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cylisse-ae · 1 year ago

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AQW Father's Day 2022 NPC Thread

Alright I'm going to just copy and paste everything verbatim from the twitter thread posted last year for /DreadForest, typos and all. Forgive me and the zilch amount of time I got

Omg all the time I had to censor words like kill and dead cause twitter would shadow ban you:

This isn't a Writer's Thread, just some extras for fun! 90% of the NPCs in the Father's Day release were already characters I had on hand I'll share where they came from as they may not reappear. They're DF Fan-OCs btw so info in the source material is non-canon to DF and AQW

If you've been here a while, you already know the dealio. Most of the one-shot concepts I turn into releases originated as Drakath/Hero Fanfiction. This Father's Day release is different in that the story itself is completely new and based on AQW canon, but includes DF OCs.

Lord Reignolds was originally a side character in the "Frog Fic" iykyk its available to everyone He got a downgrade from Duke to Lord but his abilities as a Necromancer got a boost in exchange to fit his purpose for the Telease. The details of that will be in the Writer's Thread

Within DF (non-canon fanfic, remember that), was a real wuss during the Rebellion. He's too squeamish to ever raise a corpse, and preferred to live quietly and not get himself into any trouble with the new King because of how terrified he is of Alteon

His paranoia is a constant but in the canon of AQW, Lord Reignolds' conspiracy crazy room had basis in fact while DF OC Reignolds was very much off of his rocker

Also in contrast- AQW Reignolds was able to bounce and take Marigold with him before King Alteon could find out about his unlawful activities. DF OC Reignolds was caught by Alteon when Marigold was much younger

As Chaos has no impact or presence in DF, Lord Reignolds did not become a Court Mage so that saved his daughter a lot of heartache DF OC Mari is removed from her father's care by Alteon earlier in her life so she's more expressive whereas her AQW version is sullen

DF OC Reignolds family has an estate where the flowers are care for more than the people who live on his land. And Mari is a curious and active child that has difficulties learning in conventional ways, which drove her Father crazy and made the servants protective of her

Within the "Frog Fic," Alteon puts his crown on the shelf for a moment and makes a decision as a Father. He wasn't comfortable giving custody of Mari to another, potentially opportunistic, noble. Rather, he arranged for Lady Celestia to find a quieter place for her to be raised.

Maybe I'll save the details for AQW Mari for later, since it also goes with what her purpose was for the Release

Moving on to Edward Vaughn who is also a pre-existing character I had on hand who would fulfil the needs for the release. Rather than specifically Ed who was the focus, his family and siblings are the main antags of the "Frog Fic" Ed himself is a special case however.

First though, thank you very much for your kind words! I have a lot of fun with any space I'm allowed to write in, and I find a lot of enjoyment creating scumbags like Ed! Funny you should say no face though

Edward has made no prior appearances in works I've made public. It's his brothers Henry and Richard (who's naming theme is based off of the House of Plantagenet) that are more active than he is as DF OC characters. Rather, Edward is solely an AQW Legion OC originally

Edward's family in general are supporters and big fans of the DF Hero, but are more subtle about their scumminess and deep hatred towards Alteon and the previous King But Ed gets no mention. He was far less subtle, was eventually caught for his crimes, and lost his head to a mob

As an AQW OC, Edward follows the conventions of his family where if they lose their heads, they'll still come back He manages to crawl out of his grave as a headless undead, and falls in with the Legion through unconventional means. None of his peers like him.

If you have something he wants, like gold or a pretty face, he'll act similarly to how he was in the release. But unmotivated, he's a lazy lout, enjoys picking on people weaker than him, and disrespecting his superiors. Idk he, wears a basketball as a fake head during meetings

Worse yet, he's a powerful fighter but will jump ship immediately if there's a paladin, warrior of good, or sweet hearted cleric that's cute around. "Bye guys, I'm a changed man, see you never." 6 months later, Ed comes back, said things didn't work out, does not elaborate.

As for Queen Eleanor and Ophelia, they are also DF OCs which we will have to go back...omg 9 years??? 9 years ago I made my first Modern AU fic that, of course, was Drakath/Hero At the time, I was making up placeholders thinking DF will eventually show Drakath's history.

WELL! 9 years later and here we are, the placeholders are now part of AQW's canon. I did talk with Cray about this and checked in with what AQ was doing. Messaged DF devs as well but didn't get a reply, then got scared, and didn't follow up with them

I promise I'll pull myself together in the future for the sake of AQW's lore quality. Lore is not the same across the AE games but checking in with each other, I feel, would be beneficial to get a robust understanding of characters as well as learn from different perspectives

I'm getting off track lol DF OC Eleanor is the wife of Drakath's father but is not his mother. Her family is affluent, rich, and a favorable marriage candidate. Problem was that she was unable to have children, but couldn't get a divorce because of the public shame.

Eleanor is a name come back to a lot because I really like Eleanor of Aquitaine, who was imprisoned by her 2nd husband (King Henry of England) and set free by her son Richard the Lionhearted. DF OC Eleanor feels that not only is she her husband's prisoner, Dkath is too

(remember this is all fanfic area that I made a long time ago, not canon unless something is expressly stated in-game) DF OC Eleanor holds no ill will towards Dkath, actually has affection for him as a son, and adopts a shivering/angry little dog that reminds her of him.

AQW Queen Eleanor was also married for her status and wealth. When Dethrix I successfully found and made a Vessel, he had her k*lled and framed it to look like she passed during childbirth. That way, there would be less suspicion on Dkath's origins

As for DF OC Ophelia, she was a teenage runaway who was too ashamed to return to her awful family when she realized that getting by on $200 she stole from her mom wasn't possible Eventually she finds work as a maid for Eleanor, but runs away when she realizes she's with child.

DF OC Ophelia is a scared, self-loathing person that makes big lies about how amazing, smart, and pretty she is. It's a way to force herself to get to that level, and eventually make those lies true. Fake it till you make it. Unfortunately, she's very unlucky.

Anyone named Ophelia is in danger of that cause of Bill the Bard, doomed to unfortunate and lonely ends which is why I have an affection for the name. DF OC Pheli would be a tool for her parents to gain wealth, wanted love but was only given fake affection if she was useful

She believes herself to be ugly, dull witted, and clumsy. A lonely and drab wreck that you'd have to put up with instead of want to be around. Having Dkath was actually a big turning point in her life, she cared for him a lot, and her life was a lot happier for a little while.

Then Dethrix's men found and threatened Ophelia into giving Drakath up. She only complied knowing that Dethrix was going to pass the baby off as his and his real wife's son. That way, he'd get to live like a Prince instead of having a cardboard box as a cradle.

After that, she fades into obscurity, once again alone in the world. In contrast to Drakath, she's a noble person in the ways of the heart but is invisible to others because of her poverty and unfortunate situation in life No one will notice or care if something happens to her

Meanwhile, no one will care if something happens to Drakath because he's a pathetic loser (Affectionate) Anyways, me and my friends joke that Drakath is cute while his dad looks like he spent too long in an air frier so we attributed Dkath's good looks to his unknown mother

That's how DF OC Ophelia, and now AQW Ophelia, came to be as a concept. She originally was a woman with black hair and pink irises but for AQW, they're green to better show the blood link to her son.

Bill is a completely new character for AQW, and softened things for AQW Ophelia. In the original concepts, he never existed so Ophelia really was all on her own. He could have been named Laertes but that's too on the nose and noble sounding. Bill is more down to earth sounding

That turned into a long but fun thread for me to make

This is all early concept/fanwork stuff outside of the context of AQW If you read this far,thanks for reading and I hoped you found stuff interesting! The Writer's Thread with Lore confirmations will be up on Monday

#Extra Thread #Father's Day #Dreadforest #AQW #Drakath #Bill #Ophelia #Edward Vaughn #Lord Reignolds #Marigold Reignolds #Actually this is gonna be great to organize

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animeandmangatalk · 3 years ago

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when antis discover the shounen genre

It’s as amusing as it is sad when people don’t understand the shounen genre. Shounen is a genre directed at young adult males. Though people of all sorts of genders fell in love with it as it is. It is very diverse and covers a range of topics. Many popular series, especially those in the west (the Big three - One Piece, Bleach, Naruto) have a focus on fan service. Not all shounen include as much violence or fan service, but if series do, that’s fine.

What caused this post? A twitter discussion about fanservice in One Piece- particularly how the females were portrayed. Some people stated they did not like the fanservice too much.

Others argued that the females were not reduced to their looks and are continuously portrayed as smart, kind, well versed in combat, mentally strong, good at combat and over all rather well rounded compared to many male characters who are more muscle than brains. Some also noted they did not mind or even enjoyed the fanservice.

Things got tricky when people and Oda were insulted, and accused of being pedophiles for providing and liking fanservice. It is interesting that people expect the characters like Sanji to be perfect, respectable characters without faults. Of course Sanji’s behaviour is over the top and would not be acceptable in real life.

One Piece is a series about lawless pirates. If Sanji’s behaviour were to be taken as an example, One Piece would also “promote” stealing, solving problems with violence, underage drinking, over eating, running away from home, trusting strangers, vandalism, hurting people, killing people, breaking out of prison, celebrating a criminal life. People realize that these acts are only acceptable in fiction for entertainment purposes. People know Sanji’s behaviour is not something that should be copied in real life, many of these scenes also lead to funny moments (characters getting punished for not respecting other characters personal boundaries. This leads to an educational value of showing problematic content, though that’s a new argument on its own).

Complaints regarding fanservce are especially noticable in big fandoms. Perhaps, because the fandoms are very active compared to others, maybe because many new (western) people now discover these shows and are shocked that these series do not match well with their (western, christian influenced) values. People argue that norms and values can and should change. Just because no one complained about fanservice 20 years ago, does not mean people can’t speak up against it today.

