#the casting really is excellent

[leavemetoplaythesims]

i finished tlou on hbo btw

[waterlinkedgirl]

Musical Touken Ranbu: Hanakage Yureru Tomizu (The Shadows of Flowers Swaying In The Whetwater) english subs

About a month later than I'd have liked, but here they are! Even if its writing is a bit more messy than usual, its core is very solid. Of course, Chougi's live song more than got away with me (it's got Japanese Sign Language), so if you could, please watch it gently.

I dedicate this to the friends of mine who love Ichigo Hitofuri. May you be unapologetically yourself, right the way you are.

Keep in mind that this is only the subtitle file, timed and tled to the DMM senshuuraku and BD/DVD. The archive version will have a talk at the start, so the starting times of the subs will have to be delayed accordingly.

You can find the subtitles and my TL document here!

[vraisetzen]

I'm enjoying every moment of the Golden Kamuy live-action drama thus far! I cannot wait to see Tamaki Hiroshi as a young, unscarred Tsurumi in Tsukishima's flashback ☺️✨💗

[freswoe]

i really don’t know how im feeling about the latest fhjy episode. sure, it was fun, the combat planning was great to watch and the battle map was awesome, but… story-wise? It wasn’t good. more than that, the preview for the next episode looks like it’ll mainly be just a battle episode, and that combination does Not make me feel optimistic about the ending of fhjy as a whole.

i think the thing that best sums up my confusion and disappointment with this episode is when Ally/Kristen shouts ‘For Lucy!’ and honestly… why? What about Lucy Frostblade - the kind girl whose major philosophy was that the world is cold so we have to keep each other warm, the foil to Porter’s house of conquest without mercy - suggests that she’d want the brutal murder of her friends without any attempt to talk to or redeem them? the entire season has stressed the doubt/conviction relationship - with the RGs representing wrathful conviction and the BKs representing doubt - and yet there’s zero doubt, zero room for understanding, when Fig’s first action as Wanda Chillda is to stress that she fucking hates ruben and wants to see him die. also, whatever the fuck was going on with ivy and fabian.

its just. this episode is the penultimate episode of the entire season, and if i was watching with no prior knowledge, id probably say it would be episode 13, 14 etc. a cool fight, but absolutely zero emotional resonance - just the Bad Kids going to town on yet another enemy. cool fights, cool planning, cool teamwork, but nothing really special about it.

i’ve seen some people saying not to take this so seriously, that it’s an dnd liveplay so of course the storytelling isn’t always gonna be Handcrafted To Perfection TM, but Fantasy High has a track record of some pretty amazing and thoughtful storytelling, and that’s what makes this episode kinda suck. There’s zero emotional resonance. The BKs clearly view the RGs as minibosses, annoying obstacles to defeat so they can focus on the main event, and that would be fine if that’s what the RGs were. But they’re not. We’ve learnt about them, we’ve seen how they were corrupted and groomed, we’ve seen how they really are just the Bad Kids who really went bad. They have narrative weight! They represent the mindless, wrathful conviction that the BKs are trying to stop, and for the BKs to slaughter them with that wrathful conviction (with no room for doubt or redemption at all) is… it’s not good.

don’t get me wrong, I get why (they’ve been awful to the BKs all season, cathartic last fight etc) but it still sucks narratively. like i can’t stress enough that the BKs are using the exact same tactics that they resented the RGs for to slaughter them. ruben says to fig that the BKs are killing his friends (despite their awful interparty relationships, they’re still his friends) and her response, instead of the understanding and kindness that fig (and, tbh, Emily) are known for is to cast ruben into literal fucking hell.

even oisin’s death was anticlimactic. gorgug’s kill on him was cool, but no nod to adaine? not even a mention of ‘you led my friend on and broke her heart so now i’ll break your heart?’ the broken heart thing was Right There and nothing happened. oisin died, a player was removed from the field, the battle went on. no emotional connection or resonance whatsoever.

i don’t know. from a narrative perspective, this episode was bad. all the nuance of the bad kids/rat grinders dynamic has been lost. the bad kids have become Exactly what the rat grinders said they were with apparently zero self-awareness on the matter. they shoot porter and jace and the RGs down with zingers and cool spells and don’t bother even trying to de-rage the rat grinders, and the result is an episode 19 which feels like a mid-season miniboss fight. they bring the same approach to fighting the RGs that they did to fighting the monsters in the Last Stand, which, y’know. not good.

the only way i can think that they might turn this around is if the BKs are shown to be influenced by rage/the RGs get brought back (still hating the BKs, but at least giving them the chance to try again), but I really don’t know at this point. just overall feeling very disappointed.

