#spring anime 2019

[plains-flora]

june 6, 2019

[anisongoftheday]

Carole & Tuesday Episode 12 Insert Song

The Loneliest Girl by Carole (CV: Nai Br.XX) & Tuesday (CV: Celeina Ann)

[weebssecretattic]

Anne Halford gives me so much tohru energy it's unreal, she's kind and sweet. Her mother just died while her father died before and she speaks up against injustices that are way older/beyond her. She honestly gives me vibes that she's tohru's younger sister, cuz on top of all those she's headstrong and just some days wakes up and chooses violence. I absolutely adore her!! Totally recommend watching saft, the first two episodes might be a bit slow but then after ep 4 it really kicks off!! I've only watched upto ep 6 and I am totally loving it so far!!

[jonnysinsectcatalogue]

Red-Headed Pine Sawfly - Acantholyda erythrocephala

It’s been quite a while since I’ve last showcased this insect, and the reason is straightforward: they’ve not been seen on the pine bushes since 2020! That’s just the adults specifically. While there were a few metallic adults flying around since then, there have been no larvae feeding frenzies for 3 years. I guess the hose treatment broke their numbers and any emerging adults have flown away in search of new pine trees or bushes to inhabit. As a result, the pine bushes have been in the best shape and grow steadily year after year.. They’re glorious! I do feel bittersweet however, as I’m missing the Sawflies now. Specifically, there was a lot more I wanted to learn from them and see from them in the wild after identifying what they were. However, they are an invasive species and have can have destructive effects on pine trees should they discover them and choose to nest there, especially here in Ontario. The larvae eat the needles of the trees and badly infest them, ruining the tree’s cleanliness and compromising its growth (far more brutal on young trees) which could bring catastrophe on its health! Unfortunately, the larvae are just eating and don’t know any better, so it’s up to us to clean our pine trees and monitor for these insects. The larvae are Caterpillar-like in appearance with a yellow head and stripes running from head to behind (most visible after a few molts).

I may talk a bit about the larvae, but sadly I have no pictures to share of them. Today I only have pictures of adult males flying around the bushes (all the females have been uploaded, and seemingly emerged days later) as their yellow-colored face shows. Their second name - Pine False Webworm - may be a better fit here since it’s the females that have the characteristic red face. While the adults congregate around the pines, they don’t seem to feed on the bushes or otherwise use them for nourishment. That’s one of the things I wished I could’ve learned more about them before they vanished. Are the adults just around to form mating pairs or do they eat something while active following emergence? Particularly since their head features sharp-looking mandibles seemingly designed for chopping and slicing. It’s possible they are only needed when spring has begun and they need to cut their way out of their pupa. Since only females have the saw, a solution for both males and females needs to exist, but that’s just speculation on my part. Hopefully I’ll find them again in the future to share more with you, but since they’re considered invasive maybe it’s better not to wait until they can be managed more easily. 

Pictures were taken on May 11, 2019 with a Samsung Galaxy S4. Wishing everyone a warm and Happy First day of Spring!

[why-animals-do-the-thing]

Folk were really into the post I made about Tandie, the zoo lion with a (then) undergrown mane due a period of time on testosterone blockers. He's having quite the glow up this summer.

But!

Did you know that manes are hormone dependent in both sexes of lion?

Let's talk about maned lionesses!

To recap the previous post quickly: the existence of a mane, and it's color, appear to be pretty heavily androgen-dependent. Neutered males or males put on testosterone blockers, like Tandie was, will drop their manes - but like Tandie, if taken off the meds, it will generally grow it back. Darker manes are indicative of higher testosterone levels, and long/lush manes are generally a good signal of a male's fitness and mate quality. Females seem to show a preference for males with longer, darker manes and other males will preferentially avoid scuffles with them. (Yes, as many comments have pointed out, that means Scar was actually a hunk. Do with that as you will.)

The fascinating thing about androgens being linked to manes in lions is that it goes both ways - females with higher levels will also grow manes!

Mane growth in females lions is most commonly seen with elderly animals who have stopped cycling and are basically in lion menopause. And they have to get pretty old for it to happen - captive lions generally only live into their late teens and early second decade, and most of the maned ladies I know about started growing manes around like, seventeen.

Not all old female lions grow manes, but some of the career cat people I've talked to said it happened to about a quarter of the females they've worked with over the years. Which... is an interesting contrast to the news articles about Zuri, who we'll meet in a bit, that breathlessly reported in 2022 that her mane growth "left scientists baffled."

Old lady lion manes are just... precious. They grow in first at the chest and then around the sides or on the back of the head, but they don’t normally get the length, density, and connectivity seen in the mane of an adult male. It leaves the lionesses manes kind of awkward, in the way I associate with very young males, and they're absolutely adorable. Prepare yourself for the photo spam.

I have to start with Daisy, because she's the only maned lioness I've had the privilege to meet in person.

I don't know exactly when she started growing her mane, but she was over 20 years old when she passed in 2019 with these luscious locks.

Here's another female at the same facility, named Adeena. On the left is a photo of her from 2021, on the right is from this spring (I think she's mid-sneeze in the photo). She turns 20 in October.

If you've heard about maned lionesses before, it’s probably because of Zuri, at Topeka. She’s the most recent one to get media coverage and she went a little viral.

