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girlfriendsofthegalaxy · 10 months ago

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tuesday again 9/3/2024

having a lot of fun with toddler enrichment activities in this household, until we bit through the bag and the foil and the water and hated that experience

listening

fun citypop version of Good Luck Babe! by Amandumb and Sakura Wine, “ganbatte” scans to “good luck babe” SCARY well. this is both off a tiktok my best friend sent me and the spotify recommended weekly

youtube

reading

quite frankly this makes me nervous and i am backing up my blogs as we speak. i sort of believe them when they say that we won't see a difference on the front end, but this is a HUGE migration. SOMETHING is going to go not perfectly.

William Greenleaf's TIME JUMPER (1980, 224p) and Joe Millard (my beloathed)'s Blood For A Dirty Dollar (1980 European reprint of a 1973 American book, 156p). thank you philip. time jumper is from a thrift store somewhere (possibly from the free book shelf at the umass engineering library) and the cowboy book is from ebay. they lied about the condition and the heavy smoke smell so i ended up getting it for free :) in no world is that a Very Good condition book!!!

time jumper! i do not think the back cover blurb (below) is very accurate.

COMBINED DESTINIES! One Earth of the far future, city dwellers live in a technologically advanced environment, while bands of nomads barbarically hunt and farm the plains. Hidden within the city is Erin, a crazed scientist, who is constructing a timejumper. On the plains is a nomad boy who quests after the city's secrets. Unknown to both, an evil force works to keep them apart, for it knows that if they ever meet, a new Earth destiny would be inevitable!

i looooove a bubble city. i love long lingering shots of technology and city-scapes and city politics. i would not call the nomads barbarians, bc they are a trading society who set up crop irrigation in their seasonal fields and have a giant traveling library with card catalogue. i would also not call Erin crazed or hidden, bc he is the richest man in the city. reclusive, yes. single-minded, yes. pretty sane though. he is a little person and i think the book handled this fairly deftly for 1980? most of his obstacles are physical and not societal. finally, the evil force is not working to keep them apart bc it doesn't even know about the outside kid. they mostly just want to stop anyone from leaving.

now that we know the back blurb is lies, what's the deal with this book? mostly wrestling with how automation leads to a loss of purpose and flattening of culture, breaking cycles, cyclical natures of histories thereof, and repeating old sins. however, one of the more frustrating endings ive ever read with the very last paragraph containing the suicide of a minor character. we simply didn't fucking need that last paragraph.

i found the dialogue a little bland but book overall quite evocative. it felt like a sixties scifi show constructed from castoff theater sets. it felt like this screenshot from rollerball. a lot of shapes. a lot of giant gardens. a lot of flattened textures.

i also liveblogged the cowboy book here. we've previosuly looked at the one with the balloon and the jailbreak but this is the one with the mad englishman and the imported castle and the missing scientists. i love a description of Legally Not Lee van Cleef Because We Don't Have A Royalty Agreement

watching

X-Men: First Class (2011, dir. Vaughn) was way more fun than i was expecting??? it's fun to watch these with my bestie's husband who is a fairly intense x-men fan and Will pause the movie for several minutes to explain why a specific character's death was fucking bullshit or answer one of my stupid costuming questions

playing

the new mesoamerican fire-aligned nation of Natlan is out in genshin impact! VERY beautiful region even though i think it is a crime, to me personally, to show me a village of observation balloons and then tell me i can't actually go there for six weeks until the next patch.

this is a little bit more of a frustrating experience bc my tolerance for the least little thing going wrong is at record lows. once you hit 100% on a map region it feels more like a true 100% ing the area, which is a little scary bc this usually means you have anywhere from 10-20% more Stuff to do and find and collect. one quest is straight up bugged for me (very unusual) and i cannot get a specific mechanic (the yunkasaur, the little green pokemon lookin motherfucker above, flame spitting) to fire with any sort of accuracy. why have a sight and a center pip if you CANNOT aim it.

some parts of the map look a little more seussical than others.

to whoever made sure this observation balloon lined up with the window when you entered this waypoint building, i see you. thank you.

making

fallow week.

#tuesday again #tuesday again no problem #Youtube

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bomberqueen17 · 10 months ago

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Liveblogging the Aubreyad: Book 3, HMS Surprise (part 1)

This one, I made notes on my phone while listening to the audiobook, so we shall see how well I distill them.

The series is hitting its stride now as a series, I think. M&C was kind of oneshottish, no real expectation of continuation; Post Captain was the pleased "oh! i get another one? great!" where he then crammed in three books' worth into one, and now HMS S is "ah. this is a series! Settle this plot down, then." pacing-wise.

So we pick up with politicians wrangling over the aftermath of the previous book, which had seemed to end so tidily and on such a happy note. Of course that is not the end-- there's a series now.

So at the end of the previous book, Jack was one of five captains sharing out a prize of some several million pounds, and this would have made him enormously wealthy and guaranteed his marriage. Of course.

In the opening scene of this one we hear that, legally, Spain had not declared war on Britain at the time, so legally, that money is not prize money, so legally, it should just be kept entirely for the government and not distributed to the sailors and officers who actually did the fighting at all, despite that being the well-established custom of the day. Legally, see, they don't have to hand it out, even though the people who designed the mission, and the people who executed the mission, all felt certain that it was a legit prize at the time and acted accordingly.

Stephen's friend Sir Joseph, head of Naval Intelligence, is arguing that of course it should be prize money, for large numbers of very good reasons, not least that he designed the mission with that in mind.

But the new First Lord of the Admiralty is a civilian politician. And he openly mentions Stephen Maturin's name, despite the fact that Sir Joseph had stressed to him that the man is a confidential agent. The First Lord does not catch the hint. And then he asks who the captains are, and remembers that Jack Aubrey's father is an opposition member in Parliament, and immediately Sir Joseph knows that it's over; this is political wrangling now, and this man will make a decision that harms the national interest and the morale of the service and everything else simply because General Aubrey is a politician he does not like.

So there is no prize money. And Jack is not out of debt. And cannot marry Sophie. And, far far far worse, Stephen's name is now exposed to a crowd of non-confidential people of no particular discretion, particularly marked as a secret agent with knowledge of Spanish affairs.

Anyway-- zooming out from that crackerjack first scene, and it is despite how it sounds, it's really well-told political intrigue with a very good layering of easy-to-understand, easy-to-deplore bullshit (and Admiral Harte gets his shitty little nose in there being a massive hypocrite, have no fear) -- the general situation is thus:

Jack, still in the Lively, is in the Med bottling up the French fleet in Toulon, and is engaged to Sophie-- legally, with all kinds of avaricious wrangles from Mrs. Williams, all the terms and conditions he acquiesced to unprotesting, so that Sophie will legally own most of their joint property. Diana has run off to India with Canning; Stephen has been collecting intelligence on them, though mostly it seems for the purpose of hurting himself with it. Stephen is to go to Minorca to do more intelligence stuff despite the fact that his name has been exposed-- the news will not have reached them, Stephen says coolly, declining to cancel the mission.

The Lively has a schoolmaster to oversee the young gentlemen's lessons. (Prior to being a midshipman, a young gentleman will be expected to have served three years of sea time, with the status of First Class Volunteer; many are listed as servants during this time, and many of them do not actually report to the ship during this time-- entering a friend's son on one's books to say he was on a ship long enough that when he joins he can just start as a midshipman with no waste of time is a perfectly accepted kind of little fraud, very common in Jack's social circles. "Young gentleman" as a category seems to include both the volunteers and rated midshipmen. But the Lively has a number of quite young gentlemen actually aboard, including the five-year-old [or, seven. he was five in the previous book but in this book, some weeks later, he is now seven] son of one of the lieutenants, as he came home from a voyage to find his wife dead and no family remaining to care for the child, so the little boy has been onboard ever since. Apparently Babbington may actually have still been a volunteer during some of the events of Master and Commander, but of course this is not consistently represented. I fully support an author doing whatever the hell he wants with timelines, and it is absolutely consistent with the inconsistency of historical records, LOL.)

Anyway-- Jack also actually went to sea as a volunteer very young, and the ship he was on did not have a competent schoolmaster, so he has suffered his entire life from not a very good education. He is sitting in on the young gentlemen's lessons ostensibly because he is concerned for them and wants to ensure they learn what they must, but in practice, he is taking advantage of this opportunity to get a proper thorough grounding in his own education, belatedly, and is thereby unlocking a real true love of mathematics, heretofore only instinctively guessed-at.

The Lively has seen long prior service in the South Pacific, and as such has a number of Asian crew members aboard. (So we do now see the word Chinaman occur, which unlike Indiaman does refer to humans, but is used as a neutral descriptor; I will nevertheless henceforth be avoiding its use, though to be fair I think it only occurs once in the book anyway.) Jack is pleased with the Chinese and Malayan crewmen, largely, as they all are unfailingly polite and have a number of useful skills, and are excellent seamen. But he finds out during an elaborate cutting-out expedition that many of them had formerly been pirates; they slaughter their opponents with absolutely stunning efficiency in a quite practiced manner despite how little combat the Lively itself has seen.

They make for Minorca to pick up Stephen but he does not make the rendezvous. Another Catalan man appears, and says Stephen has been taken, and is being tortured by the French in Port Mahon. Jack knows the city. With the Catalans, he sets up a rescue mission, and frees the prisoners, burns the house (coincidentally, the house where Captain and Molly Harte used to live), and rescues Stephen, who has had all his fingernails pulled out and has been stretched on a rack. (Touchingly, he has hallucinated Jack coming in to rescue him before, and so when it truly happens, is surprisingly calm, mistaking it for another hallucination.) It is a taut little action, badass as fuck. The officers of the Lively are disappointed when Jack won't take them, but this is not an official sanctioned expedition and there will be no glory, no report, no credit, no advancement of career-- it is simply a pragmatic necessity, and he wants only people who know the ground (his own people, Killick and Bonden) plus enough to pad out the numbers to make it work, so he takes those of the Chinese and Malay pirates who choose to volunteer, since this is just the ticket for them. (All of them volunteer.)

(A side note. The Catalan who helps them is named Joan. The audiobook narrator pronounces this Catalan man's name, which in Spanish would be Juan, and is pronounced the same, as the English woman's name Joan. Come on Simon. I believed in you.)

They get Stephen and get out, and we resume the tale in England with Stephen staying at an inn in Portsmouth. The Lively has been handed back over to her real captain, Hammond, at Gibraltar.