Criticism should be allowed, but how much sense does it make to complain about fanservice in anime and manga, when a huge part of that medium is to allow people to explore and express themes in fiction? The main focus of many shounen series is not to educate, but to entertain and allow people an escape from strict real life.

It might be best to compare the Fanservice in shounen series to soft pornografic content. (The following refers only to fictional content such as anime, manga, doujinshi, fanfictions).

Usually people select content they like. If people don’t like fanservice in shounen, that’s okay. No one forces them to watch it and there are plenty other shounen with less fanservice. Of course many scenes would still make sense without the fanservice, but why should an author censor themselves? According to sales and fan content created (doujinshis, fanfic, posters, pillowcases...) the majority of the readers do not mind fanservice and enjoy it. It’s been part of the genre for a long time and changing it would equal to requesting slasher fics being less violent.

Anime and Manga even if targeted at a young, Japanese audience, might not be suitable for a young Western audience.

Just because someone is uncomfortable with a scene does not mean an author is required to censor their content. Everyone is feeling uncomfortable about different things. If everyone had to be pleased, nothing would be left. The anime and manga community fought long and hard to be able to view uncut content. Based on how some people argue, it seems like they’d prefer a 4kids version of One Piece and other shows. Currently a lot of content creators have to fear about their work getting censored. A purity mentailty is fighting to ban pronographic content (OnlyFans, Patreon ect. are all affected by this). Is this the future? To ban all pornografic content?

#pro shipping #pro ship #fanservice #sanji fans

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occidentaltourist · 4 years ago

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I am not sure why Elon should be censored (unless I misunderstood your tags?). He isn't forcing anyone to go.

Musk is hosting Saturday Night Live this weekend. This is the additional platform I’m talking about; so his personality cult can exult in whatever pop culture cachet the show still has.

Nobody is censoring him or suggesting he’s forcing people to go on his carbon-bomb space tourism trips. I just don’t think he needs any more attention than he already gets for being a rich, destructive asshole. Is SNL really that hard-up for new hosts that they have to go this route.

From this Mashable article:

Elon Musk is funny. Not in the way, say, Gilda Radner or John Swartzwelder or Ziwe Fumudoh or Chris Fleming are funny, which is to say he is not funny because he deliberately, successfully does things that are meant to be funny. Nor is he funny in an accidental way, like Ed Balls or dogs with their lips stuck on their teeth.

Musk is funny because his very existence is hilarious. He lives his life like a cartoon version of a tech billionaire, steals memes because he's not funny enough to make his own, and not only tweets like a Hank Scorpio parody account run by your 14-year-old nephew in 2010 but also sometimes runs his incredibly successful businesses that way too. His idea of a funny joke is to cause significant market disruption with a tweet, inviting a securities fraud charge, which he settled and said was "worth it". He is funny like a dad trying way too hard to vibe with his teenage daughter's sleepover guests: his desperation to get a laugh is palpable, and when he gets one, it'll be at him, not with him, after he leaves the room.

Of course, this isn't the only reason people — including the cast of the show — are pissed off that he's hosting SNL. Musk is one of the two richest people on Earth, and there is an argument to be made that it is morally repugnant to be worth multiple billions of dollars and spend it on Twitter jokes and research into impossible sci-fi missions when, as a great philosopher once said, there's people that are dying. He's spread COVID-19 misinformation and called stay-at-home orders "fascist".

#lex luthor larper #elon musk #asks

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floatingcatacombs · 4 years ago

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Evaluting Gatchaman Crowds Through Rui’s Outfits

12 Days of Aniblogging 2020, Day 1

Oh, I’m fashionably late to this one. Gatchaman Crowds is a 2013 superhero anime that serves as a soft reboot of the old tokusatsu franchise, only now with 21st century shitty anime tropes. From this painfully generic setup emerges a surprisingly layered evaluation of technological disruption in the smartphone era. For this reason, Crowds is a favorite amongst anime bloggers as a superhero work that’s actually trying to do something interesting.

Unfortunately I don’t care about any of these guys

But it’s also a favorite amongst all sorts of weirdos because of the character Rui Ninomiya. A horrifying amalgamation of the technolibertarian CEO and trans femme hacker archetypes, Rui is by far the most interesting character in the show, because they’re a surprisingly prescient look at how the tech industry will function throughout the 2010s. But they’re also a ‘boy’ who never leaves their house without dressing in the most girly clothes imaginable. Predictably, this is catnip for me. But the funniest part of the whole situation is that nobody ever addresses it. Rui never provides an explanation for their outfits and the rest of the cast just uses she/her until they properly get acquainted and switch to he/him.

I could tell you that Rui’s obviously trans and wrap up the post right there, but that’s honestly not the most interesting angle of attack here. So I’m just going to use whatever pronouns I feel like in the moment for them and focus on what really matters: fashion! Rui has a surprisingly large wardrobe throughout the show, so I’ll be doing the heavy lifting of ranking each of her outfits. Oh, and also maybe a little analysis of what she represents. Spoilers for the whole show, of course.

7. The Yellow Dress

Let me lay out Rui’s ideology before I lay into their fashion disaster. You see, they’re a tech disruptor who believes that governments and bureaucracies are too slow to achieve the monumental (yet unspecified) change that society needs. So, they preside over a smartphone app called GALAX that successfully predicts Pokemon Go’s geosocial AR gimmick three years early. GALAX is a technolibertarian’s wet dream – crowdsourced emergency response, interest-based meetups, and matchmaking for people who need specific help and the people who can help them, all deeply gamified.

Their outfit here is about as messy as their politics, but at the same time, what a look. She’s got blue-and-white-striped programming thigh highs on under her combat boots, which are both such trans iconography, you know? While they may just be a reflection of early-2010s 4chan crossdressing culture, it’s also totally possible that Rui directly influenced or reinforced trans girl fashion, like the accelerationist she is. What a prescient show, in all sorts of weird ways.

6. Lace-up Dress with Bunny Ears

It wouldn’t be an anime girl cosplay without some bunny ears, now would it? Rui spends 5 minutes in an early episode just wandering around the city in this outfit, listening to people’s conversations and feelings on GALAX. There’s something very funny about how nobody even notices them, like they’re completely invisible despite their ridiculous outfit. This actually factors back into the tech stuff! Like pretty much every tech company, Rui’s app and vision are both sleek and shiny but rely on tremendous amounts of dirty labor kept as hidden as possible. From Amazon’s inhumane warehouse conditions to Facebook’s trauma-inducing moderator farms to Apple’s child labor-tainted supply chains, there’s always suffering humans behind the too-good-to-be-true magic of tech companies. Rui’s lie by omission is failing to mention that the app relies on invisible extradimensional beings called CROWDS that are manually controlled by underpaid workers to assist its users. One of the workers comes to Rui challenging their vision and arguing that they should be sharing this tech with the movers and shakers of the world, not trying to keep it invisible. He threatens a collective walkout and Rui fires him. At this point, we’re not even operating on metaphors.

5. Green Business Casual

Sure, most tech companies have cruel labor underbellies, but there’s also the separate risk of moral rot. It’s what causes Microsoft to take on ICE contracts and Google to develop censored versions of their search engine at the whims of authoritarians. Many tech companies start off with an altruistic message, but without a serious ethical core, they will start doing a whole lot of evil as they bend to financial and other pressures. Rui’s version of this is extremely literal: she made a deal with the devil to gain the ability to use the CROWDS and launch her app. Except this devil is also a butch gender-noncomforming alien (there is a Lot of other gender going on in this show that I don’t even have time for) and the two of them seem to have an extremely fucked-up relationship. Like any good Faustian bargain or any bad attempt at raising more venture capital without a viable business model, eventually the whole thing comes tumbling down and now you’re doing something terribly fucked up. Rui looks good in a dress shirt, at least!

4. Whatever your abusive partner puts on when she body-snatches you

Of course the center won’t hold, GALAX is subject to a hostile takeover, and to nobody’s surprise, an app with the flimsy promise to change the world for the better can actually be way better at ripping it all apart. I guess the prescient social media parallel here is Facebook being used to propagate Myanmar’s ethnic cleansing, or really anything related to Twitter for the last 5 years. FuckedUpAlienMimic!Rui sure does have cute fangs and a way more refined fashion sense though. I don’t feel like looking into that one.

3. Business....Futch?

I know I’m not done outlining Rui’s arc, but I’m going to skip ahead for a moment to say that Gatchaman Crowds also has a second season! I’m largely ignoring it here because Rui is pretty much stripped of all plot relevance and most of her outfits are less exciting, but I had to include this one. For two episodes, she puts on bright yellow stirrup leggings and an oversized polo shirt, with a cute ponytail to boot. It’s a ridiculous look, but still feels really evocative to me. Sometimes a girl just has to put together completely uncoordinated outfits and see what happens.

Unlike the disruption-focused first season, Gatchaman Crowds season two, which aired in 2015, is about how unfettered technolibertarianism can easily descend into fascism. Goddammit.

2. The Bunny Ears Outfit Again Oh God Who Hurt Her

The weight of the world comes crashing down in Rui’s hands, she’s bruised and beaten in a surprisingly sadistic manner by her alien ex-business partner/girlfriend, and she’s locked out of her own company which is very quickly causing society to fall apart. So what does she do? She puts the bunny dress back on, and wanders the streets again until she has to call upon the powers that be to fix her own mess. It’s silly that the powers that be in this world are superheroes, but I bet you forgot that this was technically a superhero show at this point. Anyways, my extended metaphor is quickly drifting off course, but I guess this is the part where Rui gets grilled by Congress and slapped with an antitrust case.