(Just a side note here, but I have some strong feelings about knowledge loss in the exotic animal management world due to political/philosophical schisms. This is one of those topics where it's clear: Topeka told a reporter that the zoo had “never" heard of this happening before, but it's common enough to be well known as a thing in other sectors of the exotic cat world. There's so much expertise and knowledge being lost due to infighting between accrediting groups, and it drives me up a wall).

Anyway. Zuri had one of the best manes I've seen on an elderly lioness. It grew long and lush and she totally could have done shampoo commercials. I mean, look at this.

Zuri lived with her sister, who didn't grow a mane in her old age. Here's the two of them together, Zuri on the left, Asante on the right.

We don't completely know what's going on with these golden girls to cause them to grow manes. It's theorized to be related to the end of estrus and higher levels of androgenic hormones, although it's not clear if that's just due to lower levels of other hormones during "meownopause" or if there's something else also going on.

There was some speculation with Zuri's mane growth that it was caused by the death of the male she lived with, in some biological need to "take over the role." The zoo dismissed that idea pretty quickly, and it makes sense, although there is one other instance where I've heard of that happening before.

The cat people I've talked to say that older lionesses who grow manes don't tend to act differently - they're not taking over new social roles in their prides or anything. Sometimes they can be less active, or be a little more nervous around males, and want to be left alone more, but it was emphasized to me that those behaviors could also just be associated with the fact that manes tends to develop in elderly lionesses.

The mane growth can happen pretty quickly, as we saw in the photos I've posted of Tandie over the last year. Here's Bridget, from the Oklahoma Zoo. The left photo was taken in March of 2017 and the right in November - look how much hair she gained over six months!

The zoo did some research into what might have cause Bridget's mane growth, and found that she had elevated levels of androstenedione, which is a hormone that can be converted by the body into either testosterone or estrogen, depending. In AFAB people, it's known to have a masculinizing effect. The zoo theorized that this was the cause of her mane growth, and that the elevated levels might have been caused by a benign tumor. Fascinatingly, though, blood draws revealed that her testosterone levels were the same as her mane-less sister, Tia.

Tia is on the left in the photo below, Bridget and the beginnings of her mane are on the right. Bridget was 17 when her mane started growing in.

I don't think there's any formal hypothesis that there might be a genetic component to lionesses growing manes in old age, but it's interesting to note that one of Tia's daughters, Zari, also grew a mane. (And she grew it young! It started around age 13, interestingly, also right after their male died). She's on the left in the photo below.

And to circle back around to where we began: Tandie is related to a number of maned ladies! His father, Xerxes, was Bridget's son; Zari was Xerxes' half-sister.

Here's a few more beautiful maned ladies to leave you with. In order, Ngala, Pepper, Skye, and Dandy Lion.

Next up, and last in this lion mane series, is the story of five younger lionesses in Botswana who not only have manes but also express a range of masculine behaviors.

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A huge thanks to all the folk who shared photos of and stories about their golden girls for this post: M. Townsen, S.W. Simpson, E. Day, S. Cook, M. Stinner, M. Paul, K. Vanaman, D. O'Halloran, R. Simpson, D. Souffrant.

[allergictocolor]

The Addams Family Through the Years

Before I get into character profiles, let me first do a run-through of the incarnations of the Addams family through the years.

As I wrote in my first post, Charles Addams created the nameless, bizarre family in some of the many comics he drew for The New Yorker starting in 1938. Morticia and Wednesday were named in 1962 when dolls of them were released. Charles Addams was asked for a list of names and descriptions for them and the other family members when the TV show was in development in 1963, but had little other involvement with the show.

The show ran for two seasons from 1964 to 1966, totalling 64 episodes. This was the same time that a similar show, The Munsters, was also on the air. Both shows were about wacky families of monstrous weirdos living in American suburbia. Both were in black and white, and both were canceled in 1966, possibly due to the rise of color television.

After a cross-over with Scooby-Doo, Hanna-Barbera produced a 16-episode animated series in 1973 which featured the family on a road trip in a creepy camper that looked like their mansion. It featured the same actors who played Lurch and Fester voicing their previous characters, and a 10-year-old Jodie Foster as the voice of Pugsley!

There was a reunion special in 1977, which reunited most of the cast of the show, called Halloween with the New Addams Family. The original show had remained popular, running in syndication for years. It was especially popular in Australia. According to one fan, this was because the Addams family was “less American” than the Munsters. 

In 1991, a feature film was released after a tumultuous production. Raul Julia became the new face of Gomez Addams in the popular consciousness. It was followed by a sequel called Addams Family Values in 1993, and in between there was another animated series. John Astin reprised his role as Gomez in that animated series. 

There were plans to continue the film series, but Raul Julia suffered from stomach cancer and died suddenly in 1994, canceling those plans. Although both films performed poorly at the box office, they gained a loyal following on home video and remain popular to this day. In 1992, an Addams family pinball machine was produced featuring original voice acting from Raul Julia as Gomez and Angelica Huston as Morticia. It became the most popular pinball machine of all time, selling over 20,000 units.

In 1998, a TV movie called Addams Family Reunion was produced by Saban, featuring Tim Curry as Gomez and Daryl Hannah as Morticia. The only returning actors from the 1991/93 movies were Carel Struycken and Christopher Hart's hand, who played Lurch and Thing, respectively. I have not seen it, and can not attest to its quality, or lack thereof. That movie was also meant to be the pilot for a TV show called The New Addams Family, but most of the cast was different. It ran for 65 episodes, none of which have I seen. (Hat tip to @tenthirtyone for pointing this out.)