Jack is immediately arrested for debt as he tries to get the invalid Stephen into a carriage to go from Portsmouth to London, so off he goes to a sponging-house, hero or no; he goes quietly and resignedly. Sir Joseph Blaine is shocked to hear that heroic Jack is imprisoned; he had arranged for at least a consolation, an ex gratia payment, for the captains who were denied prize rights over the Spanish treasure, but it comes out that the agent has been slow in paying it out, and Jack is helpless without it. Blaine resolves to see it settled, at least, and does-- Jack is released. At least provisionally; there are other debts.

Sir Joseph, in his gratitude for Stephen's rescue, gets Jack another ship-- HMS Surprise, on an errand to carry an emissary to Kampong. It's a good long mission in a lovely ship (in which Jack served as a midshipman long ago), and he hopes it will give Jack's affairs time to settle.

Stephen turns to Bonden, asking him to write a letter for him, since his hands are so injured, and it comes out abruptly that Bonden is illiterate.

'Bonden,' cried Stephen, 'take pen and ink, and write -' 'Write, sir?' cried Bonden. 'Yes. Sit square to your paper, and write: Landsdowne Crescent - Barret Bonden, are you brought by the lee?' 'Why, yes, sir; that I am - fair broached-to. Though I can read pretty quick, if in broad print; I can make out a watch-bill.' 'Never mind. I shall show you the way of it when we are at sea, however: it is no great matter - look at the fools who write all day long - but it is useful, by land. You can ride a horse, sure?' 'Which I have rid a horse, sir; and three or four times, too, when ashore.'

Bonden takes the message on foot, and goes and fetches Sophie and Pullings, Sophie to write the letter from Stephen to Jack, and Pullings to carry it. This allows them to arrange for Sophie to come along to the rendezvous, so that she can see and speak to Jack briefly without her mother's knowledge. Jack had tried to release her from the engagement when his renewed troubles with debt became apparent, but she wished to refuse, but could not speak to him directly about it, so this is their chance.

She sneaks out at night and goes in the coach with Stephen, and there gets a half an hour (well, forty-five minutes; Stephen with the timepiece is soft-hearted) of conversation with Jack before they must part ways, her to go home and sneak back in to her house, Stephen and Jack to go on to the Surprise, waiting in Plymouth.

The Surprise makes her way off around the world, saddled with a moderately ineffectual but amiable first lieutenant named Hervey who has influential friends, and a second lieutenant named Nicolls who is inoffensive if clearly suffering from major depression, but with Tom Pullings as the third lieutenant, competent and familiar. They are becalmed awhile, and Jack teaches Stephen to swim-- badly, but at all, which is an accomplishment.

'Did you see me?' [Stephen] cried as Jack came nearer. 'I swam the entire length: four hundred and twenty strokes without a pause!' 'Well done,' said Jack, swinging himself into the boat with an easy roll. 'Well done indeed.' Each stroke must have propelled Stephen a little less than three inches, for the Surprise was only a twenty-eight gun ship, a sixth-rate of 579 tons - the kind so harshly called a jackass frigate by those not belonging to her. 'Should you like to come aboard? Let me give you a hand.'

Some of the men get scurvy. They run short of supplies and are down to eating rats, which they euphemistically term "millers" out of absurd delicacy. Stephen has pet rats, he is feeding them madder as an experiment.

They find St. Paul's Rocks, where Stephen begs to be put ashore for a moment to study the birds. Jack declines, as it is Sunday and one cannot ask the men to work on Sunday, but the second lieutenant Nicolls volunteers to take him over in the little rowboat for a few hours.

A sudden squall damages the ship and washes poor depressed Nicolls away, along with the little boat; Stephen survives, but is stranded, and the Surprise driven away by the wind. Some undefined time later (two days?), Babbington comes in the barge with Bonden and others rowing double-banked in a great hurry straight into the eye of the wind where the ship herself could not come, certain the Doctor must be dead but hoping against hope to find him. They do, alive, and bring him back to the ship.

Stephen claims that the extreme heat on the shelter-less rock has worked miracles on his torture-twisted tendons.

'I wish you joy of your rescue, Doctor,' said Mr Atkins, the only man aboard who was not pleased to see the barge return: Stephen was attached to the mission in an artfully vague capacity, and the envoy's instructions required him to seek Dr Maturin's advice; Mr Atkins's advice or indeed presence was nowhere mentioned and he was consumed with jealousy. 'May I fetch you a towel or some other garment?'- with a look at Stephen's scrofulous shrunken belly. 'You are very officious, sir; but this is the garment in which I shall appear before God; I find it answers pretty well. It may be termed my birthday suit.' 'That has choked the bugger off,' said Pullings to Babbington, just above his breath, out of a motionless face. 'That is one in his bleeding eye.'

During Stephen's absence, however, he finds that someone has stolen his rats, and he is furious.

Babbington is given an acting promotion to lieutenant to replace Nicolls. His perfect delight in this is marred only by his guilt at having, along with the rest of the larboard midshipmen's berth, eaten Stephen's rats, and he blubberingly confesses. Stephen revenges himself only mildly for this offense.

Jack wished to avoid putting ashore in Brazil, to avoid official delays, but Stephen suggests they just find a village and buy green stuff there, which works. Stephen of course has to go ashore. He promises not to return with any vampires, but in the event comes back with a three-toed sloth, which does not like Jack. Jack wins it over by giving it grog, in time-honored sailor fashion. Stephen discovers this and is indignant, leading to possibly the funniest line in this book:

Stephen looked sharply round, saw the decanter, smelt to the sloth, and cried, 'Jack, you have debauched my sloth.'

The dignitaries aboard are annoying and take up an enormous amount of space, including Jack's entire great cabin, so that he must room with Stephen in a smaller space. The envoy himself, a Mr. Stanhope, is dignified and kind (though a bit remote: "Once he had established that Jack and Hervey were connected with families he knew, he treated them as human beings; all the others as dogs - but as good, quite intelligent dogs in a dog-loving community"), but his head secretary, Mr. Atkins, is an officious, self-important, tale-bearing busybody universally loathed onboard.

Stephen teaches Bonden to read and write. They have their lessons up in the top, for privacy-- Bonden is not keen to be mocked on his scholarly habits, and hides the book when the midshipman Callow comes up to deliver a message. Stephen doesn't notice this.

They get, finally, to the high latitudes, where there is a huge blow, though Stephen is consoled by finally seeing the albatross. The dignitaries complain that the ship leaks and demand better accomodations. Stephen refuses to pass the message and tells the officious secretary to go tell Jack himself. The man declines to do this, as Jack is currently lashed to the wheel in the driving rain working like hell round the clock with all hands to keep the ship from broaching-to and foundering, and indeed shortly after winds up clinging for his life to a broken mast in the front of the ship trying like hell to keep the sea from overwhelming them. Surprise is damaged internally, her timbers strained, and they have to limp the rest of the way. Not a single rat is left in the ship, the stores are dangerously low.

I wasn't going to do this but I'm going to divide this. I swear I'll get better at making these short. I'm kind of doing a... rehabilitative exercise on my ability to write, here. Coming up is part two, Bombay! With critical updates on How Many Indiamen Tom Pullings Has Been In! And you'll never guess who gets the clap!

#liveblogging the aubreyad #tom pullings #jack aubrey #stephen maturin #patrick o'brian #spoilers for all the book plots #book report #i need to institute word limits #i don't have the capacity to mentally organize myself #but i'm working on it

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bladekindeyewear · 2 years ago

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Hello, what do you think of optimisticDuelist's Role-playing theory? Basically, he suggested that instead of inverting, Rose was role-playing a misinterpretation of her mother's classpect. He also suggests Terezi was role-playing Redglare's Knight class while investigating Murderstuck, and that Vriska and Aranea were role-playing each other's classes. I recommend watching "HSE: Guardians and Ancestors" for more about his theory. :D

Since I'm trying to get back in the swing of things (might still take me a few weeks), I might as well remind y'all of my earlier position:

I haven't read or watched optimisticDuelist's theories yet, and I probably ought to before I make any serious judgments on the matter. Plus, I'm not caught up with HS^2's recent new updates, and I was under the impression that oD had some input into HS^2 as a whole-- I'm not sure if Andrew gave the writers and collaborators on that project the latitude to make some changes from the system that was intended by Andrew in the original comic's run, but I wouldn't be surprised if he had, so for all we know some of those theories may retroactively fit the original comic even if they weren't initially intended! Or introduced as just a NEW thing that can happen! That's one sort of thing that I was originally so devoted to the comic's "original intent" that I wouldn't have accepted easily, but I'm coming to accept as a possibility a bit easier now, with how much Andrew has pushed Death of the Author and how much the ending of the comic showed that many of the things I judged were "important" in-comic weren't important to him at all.

However, if we're looking as far back as Act 5 Act 2, I believe there's a serious fundamental difference in scope and scale between trolls like Vriska and Terezi poorly cosplaying the trappings and aesthetics of ancestors whose classpects we didn't know at the time -- ancestors who were in fact constantly teased with words like Thief (Mindfang), Seer (Redglare), and Witch (Condesce) to match their younger descendants' classes even though Andrew likely intended for them to have had different classes all along -- and the severe, extreme, and powerful event that seems to be full-on hero role inversion.

Reading some Homestuck liveblogs lately, I was reminded of the strong and intentional connections that all of Homestuck has with Carl Jung's psychological theories and the concept of the "Shadow" self. And I'm not just talking about a superficial resemblance between the Shadow and role inversion, or the "assimilation of the shadow" and the uniting of one's Real Self and Dream Self to ascend to God Tier. No-- I mean that Jung's theories, even if somewhat discredited, are referenced by the complex stew of mythologies that make up Sburb and define how the game is played, just like all the pop and serious references to works like Lord Of The Rings that made it into the game's objectives. If you skim that wikipedia page you'll very quickly see what I mean:

Nevertheless, Jung remained of the opinion that while "no one should deny the danger of the descent [...] every descent is followed by an ascent",[54] and assimilation of—rather than possession by—the shadow becomes a possibility.

