky when you do. I love questions and requests - so, send me some! 

[mindtap]

Top Ten Anime of 2017

Pretty busy last couple of weeks, resulting in me delaying to start writing this post until the day of posting this. However, I am determined to continue to make these once a year posts of my top ten anime. With this year coming to an end and my reposting of content from sekijitsu, it has been enjoyable seeing all my opinions from the past as they came out -- especially my net neutrality post from a few years back after the incorrect decision by the FCC this month.

Either way, going through all these anime in one day I have clearly seen a trend of the type of anime that drew me in this year. It was a bit more difficult to make my decisions for who made the top ten this year, but I did have one anime that clearly was number one and worked from there. So lets kick off the new year right with another top ten list that I'm sure many people are looking forward to reading.

For the Lazy

Top 10

Made in Abyss

Boku no Hero Academia 2

Inuyashiki

Ballroom e Youkoso

Shingeki no Kyojin 2

Mahou Tsukai no Yome

3-gatsu no Lion 2

Sagrada Reset

Saenai Heroine no Sodatekata ♭

Demi-chan wa Kataritai

Honorable Mentions

Kono Subarashii Sekai ni Shukufuku wo! 2

Shuumatsu Nani Shitemasu ka? Isogashii desu ka? Sukutte Moratte Ii desu ka?

Youkai Apartment no Yuuga na Nichijou

Explanation

Youkai Apartment no Yuuga na Nichijou

An odd mix of fantasy and slice of life that actually worked pretty well together. I found myself more engrossed in the arc where Inaba improved his spirit ability, which didn't last that long. Unfortunately, with that that build up, it didn't really pay off that much with the focus shifting back into the more slice of life elements. Luckily, for me, these elements were good because they covered a subject that is always fascinating to me, that being psychology. Overall, even with the stark contrast, "Youkai Apartment no Yuuga na Nichijou" was a light hearted anime that didn't shy away from the darker parts of human nature creating entertaining episodes a majority of the time.

Shuumatsu Nani Shitemasu ka? Isogashii desu ka? Sukutte Moratte Ii desu ka?

A story filled with loss, tragedy, and a world invested with monsters. Even with that themes mostly being drowned in sadness, "Shuumatsu Nani Shitemasu ka? Isogashii desu ka? Sukutte Moratte Ii desu ka?" manages to create hope in it's viewers, making for a compelling series to navigate through. They end up packing a lot of backstory into this series that ended up being squished twelve episode, but what we got I was enthusiastic to find out that more it revealed. Lastly, as I mentioned at the start, tragedy and character development go hand and hand, and we ended up getting a variety of well fleshed out characters. Each of them growing in a believable manner that fit well with the narrative themes. Overall, this anime had a really interesting world with good characters that felt like it could have been better served as a longer anime.

Kono Subarashii Sekai ni Shukufuku wo! 2

I never mentioned this series when the first season came out last year, but I did thoroughly enjoy it. I don't usually put comedies into my top ten list because I never really think about them past it's airing, but "Kono Subarashii Sekai no Shukufuku wo! 2" made it this time around. What it did to make it this time was take the main reason I loved the original series and improve on character dynamics through comedy and further build on the world -- as they are no long stuck in one space. Resulting in an increased sense of progress and truly was the funniest anime I've seen this year.

Demi-chan wa Kataritai

An anime that tackles a serious topic like discrimination and the desire to find a place to belong, in a very gleeful way. "Demi-chan wa Kataritai" introduced each character at an steady pace while also adding new dynamics between each character. It ended up creating a fun and captivating atmosphere between characters while showing the different types of monsters, or demi-human, and the lore behind them. This was one of the first anime that stood out to me this year and I'm glad it continued to delivery as more characters created a bond and the last demi-girl was well worth the wait with all the teasing incorporated throughout the series.

Saenai Heroine no Sodatekata ♭

Another second season of a series that surprised me enough to put it on my list, but checking the 2015 top ten, "Saenai Heroine no Sodatekata" was there and ended up in the same number. Like most second seasons, this was more of the same, but this time around we finally got to see Megumi develop more as a character. She was always my favorite compared to the more over the top girls -- although Utaha comes in a close second. A lot of advancement toward the end felt more rushed with Utaha graduation on the horizon. However, that sense of urgency worked as the catalyst for pushing Tomoya out of his complacency, allowing for development from all character involved in Blessing Software -- as well as, breaking the by-the-book nature of this harem romcom.