After a try-out in Chicago, a musical debuted on Broadway in 2010. I was lucky enough to see that for my birthday that year. It starred Nathan Lane as Gomez and Bebe Neuwirth as Morticia. It was pretty entertaining. It would have been better if Lane wasn’t trying to be Raul Julia. He did a very fake Spanish accent, and it was terribly distracting. The musical was panned by critics and didn’t last long, but it was popular enough that it is now performed by high schools across the country. In fact, my friend Sarah and my cousin Charlie were both involved with different productions of it this past Spring.

That same year (2010), the rights were purchased by Illumination Entertainment, and they announced that they were going to produce a stop-motion film with Tim Burton. However, he decided to go with computer animation instead. That eventually turned into the 2019 film, after Tim Burton dropped out. This version was the closest in appearance to the original comics. Although the characters are rendered in 3D, the animators aimed to make them look as much like Charles Addams’ drawings as possible.

You’d think Tim Burton had been involved since at least the 1991 movie, but he hadn’t. Black and white stripes? Bats? Other goth things? That sounds like Tim Burton, but oddly enough, he actually hasn’t been attached to any Addams Family property until the Netflix show in 2022. It’s a natural pairing, and perhaps he would have been great friends with Charles Addams, had he been born several decades earlier. 

Now the Netflix show, centered on Wednesday, is in production for its second season after its first season was one of the streaming service's most popular shows to date. It's not the first time the Addams family has spawned a viral dance sensation. Way back in the 1960s, the original TV show started a dance craze called “the Lurch”.

In coming posts, I’ll go into how Charles Addams originally portrayed each of the nine characters in the Addams family pictured above (Gomez, Morticia, Pugsley, Wednesday, Fester, Grandmama, Lurch, Thing, and Cousin Itt) and how they evolved, or didn’t, over time.

[yurimother]

Star Student X Delinquent Yuri Romance Manga 'I Can't Say No to the Lonely Girl' Licensed in English

On Saturday, Kodansha USA announced at its Anime Expo 2023 panel that it has licensed Kashikaze's I Can't Say No to the Lonely Girl (Lonely Girl ni Sakaraenai) for English publication. The first volume of the school romance Yuri manga will be released in the spring of 2024.

I Can't Say No to the Lonely Girl follows Ayaka Sakurai, a star student gifted in both academics and athletics. However, she gets nervous about exams, so has to settle for a lesser high school than she intended.

When her homeroom teacher recognizes Ayaka's struggle, she offers her a recommendation letter that could get her into any school of her choice, on one condition. She has to convince the delinquent girl, Sora Honda, to come to school. Thus the goody-goody Sakurai is thrust into a web of blackmail that might just lead to romance!

I Can't Say No to the Lonely Girl was serialized in Comic Yuri Hime from 2019 until its conclusion in October 2022. Ichijinsha publishes six collected volumes of the manga in Japanese.

The manga received positive reviews from audiences and critics. Erica Friedman awarded the first Japanese volume an 8/10 score on Okazu, and the series won 12th place overall in Yuri Navi's fifth Yuri Manga Sousenkyo in 2021.

Kashikaze is a Japanese Yuri artist. She has contributed to multiple Yuri anthologies, including Canelé: Soeur, Shibuya Gyaru, and Chocolat: Shkaijin Yuri Anthology. She also released a side story doujinshi focusing on the side characters from I Can't Say No to the Lonely Girl.

Look forward to the release of the first volume of I Can't Say No to the Lonely Girl in the Spring of 2024.

Source: Kodansha USA Website, Kodansha Comics Twitter

[inspofromancientworld]

Spinning Plant and Animal Fibers

By Brooklyn Museum - Spindle without Whorl, whole or Spindle with Cotton Yarn, Fragment. Brooklyn Museum. Retrieved on 2019-11-04.Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC BY 3.0) license, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=83653957

The beginning of twisting fibers from plants or animal coats is difficult to date because they don't fossilize, so we have to rely on trace evidence, such as imprints in mud that did fossilize. We have these of string-like skirts from the Upper Paleolithic that date to about 20,000 years ago. Recent discoveries, though, show that Neanderthals spun cording as well.

Photo of Neanderthal cord from Abri du Maras. M-H. Moncel

The evidence from the Neanderthals was actual fibers that were preserved in a cave in southern France. The fragment was 6mm long and was three bundles of twisted tree fibers twisted together. The most likely usage of the fiber was to be wrapped around a handle of some type or as part of a net bag. This implies many areas of knowledge held by Neanderthals to make the cording including the growth patterns of the trees the fibers came from, spinning, and spinning the resultant thread into a stronger yarn. 'In order to get this fiber, you have to strop the outer bark off a tree to scrape off the innter bark. This is best done in the spring or early summer,' according to Bruce Hardy, co-author of the study of these fibers and professor of anthropology at Kenyon College in Gambler, Ohio.

This spinning was most likely done against the thigh, twisting the fibers as the hand rolls it down the thigh, pinching them, and then bringing them back to the top of the thigh to be twisted more. The product was likely wound around a stick or stone.