"We begin to travel [up] through the healing spirals...straight up."[53]: 160–1

There's a good reason that Rose was given an interest in psychotherapy leading into the comic. It's tightly tied to the whole story's themes! Trying to show players the potential they have as individuals, the power inherent in their very personalities, and setting them a stage to confront themselves and grow into someone who would shape the future and accept their own self-worth, is the entire point of the game and the answer to the Ultimate Riddle. Every major character had to go through the arduous process of confronting their flaws and talents and trying to accept who they were. The game IS the psychotheraputic journey from start to finish, complete with the same monumental challenges, pitfalls, rejection and acceptance (of help and of oneself!) that all sorts of different people must confront in order to simultaneously fully appreciate and become themselves, and also become the people they truly want to be. Because despite what self-loathing and toxic gender norms and all sorts of naysayers would have us believe, those two things are closer to the same thing than most can easily imagine. The journey to discover, accept, unite with and leverage the power of being you.

And when you tie Jungian Psychology to MBTI personality types, you can practically flip the letters into an opposed Shadow too, in a less literal but startlingly similar way to the class-and-aspect-flip Inversion Theory that we proposed. (DAMMIT i still need to rewrite the Aradia post to be less pretentious, that's been on my to-do list for years but I've never been up to it...)

Again, I still need to read/watch optimisticDuelist's theories (I've had a hard time emotionally looking deep into anything Homestuck for a good while now, and even though you're referencing some pretty old theories i was NEVER very good at keeping up with others' theories besides what was specifically brought to my attention, it was a serious problem), but from what I recall in-comic every time I saw someone mimic or cosplay an ancestor they were mostly... just cosplaying! Nothing is stopping a Seer from picking up a sword and trying to do some knight stuff. TRYING. The only issue is that they won't be very good at it, because they're not actually learning about themselves and leveraging the strengths of their own personality and power set. I have no idea how to use a gun or weapons; if I were to pick one up and try to suddenly join a battle, I would have no idea what I'm doing and would be more likely to get myself or others hurt rather than do anyone any actual good. And even when someone like Terezi picked up a (cane-)sword in the comic, she still mostly used it as a Seer would, as the threat to punctuate or act on explicitly foreseen possibilities. When she ran Vriska through, she was acting on a VISION borne of the realities that hinged on others' decisions and fronts, that revealed themselves through her understanding the Mind aspect. It was no martial superpower, no mental trick-- all Terezi had was the superpower of understanding how badly Vriska's move to fight Jack would play out, with the necessary certainty she needed in order to confidently stab Vriska.

(Brief edit: as an aside, many classes of Heart player might be more positioned to take on and leverage the skills and uniqueness of others. Roleplaying others was one of NEPETA'S strengths.)

Rose's inversion was very, very, VERY different.

The word "witch" was EVERYWHERE around Rose, almost moreso than the Void symbolism. "Witch" was plastered all over Act 5 Act 2 in both the text and visual representations. Other players like Eridan CALLED her a witch REPEATEDLY. We saw a Witch of Time using dual needles and magic. Andrew couldn't have shouted the word any louder. It came with IMMENSE power, the sort of power level we've deduced (and Doc and Rose hinted) comes from someone's Hero Title because it's more powerful than any other mundane, magical, or psychic power source, fitting to the Ultimate Riddle-- when someone pulls out their Hero Powers against any non-hero power source besides sometimes the Green Sun, the one using Hero Powers always wins. It isn't even a contest.

When Rose went grimdark, she looked like a Witch. She didn't look like her mother. And she didn't act like her mother either! Especially when we got Roxy Lalonde in Act 6, it was clear that Rose's Grimdark actions and modus-operandi were absolutely nothing like those of her ecto-sister, even with all the commonalities they shared as people. Whatever inspiration Rose received from her mother's behavior and aesthetics, all it seems she took from it in her Grimdark descent was the Void, and little else.

If you were to try and convince me that what Rose did in Act 5 Act 2 was meant by the author to convey to us the actions of someone behaving as a Rogue of Void and not a Witch of Void, you wouldn't just need to show me evidence of Roguish activity. You'd need to show me ENOUGH evidence that Andrew meant to hide Rogue behavior beneath an intentional Witch whitewash (like that prior tease with the Troll Ancestors being coyly made to sound like they matched their descendants that I described earlier), and that all the Witch symbology and actions were actually a bullshit red herring!!! Few readers thought there was any serious impact of her Grimdark phase to her Class until we stumbled upon Inversion Theory as an extension of Aspect Duality, and a red herring is pretty pointless if it doesn't convince anyone.

Saying that NONE of those witch hints mattered? THAT'S A REALLY TALL ORDER. "Witch of Void" is just way, way too strongly evidenced in my eyes, and almost half of our derivative understanding of classes and aspects is based on Seer <--> Witch duality! It'll be weeks before I have my mental health together enough to watch optimisticDuelist's theories, but like, Seer <--> Witch is the most confident I still am in any theory besides the Ultimate Riddle and Aspect Duality. It'd take quite a lot to make me believe otherwise, so expecting optimisticDuelist's videos to change my mind on this matter would be... er. A little optimistic.

And because of how dependent so many of my theories were on what we learned about aspect duality FROM role inversion, if Seer <--> Witch didn't happen, then you might as well throw out almost everything I've ever said on classpects with the bathwater and start over. Rightly call me biased, but I do really hope I don't have to do that!

(edit 1pm cdt: added a bit more to the second-to-last paragraph before the cut to hammer home that "Shadow (Psychology)" wikipedia article, seriously so many of the characters' journeys in the comic follow it like a playbook. edit 1:15pm cdt: fixed wandering read-more)

#Homestuck #Homestuck Theories #Homestuck Theory #Classes and Aspects #Light and Void #optimisticDuelist

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freddi00 · 1 month ago

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Kamen Rider Zero-One Liveblog Analysis! Episodes 1-5

Welcome to the start of this little series of mine! As i rewatch Kamen Rider Zero-One i want to break down how well it deals with the topics it presents. A show about sentient androids basically comes prepackaged with loaded questions, so i want to see how well it answers them. Im mostly doing this so i can figure out for myself if Zero-One is a good or bad series, but i'll do my best to be as unbiased as possible

Some notes before we start:

1. The topics ill be looking at are as follows:

- What Zero-One says about the place of AI in society and how that relates to our modern use of it

- What Zero-One says about humanity's potential, as that's a really big theme in the show

- What Zero-One says about the place of an entirely new sentient species in our world. Can humagears coexist with humans and how? Expect a lot of Amazons comparisons

2. I watched Zero-One in 2023. I barely remember anything except the key points in the story

3. My take on AI is that it isn't inherently bad. AI can be used for plenty of good, such as doing jobs humans are incapable of performing and assisting people in their work. HOWEVER the recent boom of AI has also been a massive step back in humanity's progress. As of now, what's being pushed is automation of labor and complete replacement of creativity with generative AI (generative AI has a mountain of other issues but I'll only go into detail about them once they become relevant to Zero-One). The modern road of AI is just big corporations stabbing the working class in the back in order to make their businesses cheaper to run, without providing necessary job positions to those who are laid off because of it.

Now, without further ado: Episodes 1-5!

Topic 1: The Place Of Artificial Intelligence In Society:

Ill start this off by talking about how Hiden Intelligence presents Humagears.

"Humagears are here to support you" is one of the first things Korenosuke Hiden tells us. Hiden as a company advertises Humagear as a means of helping society function. For example, in episode 5's ending we see that a mangaka uses them to help work on backgrounds while he focuses on character art. In addition, Hiden also believes that Humagears are a good mean of automating certain jobs. In these episodes Humagears within the company are used in place of secretaries, desk service and security. We never see a human performing these jobs.

We actually get a better look at what humagears do in episode 5

From what can be deciphered, we have

- Sales

- Office work

- Mass media

- Design

- Education

- Social Welfare

- Medical care

- Information technology

- Architecture

- Transportation

And most notably

- Entertainment and art

This does not immediately mean that Hiden supports artifical intelligence replacing replacing human creativity, however. Episode 5 "The Man's Passionate Manga Method" is all about how using humagears to do all the creative work for you is a bad thing. It leads to a death of motivation and a bitter outlook on life.

On top of that, the very first episode is all about Aruto being fired and replaced by a humagear comedian. On the surfaces this isn't inherently bad. If Aruto truly was that bad and they absolutely needed someone to perform that time, using a humagear as a temporary fill-in until they find a human comedian is a good idea. This applies to all jobs that require contributing to something that's not just your own, in this case an amusement park's work. This isn't what this is about though, as the park owner quite clearly states: "I mean, its all about the humagears these days." This implies that not only are humagears exploited as easy replacements for human workers, but also that Hiden Intelligence doesn't do anything about this. This is the norm in Zero-One's society. I do not believe this is something Hiden Intelligence supports however. Going back to episode five, Korenosuke says that Humagears must help people filled with passion and that "Humagears exist to enrich human lives and makes humans happy." There is no passion or enrichment in replacing human jobs.

The only other comment they make about the use of Humagears is that "The future is going to be about living alongside new technology. It's up to the individual to figure out how they interact with humagears". This is the same episode where Aruto says humagears arent just tools.

I've been talking about Aruto, but i need to mention Fuwa and Yua too. They presence is very much important, as it shows a bigger level of nuance Yuya Takahashi puts into the show. Fuwa is aggressively anti AI, he thinks it is a threat and cannot bring anything good into the world. What's interesting is that his opinion is frequently supported by the story. The mere existence of Magia means Humagears are a potential danger to everyone around, as any of them can be hacked and turned against humanity. Episode 4 also fully sides with Fuwa on everything. From the very beginning he blames humagears for Daybreak and it's confirmed that it was them who caused the meltdown and explosion all those years ago. (There is more to it, but we'll get to that in like 15 episodes). Through Fuwa's viewpoint we can see that the magia very much represent how AI can be used for violence and destruction, similar to how a hammer is made to build, but can also be used to kill. Yua meanwhile is in the middle. She sees humagears as tools, and, like i said, understands that hammers can kill people. She thinks humagears can be used to make society better, but not without serious control of them.

All of this shows that Takahashi is very much aware of how complex the topic of AI is, and encourages us to think for ourselves and consider each perspective.

So, to conclude this section, Zero-One, as of episode 5, is pro using androids to automate work. From hard labor to art this series thinks artifical intelligence has a place there. While the complete replacement of people in certain jobs is... A choice... Zero-One also thinks artifical intelligence should not be used to replace human talent and passion. Can guards, secretaries, desk service, and tour guides care about their job outside of paying bills? Probably, but so far Zero-One implies that society is doing fine that way and does not propose solutions on what to do about misuse of Humagears. Additionally, it does not address what happens to all the people who's jobs were replaced by AI and iirc never does.