1. Every Trans Girl Stereotype Rolled Into One

I’ve been incredibly harsh on Rui throughout this writeup, because I’m harsh on the industry she represents, but I’ll make it up with this section. Look at what she’s wearing! A choker, the gothiest Hot Topic dress imaginable, arm warmers, no less than three asymmetric garters not even holding up anything, and the tallest black boots she could find. It’s incredible! If the first outfit on this list was hinting at her relationship to stereotypical trans fashion, then this outfit just screams it. It’s the perfect goth femme hacker look, a style commitment I have no choice but to respect.

Gatchaman is a weird show. After spending most of its runtime thoroughly dunking on tech disruptors for being too optimistic and uncritical, it takes a last-minute turn into Lockean state of nature arguments. It settles on “the masses are inherently good enough that empowering people through technology shouldn’t ever be a problem”, ignoring all the suffering that happened due to Rui’s unwillingness to curate their own technology. I’d give Gatchaman Crowds an average rating, but it’s one of those interesting average ratings where instead of being milquetoast, they tried something and failed and wrote themselves into a corner. But hey, at least there’s an interestingly gendered character!

#12 days of anime #gatchaman crowds #rui ninomiya #trans #technology

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screechingkingdomhottub · 4 years ago

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my thoughts on the starkid controversies

{TCB included} yo so i got some opinions that i’m gonna spread...now. So does starkid have some inherently problematic things in their musicals that whether intentionally or not promotes a stereotype? Yeah. Let’s unpack these a little, okay? So let’s start at the beginning with Little White Lie. I think Little White Lie did great, there’s an episode where they defend trans people and the transphobic person is the villain and as a young closeted trans dude watching that...it was totally awesome. Now, AVPM, i dunno mans. I love it, I’ve seen the series many a times and used to watch it to cheer me up at night, I think it critiques JKR’s stereotypes very well and goes full out of “well if dumbledore is gay...let’s make him flaming gay” which is awesome. I saw Devin posted a youtube video talking about how she feels she stole the Cho Chang role away from an Asian actress who is known for playing Lavender Brown called Sango Tajima. I, personally, never got that vibe but I don’t think that’s up to me, I wasn’t there, I’m white, she ended up getting more roles and I encourage y’all to watch Devin’s video on it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fubo7wfGcuo I’m gonna skip a few cause there’s a lot of musicals and I’m tired. I think a lot of people feel uncomfortable about Umbridge’s portrayal and the way the relationship with Dumbledore is done because it can correlate to the trans women are often seen and portrayed and watching it thinking about it like that...makes it a bit cringey. On a similar note, in Spies Are Forever, Susan is a crossdressing character that has transphobic undertones. Now, I’m not saying starkid are transphobic or racist or should be cancelled or whatever. And I believe a lot of this stuff they have redeemed and tried to progress forward a lot better and that’s awesome. I am a firm believer everyone should just be judged based on their intentions. If someone has good intentions but does a shite job and people point out they’re not fulfilling those good intentions then they can change and grow and it’s great. So I love Black Friday but I have a gripe. Can we talk about Gary Goldstein for a bit? Now, I find the character kinda funny, Jon is an amazing actor and his portrayal is awesome. But Gary Goldstein is a lawyer...a very greedy lawyer...with the last name Goldstein. So for those of you that are unaware, Goldstein is a Jewish last name...Jewish stereotypes commonly consist of being very greedy lawyers...you see the issue here? I’m not Jewish, being completely honest I’m still confused about what being Jewish actually means however for Black Friday to take such strong political stances and add to it a so easily avoidable tidbit, literally without the name no one would conflate it with being Jewish but damn. And Hatchetfield names matter so much from what I’ve seen, so there’s thought behind this which makes it worse? So onto Robert Manion, pitchforks ready? The first controversy I saw about him was to do with something called genderbent pictures. For those that don’t know, it’s when people take someone usually a character from something and switch them to the opposite sex. A lot of the trans community have an issue with this because it kinda eradicates nonbinary people a lot. Really focuses on the binary part, y’know? says “oh now they’re the gender they’re not actually” implying only 2...it’s kinda shitty. For me, personally, it’s dysphoria inducing. It highlights features everyone associates with only each gender and I start recognising all the features on the female version that i have on me and it’s not a fun time. I’m a big boi, i can deal. But many trans people replied to him when talking about this and expressed the dysphoria they were feeling, why promoting those was harming the trans community etc. He apologised but he only apologised for calling it gender bent and not digital drag which...is not what people were saying? I appreciate him making an effort on twitter to promote trans voices, idk much about american politics, so can’t say much on what he’s doing there but at least it’s something. What would be the most awesome thing for him to do is explain what the actual things the trans community told him and promote that to discourage those pictures or to encourage them to also include non binary people in some way cause artistic expression and stuff. More recent Robert Manion controversy is the body positivity pictures. I’m 100% for body positivity, always, anyone body shaming anybody (unless they’re a racist, rapist or general bigot) is a bAD BEAN. However, now this part is gonna get a little nsfw, so if you’re a minor please don’t keep reading, i aint trying to get arrested. i can’t figure out how to do the keep reading thing so consider this it. Minors leave. So, onlyfans is a website where you pay for porn basically like a total boomer simp but i digress. Some pages are softcore which is like just outlines of things...like people in their underwear. Robert posted pictures of him in his underwear and tagged it porn and onlyfans. Which if a grown man wants to do sex work I won’t stop him. That’s not the case here, the case here is he posted a picture in his underwear, where his ahem bulge is visible and sexualised it with the tags. There are minors that follow this man, that may have been scrolling through instagram in school and saw oh shit a dong. “But Joey Richter took off his pants in mamd!!!” yeah and that had a ton of warnings, you knew what you were gonna watch was for mature starkids only. “WHat about Lupin!!” couldn’t see the bulge. When I was 17, I went to see a play and a girl in it started stripping right down to her underwear, was just like seeing her in a bikini. The tags sexualised it but so did the bulge outline. He censored it on his story which kinda feels like he knew it was inappropriate. Something else that makes me very uncomfortable about this all is the Body Positivity argument. Now I have gender dysphoria, I have scars, I have stretch marks, acne, I’m so SO for body positivity. I rant so often about how fatphobia shouldn’t happen because weight doesn’t equal health. I’m not saying this is what he’s doing but that argument is used by actual groomers. Like y’know the fucks that groom children? i.e. onision (allegedly) where he’d say it’s just for body positivity and get children to send him pics of them in their underwear? You see why this is a dangerous argument here? I don’t think Robert’s intention was to do that but if you indirectly tell a bunch of teenagers posting pictures in their underwear is a good thing...I can’t be the only one making this link and the fact y’all defend this as “just shirtless pictures” is lowkey driving me wild. He apologised for the tags cause it was making fun of sex workers but please please please think of the risk. Please? Starkid mess up, they’re human, please stop acting like they do nothing wrong and please stop acting like they’re cancelled forever with no redemption okay bye PS please let me know any trigger warnings to add <3

#starkid #team starkid #robert manion #devin lytle #starkid controversies #please let me know any trigger warnings

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untapanimedraw · 4 years ago

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Ok, lets talk the Winter 2021 anime season

Dear god, there are so many shows airing. A ton of sequels, and a decent amount of new shows. I think I’ll actually break down what I’m interested in watching into two parts, sequels and new. Lets get started.

Watching:

Sequels

Jujutsu Kaisen - This is technically a continuation rather than a sequel, but the spirit is the same. This was my choice for favorite anime of the season fall 2020 so this continuation has me pretty hyped.

Black Clover - Still continuing. The manga had a 6 month time skip and the anime did some anime only stories with the author’s direction to cover that time period and now it’s caught up to that time skip. Shit is about to go down and I am stoked.

Attack On Titan: Final Season - So this started airing in December which makes for a strange airing schedule, but it’s technically continuing from the fall season into the winter season. Anyway, it is fucking fantastic and this week’s episode left us on a major cliff-hanger for 2 weeks.

That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime S2P1 - Ok, so first... HOLY FUCK I’M SO EXCITED FOR THIS SEASON, IT’S GOING TO BE AMAZING. Second, yes this is part 1. Thanks to covid there are some longer running seasons that are being split up to accommodate the production schedule. So this part 1 is airing in winter, then in the spring the 4-koma comedy re-telling is airing, and then in summer part 2 of this season 2 will air. it’s annoying, but 3 continuous season of slime is a welcome thing.

Re:Zero S2P2 - Alright, so this is the second half of summer 2020′s season 2 part 1. I have high expectations considering what we’ve already been given.

Dr. Stone: Stone Wars (S2) - HOLY FUCK I’M SO FUCKING EXCITED FOR THIS SHOW, I LOVED THE FIRST SEASON AND AM READING THE MANGA AND OMG I CANNOT WAIT FOR MORE.

The Promised Neverland S2 - More of the promised neverland. I’ve heard that this season will go even harder than the first season and Emma will prove even more why she’s best girl, so bring it on.

The Quintessential Quintuplets S2 - A second season of a decent harem show? Bring it on.

Log Horizon S3 - So I didn’t watch this when the first 2 seasons aired years ago, 6 I think actually. That said it’s always been on my PTW list and when I heard season 3 was going to air I decided that now was the time to catch up; and wow am I glad I did. I binged the first 2 seasons over the last 3 weeks and I am so fucking invested now. I cannot wait for this next season.

Higurashi GOU - this is continuing from last season and I’ll keep watching it, though I’m still not quite sure how to evaluate it.

Yuru Camp S2 - WOOHOO!!!!! This was the chillest of chill shows that aired winter 2018 and I absolutely loved it. I’m so excited for this next season for more camping and adorable girls being chill.