By Rama - Own work, CC BY-SA 2.0 fr, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=49227927

The next step was to spin onto the stick, or spindle, directly, then to create a split or hook in the top of the stick to hold the twisted part on the stick. Exactly when this happened, we don't know, as there are, as yet, no direct remains of this process. What we do have evidence of improved technology is small bone and later metal hooks that replaced the slit or hook cut into wood as well as weights made of stone, wood, metal, clay, or later metal that went on the end of the sticks to keep them spinning longer called spinning whorl. These have been found as early as the Neolithic. The combination of these technological improvements is called the drop spindle and we have artwork depicting spinning from many cultures.

By © Marie-Lan Nguyen / Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2596494

The other item needed to make spinning easier is an item called a distaff, which would hold a prepared bundle of fibers is loosely wrapped onto, which freed the hand that would have previously held the fiber and allowed a larger quantity of fiber to be held at one time. The distaff could be tucked under the arm or into a loop or holder in a belt. Again, since this didn't fossilize, we don't know when it was developed, though it does appear in Bronze Age artwork.

If you're interested in learning to spin, local independent yarn stores are a good place to start. Other places to look are reenactment guilds, fiber craft guilds, or online for spinning classes. The benefit of guilds is in-person help learning and the benefit of companionship and experience.

[talesfromthecrypts]

What are some movies that you’d recommend that use a lot of good practical effects?

Ok knowing that practical effects is going to cover a wide range of things (makeup effects, in camera effects, puppets, gore):

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931)

Vampyr (1932)

King Kong (1933)

The Invisible Man (1933)

The Wolf Man (1941)

Godzilla (1954)

The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957)

Jason and the Argonauts (1963)

Viy (1967)

The Exorcist (1973)

Dawn of the Dead (1978)

Alien (1979) (of course)

The Beyond (1981)

The Howling (1981)

An American Werewolf in London (1981)

The Thing (1982)

Basketcase (1982)

The Dark Crystal (1982) (not horror but its my buddy)

Creepshow (1982)

Videodrome (1983)

The Company of Wolves (1984)

Gremlins (1984)

Day of the Dead (1985)

Fright Night (1985)

Re-Animator (1985)

Aliens (1986)

The Fly (1986)

From Beyond (1986)

Little Shop of Horrors (1986)

The Gate (1987)

Hellraiser (1987)

Bad Taste (1987)

Robocop (1987)

The Blob (1988)

Pumpkinhead (1988)

Society (1989)

Nightbreed (1990)

Tremors (1990)

Arachnophobia (1990)

Death Becomes Her (1992)

Starship Troopers (1997) (not horror in the slightest but the bugs look so fucking good)

Pan's Labyrinth (2006)

Hatchet (2006)

Martyrs (2008)

Evil Dead (2013) (as far as I'm aware all effects except the first are practical)

Clown (2014)

Spring (2014)

Krampus (2015) (Krampus himself is all practical)

The Void (2016)

Rabid (2019)

The Sadness (2021)

Hatching (2022)

[plains-flora]

may 28, 2019

[anisongoftheday]

Sarazanmai Ending

Stand by me by the peggies

[absolutebl]

Hello! I discovered your blog relatively recently so forgive me if you’ve already done this but would you consider compiling a list of all the times crossdressing has been done in bl? Whether as a plot-device, for comedy, for serious reasons, just all the times crossdressing as a trope has appeared.

In a similar vein if you wanted to explore it I’d also be interested in the breadth of trans rep in bl/queer shows and movies in Asian media and if that ever blends into the crossdressing (maybe also drag would be interesting to throw into the mix as well?). Also just an exploration of Queer Femme characters that are not made fun of or villainized by the narrative would be cool! Basically just exploring femme queer aspects in bl in all its good, bad, and I’m sure sometimes ugly forms!

Hi, welcome! Ooo, crossdressing. Frankly I can't think of many and I don't have great recall on this one so I will have to ask the feed.

BL's With Crossdressing

Meet You At The Blossom (China 2024) - major plot point

Nobleman Ryus Wedding (Korea 2021) - historical, entire premise

Kieta Hatsukoi AKA My Love Mix-Up! (Japan 2021)

Love Stage (Japan 2020) - major plot point (better executed in the anime version)

Love Stage (Thailand 2022) - major plot point better executed than either Japanese version

About Youth (Taiwan 2022)

I Told Sunset About You (Thailand 2020)

Jack & Joker (Thailand 2024)

My Bromance the movie (Thailand 2014)

My Love Mix-up (Thailand 2023)

I Am Your King (Thailand 2017) - this is Mark Siwat's first BL, and yeah, he's the one cross dressing (he plays the femme rich boy in Jack & Joker)

The Sign (Thailand 2024) - historical costume for the girl of the past being played by a boy is a gender mix of female/male attire, it's very clever

YYY (Thailand 2022)

I feel like Gun has crossdressed in one of his. Theory of Love maybe?

Mr Cinderella (Vietnam 2022)

My Sky (Vietnam 2017) - trigger warning

My Lascivious Boss (Vietnam 2021) - major plot point

Moots et al...... other (older?) BLs with cross dressing?

Others worth noting

Either the representation or the BL is in question, or it's not exactly crossdressing it's something else. Still, some obscure ones just in case.