Despite this, Zero-One also tells us that AI is not a fix it all solution, it is a loaded idea that comes with it's own problems that need addressing and fixing.

A lot of this has ended up being true in real life too. Companies keep telling us that generative AI is the future that will improve society, but in reality all that it's doing is taking jobs, killing creativity, and promoting anti-intellectualism while forces we can't control weaponize it for malice. We'll see how the show expands on all of this later. As for the in-universe status quo, at best we can say Aruto is aware of all of these issues and is doing stuff off-screen about it 🤷

Topic 2: Humanity's Potential

The stories of Zero-One are very much about how our actions shape the future. That we are the only ones who can make things better and that we can't sit around if we want things to change.

This is shown by humagears being easily influenced by what those around them do. If they are introduced to malice, then they go crazy and destroy everything. If you show them kindness and help them learn how to live, then they will be amazing assistance and even friends and family. This also expands on the topic of AI, and that it will take the form humanity chooses it to take. Once again, "The future is going to be about living alongside new technology. It's up to the individual to figure out how they interact with humagears". Its up to us to shape our future with what we have in our reach.

Topic 3: Coexistence

As of now, the topic of Humagears as a sentient species coexisting with ours is only addressed by Aruto and Metsuboujinrai. Aruto respects humagears. He thinks of them as people. He greets them, he talks to them, he mourns them when they die. He believes humagears should be treated like we treat each other - with respect. As he says, humagears have hearts. He does not like when humagears are abused, driven to the point of breaking, even if they have not reached singularity by that point. He believes humagears lives matter at all stages, since they already perceive the world and develop through their experiences in it. He is fine with replacing broken humagears with back ups, but he doesn't think that should ever be an excuse to treat them like toys to throw away when they break. Aruto thinks we must learn to coexist and get along with this new type of being his grandfather has introduced into the world. Interestingly though, Aruto initially doesn't think Humagears are equal to humans. In episode 1 he refuses to believe humagears can understand comedy. This is rarely, if ever brought up again.

Metsuboujinrai on the other hand think Humanity has to go.... These episodes don't actually talk about why, but they introduce the idea that not everyone wants the two species to live alongside each other. I'll come back to them in another post

The topic of what makes us alive and sentient is... A very complex one. Some think generative AI should be treated as a person, some thing we need to wait until TRUE artificial intelligence is created until we can call it living, while others think no matter what we do we cannot create life out of machinery, regardless of how close it gets to looking and acting like it.

Im personally of the opinion that artifical intelligence can bevribe called truly alive and that creating anything even remotely debatable as a species equal to us is the stupidest idea science has ever considered. We can't even get along when its just us humans. Creating a new type of "life" will only make things more complicated. Lets not do that.

Despite this though, for this liveblog i will be taking Aruto's side. If we created life, we need to take responsibility for it. Its the message the series goes with, similar to Amazons, so i'll be looking at this topic from the way the show wants us to

Ramblings!:

- HOLY fuck the opening is good. I forgot how hard RealXEyez goes

- Hey Azu

- Rising Hopper is my favorite base form

- Love Vulcan's suit too

- The toys have really grown on me. Im thinking about saving up for a Shotriser

- I fucking love Aruto and Izu the goofiest of goofballs i can't wait for them to go through the torment nexus :)

- It is currently unclear whether humagears accept Metsubojinrai's mission by choice or are just reprogrammed. I genuinely don't remember which it is. Hoping its the former. Humagears that received Ark data cannot be reverted. Is this because its a virus or because the humagears themselves are so convinced by Ark's words that they can never trust humans again?

- Jin is referred to as a "lost child" by an amusement park humagear. The forshadowing is STRONG with this one

- No bad music in this show

- The fights in this show are only second to Geats

- I love that this episode two recontextualizes Aruto's catchphrase. In the first episode he said it as an exclamation. The Magia is evil and he will be the one to stop them. Here, he has to kill a Humagear he considers family, so he says it with desperation in his voice. He is convincing himself that its what must be done. He is the only one who can do this, even if it pains him.

- The finishing move text is amazing

- I don't know how to feel about the sushi chef humagear inheriting the business

That's about it! Hope you enjoyed reading this. Not sure how often these will be coming out, but i am definitely finishing this series. I plan to cover all 45 episodes and every movie and spin-off, so stay tuned!

Edit: Part 2!

#kamen rider zero one #kamen rider zero one lb #kamen rider #freddi00's analysis

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justanothergaymess · 1 year ago

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A Rome by any other name would be just as bleak

Assorted thoughts on Women of Xal by @plottwiststudios

Those who know me know that I have a fondness for Visual Novels, particularly indie ones. I have play-read a plethora of them over the years, with varying themes, qualities of execution, and lengths. Women of Xal is a first insofar as the liveblogging on this very blog has been read by one of the devs. It receives the dubios honour of being one of the few Visual Novels that have haunted me since starting it. And it is a first since I have to invoke death of the author on a post where I tag one of the authors - but the text must stand on its own themes and execution, regardless of paratextual authorial intent. Because Women of Xal is certainly a potent text speaking to a lot of technical and artistic skills of the author(s), but it is not as a dating sim that it remains lurking in the pit of my stomach. Women of Xal, to me, is an ambitious balancing act between horror, parody, and Brechtian theatre.

Spoiler warning and content note for sexual abuse, classism, racism, psychological and physical gendered violence, and slavery for everything under the cut.

Women of Xal casts the player-readers into the world of Xal, particularly and mostly the palace of Xanasca, as Xjena, a young woman. Xjena is secretly a seer, a person capable of accurately extrapolating the future from dreams, at the cost of constant fatigue. She has been summoned to Xanasca with four other young women to compete for the inheritance of the - still alive and seemingly well - Lady Xuna of Xanasca. By building and breaking alliances, Xjena races to find out the secrets of the palace and Xuna. Her abilities as a seer quickly get impeded by an antagonistic character named Marra - who aims to stop all seers, pitying them for being forced into government service by default once they reveal their abilities. As Xjena now cannot remember any future and past events she has already witnessed via her abilities, the player-reader still can - and guides her decisions through Xualian politics as the avatar of her magical ability and strength. It is revealed after some iterations and loops of the story that Xuna is herself a seer, and has seen the end of the world of Xal - knowing, because of Marra, very little about it, just that the five women she summoned to her palace have something to do with it.

So far, so normal a setup. Purely from the angle of a time-loop Visual Novel, WoX certainly is brilliantly crafted. The pacing, the mechanics of a visual novel having diegetic explanation and being subject to diegetic transformations, the way information are revealed and maintained across loops, antagonists vaguely aware of the existence of a player - WoX can certainly compete as a time-loop indie Visual Novel with the behemoths of that subgenre (and I will talk about the Golden elephant in the room later).

But WoX enters into an dangerous and hard-to-execute gambit in its worldbuilding: the Xualian society functions under an inverse patriarchy and shows hints of an inverse colorism, with white skin not existing whatsoever and the only white background characters ever appearing being humans visiting Xal in a diplomatic-cultural exchange between the planes. I have uninstalled enough digital and put down enough physical novels operating on the premise of oppressed-as-oppressor. WoX earned the benefit of my doubt and subsequent maintenance of attention by removing white people alltogether. Xualian society is heavily stratified by the status of its women of color (status attainable by military and government service as well as the accumulation of wealth), with the completely disenfranchised enslaved lower class being its men of color.

WoX shines truly as a parody - I understand enough about the patriarchy (and the YouTube algorithm in Germany constantly pushes anime summary videos with absolutely disgusting titles and preview pictures) that I know a genre such as the harem anime/manga exists [and I feel obligated to point out the collapse of two very different orientalisms into one within the title of the genre alone, far be it from me to know its reception and success in the West], as well as the majority of all media focusing its attention on men as agents, forming homosocial relations with one another, while women are relegated to the position of object for occassional sexual gratification. Running around Xal as Xjena, seeing all these powerful women of Xualian politics, veterans and career politicians and leaders, all fighting in different alliances and with different intentions, while men are relegated to serving Xjena both in household activities and sexually, is a brilliant parody. The novelty of said parody quickly falls off, however, and I am left with that bitter feeling in my stomach knowing that for every self-aware parody-via-matriarchy like WoX, there will be a hundred thousand novels that play the patriarchy straight, with real world consequences. When Valimer, a teenager and victim of the physical and verbal abuse of one of Xjena's competitors for the inheritance because he as a man dared to speak up against the matriarchy, continues his subsequent scenes and arc being just as worried about the well-being of his abuser, when Proxis, also a teenager and victim of attempted sexual abuse continues to smile and stay joyful and subservient despite his experiences, when Xaris, a young man with the ambition of becoming a theatre actor, breaks down crying in Xjena's arms after having suffered through sexual assault, it all is so familiar - conversations I have had with so many women I stopped counting at some point.

But the bitterness eminating from between the lines does not stop here, far from it. Xal's society does not only allude to the present-day patriarchy. In scouring the libraries of both the palace and the city, with which I spent the majority of my first loop, I stumbled upon the governing articles between the regions of Xal: Men are not only expected to be subservient to women. They are codified as property, and cannot become free unto themselves. Xal is a slave society. Proxis, Xaris, Valimer, the aforementioned abuse victims, were all legally bought by Xuna, and placed within the brothel of her palace. Men start of as property of their mothers, until at the age of 12 being able to be sold; as indentured husbands, servants, and/or sex slaves. To my knowledge, the player-reader never learns who works Xal's mines and fields; still, we know who works the kitchens, cleans the houses, maintains the gardens. Xualian notions of status and human property closely reflect Roman society, even if collapsing gendered and enslaved categories. That only heightens the severity of the society portrayed, the inherent horror. I went into Women of Xal, a game with very little documentation outside authorial posting, with no knowledge of its worldbuilding; I expected a dating sim meets political thriller where I lesbian slut my way through court intrigue in a somewhat generic fantasy setting. Instead, I am thrust unto the lowest steps of the cursus honorum, with all the baggage that implies.