Sagrada Reset

The type of anime that starts out dull, but builds up to the point of becoming a really compelling story with a lot of complexity. "Sagrada Reset" starts out simple with the idea of a town that inherently manifests powers for the people that live in it. However, as more characters are introduced, and their beliefs and goals become clear, this simple concept turns into a complicated situation where people fight for what they believe propelling the story from that. This was one of the few anime that made me think more about components they introduced. "Sagrada Reset" does a good job of showing not telling that can confuse some viewers that are use to the exposition type of storytelling. Really enjoyed the mystery and how it was laid out for the viewer, concluding with a satisfactory ending.

3-gatsu no Lion 2

One of the anime from this season that is only half way through, but has managed to convince me enough to put it on the list without finishing. Last season Rei didn't really feel like he had much motivation for anything and just went with the flow. This made the driving focus for the story not that impactful, but with the season season, his motivation became very clear and pretty quickly. This contributed to my increased attraction to the series, as well as the cuteness of the series that continued from the previous season. So this mixing of innocence contracted with human anguish, really tugs at my heartstrings in an enjoyable way.

Mahou Tsukai no Yome

Initially got into "Mahou Tsukai no Yome" through a three episode OVA that helped establish the character Chise and her tragic backstory. So going into the full anime with that knowledge, I was already in love with Chise and opening the world with new characters and a more cheerful tone made for in enjoyable experience. Even with this being another anime only half way through, the amount of information blended into a cohesive theme elevated this series into one of my favorites, not only in this season, but this year as well. I can't wait to see how much more this season builds the world and how each character will develop.

Shingeki no Kyojin 2

The initial hype around "Shingeki no Kyojin" back in 2013 didn't really register with me at the time. I'm not usually that into action anime, however, with more details being revealed about the titans, that hook finally started to catch something. All that fog of ambiguity of a human killing machine started to clear with the motivation of why titans wanted to wipe the human race. So will all that information, Attack on Titan swung to being a political anime featuring action and gore scenes. So really, the second season convinced me to continue this series and I hope they continue to bend in the political and psychological side of the narrative.

Ballroom e Youkoso

Every now and then a sport anime ends up surprising me, see as I rarely watch them. "Ballroom e Youkoso" is another one on a short list that fits that category. This anime has great pacing from start to finish, assuming that the viewer knows very little about dance and all the complexity of it in a competitive space. I found myself being engrossed in the world of dance and the topic of parter compatibility, synchronous movement, body control, and the lead/follow dynamic. These subjects helped create a nice arc for Tatara going from a green dance into a worthy competitor with a strong cast of characters.

Inuyashiki

This one took me by surprise because I had no idea what I was getting into as I watched this. Luckily, "Inuyashiki" turned out to be an interesting commentary about humans in similar situations and how they react depending on their past experiences. The situation itself was being handed power in the form of a new robotic body after their previous bodies were destroyed. This concept worked well in creating a villain with a purpose, although it wasn't there initially. As well as an unlikely hero, whose compassion also isn't as clear in the beginning, and develops as the villain gains traction. And with them having the same type of body, it really shows that that "good" and "evil" aren't binary, but more of a scale depending on the situation.

Boku no Hero Academia 2

Last of the second season anime that ended up in my top ten list. This season of "Boku no Hero Academia" finally allowed for Izuku to development his One for All powers changing the essence of a bumbling hero that faces danger in foolishness, into a more competent that is still struggling to catch up. More the world lore gets revealed and that created a future incentive for Izuku to get stronger. Really the second season helped me get even more invested into the world and I'm waiting in anticipation for the next season to air.

Made in Abyss

Going into this anime, I thought this would be a merry little adventure that I might enjoy, however, as the title suggests, the bleakness of the abyss fools you into a sense of comfort. "Made in Abyss" is one of those adventure anime that reveals concepts of the abyss fairly quickly in the first episode, but doesn't really show the abyss until our characters enter it. This is another case of showing rather than telling being better, but the anime ended up using both almost like a warning for those that attempt to stare into the abyss. The horrors of abyss isn't the only thing to look forward to in this anime, the character we stick with grow up fast in this environment. With them encountering many dangers worked as a consent remind of how easy it is for these characters to be killed. So I wouldn't recommend this to those that are easily squeamish, but those that stick with it will be rewarded with a fascinating world and characters that represent useful pieces of an adventuring crew that you will quickly begin to cherish.