Wait For Me at Udagawachou AKA Udagawachou de Matteteyo (Japan 2015) - may be triggering involves body dysmorphia and fetishization of trans identity, but if you can you should watch this

Spring of Crush (Korea 2022) - this is a bromance

Rainbow Prince (Pinoy 2022)

DNA Says Love You (Taiwan 2022)

Great Men Academy (Thailand 2019)

3 Will Be Free (Thailand 2019)

Love Sick 2024 (Thailand) - made an aggressively male character from the original into a newly out 3rd gender/trans character in the new version, very intentional modernization choice, fascinating. Directly addresses dead naming among other things in the few scenes she has.

Saneha Stories series from Thailand

You should follow Cooheart on IG he does some fantastic gender bending and crossdressing styles. He's the fashion icon gift that keeps on giving.

Thai BL has tons of representation and use of characters/actors of Thai third gender, a lot of which is for comedy. Rarely if ever in BL more like Diary of the Tootsies. I would say my favorite and most beloved 3rd G rep is in The Sign. But that is is different than what you asked for.

Femme rep I have talked about before, most specifically in the context of Daisy in Secret Crush On You......

More Queer Lens & Thai BL 

BL Linguistics & Queer Identity I Am Gay versus I Like Men 

Husband Wife Language in Thai BL (SOTUS, TharnType + a lot of 2022 BL) 

Thai BL Lacks Representation of Butch & Transgender Men (and why this has to do with Thailand's 3rd Gender) 

Thai Military Service & Thai BL

Hope that helps.

(source)

[siena-sevenwits]

January 2025 Reads

The list will be modest, as I am coming out of a slump, but I used to have fun doing this, so I'll put my pride aside and enjoy it.

Complete: The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett (1911, children's classic) As I have already remarked, I think I loved it more in adulthood than I ever did in childhood. I noticed so much more this time through. One thing that stood out to me was how Mary and Colin both were changed by meeting a hope-filled person who told them of joys they had never experienced. Even more Mary discovers the Garden, hearing stories of the family life of the Sowerbys changes her. Hearing of Dickon out on the moors with his animals changes her. And of course the simple idea of a mysterious locked Garden changes her. It's the same for Colin - he falls in love with all these things before he can ever experience them. There's something about the generosity of sharing that kind of joy even just by the spoken word - something very good news-y about it. I remember as a child I didn't much care about Mrs. Sowerby sending them food, and advising Mr. Craven, and eventually coming into the Garden and being part of the secret - but not I see why it feels like a necessary culmination. It's all very, very Spring, and that was good for me this time of year (Spring does not usually come till May here, and it's hard sometimes.) I might have to revisit my childhood adaptation, the 1980's Hallmark one, if only to laugh at how Gothic they try to make it. (That scary thunderstorm scene with the creepy statues while Colin wails! Oh, and random Colin Firth before he was famous at the end, for some reason.)

Complete: The Shadow of the Bear by Regina Doman (1997, Catholic YA Fairy Tale Retelling) Technically I was reading my first printing copy, the one where the publishers got mixed up and gave it the wrong title of Snow White and Rose Red: A Modern Fairy Tale, which was just meant as a note at the beginning of the manuscript. This was another revisit of a favourite - as a twelve-year-old, I read this so many times, before Black as Night was published. I can see the writing flaws much more clearly now, but also all the ways she succeeds at the story she'd trying to tell. The story meant a lot to me, and I think it had a big effect on me going into my teen years. Revisiting was good fun.

Complete: Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare (1601, classic theatrical comedy) This feels like a cheat to include, but. What can I say? My favourite of Shakespeare's comedies.

In progress: Wind and Truth by Brandon Sanderson (2024, epic fantasy) Getting close to halfway through. I'm here for my beloved characters and getting an ending to the five books. It's great to be spending time with Kaladin and Shallan and Adolin and Dalinar again, and seeing payoffs for this set up earlier in the series. It has some passages I'm not a fan of, (and some scenes I thought were just plain silly. Kaladin's kata/dance scene could maybe have been fine, but once he started saying affirmations? *Eyeroll*) but I've found a way to navigate the content considerations so far, and eh, I can put up with a little cringe. And who would have thought I'd be so happy every time the scene switches to Azimir? :-) I enjoy doing all the voices and sharing the experience with Juan Diego. I'm hoping for a satisfying avalanche, and for Brandon Sanderson to keep his promises well.

In progress: How Rory Thorne Destroyed the Multiverse by K. Eason (2019, YA space opera fairy-tale inspired) Also close to halfway through. I enjoy the blend of some fairy-tale conventions with the interplanetary setting. There's a fun sense of humour and sharp imagination at work here. I love the dynamic of Rory's tiny household, which consists of just her, her vizier/tutor, and her tiny band of female guards. But I'm slightly annoyed at the arranged marriage aspect of the book, because the direction I thought the author was taking it excites me more than the direction it's probably going. That's not the book's fault, though. I should probably just outline an arranged marriage story that I'll never get round to writing and get it out of my system so I can enjoy this one wholeheartedly.

In progress: The Dawn of the Messiah by Edward Sri (2005, Scriptural theology) Not that far in yet. First fifty pages are good.

In progress: The Red Palace by June Hur (2022, YA historical mystery/romance) Whoops, forgot I was reading this and enjoy it! It's because I took my night reading lamp to another part of the house and forgot to bring it back for my bedtime book...