The struggle I have with WoX as a dating sim, the struggle it is in a way brilliant in invoking, is that not only are the women dateable, but the men as well. Proxis, Xaris, Valimer, they are not only victims one can (optionally) support, but also romance, and also, very explicitly, fuck. Indeed, as soon as one gains control over Xjena's day, one can stroll into the brothel section of the palace and demand to sleep with the men there. Now, the ethics of slowly building up a genuine friendship with these young victims of slave trade and sex slavery and arriving at a place of mutual understanding for the negotiation of consent are not something I can debate in the space of a throwaway post I am writing freely just to get these thoughts out of my mind. But the ethics of fucking them first-day are easily labelled as nonexistent. It does not get meaningfully less disquieting dating the women. Lady Xuan, the matriarch of the local region, owner of the brothel and its sex slaves, is also a romance option. So are Clanice and Merixa, two women firmly anchored within the violence of Xualian matriarchy. Velvet, the most outspoken advocate against the Xualian matriarchy amongst the competitors for Xuna's inheritance, who ends up losing an eye to the assault by an heiress of a proud slave-owning family, still ends up policulizing up to Clanice, sending the player-reader selfies with her. As a dating sim, WoX asks me if I want to romance slaves, a "benevolent" slave owner, or slavery defenders and their girlfriends; as a player-reader, I answer that I want the slave society of Xal abolished at gunpoint and knifeedge.

The fantasy Rome of Xal comes fully equipped with its own girlbossified Cassiuses, Brutuses, and Spartacuses, not just Caesars and Ciceros. The aforementioned Marra, moreso acting against seers and their abilities, is impeding the government's ability to exploit the abilities of the seers to maintain its structural integrity while revolution is brewing. Perhaps that is merely a side effect, perhaps that is intention on Marra's side. Plenty of the slave-servants at the palace resent the matriarchy, sometimes louder, sometimes quieter. An entire region of Xal is mentioned that is semi-independent from the rest of Xal where the freedom of men is tolerated; men escaping there are difficult to be retrieved by their former legal owners [despite the social structure of Xal being so romanesque, I could not help but whisper "Mason-Dixon" under my breath in horror learning that part of the lore]. And last but certainly not least, there are the revolutionaries surrounding Tannae, a woman that appears as a side character in the story a handful of times. She openly scoffs at the matriarchy, and later attempts to assassinate Xuna and one of Xuna's lovers (who Xuna also legally owns) in an attempt to kickstart the revolution by killing the most vocal centrist reformist and her confidant. The so-called True Ending of WoX happens by carrying two words of memory across the time-loop and the amnesia imposed by Marra: "aggressive progressives", a warning Xuna designed to tell her if such an assassination against her and her confidants is imminent. The absolute absurdity of using "progressives" here, given the fact that it is a term within the present often used to designate a reformist antirevolutionary electoralist section of the settler population of the US, can be left aside. The fact is that Tannae, the revolutionaries, and Marra are right. While the revolutionaries towards the end of the story send in assassination squads into the palace and an assortment of the highest-ranking veterans, generals, and matriarchs of Xal reside there, multiple women complain that they sympathize with the cause, but draw the line at murder. I do not. The palace houses several of the people most pivotal in upholding the slave society. It is a more than valid target. The True Ending of our journey as player-readers through girlboss fantasy Rome rests in saving girlboss Cicero and her favorite slave from assassination. The beating of the tell-tale buried between the lines becomes ever louder as one progresses through the story: WoX is a parodistic horror game about being on the wrong side of history.

WoX is built upon an absurdist inversion of the status quo in its matriarchy; and, as explained before, it rests close to Rome and Roman slavery in structure. Still, it bears mentioning that in the exchange between the planes, quite fittingly, Xal maintains close alignment with the US on actual diegetic Earth. A Black man from the US gets hired by Xuna to run the day-to-day activities of the brothel; when Xjena befriends him, he mentions that he came to Xal knowing little besides that race and racism did not exist there, only to find similarly strong kinds of systemic violence in this hoped-for utopia. Xualian slavery does not espouse the same kind of bio- and necropolitics as the transatlantic slave trade and chattel slavery. And yet, given that the US is built and running on slavery, as well as the West's present-day hegemony being built upon the transatlantic slave trade and subsequently financed imperialist exploitation, between the lines of WoX run not only echoes of slavery past but also present. In that sense, I am more than willing to delete this post should any of my Black mutuals find it insufficient and wrong; if you made it this far, your attention was never expected, but is an honour to be granted for certain, no matter what you think of my writing here.

WoX therefore juxtaposes its inverted magical fantasy violence with real-world violence. This is not the first time-loop indie Visual Novel I play-read and analyze where the narration follows a path through a labyrinthian mansion filled with exploited and assaulted servants while those from an oppressor class compete for the inheritance of the small empire of the recluse head of the household. Admittedly, Umineko No Naku Koro Ni is quite different from Women of Xal, and yet, as a behemoth in both volume and impact in the indie Visual Novel scene, I kept coming back to it while playing WoX. I have play-read only the first two chapters of Umineko, and yet, I would label it as one of the very few successful fantasy inversions of oppressor and oppressed. When rich asshole fuckboy Ushiromiya Battler gets gratuitously tortured by female witches and demons in the frame narrative, often while using signifiers of BDSM, it only serves to underline the horror of the unacknowledged and mundane sexualized verbal violence he and his male family members subject female family members and servants alike to. Women of Xal is far more reserved in showing the mundane, real violence it inverts, only hinting at it from time to time. WoX also maintains a close entaglement between player-reader and main character; Xjena's actions are, by all means, the result of my personal free will as player-reader. Umineko invokes horror and gore in trying to find a language for the trauma of structural sexualized violence; Women of Xal invokes comedy and parody while placing the main character, a woman of color, and the player-reader by proxy, in an absurd, inverted oppressor class. The monstrous of Umineko is the subtle violence of everyday patriarchy coming back to haunt itself, the monstrous of WoX is the player-readers complicity while being robbed of any choice to also take up arms against the status quo.

The absurdity of WoX's base premise aligns closely with the concept Brechtian Alienation in Brechtian Theatre; through constant reminders of the performativity of the play, the audience is tasked with untangling its commentary on the real world. I do not know if the author(s) of WoX intended such a thing or not, but the Brechtian effect of WoX's base premise manages to bypass the base level of coping that I had to develop helping dozens upon dozens of acquaintances, friends, and kin through abusive relationships, marriages, and expriences of assault. Women of Xal leaves me with a haunting sense of dread in regards to the patriarchy, one that adequately fits the severity of it. Would I recommend WoX as a dating sim? No. Would I recommend WoX as an experimental piece of Brechtian horror? Yes. What else remains there to be said? Marra and Tannae are right, death to all Romes, whichever name they might adapt.

#kass plays women of xal #women of xal

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nellie-elizabeth · 21 days ago

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Starsky & Hutch LB 1x07: Pariah

All right. Fully bracing myself for this one, I know what it's about... content warning that I'm about to liveblog an episode about Starsky shooting and killing a Black teenager in this episode, so... buckle up.

I love Hutch's house so much it's so cute. Early morning visit from Starsky!

And S is just rummaging through H's fridge like he owns the place lol. They're so domestic. Sitting on the counter because he's not a normal person.

"for the autopsy record" about what H puts in his smoothie lmao.

"you're looking kinda peaked lately" - they're so funny razzing each other

Why does S follow into the doorway to watch H kiss this woman lol. They hook up with women as an intricate form of courtship between the two of them, I swear to god.

"Why'd you leave the party so early last night" / "seemed like the proper thing to do at the time" lol S being a good bro and letting H get laid...

Poor Starsky is like WHO HAS BEEN GIVING ME BAD SEX REVIEWS, he's fully frozen in shock.

And the fact that H set that up!! Oh my god. What is this friendship lolololol. This opening scene is delightful as fuck.

Oh shit right into a shootout, officer down.

The kid was pointing a gun right at S, but like... why a kill shot. Why directly a chest shot. Oh god this is fucking wrenching to watch. Fuck. His mother is there?

Okay, this is so muddy and uncomfortable already because you've got a Black witness saying that Lonnie was trying to surrender when he was shot down, but visually that's not what happens, like, the kid definitely put his hands up and then swung the gun down pointing directly at S. The chilling thing is just how fucking casually these cops discharge their weapons in the first place, but we now have this gross thing of a witness claiming it was totally unprovoked but we the viewer know that's not true so it feels like the episode is already trying to frame Starsky as not being in the wrong... oof.

Give Glaser an Emmy for the look on his face though. OOOOf.

Also framing it like S was defending a crowd of innocent bystanders... they're really stacking this to make it not S's fault within the framing of the story, but like... he killed a teenager. He killed a teenager.

Dobey is really on edge about this. I wish we had more insight into how he feels, like, as a Black police captain in this situation.

"What you're doing is throwing him to the wolves!" - Protective Hutch has entered the building...

"If throwing me to the wolves is what it takes, let 'em do it" - S says this in a tone where it's like he's playing at his usual cocky self but he actually sounds very subdued, almost like he's saying it to calm H down more than anything. And then they share this fond, kinda sad look...

And then the long, solemn silence between them... S sitting weird on a chair because nothing can stop that...

"Oh god, Hutch. He was sixteen years old." - Obviously this episode is really tough to watch and icky in a lot of ways but holy fuck is Glaser giving a world-class performance.

"I did what they tell you to do and I pulled the trigger." - like, this is the core issue right at the heart of this, that this episode is not going to be audacious/smart enough to tackle - the idea that yeah, actually, Starsky "didn't do anything wrong" by the rules of his job. But what he did SHOULD have been wrong, with regards to the law, and it already IS wrong as regards like... moral law.

H coming to support S in court and giving a lil tie wave... he's being so supportive. Like. It's gross because of the situation but also... awwww.

God, what I would pay to hear what Dobey is thinking during this courtroom scene

Oh, this suspect with the "it's hard to say", like, I wanna know what's going on in HIS head. "I guess I made a mistake" - this is rough stuff, this is a really wrenching viewing experience. Him apologizing to Lonnie's mother... it actually makes me a little physically ill to watch this Black man having to humble himself and apologize for "wrongly" accusing the police of having done something bad by killing a kid. Fuck.

"Detective Starsky in no way overstepped the bounds of reasonable force"... Godddd he calls him "commendable". This is SICKENING in light of... the real world. Like. Gawd.

Huggy in an all denim outfit is great. But also. YUCK at having Huggy verbally absolve Starsky and call him brave, really coulda done without THAT little nugget. Starsky is like the only person reacting appropriately here.

Starsky don't show up for a funeral in jeans, my dude. Actually, you probably shouldn't be showing up to this funeral at all, wtf is wrong with you

"How sorry I am that it had to happen"... I'm not strong enough for this, jesus.

So now we're framing it as Lonnie was the victim of another person, that the person responsible for his death is the guy who corrupted him into a life of crime. Which like. Nice try I guess but uhhh no?