[yukipri]

I never experienced art theft until one of my works became unexpectedly popular- since then, I've found my work reposted, redrawn, and used as reference for cosplays. It's been exhausting, both seeing it, and not knowing WHERE I should stand on the issue. I've let redraws slide (with credit), but I plan on not allowing future ones from occurring. How do you deal with art theft? How do you continue drawing without thinking about the disrespect thrown at you during bad/failed confrontations?

I am so, so incredibly sorry this happened to you, and empathize very strongly with you. Art theft SUCKS, few things can be quite as demotivating as a creator than having something you’ve worked your ass off on swiped by someone else. And unfortunately, given the current internet culture, if you continue as an online artist it’s inevitable that it’ll happen at one point or another.

Because sure, of course part of the reason why we create is because we want to, but a large part of the motivation for sharing it is to hopefully get some response that people like it, whether it be in the form of likes, reblogs, comments, asks, tags, or anything else. That is the tangible PROOF that our work touched someone, and for someone who put in zero effort and has no idea how we felt while creating to receive all of that instead of us…sucks.

I think where you stand on the issue is up to you, and it’s okay for it to change. YOU always have the right to decide how you’re comfortable with people sharing your art, and your feelings are valid regardless of how they change.

Ironically enough, I just had another art theft on Instagram (my Anniversary post) super recently, so I was like HAH when I got this orz

This rant got a bit long, so the rest beneath cut but here’s a rundown about how my feelings towards art theft have evolved over the years.

For example, over the years I’ve gotten much, MUCH stricter. My earliest online art, I just put it up, no url, oftentimes no signature, no warnings in the comments or my blog bio. Admittedly I was starting out and didn’t have much viewers anyway, but the point was I still had Trust at the time.

Then the art thefts began. I started adding my url to all my illustrations, even if it was just small in the corner, as this’d let people at least find my website. Most people are too lazy to type out a url though, and I’ve seen people asking “Who drew this??” on art theft comments EVEN WHEN THE URL IS LITERALLY RIGHT THERE…

And then people started cropping my watermarks. I made my url bigger, and started adding an additional “DO NOT REPOST” to the image itself. I used to allow reposts with credits on platforms I’m not on, like fb, until I realized that people were then reposting from THOSE communities without credit and putting them into their videos and fics and I just…decided it wasn’t worth it.

I switched to no reposts PERIOD. I have lengthy disclaimers on all of my art that leads to an even lengthier FAQ post that, should people wish to look, leads to even an even more detailed post about WHY art theft sucks, as I’m explaining now.

(EDIT: ALSO, reduce the quality of the images you upload, and NEVER upload the full resolution, and try to keep you unmerged original files. This is for several reasons: no matter how much an art thief reposts your work, they’ll never have access to the higher resolution, and if they ever decide to try to print to sell for profit it’ll be shitty quality compared to anything you make with the original. ALSO, you having the maximum resolution with no watermarking with additional unmerged psd files will be proof that you are the true creator should you need to prove it, which I’ve heard is sometimes necessary to show when your art is stolen at say, an artist alley)

I also used to bother trying to talk to art reposters. I’d comment on the post, try to send messages, etc. It’s fucking exhausting, and while there are some exceptions, the VAST majority of art thiefs will feel attacked and immediately get rude and defensive. (the failed confrontations and disrespect you mentioned orz) If it’s a large community, they may even try to gang up on you. I’ve unfortunately experienced this most frequently in communities centered around other languages (mainly Spanish) because of different mainstream attitudes towards art reposting etiquette combined with a language barrier.

You will, and no doubt already have, encountered people who will argue with you, like the people I describe above. “You should be grateful for the bigger audience!” “We just want to appreciate your art, how can you be so horrible?” “We’re all fans together!” “This is fanart and doesn’t belong to you anyway!” Etc. etc. etc. It’s exhausting, it’s repetitive, it’s neverending, and you already felt awful before it even began and the stress just continues to build.

So I personally have just begun reporting people, if the service allows it. Use DMCA takedown request forms (and YES, even if it’s fanart it’s still yours if you drew it). This is stressful too because it sends your real name + info to the reposter (and wow I clearly can’t trust these people to begin with, why would I want them to have that???) but most sites (facebook, instagram, certainly tumblr, twitter) are very efficient and responsive, and in the end the relief of receiving that email that the art has been taken down is worth it. Especially with facebook, they also send a scary official warning email to the reposters which I sincerely hope will help educate them and discourage future art thefts.