World Trigger S2 - So I was under the impression that there were already 2 seasons of this show, I watched most of it I think but it’s been so long I don’t really remember much. But this is being called season 2... so either this is retconning the previous season 2 or that was really just 1 big season despite the notation on some websites. Also a S3 has already been announced so I need to hurry up and rewatch this before the new season airs. But with 73 episodes that might take a bit of time.

Armor Shop for Ladies and Gentlemen S2 - This is a sequel to the short anime of the same name. If you like it, you like it.

New

Cells at Work S2 - Ok, technically this is a sequel, but I’m including it here because of something cool that’s happening with the next title.

Cells at Work: Black - Why yes, this is a different Cells at Work title. This is based on the spin-off manga of the same title that gender swaps the cells from the main series and covers their work inside an extremely unhealthy body. This is going to be a grittier, bloodier, and bleaker show than the main one and in a fun airing scheduling event, they will be airing back to back. I’m quite excited for the both of these.

Mushoku Tensei: Jobless Reincarnation - OMG I CANNOT BELIEVE THIS IS GETTING AN ADAPTATION! SADLY IT’S A SPLIT COUR SO THIS IS THE FIRST HALF OF SEASON 1 AND THE SECOND HALF WILL AIR LATER PROBABLY IN THE SUMMER. BUT THAT’S OK BECAUSE EVERYTHING I HAVE SEEN ABOUT THIS SO FAR TELLS ME THIS WILL BE A PRETTY DAMN FAITHFUL ADAPTATION AND IT IS GOING TO BE FANTASTIC.

Horimiya - I’ve heard many good things about this romance show and am looking forward to it.

Redo of Healer - Ok, here we go. This is going to be the outrage anime of the season. That is, if it is actually watched by people. It’s also getting 3 different levels of censoring so uh, I’ll have to check for the proper versions when it airs.

So I’m a Spider, So What? - Ok, so funny story. I’d been hearing about this manga for a while so I decided to dive into it a few months back. As I read it, I thought it was pretty funny but I wondered if the anime adaptation would be great for a comedy manga about a reincarnated girl into a spider’s body. Then about 3 weeks ago, I realized I was reading the comedy spin-off instead of the main story. That said I’m still quite excited to see this adapted and I’ll get the manga after then anime is done.

The Hidden Dungeon Only I Can Enter - Hella ecchi, actually pretty fun manga. I’m looking forward to this adaptation.

Suppose a Kid from the Last Dungeon Boonies moved to a started town - Hopefully this will be as fun as the manga was. Here’s a better synopsis than the Livechart one - Lloyd is the weakest person in his remote village but his dream is to become a soldier in the big city. So he moves to the city and strives to make his dream come true. However in a twist, it turns out that the remote village Lloyd came from is the retirement town for all the world’s strongest heroes and they are all massively overpowered, so when he gets to the city he’s stupidly OP but it doesn’t quite click for him. Shenanigans ensue. It’s fun and I’m looking forward to this adaptation.

Bottom-tier Character Tomozaki - This is supposed to be not quite as good a romance as Horimiya this season, but still decent. If that is the comedy romance this is the drama romance show and hopefully it’ll be good.

Kemono Jihen - Mystery, supernatural, Yokai. I’m intrigued in this show and hope it’s decent.

Otherside Picnic - Shoujo Ai, Sci-Fi, I’m sold.

Hortensia SAGA - This is based on a game, but I’ve heard that the story and scope are actually quite good and the PV actually looks quite good so I’m definitely gonna check this one out.

SK8 the Infinity - Ok, so my first impression of this was nah, I’ll pass. But then I saw the PV and saw it was being animated by BONES and my impression changed to Ok I have to at least give it a couple episodes.

2.43 Seiin High School Boys Volleyball Team - So this is supposed to be Haikyuu except lots more drama and less gameplay. It will really have to pull me in in order to get me to not think boring Haikyuu when I watch it. I’ll give it a couple episodes.

Dr. Ramune -Mysterious Disease Specialist- - Doctor heals people from Yokai or something like that. The tags look interesting as do the character designs. I’ll check it out.

Back Arrow - Fantasy setting but BOOM... Mecha! That premise at least demands a couple episodes of my attention.

Heaven’s Design Team - Here’s my chill comedy SOL show of the season. The premise is Heaven has a design team that creates/created all the animals. I’m very excited to see the shenanigans.

Gekidol - Idols and stage acting. After watching the new Love Live last season I’m in the mood for some idol stuff. But most interesting to me is the next show on this list.

Alice in Deadly School - It’s not currently known whether this will be a full series or an OVA or some other thing, but this is an anime of the stage play that is being put on in Gekidol. The same VAs in Gekidol that play the characters in this play are voicing the characters for this anime production. And I just think this whole setup is neat and am very interested to see it play out (pun fully intended).

Idoly Pride - This seems to be a more straight-forward idol show which I’m going to check out.

Maiko-san Chi no Makanai-san - Girl doesn’t quite cut it to do the thing she and her friend came to do, but she found that she can cook so uses her cooking for support her friends. SOL, lets go.

Wave!! Surfing Yappe!! - Surfing show, the animation will make or break this show so we will see how it turns out.

Wow, that is a lot of shows, lets add them up.

13 sequels and continuations

22 new shows

35 total. I kinda hope some of these suck cause HOT DAMN, that’s a lot of shows.

#anime #winter 2021

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cartoonessays · 5 years ago

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OFF-TOPIC: All the Rage

Dave Chappelle has just released his latest stand-up special on Netflix, Sticks & Stones. This stand-up special comes after four other comedy specials that have been beleaguered with criticism over Chappelle’s material about the LGBTQ+ community, particularly transgender people, and about the women who accused Louis CK of sexual misconduct. And Sticks & Stones has attracted just as much controversy as any of Chappelle’s other Netflix specials if not more.

And that’s by design.

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The special opens up with this quote from Kendrick Lamar’s “DNA”

Tell me somethin’ / You mothafuckas can’t tell me nothin’ / I’d rather die than to listen to you…

In Sticks & Stones, Dave Chappelle sets himself up as some kind of defiant martyr fighting the good fight against so-called “cancel culture” or any moral busybodies who get offended by any jokes he or any of his other comedian friends might have told at any point. Many of those who express praise and enthusiasm towards Sticks & Stones defend it on similar grounds, writing off any criticism of it as people being “too sensitive”, “offended”, and “trying to cancel Dave Chappelle”.

Enough dancing around the subject. I found the special really tired and juvenile. What he’s doing here is thumbing his nose at any critic who had dared to take issue with anything he has said in his prior Netflix special in a way that eschews the thoughtfulness that Chappelle is capable of for petulance. That might have been okay if it was funny regardless, but I didn’t think it was. A better version of what Chappelle tried to do here was more than 30 years ago, in Eddie Murphy: Raw. Eddie Murphy opened up this special complaining about criticism he got for his last special from Mr. T, Michael Jackson, and the gay community with much funnier jokes. The crescendo of this bit was his brilliant story of Bill Cosby calling him on the phone to browbeat him about his foul language.

A bunch of the critics praising Sticks & Stones are calling it revelatory and a breath of fresh air in this moment of time. Really? All this is is Chappelle’s version of “PC gone mad” in response to criticism, which is not a novel concept. Carlos Mencia’s whole shtick 15 years ago was to crack jokes using racial stereotypes and then spend the next ten minutes guilt tripping the audience into laughing by expressing faux-martyrdom aggrievement over “political correctness” or “sensitivity”. This is as cliche a comedy staple as “take my wife, please”. Other comedians who have gone this exact same angle include Jerry Seinfeld, Roseanne Barr, Larry the Cable Guy, Ricky Gervais, Bill Maher, Chris Rock, Andrew Dice Clay, Lil Duval, Jim Norton, Patrice O’Neal, Nick DaPaolo, Joe Rogan, Doug Stanhope, Rob Schneider, Lisa Lampanelli, Eddie Griffin, John Cleese, George Carlin, Aziz Ansari, Sarah Silverman, DL Hughley, Tracy Morgan, Adam Carolla, Amy Schumer, Tim Allen, Aries Spears, Russell Peters, Redd Foxx, Dennis Miller, Mike Epps, Patton Oswalt, Jeff Dunham, Sam Kinison, and Louis CK just to name a few.

Despite this being a cliche, I think taking the angle Dave Chappelle took here is more expedient for himself than ever. A part of the reason is because our society has become more politically polarizing than ever. A lot of the discourse around Sticks & Stones falls along politically partisan lines (yes, I know that includes myself too). Most of the people defending Dave Chappelle so ardently are right-wing pundits/publications like Breitbart, Dana Loesch, and Gavin McInnes and most of the people criticizing Chappelle are liberal/pro-LGBTQ+ publications. Chappelle and his defenders are using this special as a denouncing of “cancel culture”. I hate that term and I hate the framing around it even more because it’s so vaguely defined other than the fact that it’s nakedly partisan. The screeds against “cancel culture” are not so subtle digs at the left and reinforce a narrative that the left wants to censor everything and that the right are the true defenders of free speech and free expression. It’s weird that the “cancel culture” designation never applies when the right-wing gets upset about Nike, Gillette, or Keurig coffee makers.