[dribs-and-drabbles]

I can't help thinking about how the casting of Be My Favourite, which at first (and second after the recast) felt so odd, could actually be very cleverly intentional.

When the first trailer was presented at GMMTV Live 2022 we all collectively lost our shit at the casting of Krist and Mike. Not only for the backlash Krist (potentially wrongly) received after SOTUS but also for pairing him with Mike. Two actors who had been in bl pairs before but not for a while and who weren't predicted to do any again soon.

But then Mike got replaced (for whatever reason), and by yet another person who no one saw coming, Gawin. Again, an actor not shy of a few bl pairings but who hadn't lead a show yet and who seemed pretty reserved and not the obvious choice to do another bl.

And looking at Krist/Kawi and Gawin/Pisaeng sat together at the end of ep 7, it hit me that they don't seem like an obvious paring.

And they're really not. They've not even worked together on a series before (as far as I could see on mdl) let alone built up a friendship/relationship on the 'promotional circuit' compared to other newer pairings (I'm thinking Ohm/Nanon before Bad Buddy, or Perth/Chimon going into Never Let Me Go and now Dangerous Romance, who it's easy to picture together from the get go.) And also compare this to Krist and Aye, who have worked together in three other series prior to filming Be My Favourite - and recently too.

So it feels like the show wants us to see the Kawi/Pearmai pairing as the obvious one - just as Kawi does.

It wants us to see the Kawi/Pisaeng pairing as a little odd, or unimaginable - just as Kawi did (and is kidding himself that he still does).

And I love that because, as it's taking time for Kawi (and Pisaeng) to get used to the idea of them as a couple, we also get to do the same thing at the same time.

Their pairing is growing for us as it's growing for them.

And in some ways it's making me feel closer to their journey.

(shout out to @grapejuicegay for our dm discussions about the show)

[fishyfishyfishtimes]

Maaaaan I wanna draw the three main woman Monster Prom love interests, straight up the top three characters of the game and maybe even ever!???

[teafiend]

[riacte]

People on MCC Reddit talking about the future of MCC and mentioning a decline in interest of MC content while I know at least QSMP / HC / Life series did well on Tumblr wrapped… I think I know what can help MCC. Fanfictionable content 😏👍 /JOKE /hell

By that I mean angst. Vaguely homoromantic content. The fun skins that we already have. The cute lobby Christmas gift giving. Teams having the option to craft and fly their banners in SkB like some sort of Royalty AU. SoT lackey in which it’s the job of one player to guard a player and sacrifice their life if needed. Teams having to guard their egg baby in Survival Games. Someone should get married on the Winner’s Podium for funnies. What if we were trapped in the SoT cage 😳 and got set on fire 😳 and summoned a fire demon 😳. TGTTOS but you can drag someone up dramatically and they land in your arms perfectly. Sports anime arc in which two underdogs team with two mentors and they win with the power of friendship, like this kind of storyline can and will fuel people for three years. Ren and Martyn role playing with each other in horrible voices for three hours. People from different teams making out in the Battle Box wool mid. Fuckass Double Life scenario in which the entire team shares the same 80 hearts and they’re all intensely worried for each other. There’s a party with flashing lights with Hermitgang plays for some reason. Impulse raps to the second hand embarrassment of many. False and Ren return to stand next to each other for thirty minutes in the lobby

[novelconcepts]

Man, to have this story be about a girls’ soccer team in particular. Girls, who are taught to play by clean rules of society that must be actively unlearned in the wilderness. Athletes, who famously operate on superstition, rituals so easily transformed in crisis to matters of life and death. A team, which fundamentally cannot succeed if all parties aren’t working in tandem for the good of the whole. It’s so smart, and so simple, and goddamn, I love Yellowjackets.