In progress: The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street by Helene Hanff (1973, travel memoir.) I am delayed because my dad took it to read it after he finished 84 Charing Cross Road.

[opinions-about-tiaras]

Ten Years Against Fascism: Star vs. The Forces of Evil in 2025

Today is the 10th anniversary of the premiere of Star vs. the Forces of Evil.

During the 2010s, Disney had a pretty epic run of extremely high-quality YA animation series. They were characterized by being intensely creator-driven, and beginning as humorous episodic adventure shows that eventually morphed into strongly serialized affairs focusing on plot and character development. That run was kicked off with 2012’s Gravity Falls, and would come to an end in 2023 with the abrupt cancellation of The Owl House. Their sophomore outing, Star vs. the Forces of Evil, premiered on January 18th, 2015 on the Disney Channel, before beginning its regular run later that spring on Disney XD.

Of the “big four” series of that era (Gravity Falls, SVTFOE, Amphibia, and The Owl House) SVTFOE is probably regarded as the weakest, and is the least well-remembered and engaged with a decade later. It was far from bad; at the time it was one of Disney’s hottest hits, with crazy high ratings, heavily promoted, with celebrity guest voices (they brought in the lead singer of Fallout Boy to perform music), tie-in books and comics, the works. But it suffered from a flabby last season and an ending that left almost nobody happy. If you look at fandom engagement and the prevalence of fanworks compared to any of the other three series on that list, it isn’t even close to which one lags behind.

And that’s a damn shame, in my opinion, because I re-watched the series in its entirety in preparation to write this post, and SVTFOE slaps hard.

Let’s take a look back at this magical princess from another dimension.

SVTFOE starts off in a fairly direct and nearly formulaic way; frenetic humor, big personalities, straightforward plots that grow out of wacky premises. (Essentially the Adventure Time playbook, really.) It dispenses with secret identities and the pretense that this is taking place in anything other than a fantastic setting. Take Star Butterfly, magical teenage princess from the dimension of Mewni. Give her a wand and a distinct lack of self-control. Send her to Earth and high school and pair her with a straight man. Sic a bunch of monsters who want to GET THAT WAND on her. Let the hijinks ensue.

I mean, hell. Star Butterfly turns her math teacher into a literal magical ogre in the second episode, and she stays that way for the entirety of the series. It’s just… whatever. That’s how it rolls.

That was the premiere, in 2015. In fact, said premiere is still available in its entirety on Youtube, even if you don't have Disney+. The first ten minutes are worth your time as an example of "how to immaculately pace your show" if nothing else.

Wacky and fun and as light and airy as strawberry soda, yeah?

By the series finale in 2019, Star Butterfly was conducting surgery on the universe because the magical powers that were the source of her family's entire identity for hundreds of years had in fact been a tool of conquest, imperialism, genocide, and terror, and in order to prevent a mass campaign of ethnic cleansing she has to detonate them, because her power, privilege, and identity are less important than basic justice.

It was a hell of a ride to get there.

*      *      *

Before we get into the giant myth arc, the political drama, and some of the shipping stuff, I want to jump into a big under discussed aspect, and strength, of SVTFOE; its willingness and ability to be gross and weird and filthy on a lot of different levels.

The animation is the obvious place to start with here; it was rather unique, at the time. All of the big four series of the 2010s adopted very obvious anime-inspired aesthetics; big eyes, small mouths and noses, thick black borders on characters and objects (as opposed to the thinner linework on something like Phineas and Ferb or Kim Possible) with lots of solid, bright, contrasting colors to make things pop. But SVTFOE went in its own direction away from this “house style,” by adopting an explicitly Ren and Stimpy inspired level of being willing to squash, stretch, and deform its characters. There’s an entirely deliberate grossness about it. Smash cuts to peoples fucked-up faces and arms, often covered in pustules and leaking all kinds of fluids, were common. 

It’s a much grosser show in this regard than even Amphibia, and Amphibia takes place in the middle of a disgusting swamp and features at least three characters with poison skin; SVTFOE out-grosses it.

This is unusual for a Disney show. What was also unusual was how filthy it was willing to get, and when I say filthy I mean “this is a show with a predominantly teen cast, and it wasn’t afraid to lean into how thirsty and horny and emotionally twisted up and weird teens can be.”

Let me put it this way. This is a show that wasn’t afraid to show a bunch of high school girls flocking around a boy’s tentacle arm, cooing over it and remarking how they want a tentacle boyfriend.

Yeahhhhhh. That's... look at Janna there, in the middle. The animators knew what they were doing.

Shows of this type (by which I mean TV-Y7 rated shows intended for a primarily Young Adult audience) don’t eschew romance. But it tends to be… very chaste, and very straightforward. Love triangles can be a thing, sure. But usually it isn’t messy, and characters who are weird about it usually have it played for laughs or are depicted as warped or wrong in some way. “Girl character is a crazy stalker girl that lets us make a few Fatal Attraction jokes the parents will get” is practically a trope. (I’m looking in your direction, Mabel Pines.)

That isn’t how SVTFOE rolls.