I think a better name for all of this is “outrage culture” and it’s nonpartisan. So much of our public discourse is handled on social media, particularly Twitter, that rewards shorter and more attention-grabbing hot takes over lengthy, nuanced analysis. And one of the easiest ways to grab attention is by being outrageous or inflammatory. In response, online publications of all political stripes write their headlines in inflammatory ways that grab attention in order to be shared on social media. Even if the actual article has more nuance to it, most people don’t read past the splashy headline anyway. In regards to politics, it has further defined people, whatever their personal views may be, in reaction to what they aren’t or what they disagree with. It’s partially why so many people have blamed things like the 2016 Ghostbusters film or Star Wars: The Last Jedi as the reason they voted for Trump or why they’ll vote for Trump again. It’s also why so many of the people praising Sticks & Stones so zealously have attempted to use it as a rallying cry for Trump and Trumpism. This also goes for any liberals who expressed a desire to buy Nikes or Gillette razors after the right-wing meltdown over them.

Sticks & Stones was a rallying cry to anybody that has defined themselves or their politics to being anti-politically correct (which isn’t only right-wingers, but largely encompasses right-wingers) to look to Dave Chappelle as a hero to wrap themselves around. I felt the same way about Louis CK’s stand-up “comeback” where he mocked school shooting survivors, millenials, and non-binary kids. CK was hugely popular on college campuses and liberal crowds despite never being “politically correct”. He was also often very thoughtful in the way he towed that fine line when tackling touchy subjects. But in light of his sexual misconduct scandal, he must have figured that he permanently burned a bridge with that crowd so he pivoted to a crowd that doesn’t care that he sexually harassed multiple women. This same crowd also tends not to think too highly of the Parkland shooting survivors for their gun control activism or trans and non-binary people.

The thing is, Dave Chappelle and Louis CK don’t give a damn about any of these right-wingers or their pro-Trump causes. They’re just looking out for number one. Breitbart wouldn’t write fawning articles about Chappelle if the focus was on him expressing discomfort over a white person’s laughter over a blackface sketch he was doing on his show. They wouldn’t rally around Louis CK either if he was still telling jokes expressing confusion as to why women would want to date men based off violence against women statistics. Conversely, Nike and Gillette don’t actually give a damn about putting an end to police brutality or toxic masculinity. If they were to discover that they could make more money off of using “Blue Lives Matter” sentiment or objectifying women, they would do it in a heartbeat. This is all this whole shit is.

I suppose that’s ultimately the joke in all of this. I don’t find it very funny, but I suppose I’m just too sensitive, right?

#dave chappelle #sticks and stones #comedy #stand up #cancel culture #marketing #cartoon essays #just my thoughts

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pellicano-sanguino · 5 years ago

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The Long Carmilla Post 2 - Return of the Long Post about the Queen of Lesbian Vampires

When Tumblr tightened its policy about censoring nudity, they targeted a long post I'd made about Carmilla, since I showed photos of Ingrid Pitt and Yutte Stensgaard with their bare breasts in it. I have now censored the post, edited it and added a little. Carmilla is my favourite vampire of all time, and I have a long history with her different incarnations, so I wanted to bring the Long Carmilla Post back.

When I first posted the Long Carmilla Post, I had just seen the movie made by the Carmilla webseries folks. The sudden fame of the webseries surprised me. I can't help but think, that there must be a lot of new Carmilla fans, who instantly think of Natasha Negovanlis when they hear that name. If this series had been around when I was a teen, damn, would I have loved it! I would have been obsessed with it. But it was not, and I can't really become as obsessed with it now as the new fans do. Because when I hear the name Carmilla, several different faces appear in my imagination. I have already been obsessed with Carmilla from a rather young age, and while I love the webseries and this movie, for me it's just one of Carmilla's newer incarnations, not her default form.

I don't want to sound like a hipster (”I liked Carmilla before the webseries made her cool!”), I just thought that as a lesbian vampire lover I should make a post about my favourite vampire, and the history I have with the character.

There are some images of blood under the cut.

When I was younger, there really wasn't any lesbian litterature around (well, there probably was but I didn't know what books to search). I had a habit of switching genders in the books I read, making everyone female so I could get the girl romances I craved for, but this always felt forced and not ”real.” I read lots of vampire stories, because I've always loved that genre, but it was very much dominated by stories of male vampires. When I read Dracula, it had a short introduction speech that talked about the history of modern vampire stories, and it mentioned Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla.

Tracking the novella down was a bit hard, considering that back then I didn't have internet and so could only read books that I found in the library and bookstores. Fortunately the translation of Carmilla was included in one horror anthology that our library had. I managed to get my hands on it, and this cover illustration was the first ”face” of Carmilla that I knew.

I can't really put a finger on why I became so obsessed with this story. It's not that great of a novella. A very basic old-timey vampire story about a monster who threatens the life of the protagonist, who is saved when the monster's true nature is revealed, after which it is hunted down and destroyed. And the lesbian subtext is very, very subtle. There was just something very mysterious and fascinating about Carmilla. She is still among the few vampires who actually frighten me. Though Le Fanu's story isn't very scary by modern standards, Laura's nightmare scenes somehow got under my skin. There's something very creepy in the way vampires in older stories used to steal blood from their victims while they were sleeping. The idea, that there exists a predator who instead of straight up attacking its prey, approaces it by a cover of flawless mimicry, is horrifying. You are being slowly eaten alive and you're not even aware of it happening, or that it's your charming friend doing it to you.

I started having dreams about Carmilla. The first ones were nightmares, but even if they were scary, they didn't make me anxious, just excited. I was scared of Carmilla, but I wanted to see her, I wanted to hear her voice. It was as if I had fallen under her spell, much like Laura, but unlike Laura, I was aware of her true nature. I knew what she wanted, I knew that in my dreams, her kisses would lead to bites. But to a young lesbian who loved vampire stories, those kisses were worth losing a few drops of blood in the dream kingdom. She was one of ”my people.” She was not a genderswapped male hero, she was ”real.” She genuinely loved women and blood, and I loved her.

Halloween isn't really celebrated where I live, but one October a friend of mine decided that she'd hold a Halloween party (which became a yearly tradition for us for many years to come). She invited a group of her friends to watch horror movies at her house, and everyone should wear a costume. There was no competition what I would go as. I had a light blue dress that I decorated with blood stains, and over it I wore a dark gray cape, on which I had painted purple flower patterns to make it resemble the coat Carmilla wears on the cover illustration. It must be almost twenty years old, but I still have that cape.

Little Pellicano as Carmilla. I think I must have been 13 or 14 when this party was held.

Then I saw my first Carmilla movie. A Hammer film called Vampire Lovers.

This is a very silly movie. Very cheesy. But young Pellicano loved it. I can still quote many of the scenes from memory. The movie follows LeFanu's novella rather loosely, but I think it's one of the most faithful adaptations. It included the basic ”plot” that Carmilla uses to get close to her victims, has the nightmares (including Carmilla's monstrous cat form), keeps the plot point that she must form her new names anagrammically and makes her killer be a man who lost his daughter to the vampire. So far I think it's the only movie version that includes the scene where Carmilla sees the funeral procession of a girl she killed and loses it completely. I've always found that scene interesting, many claim that her fit of anxiety is caused by hearing the chanting (being unholy creature who's weak to christian things) but I think it's more than that. Either she has horrifying flashbacks to her own funerals (waking to vampirism and having to claw her way out of her own grave, that would scar me for sure) or she is genuinely sorry for killing the girl and terrified of having to face the truth that her love will always end in death.

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I want to interpret Carmilla as a vampire who really loves her victims, not as playthings but as real lovers. But she wasn't a reluctant vampire either, she embraced the monstrous side of herself. It was natural to her, and so it was inevitable that the women she loved would eventually die. Maybe she preferred to ignore this knowledge in the daytime, and when she was forced to see what her night time activities had resulted in, the fit of anxiety happened.

A bit off topic, but one scene from the novella that I've never seen make it into a movie, is when a wandering salesman offers his dentistry services to Carmilla, offering to file down her fangs, which sends Carmilla into a fit of rage. I don't know, I always thought that scene pretty funny. Poor guy, offering to de-fang a vampire and getting a HOW DARE YOU rant in response.

So, the next ”face” of Carmilla was obviously Ingrid Pitt. While this movie wasn't particularly explicit (all the sex happens off screen), the lesbian subtext was much less subtle, which pleased young Pellicano. And then there was the infamous bathing scene (would show pics, but gotta censor for Tumblr. You can easily find them by image googling.).

When I was younger, I suffered from being underweight for a long time (had always been a small girl). Seeing Ingrid Pitt's figure motivated me to try to gain weight. She was so beautifully soft and curved, not just her chest, but her shoulders and legs and everything just looked so smooth and nice, while I had thin, pointy, stick-like limbs with sharp edges and none of that lovely roundness. I know teens should not look at celebrities and actresses as body models, but I think having Ingrid Pitt's shape as body goal was healthy for me. I never reached that goal, of course, but I did eventually reach normal weight limits (50kg, the weight needed for blood donors).

That friend of mine, who hosted Halloween parties, watched the movie with me and knew that I was obsessed with Carmilla. One day she got me a fake gold necklace with a red plastic gem on it, shaped like a blood drop. I don't know where she got this trinket from, but it was similar to the pendant Carmilla wears in the movie, and even if it was just cheap junk, I treasured it. And totally wore it during the next Halloween party, going as Carmilla like I always did. I've lost the gold chain, but I still have the gem.

Also still have the VHS. I don't know why I've kept it, I have no VHS player anymore.