"That's gonna make you sleep better?" / "I wanna find him for me, I wanna find him for you, but most of all I wanna find him for the next Lonnie." This like... this would be more effective if his death had been like only tangentially S's fault, not literally, factually, the result of him SHOOTING HIM DIRECTLY IN THE CHEST.

The hand shaking. Fuck. I mean, I'm not gonna lie, I'm powerfully moved by the grace of these people to shake Starsky's hand but still just so yucked out by the fact that S thought it was okay to even show up like this.

Cute lil half-hug between S&H on the way back to the car. In isolation this would be a fun episode for worried/protective Hutch stuff, love to see it.

H trying to cheer S up is so sad actually

So now we get the pivot into this episode being about a cop killing maniac? Huh.

H with the "this isn't your fault" refrain... like, the loyalty is heartwarming but Starsky should maybe resign!

H's little "thanks" to Dobey is cute though.

Oh, what a delightful lil instance of police brutality, they just break in and start roughing up this drug dealer... yeesh.

H grabbing at S's wrist to check the time. Married behavior tbh.

S speaking a lil Latin? lol.

The pivot into this plot with the cop killer is so odd, it makes the episode be about something different than it seemed like it was at the start. It deflects the attention away from the racial component entirely

H grabbing S's arm just to hold onto him at the scene of this second cop's death...

I'm glad S is choosing to resign but like it would be more emotionally powerful if he were resigning because he killed a child, not because a random baddie is on a killing spree, ya know? Still in awe of Glaser's performance in this episode tho.

Dobey's pep talk is of minimal effectiveness it would seem

UGH this hallway scene. Like, if Starsky's crime that he was being blackmailed for was anything other than the killing of a teenager, this scene would be delicious, I'd eat it right up. It feels so... strange, thematically, that the cops are mad at Starsky for staying in the force because they're personally at risk, and nobody is like "you shoulda resigned for killing a child". Like.

But, again in isolation, it's hot that Hutch is so fired up in S's defense with these guys. S grabs him kinda half-heartedly to stop H, but then just lets it happen.... Also again, Glaser's acting, he's just so meek and small and despondent. So unlike Starsky usually is.

Was shoving Tremaine's face into tomatoes really necessary though...

Ummm again I feel weird noticing this in an episode like this but Hutch has maybe never been more beautiful than when he's restraining Starsky from attacking Tremaine, god, the sheer intimacy of the way they're looking at each other in that moment is staggering. S releases this deep slow breath like H is the only thing that can regulate his mood

H literally looks so fucking anxious about this whole situation it's hurting my heart

H's hand on S's shoulder... he's trying to do the grounding touch thing and it's just too dire of a situation for it.

ooh, backstory lore drop. S&H's first out of uniform assignment was 2 year prior to now, undercover for Narco.

The cop being like "Most of the guys are behind you, Starsky." Big yikes.

Starsky insisting he'll come alone doesn't feel like macho posturing, it straight up feels suicidal.

H grabbing at him... "you're walking into suicide!" yeah, like I said...

God, the little head-nod, and H watching him drive away... that's so wild because S thinks he's doing a solemn goodbye and meanwhile H is like "oh fuck no, not in a million years" and IMMEDIATELY finds a way to follow him. Proof positive that H cares more about S than he does about the job or anything else.

They do tend to find really interesting sets for their action sequences... an abandoned zoo? How weird.

This is stressful, actually, S is completely a sitting duck, walking around...

Welp that was an EXTREMELY close call, if H hadn't yelled a warning...

An absolutely chilling echo of the beginning of the episode, with S starting by aiming the gun at him and then lifting it into the air, the reverse of what Lonnie did...

Starsky is really worn down by this whole thing, I mean, as he should be, but you really get the sense that Lonnie's death is eating him up from the inside the whole episode, culminating in this moment when he would really, really, like to act out his rage on Prudholm. I don't think he would have done it, even if H hadn't been there to say his name, but god, I do believe he was thinking about it.

The tone-deaf tag where apparently Starsky's checking in on Lonnie's mother and getting recipes? Like, this is a thing I praise in other episodes, that sense of continuity, of S&H actually getting to know the people they cross paths with in their line of work and making social calls. But in this specific case it just does not work!

I mean this would be a cute lil' tag to match the cute opening sequence if not for uhhhhhh what this episode is about. Though of course I do love that they hang out around each other's casual dates so much cuz they can't socialize alone apparently.

Welp. Okay. This episode was so strange and difficult to watch, I think for obvious reasons, but I do want to talk about the specifics here of how this is structured? It's weird! The second part of the episode, of Prudholm blackmailing Starsky, trying to get him to resign, in revenge for his own kid dying in prison... that could be an episode all on its own, right? It could even be an episode that explores the deeper ramifications of the criminal justice system. Imagine this episode where Prudholm is the inciting incident, he leaves a threatening note, the cops try and find him but too late, he starts killing other cops, getting closer and closer to Starsky each time. We piece together the truth about a former case, where Starsky booked a kid on drug charges, that kid was imprisoned, and ended up killed on the inside. Starsky could feel guilty about a juvenile delinquent dying indirectly due to his arrest, he could grapple with the tragedy that some of these "criminals" are kids who are really more victims than actually bad people... etc. etc.

But instead... the fact that the framing here is that Starsky shoots a Black teenager in the chest and kills him, is almost incidental to the actual showdown of the episode's core villain, and I honestly think that's part of what makes the whole thing so unsatisfying and uncomfortable. I was actually kinda... impressed, vibes-wise, with the start of the ep-- like, it was brutal to watch, but you had Starsky in this numb shock and despair, Hutch trying to be supportive and yet being kinda tone-deaf, Dobey deeply shaken but trying to stay professional and make the right call from a moral, legal, and practical standpoint all at once. I don't think they thought they were playing the middle on this issue when they made this, but there's this sense of equivocation. They can't go all the way. The episode would be worse and harder to forgive in some ways if Starsky had shot, say, an unarmed teen or if Lonnie had clearly been surrendering, so they go out of their way to try and make the case that what Starsky did was a regrettable necessity, and his guilt is actually just because he's such a great guy, not because he did something wrong. Maybe the episode would have worked better if Starsky had been even less directly culpable, like what if he'd hesitated to shoot, Lonnie had actually shot a bystander, Starsky then shoots again, but he aims for a leg or a something, and yet still Lonnie ends up bleeding out? I don't know. That would make it more of a "what other choice did he have" thing, which I think is what this episode was going for, but it just... it doesn't hold water, it really doesn't. Direct chest shot. He was aiming to kill.

I think it's a little more complicated than just saying that this episode doesn't hold up in today's world. It doesn't, don't get me wrong, but what intrigues me about it is its attempt to actually address the deep feeling of distrust, the deep and abiding wounds between cops and the Black community. It's clearly there, with the witness who says Lonnie was surrendering and who testifies later that he made a mistake, with the hostility of the funeral-goers when Starsky first walks up, with the fact that everybody involved knows that managing optics here is going to be difficult. But on the other hand, Lonnie's race isn't actually addressed all that much, the focus is more on the fact that he's young, not that he's Black and has been shot by a white cop. I think Huggy's the only person who brings up race in the whole episode, honestly. So there's this odd sense that they wanted to address a very real and very troubling aspect of this whole system but they didn't know how to do that while maintaining that their heroes Starsky and Hutch are in fact... the good guys. So they can't actually fully say The Thing, they can just meander around it in this convoluted way.

I'm sure smarter people than I have written a lot on the topic of this episode. I already knew before watching it that it was infamous, and having seen it for myself... I see why.

In any case. Paul Michael Glaser, ladies and gentlemen. Whew. What a star turn.

#starsky & hutch #shlb

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frogs-in3-hills · 2 months ago

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Hi! I've been enjoying reading through your umineko liveblog and I just wanted to give you a few tips regarding Sayo's feelings and motivations, since you said that you felt that you didn't understand her yet. I'm not gonna outright Explain her to you ofc but I just wanna give you a few directions.

I think it would be useful, knowing all that you know now, to take a second look at episode 2 through the lens of it being an episode that Sayo herself wrote. I think a lot of her emotional pain is expressed in that episode (some of it revolving that "injury" though...the vn is never Explicit about it.)

Secondly, regarding her motivations for murder- I think that as good as episode 7 is at presenting Sayo to the reader, it's not the best at explaining her motivations? (Ofc bc R07 wanted to be Vague about it all on purpose) So if right now you're feeling stuck in "how does someone being sad and mad at their childhood crush turns into mass murder-suicide" I want you to reconsider the red truths in episode 5 about Beato's motivations about her not doing it for revenge, and not doing it to scare anyone. Also how Beato's true motivations regarding Battler in the Meta/Purgatory layer might translate to what Sayo was hoping to achieve through the murders in the gameboard layer.

Aaaand thirdly I hope that you enjoy the rest of umineko :) important reveals are yet to come...

helloooo, i��m so glad you’re enjoying! in realizing how much this novel is interested in the process of engaging with a mystery (and a story in general) i feel more & more like it was the right choice to share my thoughts as i go, even if i’m a little embarrassed to look back and see where i’ve been confidently wrong :p

i think i will take the time to replay ep2—i tried to do so a bit ago but got impatient lol. but now i’m realizing that ep7 overwhelmed me with revelations and i want to take more time to think about it, consolidate my thoughts, and maybe return to some moments in the episode just to make sure i understand what is being put down. and yes, definitely keeping those truths in mind, and bc frankly interpreting this all as just revenge would be doing a massive disservice to the game & sayo as a character. what i think has caught me up is that, understanding all of this as 1) trying to get battler to understand sayo’s heart and 2) a sort of love letter to the relationship they had, i don’t know why it had to be mass murder lmfao. but sayo is obviously suffering so much that it is literally too much for her to contain within one self/mind, so, having stewed on it some more, i definitely read it as being crystallized in these feelings of “i just need all of this to fucking end so i may as well make a show of it and try to make one last ditch effort to be seen and understood” (talking again about the act of presentation, of theatre, and what that means..). the murders definitely do feel like her extended suicide attempt, but considering that some part of her (beato) wanted battler to “carry her off the game board” (i don’t remember who said this or when but it’s p much a direct quote), this invocation of betting on miracles that we get thru kinzo in ep1 is recontextualized as sayo’s approach.

i also think to the question of “why murder”, its possible that the truth about herself is not the only truth that sayo wants to reveal, and she also wants to lay bare the tensions between the ushiromiya family & their capacity for incredible violence against each other. like, it HAS to be murder because this is the language of the ushiromiyas. this is so clear in the way the epitaph is written that it so easily lends to the solution of human sacrifice—the ushiromiya family is built on the violence of heteropatriarchal marriage & family, of the class disparity between the family & staff, of the bombs lying under the island and of the fascist money founds and motivates it all. furthermore, knowing that ep6’s “love trials” are how battler chooses to show that he understands, and how he so acutely hits on the matter while completely adopting the narrative techniques of murder & violence, makes me think that the violence is necessary, and that what sayo wants to communicate won’t function without it. i don’t know if this is actually the right direction but i think its rlly worth looking at how the idea of “without love it cannot be seen” has developed over the course of the story, and how despite seeming trite it’s grown multifaceted as our understanding of love itself becomes increasingly challenging. bc like, we can’t necessarily understand these violences without love and without knowing that these characters love each other. the act of love is not redeeming so much as it is explanatory. and so i think for sayo it may not be an explicit desire to reveal a dark underside to the family so much as doing so is the natural consequence of this technique we use to traverse the mystery, of “don’t neglect the heart”. if we have love for the ushiromiyas, we have to understand the violence. if we don’t understand the violence, we are neglecting their hearts. the catbox will never open if we neglect the heart.