I try to avoid posting public urls because yes I’m aware how mob mentality Tumblr can get, but sometimes it’s just too much. There’s no convenient form of getting my content removed (perhaps bc it’s in a compilation with a ton of other content), or for some reason my attempts to communicate have failed. In those times I have occasionally asked my followers to help, with a reminder to PLEASE always be polite and respectful, regardless of the offense. Y’all have been amazing, and this has saved me many nights of crying in the past.

I will sometimes also write lengthy posts (like this one!) to help educate. Because I do feel that art theft will continue so long as people don’t understand what it does to artists, and it’s up to the community as a whole to make that change, which also depends heavily on the consumers not just creators. A lot of art theft really isn’t intentionally meant to harm, but IS super ignorant.

But in the end, all I’ve ranted about so far is how I’ve dealt with actually removing/dealing with the shit. But the emotional pain, it builds. Sometimes, when it’s too frequent and the stolen art gets way more attention than my original that I worked my ass off on that basically flunked on my own platforms, I feel a bit of me break.

And in the end, it’s up to you what that threshold is, where posting art and feeling good about it is overwhelmed by the pain, fear, and anxiety of art theft. I’ve crossed my own threshold too many times, and once had to take an art hiatus because of it (fandom was BH6). This lead to a break in my productivity and motivation and my eventual complete departure form the fandom. I’ve seen many other artists just stop posting art entirely or moving everything to private. It’s terrible, but my feelings are with these artists, and I feel so, so sorry that they were hurt so much to the extent they had to do this.

With my current fandom and followers, I feel that regardless of how niche an audience my content tends to be geared for, I have a community that is really satisfying for me to create for, one that is responsive to me and gives me tons of feedback. This is the number one reason why i continue to feel motivated to post a ton of online content despite the risks.

The takeaway form this long meandering post: Posting online is a hobby, it’s for fun, and I don’t make any money off my public audience (unless they come to Patreon! LOL!), so I’m a firm believer that once the anxiety + misery starts outweighing anything positive you personally may get from sharing online, which for me heavily depends on my audience and their responsiveness, there’s no reason to subject yourself to that anymore and you are in no way obligated to stay. There are various methods to more efficiently get rid of art thefts without dealing with them in person which is stressful AF, and also ways of marking up your content in ways that may look less aesthetically pleasing, but will hopefully discourage art thefts, and at the very least give them very little leg to stand on should they do it anyway. How forgiving you are in art thefts also depends on you, but the more forgiving you are, the more it can get away from you. And in the end, YOU as a human are more important than any complaints about art looking less pleasing or the feelings of art thefts who don’t get to do what they want with YOUR hard work.

Sorry this was so disjointed and literally just me spewing at you, but I hope some of it was helpful ^ ^; Please let me know if I can give you any other advice, and I’m sorry again that you have to deal with this ;_;

(and to respond to your second ask, I do try to respond to most of my asks, but sometimes it takes a while (sometimes even months orz), especially if it’s one that requires a lengthy detailed answer like this one ^ ^; thank you for your patience!)

[deborahdeshoftim5779]

The Marvel of Trelsi (Intro)

I can’t stay away from these two; they will have me smiling in my grave. Having been heavily critical of the writing for the High School Musical series, I must temper my own acidic tongue (typing fingers) to celebrate what I call “The Marvel of Trelsi”. As I am currently writing Trelsi fic (which WILL be finished sometime this century), and trying to get at least 1500 words a day, I need to write as much meta as possible to flesh out my ideas and headcanons for this pairing. 

What to say? That I love Trelsi is an understatement. That I will keep repeating this is a given. And despite all of my sarcasm, opprobrium and inveterate anger towards the writers of the HSM franchise, who ruined my viewing experience by sinking the RMS Troy Bolton whilst claiming the ship could not sink, the creation of Trelsi is to their credit. It is gloriously ironic that the show set out to demonstrate that the main couple epitomised the ideal of love and a solid relationship, but ended up demonstrating this between the protagonist and an allegedly minor character instead. As I have said before, Troy and Kelsi grow from strength to strength throughout the movie series, whilst Troy and a certain other lady go careening down a mountainside in blizzard conditions. So, I must give full credit to the screenwriters for creating this ship and thus fostering an enduring love for two of the most likeable characters I have ever seen onscreen. 