Before I move on from Ingrid Pitt, I’d like to mention a pet peeve of mine. Ingrid Pitt has done two vampire roles (three if Elisabeth Bathory from Countess Dracula is counted). The more famous role is obviously Carmilla, it’s probably her most famous role ever, period. Her other vampire role is Carla Lynde from House that Dripped Blood. Now, the thing that annoys me is that article writers tend to always mix these two up. Whenever they write something about Carmilla or female vampires in general, they always mention Ingrid Pitt’s role as Carmilla in Vampire Lovers, but they always use the same damn stupid promo photo that is from House that Dripped Blood. That’s lazy research! Do they just image google “Ingrid Pitt vampire” and fail to check if the photo they use is actually from the movie they’re talking about?! The roles don’t even look identical, Carmilla’s a brunette while Carla Lynde is blonde, Vampire Lovers is set in 1800s, House that Dripped Blood is set in 20th century. The worst one was when the museum in my home city had a vampire themed exhibition and even they used the wrong photo for Vampire Lovers. If a museum can’t get their facts straight, that’s just sad.

Here is an example of my pet peeve in action, an article about vampire movies, using the wrong fucking photo for Vampire Lovers. And yes, I know why they like using this particular photo (”höhöhöö boobs, I’m so mature”). But that just makes me more angry when they do it.

Hammer made a sequel to Vampire Lovers called Lust for a Vampire. It was... disappointing. It introduced a male love interest for Carmilla, which in my opinion was complete bullshit. If you want to make a story about a female vampire who falls in love with a human boy, by all means make it, but don't call it Carmilla, call it something else. That being said, there were a good amount of lesbian action going on as well (this time Carmilla plotted her way into an all girls' school...) and if there's one thing Hammer rarely fails at delivering, it's the bucketloads of unconvincing bright red fake blood. I skipped the icky het sex, but always enjoyed this scene:

Yeah, Yutte Stensgaard was the third ”face” of Carmilla. When I think of that name, this blood-covered, sleepy-looking vampire maiden is among the images that instantly pop into my mind.

The third Carmilla movie I saw was titled just Carmilla and starred Meg Tilly.

This was clearly a cheaper (maybe made for TV) adaptation. Meg Tilly didn't leave as big an impression as Ingrid Pitt and Yutte Stensgaard did. But I do remember one line from the movie clearly. When Marie (the southerner ”Laura” of this version) asks about Carmilla's past, Carmilla brushes it aside by saying ”That was another lifetime. I'm much happier now.” I adopted this phrase into use. Whenever people are unknowingly asking about a painful thing from my past that I don't want to talk about, I will say it to let them know that nothing good comes from digging old wounds that have already scarred. That was another lifetime. I'm much happier now.

I do remember that Meg Tilly's Carmilla was the movie with the ”awkward floaty blood drinking pose.”

I'm sorry, but that just doesn't look comfortable. Or functional.

Then the big day came – my family got a computer that could access internet. It was an awful piece of junk that could barely be used for writing emails and visiting messageboards. It wouldn't play videos, loading images took forever and big pictures often made it freeze. However, I had access to the internet now. The first word I ever googled was obviously ”carmilla.” Among the sites I found back then, was one about a German play, starring a woman called Ulrike Schneidewind.

The site had big, beautiful promo photos of the play. They took forever to load, but I returned to watch them often. There was something captivating in Ulrike Schneidewind's look for Carmilla. I'm not usually a fan of vampires with the white face+red lipstick+loads of mascara-look, but hers was beautiful, like a painting, like a creature that really wasn't human.

I don’t know if they used fake blood in the actual play or if it was only for these promo photos, but it looks incredibly pretty and surprisingly convincing.

I have no idea what this demon looking thing is supposed to be - Carmilla’s monstrous cat form maybe?

Ulrike Schneidewind became the next ”face” of Carmilla, even though I have never seen her act. All I've seen are these promo photos of the play (I have heard her speak. There's a couple minutes long news clip on Youtube about a vampire lifestyler event she attended). Supposedly there exists a VHS of the Carmilla play they performed on a Romanian tour, but they must have only made a handful of those, since I've never seen it on sale anywhere. I check the German eBay every now and then in faint hopes of finding a copy but I've come to accept that I'll probably never see this show. But still, Ulrike Schneidewind's look left an impression on my mind.

Around those times I started to draw comics in which my self-insert character shared a house with six vampire roommates (Carmilla, who owned the house, Brunhilda from Wake Not the Dead, Teresa from Last Lords of Gardonal, Ruthven, Dracula and Francis Varney) and an OC named Charity (Brunhilda's donor and girlfriend). I mostly pulled the designs for my vampires out of thin air, really (well, Dracula was as he was descrided in the novel, with fuzzy moustache and bushy eyebrows) but Carmilla's design was based on Ulrike Schneidewind's look, with blue veins shining through the white skin and lots of dark makeup and black hair.

Sad part is that it's been over ten years and my drawing skills have not improved at all. This is not ”art” this is doodles. But drawing these was super fun back then, so I shouldn't feel ashamed of them now, I think.

Besides these comics, I wrote some fanfics too. But I'm very glad I never put those anywhere public, because damn, they are embarrassing to read now. It's because my fanfics were actually serious business, full of drama and sturm und drang, and they turned out rather cheesy. Also full of, ahem, erotic content written by someone who had no personal experience on the subject yet. The comics on the other hand were just made for shits and giggles, and I think they've survived the test of time better (by which I mean, that I have actually shown my comics to other people, because occasionally I think I made a fun one, while I've never shown my fics to anyone and have already burned the worst ones.).

When the wonderland of internet was opened to me, I gained access to all the books in the world. I was no longer restricted by what our library and book stores had, I could buy stuff that wasn't published here. So obviously I got a copy of Kyle Marffin's Carmilla sequel. It's not a very good book. Quite silly, childish and badly written (men really shouldn't write about lesbians, they know nothing about them and enjoying an erotic scene becomes rather hard when you imagine some gross het dude writing it while drooling on his keyboard). But it was the first time I read a rather explicit lesbian sex scene, and that got me very excited, because finally all the subtext was thrown to garbage. Here it was, black on white, proof that Carmilla was into girls, not just their blood but their bodies as well. My late discovery of lesbian erotica may seem weird now, when anyone can gain access to mountains of lesbian smut in the internet, but back when I lived with my parents I never dared to look up smut on the home computer, in fear that they'd find out. Until I moved out, my only access to lesbian erotica was books, and Carmilla's Return was the first one I got.

Rant time: I might also add, that annoyingly enough I had been encountering explicit het sex scenes in books, movies and TV years before. And while I never intentionally searched naughty stuff on the net, I had bumped into het porn there accidentally as well. I wonder if heteros understand how freaking frustrating this kind of thing was. Their smut was all over the place, in every book, every film and all around the net, pretty much rubbed to my face, while MY stuff was so obscure I didn't even know where to look for it. And then they had the nerve to claim that we are ”flaunting it” and ”making it all about ourselves” whenever there was a gay sidecharacter somewhere. Grr. Grrr. Rant over.

I bumped into some incarnations of Carmilla later too, but none left an impression on my mind like these early ones did. The worst Carmilla I ever saw was the main villain in Lesbian Vampire Killers. That movie is easily the worst vampire movie I have ever seen (maybe even the worst movie I've seen, period), it's an ”erotic horror comedy” that is neither sexy, scary or funny. It is nice that when they were thinking of a character to star in a movie about lesbian vampires, they chose Carmilla. But the movie is such utter garbage, I'd rather they'd left my favourite vampire out of it. Save your money and sanity - don't watch this movie. It's bad.

I feel like a lot of time people want to take Carmilla's name and make a whole new character with it (like Reimi Urara's character in Vampire Succession, who is named Carmilla but isn't even a vampire at all). These ”Carmilla in name only” kind of characters don't count, and frankly speaking I'm not that fond of them. I guess it is nice that people want to pay respect to the legendary vampire by naming a character after her, but my opinion still is that if you don't want to tell the story of a lesbian vampire, call your character something else. If you take away either of Carmilla's two passions; that of women or that of blood, the character loses her trademark characteristics and stops being ”real.” You don't make a Godzilla movie where the king of the monsters isn't allowed to have his trademark atomic breath, and you don't make a Carmilla who doesn't love women and blood.

Now that I have said that, you probably guess my opinion about the (*spoilers*) ending of the webseries's third season. Yeah, I wasn't a fan of humanizing Carmilla. So, I went to see the movie with rather low expectations, and was pleasantly surprised. This movie is more Carmilla than all of the webseries's seasons together.

But let's speak about the webseries first. I was very positively surprised by it. One day I ended up googling Carmilla again (was probably looking for fanfics) and discovered this little gem. It had very little to do with Le Fanu's original, but what it decided to change was so good that I didn't care. And it had still lots of little nods to the novella. Carmilla's anagrammical names, the nightmares, they freaking included Laura's governesses De Lafontaine and Perrodon (I would totally watch a spin-off that just follows the adventures of Laf and Perry) and there's even a scene where Carmilla is watching over sleeping Laura, looking a bit similar to a famous illustration of the novella. Also, the theme song ”Love will have it's sacrifices”, is a direct quote, from a scene where Carmilla is describing to Laura the night when the curse of vampirism was passed on to her (of course, she doesn't out right say it, but the reader knows what she's talking about).

”--- I was all but assassinated in my bed, wounded here," she touched her breast, "and never was the same since."

"Were you near dying?"

"Yes, very--a cruel love--strange love, that would have taken my life. Love will have its sacrifices. No sacrifice without blood.---”

I'm not going to say the webseries doesn't have its flaws, a little lazy writing here and there, plot holes and inconsistent characters occasionally (I feel sorry for Danny. She just can't win.). But it was incredibly entertaining, it made me laugh and it made me care about what happens to everyone. And like probably a lot of the fans, I adored the fact that they didn't dance around the lesbian thing. When Laura understands that Carmilla's advances weren't blood-related, her reaction isn't any dumb ”But we're both girls, how can this be?!” Whoever understood to make Laura gay too was a genius. When she gets all flattered and blushing after learning that a beautiful girl finds her attractive, it's such a relatable feeling. It's the lesbian romance I so wanted as a teen! Not stories of a predatory lesbian seducing dumb clueless het girls to the dark side, but girls experiencing all the usual things female leads in romantic stories do, only with another girl as their love interest.