“important reveals are yet to come” lol i bet!! thanks for your kind words, i’m sure i will enjoy it a lot! ryuukishi07 has definitely earned my trust in this matter even as i keep some reservations (which i’ll talk about soon but it’s not relevant to this ask). as you can tell i’ve used this ask to make some space to openly speculate & theorize & dare i say, ramble, but i’m going to keep considering these directions you’ve suggested bc i really think this story is worth the effort to engage with & understand more critically instead of going “oh i didn’t understand this part but it’ll tell me eventually so i’ll ignore the fact that i don’t understand”

#inbox #anon ask #umineko liveblogging #umineko spoilers

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milkbreadtoast · 11 months ago

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biwan-nim's designs for the han brothers are so cute... i like that their eyes are.. not quite monolids but the eyelid crease is small & only visible on the edges... kinda like choi soobin & kang taehyun's eyes?🥺 it's a specific character design detail and soo cute...🥹🥹

and i like that both of their eyes are like this!! definitely brothers... 🥹

their designs seem generic at first glance (esp yoojin, almost every protag in the action fantasy webtoon genre is a guy with straight black hair like him lmao) but it's details like this that make them(and biwan's designs) stand out to me...

#my s class hunters #s classes that i raised #s class liveblog #talk tag #mentioning it again but i got to ep 12 last night!!#its rly good...#i alr love yoojin and yoohyun😭😭😭#also pointing this out bc i got to yerim and she has full double eyelids #han brothers eyes being drawn like this is def a specific chara design detail #BIWAN-NIM'S AET AND DESIGNS R SO PEAK #*ART #btw idk the exact term for this eyelid type... is it epicanthic folds?#i feel like that's too broad...#but hopefully u can see what im talking abt from the pictures LMAO

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henghost · 1 year ago

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Twig Liveblog for Arc 10

an arc double-stuffed with pain and suffering... from the very beginning i had a weight in my stomach even before anything crazy had happened. there's a real sense of inevitability: sy feels that it's inevitable that he will leave, that he will disappoint lillian, and i gotta say he's probably right, awful as it may be. i've alluded before to the fundamental contradiction between sy and lillian--their radically different relationships to the academy--and here it finally comes to a head. this is not to say, however, that sy handled it in the best way possible lmao. in many ways he made the worst decisions possible, though ultimately i support his decision to leave. for all the questions of morality in this arc, none but sy have remembered the major moral imperative here: harming the academy by any means possible.

in that vein, i read lainie as a kind of lillian from a different angle. and upper class girl who becomes enamored with sy and his rebel attitude, his monstrousness, his alterity. take the dinner with the parents chapter, for example: it came into sharp relief the extent to which lillian likes sy precisely because it pisses them off. it would drive me insane too. of course, sy ultimately forces lainie to leave her bourgeois life behind, so perhaps there is reason for optimism.

it's a similar situation with mary, though her reasons for staying with the academy are a little less understandable, frankly. was not her problem with percy that he was using children for his evil experiments? is that not exactly what the academy is doing with the people she loves?? anyway, she's amazing this arc. the shooting scene was an all-timer: one must imagine me sitting alone in my bedroom just going "OH NO OH NO OH NO" over and over again. in my twigfic where everything will be perfect sy will manipulate her and they will run away together and kiss and be happy. here's how they could still get together in canon.........

the fight with the baron was very satisfying. the duel in the hollowed out church was some s-tier wildbow-pilled over-the-top anime-style battle. the image of him just lobbing a giant ass rapier at this thirteen-year-old killed me lmao. meanwhile, with the duke of francis out of action, the lord infante is my new noblekin. that guy is so fucking cool. like i know he's evil but still. i want to be him.

and then jamie is the only lamb who came to join sy and in such tearjerking way 😭 the relationship between neojamie and the previous jamie seems so touching--some kind of terrible duty. i'm not honestly sure that i could do the same. it speaks to his essential sweetness... poor baby.

PREDICTIONS (or, embarrassing myself for your entertainment)

helen will kill ibbot (the interlude confirmed for me that he is "daddy")

the need for wyvern will force sy into fray's camp (pleaseeeee)

lamb factionalism will cause strife in radham (duncan + lil vs. ashton + helen et al.??)

#twigblr #henghost's twig arc #twig liveblog #twig web serial #sylvester lambsbridge

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shamera · 1 year ago

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Jan-Feb 2024 Manhwa round-up

it is MARCH so it's two whole months of manhwa that I wanna talk about I'M SO SORRY so here are the top 5 new (to me) manhwa that I read the past two months!

5. Estio

The story of a boy with the ability to communicate with animals, a power that grows and evolves into something fearsome as he grows up. It's the story of Estio's search for a meaning to his life and his powers, and to understand humanity's place in the world. (This series had me crying over a cactus at 1am, so it's earned it's place on top 5!)

4. The Way to Protect the Female Lead's Older Brother

The villainess of all time. Roxanna is the reason for 'she can step on me and I will thank her' phrases. Transmigration story, except this time the lead realises that the only way to prevent the bad end is to be a greater villainess than the original character. With an entire villain family to deal with, Roxanna will manipulate, seduce, and kill her way to take them all down and save the character whose death starts the tragic novel she's now living. (Probably discontinued, but good enough to still recommend with the chapters that are out.)

3. Death is the Only Ending for the Villainess

A 'transmigrated as the villainess' story where the original villainess was merely a victim, and every choice leads to death. Thanks to the system, Penelope knows her only chance of survival is to seduce one of the romance targets before the female lead arrives-- except they're all red flags a hair's breath away from murdering her if she so much as says the wrong thing. Her manipulations and scheming in order to survive, however, is leading her to become a greater villainess than the original ever was, and that might actually be the key to her survival... if she doesn't get murdered by her romance targets first.

2. The Greatest Estate Developer

A transmigration story where... the mc's past life is relevant?? Lloyd Frontera was meant to be a scummy noble who dies at the beginning of the story as a way for the protagonist Javier Asrahan to leave the family he was serving, but when a modern day civil engineer takes over Lloyd's life, the fantasy world he's now living in is about to get an upgrade! (An absolutely hilarious story with what might be my favourite mc and protag relationship. The ridiculous artwork is a bonus and I look forward to how much more deranged Lloyd can look with each chapter!)

The S-Classes That I Raised

I started reading this 10am Jan 1st, and I know this because I have liveblogging receipts. I literally wrote 'this one is going to break my heart' and 'BRING IT ON' and then proceeded with 79 reaction comments the first day. When I finished the manhwa, I went straight to the novels and spent the NEXT MONTH AND A HALF reading all 850+ chapters. This series has catapulted it's way to my #1 manhwa in my heart, and I posted a whole powerpoint on why. It's a story about F-ranked hunter Han Yoojin and his S-ranked little brother, Han Yoohyun. It's a story about brothers absolutely doomed by the narrative and their attempts to save each other, even if they have to save the world in the process. It's about the family you choose, and about love (not even the romantic kind) bringing people together, and how people don't need to be strong to be important. It's a story of Yoojin turning back time to save his brother, and then saving a girl who needed help, and then saving a man who needed a friend... and he continues to reach out to people who didn't even know they needed human connection. It's about a doomed world that fears S-ranks as much as they revere them, because people with that kind of power are nothing short of monsters, but they are the only possible way of saving the world. It's about a boy rejected by the world, and his brother who rejected the world to keep him safe. (And later on, it's about a man who was meant to be a protagonist, but even he can't save the world from what's coming.)

Below is: IT DIDN'T MAKE TOP 5, BUT THEY WERE REALLY GOOD! The honorable mentions~

Honorable Mentions (aka they are really good! I read through all the chapters that are out and I now check for weekly updates!!):

How to Live as the Enemy Prince

MC was the prince of a country that was invaded and conquered for a mysterious time artifact, but after he was killed in battle he finds himself decades in the past as the sickly third prince of the enemy kingdom who was originally murdered before he reached adulthood. His goal was to help his original kingdom by preventing his new brother's ascension to the throne, yet he finds out that in this timeline, the king of his previous kingdom didn't have a younger brother who fought for him, and that the time artifact disappeared when he woke in the new body.

Max-Level Player's 100th Regression

MC is part of a brutal death game that he's consistently died to, only to realise right before his final regression that the last stage of the game required teammates-- and now he's on a journey not only to survive the game, but the level up the people around him so that they can finally defeat the death game. Almost made top 5 because the art is... hnnnng. So good. Also MC has a cute little brother he's very protective of, and I desperately wanted another story like S-Classes.

My In-Laws are Obsessed with Me

Genuine Fruits Basket successor, it feels like! After being murdered by her supposed loving family, MC wakes up weeks before her death and throws herself into an contract marriage with a duke powerful enough her family wouldn't dare go against, only to eventually find out that the duke's family has a mysterious and deadly curse-- one that she's immune to (because she's already died from it before), and her immunity sparks hope that perhaps the family curse can be broken after all. Really intriguing plot as it's soon revealed she's not the only one who died and then woke up several weeks in the past, and that there are outsiders who want to make use of the family's curse for their own gains.