Star, herself, is a deeply thirsty person in the way that only someone who is fourteen can be thirsty, and the show basically revels in that. She is not traditionally boy-crazy, adopting the aforementioned stalker-style behavior and suddenly becoming a dumb idiot when romance is in the air. Rather, she is a fourteen year old with an active desire for romance who the show allows to be quite open about it (by Disney standards) when she sees someone whose abs she wants to run her face up and down on. Her dumb decisions aren’t “I will entirely deform my personality for the cardboard cutout of a boy I have a crush on” but rather “my ex has invited me on a date, and he is very cool and my feelings about him are ambivalent, so I will accept against my better judgement.”

The show is very up-front that parts of it are a straight-up romantic drama; Scott Pilgrim is specifically cited by the showrunner as an inspiration and influence. Things get messy. People cheat on each other. There are multiple love triangles. People hurt each other and are hurt in turn in ways that, despite them happening in the context of demon battles and court intrigue, are highly believable as “these are things that teens in high-stress situations would do with, for, and TO each other.”

This isn’t something you’re going to get from just about any other show, especially any other Disney show. Those shows usually involve straightforward meet-cutes, adorable crushes, unrequited love played largely for laughs (Phineas and Ferb) or at best a well-executed enemies-to-lovers arc (The Owl House.) That’s when they bother with romance and, yes, let’s be blunt, lust at all. Teens in mainstream YA fiction tend to often be either curiously sexless, or sexy desires are portrayed as kind of gross and weird and shameful.

SVTFOE allows its cast of colorful adolescent weirdos to get filthy with each other. This is still a Disney show; nobody is getting to second base or, god forbid, having premarital adolescent sex. But it really goes the extra mile and it feels real. It feels raw, in a way most other mainstream shows of this sort never, ever do. One of the bigger and more important sub-plots is literally about how sexy miscegenation between a queen and her sexy monster man lover she committed adultery with might bring down a whole kingdom, and this isn’t portrayed as shameful or said queen a disgusting harlot in any way. 

Speaking of the queen of darkness…

*   *   *

One of the big narrative strengths of accomplishing the shows transition from episodic adventures to longer, more serious arcs was establishing ridiculous setting conceits as jokey fun things, and then later revealing them to be of serious, critical importance.

The magical princess has an overbearing mother, just like regular teenage girls! How will they learn to communicate? (Her mother is overbearing because their family line has DONE SOME SHIT.)

Aww, this twelve-minute episode is devoted to Star meeting one of her heroes, who is mysteriously living as a hobo on Earth, and trying to be her apprentice until she realizes that her hero is a bag of mixed nuts. The larfs! (Said hero is an ancient genocide engine and a walking war crime, and will secretly be the series final boss.)

Monsters are trying to steal the magic wand! Fights ensue! (The monsters are trying to steal the magic wand because the humans have magic, the monsters don’t, and the humans have been using that magic to impose a racial hierarchy.)

Star goes through magic-inflected puberty and becomes boy crazy! (The magic inflected puberty is because her family has been fucked up on a basic level by constant exposure to magic and is dangerous and deadly.)

The queen of darkness had returned from her terrible crystal prison! She’s corrupting the youths! (The queen of darkness is a wrongly convicted political prisoner and  the most empathetic, concerned, responsible adult in the whole show.)

All of this is slowly unpeeled over the course of four seasons. Almost everything that shows up as a total joke in season one will turn out to be fairly plot-relevant by season four. Again, the Adventure Time playbook. And it serves as an underpinning to the series main political thrust.

Because, yeah, SVTFOE is an intensely, almost uniquely, political series.

*    *   *

The politics in Disney shows tend to be paper-thin. They’re functionally nonexistent in Gravity Falls, for example, except as jokes. Amphibia and The Owl House approach them through bog-standard “fight the evil empire” lenses. (Yeah, I’m sorry, fellow Owl House fans, Emperor Belos is a great villain but his religious-inflected bigotry is very much soft pedaled; he’s functionally Palpatine in so many ways.)

SVTFOE doesn’t do that. SVTFOE faces this shit head on.

The show starts as basically “Oh, the goofy, somewhat comedic, but also very threatening monsters are obvious villains, out to steal magic for their own nefarious ends.” The theme songs and opening credits and basic structure of the show all support this. Then they pull back the curtain a little bit, and it's like “Oh, okay. The monsters are fully fleshed-out characters and some of them will be Star’s friends. Aww, they have cute monster kids she babysits for!”

Then they pull it back further, and further, and further, until eventually what is made clear to the viewers is that Star Butterfly’s magical kingdom of Mewni is a colonizing force. They have magic. (And corn!) The monsters do NOT have magic. (Or corn.) The humans therefore view themselves as having a manifest destiny to subjugate, drive out, or exterminate the monsters. In the service of this, the Queens of Mewni have at times used their magic to attempt to develop spells of mass destruction, create super-soldiers, and other such mayhem. There have been people who tried to stop it. Those people have their names smeared, are imprisoned in a kind of endless living death for the crime of miscegenation, and have their legacies erased from history.

This isn’t really a giant secret anyone has been concealing, some horrible revelation. (For the most part. There are… SOME horrible revelations.) It’s just part of the background noise. Star never really questions it until one day when she does. She has the privilege for it to be something she doesn’t need to engage with.

And when she tries to stop it, it isn’t easy. The show is very up-front about that! There is no single source of evil that Star can point her magical wand at and make go away by blasting it with multicolored sprinkle unicorn lasers. It’s a constant, unending miasma she has to try and plow through. When not met with hostility, she is met with indifference, which in some ways obviously cuts her even deeper. Her own mother, the walking embodiment of centrist idiocy, becomes so nervous about the social change Star is trying to usher in that she makes common cause with straight-up genocidal fascists.