The first season of the webseries is my favourite. The second was pretty good, too. Third, in my opinion, a bit unnecessary (here I think you could see the writing starting to slip). Then came the movie.

They could have completely abandoned the vampire theme and proceeded with the heroes' further adventures. But they didn't and thank goodness for it. They return to draw inspiration from the original source; the novella. We have nightmares, and I admit they actually made me uneasy, reminding me of that creepy feel Laura's dream scenes gave me in the novella. The image of Carmilla laying down in a coffin filled with blood is also from the story. There's a scene where Carmilla is forced to reveal her vampiric nature, and it really reminds me of the scene where it happens in the book.

And they freaking quote it, probably being the first adaptation ever to use straight quotes from the book. ”Die together so they can live together”-speech isn't quite right word-to-word, I think, but still, it's an identifiable quote. I used to be able to quote the ”You are mine, you shall be mine”-speech in English, Swedish and German, but have now forgotten most versions (yeah, I read Carmilla in several languages when I was younger. I was freaking obsessed with the story). I still think it's the most memorable quote from the novella. Also, the book-reading scene with ”Girls are caterpillars who undergo several larval stages before becoming butterflies”-speech is also from the novella. I think the only famous quote missing in this movie is the ”I've never been in love and never shall unless it should be with you”-speech.

As a fan of the ”old” Carmilla I adore how they pay homage to the origin respectfully, while still making their very own story. Again, teenaged Pellicano would have been all over this stuff. But I had to make my lesbian vampire stories from other versions, and while those also have their flaws, I adore them just as much. I am just happy that Carmilla lives on, not forgotten and left in the shadow of the countless more famous male vampires (seriously, where the fuck are all the female vampires? Ones that are actually main characters in their story and pass the freaking vampiric Bechdel test?)

Carmilla lives on, indeed. She has made a new comeback in Netflix's Castlevania series. I watched the first season and liked it quite a bit. It was a bit too gorey for my personal taste, but that wasn’t a dealbreaker. I liked the art style and was interested to see where they take the story. When I heard rumours that the second season would have a character named Carmilla, my reaction was pretty much “Carmilla is part of the Castlevania franchise?! Why did no one tell me this before?!”

Of course I’m always eager to see new adaptations of my favourite vampire. So, I did some research to know which games she appears in, made some popcorn and sat down to watch some Let’s Play videos (I’m not a gamer and don’t own game consoles so the only way I get to experience videogames is through Let’s Plays in Youtube.). But I ended up rather disappointed. Carmilla in the Castlevania games is cartoonishly silly at best, downright insulting to the original at worst.

So, after seeing how poorly the games treated my favourite vampire, I looked forward to the second season of the Netflix series with mixed feelings. I was hopeful, thinking that they can't go anywhere but up from here. And I was pleasantly surprised. The character design made her a bit silly looking with eeeevil face and her body language is very femme fatale-ish (I don’t really see the appeal of the femme fatale trope, but then again, it’s usually written for male audience), but they didn't put her in an ugly, revealing costume and the camera focused on her face instead of her breasts.

It's disappointing that she isn't a lesbian in this one (she makes one joke that hints she might be into girls too, but because Dracula's war council is mostly one big sausage fest, we don't see her interact with other females much).

I am so, so happy that the makers of the show understood that Carmilla is not some boot-licking notice-me-senpai Dracula fangirl (an aspect of her I loathed in the games). The only reasons for a lesbian vampire to ally with a male one are if they have a common goal (such as defending themselves against vampire hunters) or if she has no other choice. Netflix Carmilla is the latter. Dracula is a powerful, dangerous monster, who is also very much insane and therefore unpredictable. When he summons Carmilla to join his senseless crusade against humankind, Carmilla can't afford to refuse and take the chance of the mad vampire king killing her for disobedience and making a warning example of her. She has to go to war she herself deems pointless (well, Godbrand had a point in his ”If vampires kill all the humans, what will the vampires eat?”-speech.). So she begins to plot to prevent the genocide (she actually wants humankind to keep existing as opposed to wiping them from the face of the Earth, remind me again why she is the one every fan hates while they love Dracula the Kill All Humans-madman? Oh right, she assaults one of the male fan favourite characters on screen and is therefore deemed much more evil than Dracula who slaughters countless innocent humans offscreen without mercy. Got it.).

I love that she uses cunning instead of seduction when putting her plot to gain freedom from Dracula's servitude in action. Admittedly, some of the scenes where she's manipulating Hector seem a bit seductive-ish, but are still nothing compared to the ”Oh great master let me lick the blood off your sword!”-bullshit from the games. Also, was I the only one who could see right through her mindgames? Every time she complimented some man, I was shaking my head ”Lady, even blind Reetta can see that you are full of shit.” So it really surprised me when Hector fell for it. How do you fall for such an obvious trap?

I like that Carmilla's reasons for her schemes are reasonable and based on common sense and war strategy rather than just being evil for the sake of being evil. That being said, the scene where she beats Hector felt unnecessary, the man was tied up and would have gone with her even without getting his ass handed to him, because he's a prisoner and has no choice. I understand that it's an important scene symbolically, tying back to the scene where the animal-loving Hector compares vampires to cats, to which Isaac points out that cats play cruelly with their prey. It's a turning point for Hector, who abandoned humanity and tried to find a new family among monsters only to realize that they are, well, monsters. What did you expect voting for Leopards Eating Peoples' Faces Party would bring to you? Anyway, I understand that the scene is important to the plot and character growth, but I can't help but feel that making Carmilla assault a fan favourite character so brutally was the writers way of making sure the audience hates her. I have a feeling that they want to be sure the audience hates her, because they have something disgusting in mind for her for the third season.

I already talked about this in my ”If you have to kill female vampires on screen, please don't make it look like a rape”-post. I am worried what they are going to do with Carmilla. She's obviously going to get killed, but I hope they allow her to go down with dignity. Lords of Shadows 2 already gave us a really disgusting, rapey killing scene (I’ve only seen one killing scene with an even clearer “lesbianism can be cured by rape”-theme, in Lesbian Vampire Killers where Carmilla is impaled by a dick-shaped sword), we do not need another. I don't want Hector or Isaac or Dracula impaling her body slowly and looking downward at her in disgust as she painfully dies. Yes, Dracula will be coming back, it's Castlevania after all. I'm also worried of the possibility that instead of killing her, they make Dracula force her back into his servitude, which would also be super gross.

I am happy that the character of Carmilla lives on, that new fans get to experience her with these new incarnations, but whenever a new Carmilla surfaces, I am also a bit worried at how they are going to handle her character this time. I will have to wait and see how the third season of Castlevania ends, until then it is useless to speculate.

#carmilla #vampire #vampire lovers #lust for a vampire #ingrid pitt #yutte stensgaard #ulrike schneidewind #natasha negovanlis #meg tilly

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courage-a-word-of-justice · 5 years ago

Text

Fate/Zero 1 - 25 (FINAL)

Most of these notes stayed intact during Fate/Stay Winter posts, but I’m releasing them in an unedited version here (aside from the dotpoints and read more, of course).

Fate/Zero 1

For some reason, I have it recorded that I’ve watched F/Z ep. 1, but I don’t remember it! I only remember Saber fighting someone…that’s why I have notes for this ep too.

Ewwwwwww…what’s that in the Macedonian box…?

Oh! Heaven’s Feel is the name of one of the movies that came out this year or last.

LOL, the grandparents of Waver literally refer to him as “Waver”. I thought it was a title. Is it really his name???

I’m very good at making connections between seemingly disconnected things using only the things I know. I predict Kariya’s in for a verrrrrrrry bad time and will probably die in this Grail War, if not go bananas. I already know Rin, Ilya (the Einzbern child) and Sakura are already part of the Fate/ canon, so they’re probably going to fight in a Grail War as well.

Ahhhhhhh! B*stard Archer (that is, Gilgamesh)! He’s hereeeeeeeee!

What’s that counter on the ep title card…? Is it the time until the Grail War…?

Fate/Zero 2

I’ve seen enough spoilers being bandied about that I already know Rider is Alexander the Great.

Like, seriously, why do we call the dude “Waver Velvet”? What’s his real name?

Kiritsugu acts as Ilya’s dad, but…I’m pretty sure he isn’t her dad. Kiritsugu’s surname is Emiya, right? He’s Shirou’s dad, as far as I know. Then again, I only know what I know from being around Fate/ fans for so long.

LOL, there are far too many dragons in this name – Ryuunosuke Uryuu.

Ohhhhhhhhhhhh! Is this Giant B*stard Archer???? Is this Giant B*stard Archer??? (i.e. Gilgamesh) Oooooooooh! No wonder people like Gilgamesh, even though they call him a giant loveable b*stard.

Fate/Zero 3

Thy don’t call Rider that for nothin’, eh?

I wonder how Saber managed to get a passport…? She’d need one, eh?

Oh…CGI car…it’s burning my eyesssssssss! (although I do believe Troyca didn’t do any better with El-Melloi’s Case Files)

“Hotel in Fuyuki” – They couldn’t be any more explicit with this stuff, could they…?

“…Highness.” – I can see why Saber is so popular with the Fate/ fans now.

Huh? I seem to remember the battle that comes next! Damn *bleep* <- (censored name of anime club manager responsible for the anime marathon that caused me to go from the beginning of F/Z in the first place)! I definitely remember Saber fighting Lancer.