The Crown Prince That Sells Medicine

Set in the same world 300 years after Greatest Estate Developer! A doctor wakes up as a sickly crown prince and the system once again pulls shenanigans where the only way to live is to save lots and lots of people, so he goes to save the novel protagonist who becomes his personal guard! Less than 20 chapters so far, but it's super promising and really funny!

The Newbie is Too Strong!

A great take on the tower ascension trope and streaming sponsorships-- except rather than the gods watching, it's other players who are watching the progress! After finding out the orphanage he grew up in would only have three more years of funding, MC discovers a series of videos sent to his phone that featured himself in the future challenging the tower and decides that would be the perfect way to make enough money to keep the orphanage going. By the time he's drawn into the tower, he's ready for every challenge-- or so he thinks.

Debut or Die

Reincarnation idol series with a system! MC wakes up one day three years in the past in someone else's body, with a system that tells him he has to debut as an idol within a year or die! He ends up on an idol show using unconventional thinking to climb his way to the top. Really funny concept with a lead character who has to be the most blank-faced and deadpan debut idol I've ever seen.

Pick Me Up

What I call 'I got isekai'ed into Raid: Shadow Legends' because that is what it is. MC gets isekai'ed into the mobile gacha game he played where characters stay dead if they die in battle, and now he's a character at the whim of an unseen, unknown 'master' who summons heroes and pushes them to fight-- even killing off characters by 'combining' them with others in order to help one get stronger. He has to survive the game he was playing, and this time without control of anything at all!

I Thought My Time was Up!

Hilarious. Almost made top five this time! MC is told she has three months to live, and so she proceeds to stop worrying about everything and live her life the way she wants-- and her bucket list includes having a hot boyfriend! Thus begins her utterly shameless and relentless pursuit of a fearsome Duke, winning the hearts of everyone around her with her fearless and go-getter demeanour (which is really just a result of not fearing death at this point).

Tyrant of Tower Defense

Another 'main character gets isekai'ed into the game he was playing', except with heavy Fear and Hunger and Bloodborne vibes. In a game where the goal was to defend a city against waves of monsters, each level more impossible than the next, the MC is out to discover the secret of the world he's stuck in-- because in his previous life he barely managed to defeat the game with one surviving character, and this time he wants everyone to live. Now he's out to discover just where the invading monsters come from, and why they're here.

Hunter World's Gardener

In a hunter and dungeons world, the MC is the class 'labourer' which doesn't quite allow him to raid dungeons, and thus he opens up a general store for hunters instead. My slice-of-life pick this month! Finally, a sweet cinnamon roll MC who is 1, not struggling in his life and 2, not being taken advantage of by other people in a way that will later leave them scarred or jaded! Seriously, this series is sweet in every way: a kind MC whose kindness is rewarded in turn, and people around him who genuinely want to help him keep that innocence and ensure no one takes advantage of him! (Another around 20 chapters so far story.)

My Favorite Novel has a Weird Epilogue

MC is an olympic gold medalist fencer who gets transmigrated into her favourite novel-- except 20 years after the horrible ending! All her favourite characters are dead and gone, and now she's determined to protect the son of her OTP, which means she's definitely going to do the same thing as her favourite character (his mom), and pretend to be a boy in order to be his knight. Again, around 20 chapters, but this is shaping up to be really really funny.

Moon-Painting Alchemist

Less than 20 chapters so far, and the first bl to make the list! MC is a genius alchemist tasked with creating a spell that would show people their future spouse, but when he finally thought he had it, the spell showed him-- a man? When he fixed the spell again, it showed him a boy the second time-- a boy that he soon meets, who disappears soon after right before he meets the man he saw in his spell-- who hires him to break a complicated curse. (I'd give this one a mature rating for the Duke's dirty mind, lol, but so far it's played off as humorous intrusive thoughts.)

The Tyrant Wants to be Good

This story led me to tears. About a tyrant queen who woke up at the beginning of her life after she was executed by her country, and rather than revenge and power, she decides that this time she will live her life quietly and learn to be a good person. Starting with her as a young, unloved princess, it really explores how she went down the path she did, and her quiet exhaustion as she examines what originally led her to kill her brother for the throne, and her descent into madness as she took up the crown in the first timeline. This time around, she's resigned to a life without love so long as she doesn't cause the downfall of the people she cares for. (Every scene with her and her brother had me in tears, because he loves her so much but it took her a lifetime and a half to see that.)

The Academy's Undercover Professor

I had to debate between this series and Estio on the top 5 list, because this one is also very, very good but in a different way. Complicated world-building, factions and politics, with events that will keep you on your toes-- this is almost a Sherlock Holmes-esque story where the intrigue keeps you going and you don't know who is actually who. Set in a fantasy version of Victorian England at a magical academy, the MC is accidentally roped into a role he was never meant for while he investigates criminal organizations and searches for relics that contain a hidden power, all the while being hunted by different knight and police groups.

Series I read that didn't quite cater to me but it doesn't mean that it wouldn't be good for other people (mostly because I really couldn't connect to the main character, but it doesn't mean the story is bad)!

I'm the Queen in This Life

Regressor Instructional Manual

Necromancer Survival

Global Examination

Limited Extra Time

The Villain Discovered My Identity

The Remarried Empress

Third Wheel Strikes Back

Weapon Creator

Seoul Station Druid

Revenge of the Iron-Blooded Sword Hound

F-Class Destiny Hunter

66,666 Years: Advent of the Dark Mage

Reincarnated Assassin is a Genius Swordsman

Reporting for Duty, Duchess!

Doom Breaker

Cleric of Decay

#manhwa recommendation #...I probably forgot about a few series that I've read the last two months #I was really desperate after finishing S-Class lol #because I can tell you I barely read anything else while reading S-Class #so this is pretty much all AFTER I finished reading #I also am not listing the stuff I just started reading #that would be on my March list

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theodoraflowerday · 1 year ago

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young royals s3e5 episode reaction:

well I really hope the cliffhanger isn't horrifying bc this week is gonna be really fucking long

let's fuckin do this

"tired" and it's just him contending w the fact that erik might have been violently homophobic

i can excuse [rolls down a 6ft long papyrus] but I draw the line at being racist - august, probably

"family" LMFAO sure dumbass

seriously those girls are acting like sara and felice broke up (and I get it, friendship breakups are horrifying but damn)

"are you on something?" MY LITERAL FIRST QUESTION SKFISJFKSJFKDJF

I feel like micke is gonna die. idk.

his own letter? why?

oh. hello ludwig. i forgot what your voice sounded like.

"it's hard for her to show weakness" yeah well so it is for all of us. be a mother. show up for your son.

naaaaaaaaaaa volvete serio ludwig

wdym he was perfect. are you serious. do no adults in this show have the slightest bit of common sense?? you're talking to erik's spare my man. erik's little brother who now has to take on everything erik had to do. be the most fuckin for real rn

of fucking COURSE

"it'll be nice to celebrate you. and to meet simon too" ok that was sweet.

yeah wille being in the choir was starting to feel too weird skfjdkfjd

okay? calm your tits my man? simon hasn't said anything?

WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON????? HE'S LITERALLY DEFENDING ERIK?????????

oooooookay kristina jr.

ohhhh it was sara's locker. ok.

oh micke is dead isn't he

FELICE DOING WILLE'S NAILS AAAAAA

HE'S PAINTING THEM PURPLE SOULMATISM

also is this the writers acknowledging the nonbinary wille headcanons bc.......

I can't believe wille likes doing his nails. that's so fuckin nonbinary of him.

god I wish micke had been dead. that is SO much worse.

pls don't get into a car crash sara

linda honey no. it doesn't fit him perfectly it's goddamn huge on him.

love shouldn't be this hard I agree linda

oh fuck me

oh her little face sara no

oh sara is breaking my goddamn heart

WILLE'S PURPLE NAILS

wilhelm, why do you have nail polish remover in your room

MI WILLE I'M GONNA FUCKING BLOW MY BRAINS OUT

omg malin was willing to be bribed. back to fanon malin we go (after the shit show that was season 2)

WHY IS HE WEARING THE PYJAMA PANTS AGAIN SIMON

okay this is killing me inside. this is too much.

BECAUSE THERE'S A RISK OF POISONING SJFKDJFKJFDKFJDKFKFKFKDLRK

simon's FACE im

SHE CURTSIED @ SIMON

I know he must have felt disgusting sjfkdjfk

after pretty much 3 years of a polar opposite fanon interpretation I cannot *believe* I'm witnessing kristina and ludwig being genuinely happy about meeting simon. this is so insane

august are you staring at sara's boobs

oh a rolex

OH IS IT BECAUSE OF ERIK

IT IS BECAUSE OF ERIK OG FUCKKKKK

I missed sara and felice I'm ngl. I love my tiny baby girls

oh kristina is about to throw up isn't she lmfao

ludwig is being weirdly nice. this is so strange.

ludwig and simon chatting away while kristina is about to choke and die

hold on. IS kristina gonna die?

even during wille's birthday they can't stop yapping about erik. my god do royals genuinely only care about their firstborn? god

NOT DILF HUNTER SJROSUFOSIDOD

class bad boy slfjdlgj I think they had to have done that on purpose. I mean vincent didn't wanna give him the satisfaction of giving him another award. I can assure you.

august is such a *sad* character oh my god

I WISH I HAD DONE THINGS DIFFERENTLY WITH YOU NAAAAAAWWWWWWWWWWWWW

oh of course she kissed him.

WHAT A SNITCH WTF

"please don't leave me alone with your parents like that again" honestly wille they could've eaten him alive

my god wilhelm you're being SO NASTY

OH HE'S GOING OFFF

oh ldkgldjgldjfldjffl

I can ASSURE YOU during my s2 liveblogging at one point I basically wrote "[points at ludwig] AND YOU" bc i was so fucking done with his bullshit skrjdlrkdlrkld

to hear wille going AND *YOU* is fucking sending me help

IT ISN'T EASY TO BE BOTH YOUR MOTHER AND YOUR BOSS OH FUCK OFF KRISTINA

I NOTICED BECAUSE YOU'RE SO USELESS AT BOTH HOLY FUCKING SWEET JESUS CHRIST

HOLY MOTHER OF GOD

me rn:

my god this is the most cathartic shit I've seen in my life

OH AND SIMON IS WATCHING THE WHOLE THING

god

I knew the cliffhanger was gonna be that

but I didn't expect them to cry like that nor did I expect ME to cry like that

bro I'm sobbing I can't wait another week

#yr livenats #yr s3 spoilers #young royals spoilers

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