(A lot of people think the show engaged in character assassination of Queen Moon. I say that given her background, personality, and place in the world Moon’s actions were entirely overdetermined.)

The show is not subtle about this. The physical embodiment of this is a seemingly goofy, out-of-it crusty old relic of bygone days, who clearly is not that smart, has several screws loose, and can’t utter three sentences without it seeming like her brain is going to leak out of her ears.

She seems entirely unthreatening until you discover she’s a thin shell of humanity over a bottomless lake of hate… and that all she has to do is start saying things like “Our Kingdom used to be great! But not anymore!” and she’ll get many worshipful followers willing to do whatever she says, and what she says is “ethnically cleanse Mewni.”

The final climax of the show, which remains endlessly controversial to this day, presents Star with a choice. Magic and the use thereof is central to her, her history, her family, and the life she leads. But magic has been an absolute nightmare for everyone but a thin slice of privileged humans, who are the only ones who can use it and who have the literal embodiments of its various aspects dedicated to upholding their racial supremacy, and a horde of magical crazies have juiced themselves up on it and are going buck wild with the aforementioned ethnic cleansing.

So Star just destroys it. She removes access to magic from the universe, despite the personal cost.

The hell of it is, and this honestly the bravest decision the show ever made, was that this doesn’t secure victory. You can’t kill bigotry like that. Sure, Star stopped it and removed its most powerful tool… this time. All it does is scuttle off into the woods and wait.

“You can get rid of me. It’s soooooo easy. But the sweet thing is… I’ll never really be gone. ‘Cause I’ve got GOOD IDEAS.”

So yeah, that was SVTFOE. It was brave, and bold, and achingly relevant, and despite its flaws doesn’t deserve the bad rap the final season got.

Here’s to ten years of fighting the forces of evil. Because if there’s one thing you should take away from the show, it’s that that fight never ends, but there’s meaning and even joy and love in the struggle.

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

Am I the AH for refusing to be friends with someone who flat out hated me?

From ages 22-26 I was friends with R 29-33. R had only worked once in her life which was mcdonalds for 3 months to buy anime merchandise her grandma didn't want to buy her. R's grandma is in her late 80's now just for reference. R's granny had married a rich military dude who was on his 3rd marriage or so then died, so she got all his assets which included like 5 houses, 3 were being rented out which is how she'd get her income. So R never worked and just sat at home getting into internet fights. My friend had invited her into our discord and I'd be civil with her despite knowing how shes been with others. I was working full time for shit pay and going to school full time too. R was very, idk how else to say it, but she always demanded our attention. The other people in the server were 5 from ages from 16-22, we never used how much older she was against her, but she really didn't acknowledge or respect alot of us were in school. Many times we'd had to tell her to step back and set boundaries with us. It did result in people leaving the server. So, in summer of 2019 R decided to go to college. She got alot of financial aid and said her goal was to become a therapist cause she was everyone's "mom". That stuff wasn't even remotely true, she was always a total bitch to everyone. R unfortunately didn't understand that going to school means having to put the work in. She was more interested in spending the financial aid on gacha, anime merch, and other stuff. She lost her financial aid after the spring semester of 2020, and refused to talk to her school about the pandemic stress and other shit. During this time, she tried making me do her assignments and I kept saying no or only helped a little. I had my own assignments, school, and I was stressed. Well, when she lost her financial aid due to academic probation, she blamed me. When the pandemic hit my school did this thing where you'd get partially refunded your semester depending on how you did. I was so thankful for that since I barely scraped by to pay for school. R was so fucking nasty about it. I didn't tell my friends that to gloat, I actually said that before she lost her financial aid. She said I didn't deserve it, cause people like her struggled more. Which is fucking weird since I'm a first gen POC and made a few bucks above minimum wage where I live. I didn't even enjoy my time at school cause of the stress and never having money. So she kept harassing me for getting government aid. I wasn't eligible for financial aid! My parents weren't even eligible for food stamps and we always fucking struggled. But I didn't deserve help, who cares if R is a cis white woman in her 30's that only worked once for a few months, she has it harder. Then R left our server when the pandemic started getting nastier, alot of us struggled but we stayed close in the discord. Then one day I reached out to R in late 2021 to say happy birthday and she said "whose this? New phone." I was hurt she didn't keep my number, but whatever. In 2022 she reached out to me for gossip cause I broke up with someone. Then now in 2023 she reached out cause she wants resources to be a vtuber. I'm sorry, she was shitty to me, I've been struggling, and she reaches out for that? Idk even know how I'd be able to help her with that. I told a friend from our old server and she told me how she had been doing R's assignments for school, but stopped cause she was getting stressed cause she had her capstone class that semester. So wow. R basically didn't do shit for school and gets pissy i get some financial relief. I then had another mutual friend tell me how R had told them she sent me a gift and I didn't send her one, one year. Uh? I tried. I ordered something online for her, and the company sold out, but kept my shit on back order. So R got it like a month late, it was a Christmas gift and I explained it to her, sent her screenshot of when i placed the order and sent her an Amazon gift card as an apology. So she bad mouths me for something out of my control?

I've been getting "hey" messages from R lately, and idk. I'm so done with her.

What are these acronyms?