In reality, no introduction to Trelsi is needed. Or at least none that supersedes the beautiful screenshot I have at the top, reposted for the pure joy of it. Interestingly, when I use the word “Trelsi”, I am actually referring to their canonical friendship FIRST, before referring to a potential romantic ship. Apart from being easier to write, I like to adhere very closely to canon and build my ideas from that basis before branching into my own headcanons. I have an intense dislike for OOC and all the horrors that spring from that Pandora’s Box. This friendship comes as a result of Troy taking an interest in Kelsi’s music and resurrecting her self-esteem after she has been bossed around by Sharpay Evans during the first movie. The two become friends very quickly and prove to work as a great team during the production and execution of two major musicals in Junior and Senior Year. 

You will notice, of course, that I exclude Gabriella from this description-- not because she wasn’t present for the beginning of the Trelsi timeline, but because she had no hand in its development. I am currently planning several Trelsi fics, one of which includes a significant rewrite of the canonical timeline without Gabriella, and most of the major events would have happened either in a different way or with no change whatsoever were she not there. I notice that many fandom writers will often describe Kelsi as being friends with Troy and Gabriella. This intrigues me, as it implies that she is friends with them on an equal basis. Call me picky, but appears to be untrue. I cannot think of any scene between Kelsi and Gabriella that comes anywhere near the Trelsi bond. What do I mean by the Trelsi bond? I mean primarily the unspoken understanding between them that makes the two so effortlessly comfortable around each other. Case in point: the lovely, LOVELY hug in HSM III seems obvious, but I draw the viewer’s attention back to HSM I, when Troy tries out “What I’ve Been Looking For”. Isn’t it interesting that Kelsi only has to nod at him to start singing the song, but guides Gabriella through the first line before letting her sing the rest? Troy, who is notably MORE nervous about performing, has never tried this song before and seemed a little surprised when Kelsi asked whether he wanted to hear “how the duet’s supposed to sound?”

Yes, I know, this is MINOR. But it intrigues me. We will discuss this in more detail during the next instalment. 

I have LOADS of notes in my Google Drive on Trelsi, because it was and still is incredibly important for me to understand WHY I shipped them, the potential and realistic avenues for this ship and how to portray their dynamic. I’m going to try and condense those notes in my next couple of posts when I explore their beautiful, but cruelly limited scenes together. Unlike the average shipper, I tend to think-- overly much, from the length of my Tumblr posts-- on ships and dynamics. In the beginning, I wanted to ship Troyella. It seemed natural to me, as they were stamped across the screen. Turns out I could only ship one half of Troyella; that is, Troy Bolton, who is so such a sympathetic hero. He has flaws. He struggles*. He has a journey. He grows (when the screenwriters allow him to!). We see this. Gabriella? I got nothing. Believe me, I tried. That’s why I was pinning my hopes on HSM III to deliver. This did not happen, and that prompted a 13 (see my archive for April/May!) post series on my fury with this movie and the dreadful implications for Troy Bolton, the art of writing and human decency. 

So, throughout this series, I will examine Trelsi with my usual fine-tooth comb, as viewed through the scenes in the movies as well as my headcanons and musings. Of course, I do not pretend to be impartial. I have a very unfavourable view of Troyella, as one may already have gathered; however, whilst being scathing towards this “relationship”, I have and will continue to provide evidence for my opinions here. I will frequently compare the Troyella dynamic with the Trelsi dynamic. Please do not be surprised to find that Trelsi wins 11 times out of 10. I am not bound by the Trade Descriptions Act or any other regulatory equivalent, so I can say whatever the hell I like. 

The particular themes and questions I want to explore alongisde my scene analysis are:

1- Who IS Troy Bolton?

2- Who IS Kelsi Nielsen?

3- What makes the Trelsi friendship and dynamic so friggin’s special? Why does it make me want to weep and write poetry?

4- Friendship, Romance or Both? What’s their dynamic? What would attract the both of them? What are their flaws? How would these flaws work together?

5- Why is Trelsi a superior potential romantic ship to Troyella? (Oh, I’m going to have a field day with THAT one!) Why is Trelsi so poorly appreciated as a potential romantic ship?