[nobodysdaydreams]

Giving a complicated tragic childhood backstory to your favorite character is all fun and games, until you realize you need to account for how old all the other adult characters would have been at the time and realize that scenes that would work perfectly if one character was twenty three and the other was fourteen stop working when you need other characters who are played by adult actors clearly younger than they are to be in college at the same time so your story beats line up thematically.

[puppppppppy]

Atla live action 😐

[illiana-mystery]

The Electrician, Basquiat (1996)

[shakingparadigm]

Would the human pets be capable of basic tasks like washing their clothes or preparing food? I can see some pets knowing how to prepare food as like, a fun little party trick to impress others, but as a basic survival skill I don't think it's commonly taught to humans anymore. There's most likely a line drawn between pets that are helpful and reliable, and pets that are too capable, to the point where certain owners may feel threatened by their level of intelligence and independence. I wonder just how helpless the humans would be without their aliens.

[estellaestella]

The only bright spot in MAESTRO is Carrey Mulligan. Cooper's LB is all surface, no substance. Matt Bomer does more in his 5 minutes of screentime than Cooper does in the whole movie.

The movie covers smth like 50 years of Leonard Bernstein's life and even though it namechecks a lot of his achievements, i didnt get a sense of the person at all. Its more infodump than entertainment. There's some lovely camerawork in the b/w part of the movie (first 30 minutes?) but that's about it. Kinda sad that Bradley Cooper cdnt deliver another beautiful musical film like A STAR IS BORN. His instincts were so much better there. This felt like a mess. A powerpoint presentation of a movie.

[recitedemise]

𝗚𝗮𝗹𝗲, 𝗶𝗻 𝗮𝗻 𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗻𝗶𝗮𝗯𝗹𝘆 𝗶𝗺𝗽𝗿𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗽𝗮𝗰𝗲, 𝗯𝗲𝗴𝗶𝗻𝘀 𝘁𝗼 𝗲𝘅𝗽𝗿𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝗮 𝗺𝗮𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗿𝘆 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗪𝗲𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗱𝗲𝗳𝗶𝗲𝘀 𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗮𝗴𝗲. After ridding himself of the orb at last, in fact, the wizard becomes a force that's once more unstoppable. He can cast spells without a word, capable of summoning infernos with a wave, and the ease in which he harnesses storms is frightening, but only as frightening as it is an art. Of course, Gale, however, had proved long ago his more prodigious talent. Still, to see him in action beats just listening to this talk. Gale is powerful, relearning all that he'd lost with alarming speed, and that's all a testament to his blinding brilliance--and, of course, his ingrained ambition. With the orb, the wizard had to limit all manner of casting. He had to sate his hunger, was forced to draw back as to not tempt fate, and with the orb in place snuffing his most powerful spells, was something of a tempest in a thick glass cage. However, with the orb finally gone, those limits have at last been lifted. He had became a level 12 wizard with a hell of a handicap, and with that handicap absent beyond its lingering scar, it's like all his previous mastery finally returned--and with force, mind you, like a strike of lightning. In a way, one could compare him to a runner stripped of their weights. He'd learned unparalleled control with an arcane bomb strapped, but now no longer fearing his imminent explosion, is free, as goes the metaphor, to cast a god damned marathon. And Gale is learned. Rather, he's disgustingly learned. He knows all schools of magic, is qualified to teach every field in Blackstaff, and he doesn't serve his city or own his own floating realm, but he'll once again become archwizard in those ways that matter--in his ability to cast and his hellish ferocity. Maybe he won't become as great as he had been with Mystra, but as a former chosen, it's a helluvan accomplishment. In time, Gale Dekarios becomes Gale, professor at Blackstaff, but as a testament to his ability, the city again warms to the idea of Gale of Waterdeep--because she's really only one Gale one could possibly need.

Of course, he doesn't advocate for the title... But it still delights him.

[benevolenterrancy]

AND IT'S COMPLETED! Last chapter finally posted!

The Torchwood team manages to get themselves dumped into the middle of the Korean War and have to struggle their way through injuries, medical staff, time anomalies, demon hunters, and more general confusion than even they're used to dealing with on the regular in order to find a way home.

Meanwhile the MASH crew get a bunch of British spooks who just may win for being the weirdest patients they've ever had, and that's saying a lot.