I may add some more questions later on. I am definitely open to prompts and questions from anyone reading this. My posts are long, partially because I think too deeply about things, partially because I have a daily word count to smash, partially because I am depressed by the lack of all things Trelsi and mostly because HSM, despite infuriating me, GAVE ME TRELSI SO I’M HERE FOREVER! :D Anyway, I hope this will be fun. One thing I’d like to see more of in the HSM fandom is a willingness to at least consider other ships that aren’t called TroyHELLa. I’m not asking for conversion to Trelsi. (Although that would be nice. One, I’m pretty lonely out here. Two, these two have a healthy dynamic!). But it would be good if more fans actually detached Troy from Gabriella’s umbilical cord and viewed him firstly as a man and a hero protagonist, and secondly with potential other characters either platonically or romantically. For a series that is supposed to represent being YOURself, you would think fans would take that on board, huh? 

Try it? You might like it. 

TO BE CONTINUED.

(*FOOTNOTE- I have no time for people who claim that Troy Bolton is a privileged brat. Unless you can give me the name of a privileged brat who treats everyone equally, is kind, generous, thoughtful, mature, hard-working, gets ALL his friends jobs for the summer and makes friends with kids who would be considered “uncool”, always has a kind word for everyone, always appreciates other people’s achievements and is always on hand to help his friends, then please do be quiet. With a father who is a public school teacher and who struggles to pay high tuition fees, I think any such argument is dead in the water. Claims that Troy was a “jerk” in HSM II are entirely unfounded-- please refer to my Questions for HSM II Part I and Part II for further information. Claims that Gabriella was right to pursue her own future are fine, without the odious implication that Troy stood in her way. This is completely false. Rather, it is Gabriella who stood in Troy’s way of achieving a much-needed scholarship back in HSM II. Claims that being a popular basketball player make you a jerk are rendered absurd by the very obvious social pressure that accompanies such a level of fame, and which deeply affect Troy in every movie. This is thoroughly nonsensical. Claims that Gabriella is a privileged brat are, of course, founded in fact). 

[emilyannriley]

Reposting my gifset because it feels relevant again right now… Back then after the empty hearse, I just thought it sucked that two big ships got their (albeit fake) moment to shine except the Titanic of ships in the Sherlock ocean. It annoyed me.

It still does. But on a whole new level. What they did is not just plain queerbaiting (and neglecting because they could show the Sherlolly kiss itself is not made out to be a joke, while we get a big fat moment of “WHAT? HOW COULD YOU DARE SAY SUCH A THING? NOT IN MY HOUSE!” cutting into the scene of the almost Sheriarty kiss - which they didn’t even show - the gay kiss (which again they only hinted at but didn’t show as opposed to the theoretical and REALLY exaggerated hetero-kiss) was literally set up like a sitcom scene.. a joke... haha very funny fuck yourself!)

(I didn’t even mean to get that worked up about that part here, that sort of just happened, so back to what I actually planned to say)

It isn’t only queerbaiting. I’m gonna eat Carl Powers shoe if leaving a theoretical johnlock sequence out wasn’t their way of mocking the johnlock fandom, subtly telling us to fuck off? I mean it wouldn’t have been that far off for someone to consider that John is in on it, if they can even imagine Moriarty is. Moriarty who was the reason he assumedly killed himself. Yes of course that would be much more likely than his b(-oy)est friend and flat mate, the person that literally closest to him would be part of the plan.

And naturally the girl that came up with Sherlock being possibly gay must obviously be portrayed as a goth, someone who would be seen as a weirdo by a good deal (sadly I believe the majority) of casual viewers, who’s not to be taken seriously, because gay doesn’t exist in our universe (unless you’re not, of course, or your a sister of a main character who’s character description is “plot device - never actually shows up” and then, oh right, how could I forget, you are also allowed to be gay in this universe and actually show up if you’re a lesbian that we can turn straight for our main character, another exception might be the jokey pub owner gay couple who’s purpose is to be the funny gay ones with a little dog in the basement and we can use you to make another reference to our main characters being a couple when hello, don’t be ridiculous, they’re obviously not, but we get more viewers if we drag the joke until the very end.. what do you mean that’s shit? We say they aren’t gay and if they still believe they are - because we keep making references and make literally every character think they are including their landlady who basically lives with them and should know what’s actually going on except she does not - then hey it’s not our fault because we told you all along, we might have said we lie all the time, but not about this, silly! It’s not our job to please the audience that pays our bills and literally is the reason we’re even able to do this, we write for ourselves, why should an author give a fuck about their fans and if they like their work or not? It’s way funnier to fuck with them and toy with their hopes and feels and then BAM we do one fuckery of a series final!

We’re geniuses! *Mofftiss high five*