Fate/Zero 4

(sorry, seen this one! That’s where the confusion was! So no notes here!)

Fate/Zero 5

Berserker looks like Goblin Slayer covered in smoke…LOL.

…Well, they don’t call that guy Berserker for nothin’ either.

Rider would make a great Santa Claus, LOL.

Fate/Zero 6

Isn’t there a Joan of Arc in the Netflix Fate/ (Apocrypha)?

Dang, that Kayneth is an evil b*stard, alright!

Kirei is basically Wolverine…?

No wonder you never hear about Caster when people talk about Fate/…he’s neither hot nor a waifu…so nobody gives a s*** about him.

Fate/Zero 7

Is that a Gantz?

Wait, y’mean Rider is motivated…by pants? *spits* Hahahaha…

You can see Ufotable’s much-praised CGI at work here, too.

I can definitely see why Ufotable was chosen for Katsugeki and why they chose Izuminokami for their protag.

Had to google Jeanne to remember what she looks like in this universe, but yeah…she does look like Saber.

For some reason, I had a fleeting thought that Lancer would be the one to be on the mountain alongside Saber…I was right.

So basically, the entire Fate/ series is this: who would win? A mage or an assassin? (Or something like this.)

Fate/Zero 8

I still think Kirei is basically Wolverine.

Kiritsugu = “to cut and tie”.Update: It’s “to tie” and “to inherit”, apparently.

F/Z 9

I wonder…just what is Lancer’s motivation for the Grail? Surely, Servants have their own motives…

I literally covered my eyes when Sola-Ui bent Kayneth’s finger back…it was almost as bad as seeing Nozomi get tortured (Magical Girl Spec-Ops Asuka)…*gulp*

“Not well” is an understatement, Sola-Ui.

I had to google how old Waver was in this Grail War…he’s 19, apparently, so right in my strike zone right here, so to speak~.

Beleaguered Waver is what you cool kids would call the 2020 Mood…and yes, I’m watching this on the 1st of January, 2020 (but you’re reading this after I put it up later in the month), so I’m keeping the comment.

“What kind of moron would go busting in?” – *facepalm* It seems Rider would.

What the heck is Rider riding his chariot over on the floor, anyway? What’s up with these sewer creatures ? They’ve got tentacles…!

F/Z 10

Rin reminds me of Asuka (NGE)…*gulp* That can only mean bad things for her.

Zenjo? I’ll make a note of that name.

That one glowing sign says “Fuyuki Station”.

Rin no Bouken = Rin’s Adventure. I don’t see why the subbers included “Big” in there, tbh.

F/Z 11

Uh-oh. Why do I get the feeling Saber’s going to get very, very drunk…?

Gee whiz, the great b*stard is a narcissist…

Well, sometimes I forget I had “Archer = Gilgamesh” spoilt for me ages ago…probably because he’s all over Babylonia, not to mention he seems to be one of the more popular characters precisely because he is the great b*stard.

“I wish for my homeland’s salvation.” – An interesting thing to say, considering Brexit.

What the f*** is a Gordius…oh, okay. So that’s Rider’s chariot.

How many Assassins are there??? I thought there was just the one, but there were 4 last time.

This discussion is interesting…no wonder Saber got mistaken for Joan of Arc back in the day.

Welp, Assassins gotta assassinate…*shrugs*

Eyyyyyy…there’s this one guy who looks basically like an older Waver Velvet! That explains a few things, I think.

F/Z 12

“Ramasonic” (sic).

I still think Gil-I mean, Archer’s snakeskin pants are hilarious.

I feel like last episode was a lot better in regards to how good Fate/ could be. This episode is just Ufotable animating talking Gilgamesh and Kirei heads.

Why do I get a bad feeling something bad’s going to happen to Maiya…again?

Kirei trying to look bada*s while leaning against a wall…it looks sort of funny, to be honest with you…because he bends his neck at a funny angle.

F/Z 13

This is the end of the 1st cour, apparently…according to AniList, at least.

“…5 billion people.” – I think the number is 7 billion now, but okay.

Never leave your Servant unsupervised, amirite?

I saw one of the bookstore’s shelves has science fiction on it…hmm, in a show with magic, that seems ironic…or was that non-fiction? Also somewhat ironic.

Oh, this “Don’t you want to do anything fun?” from Rider to Waver is an interesting parallel to Kirei’s episode (the previous one).

Dragon guy’s off his rocker…seriously.

Paraphrasing here, but “…if you want to use the Grail to make yourself taller…” – then stick to milk and other calcium products, Waver…LOL. I mean, other anime characters do.

Even Saber Naruto runs! There are no aliens here…but that car does have gull-wing doors (<-had to google what the doors were called), so…is it a DeLorean or something? Then someone could time travel instead.

I thought one of the previous commands from the overseers was to defeat Caster…?

Fate/Zero has become a kaiju movie, LOL.

Scared Waver is also a 2020 Mood…LOL.

F/Z 14

What’s this “Giant of Light” business…?

Geesh…If Ufotable did a Godzilla movie, I would watch that…(now that this monster makes me think of that possibility.)

This is a small quibble, but is it “Diabolo” or “Diablo”?

Somehow it didn’t even hit me until the fight was halfway over…but does Gilgamesh control a flying airship as part of his Noble Phantasm?!

Pretty scenery or not, talking people standing still are just that…not very entertaining, for sure. It’s basically the only flaw of this series, aside from the fact it hasn’t plumbed the depths of its themes yet.

Ufotable’s clouds look kind of like Gainax’s in Houkago no Pleiades, huh?

Tokiomi seems to blame Kariya for the whole sister vs. sister thing. Hmm, it really just shows how demented the guy is.

F/Z 15

Berserker is only ever in CGI, huh? No wonder Ufotable was given the job.

“That’s…from King Arthur’s legend…” – Can I please interrupt with the Excalibur song? (I’m annoying like that and want to ruin your level of immersion, that’s why.)

Hey, who knew? We get to see Joan in this anime, too. Thank you, Ufotable and Type Moon for saving me a Netflix subscription.

F/Z 16

“Things have been rather hectic this evening.” – Well, you don’t say…

*Saber and Lancer start their fight * - I detect signs there may have been people shipping Saber and Lancer at this point in time, what with their mutual ideas of honour and such.

Kayneth is kind childish, LOL – he’s like a kid peeping at his parents while they complain to each other about a hard day’s work or something.

Uh, this curse from Lancer here is definitely gonna be relevant later, right…?

I was muttering, “Oh goodness” (<- I’m self-censoring here, but you get the point) a few times over when Kiritsugu and Maiya finally got around to killing Kayneth, Lancer and Kayneth’s fiancee. By the way, were those two ever married…? Also, this makes me wonder…what would happen if you got a completely useless Servant? Like “King of Fools” or something. It would sound like the Familiar of Zero, sure, but it would be an interesting exercise in making a compelling narrative.

F/Z 17

Dangit, B*stard Archer. Disappearing just after you provoked Kirei…

Oh! I found the Avalon scene confusing at first, but now that they explain it, it makes a lot more sense.

“As I live and breathe, Kirei!” – Sounds mighty ironic for a meant-to-be-dead historical figure to say that.

F/Z 18

We jump to someone else’s story…or do we?

For some reason, I think this beach place is based on Okinawa. (It seems like the best match.)

“This isn’t a game.” – Seems highly ironic, given his current situation.

I know Kiritsugu is probably looking into Shirley’s eyes, but all they show is the boobs downwards, so I imagine it to be fanservice.

That shaking was just to disguise the bad animation, wasn’t it…?

…and suddenly, zombies!

Well, that’s great, Kiritsugu. You ended up burning down a village by association. Good job…

“Vampires.” – Well, that wasn’t the word I was expecting…

For some reason, I think this new arrival is a woman, but now that I get a proper look at their face, they kinda look like the Great B*stard (Gilgamesh). Update: It looks like they have cleavage, but then they also kinda resemble Samatoki (Hyp Mic)…so, uh…I dunno. Update 2: Okay, she’s a woman…Natalia, to be precise.

The houses on fire look a lot like the ones in Katsugeki, come to think of it.

F/Z 19

Wait, what’s a Mystic Code again…?

Oh, I didn’t think this show would do it, but there’s a good few seconds of recap. I know, because I had to skip it.

Oh, the reason Kiritsugu doesn’t seem to ally with the Association or the Church is because Natalia wasn’t part of either. Right…I’m so dumb.

Am I just reading into Kiritsugu’s pose here too much, or does he look like Christ the Redeemer a bit…?

There’s something oddly pretty about Vorzak. Then again…it’s too bad he’s designated to be dead.

I could tell Kiritsugu was CGI for a second…but he was in fog. Dangit, Ufotable. You know how to disguise your CGI well.

…Okay, those bees were very CGI. Scrap what I just said.

Bees on a plane. What a way to die.

I’ve noticed Kiritsugu’s eyes don’t have any pupils in them. They’re always kind of dead, but not in th same way En’s (<- from Boueibu) are.

What happened to Kiritsugu’s mother…?

The extended flashback seems to be the best way to my heart, assuming you can pull it off properly.

What’s with that “sometime, somewhere”?

F/Z 20

There hasn’t been a proper OP since 3 episodes ago.

Was Maiya ever interested in Kiritsugu as a woman? This vague pseudo-harem sorta annoys me, which is why I need answers.

The crows in this show aren’t very fluffy. Not that I have a problem with that…it’s just a bit random (and I’m saying that as I operate without much sleep and will have a huge period of getting up early in my near future, so you’re probably going to see even more randomness coming from my brain).

Modanyaki. Never thought I’d be googling a Japanese concept for this anime.

This sleeping bag Waver reminds me of Aizawa, but this is at least 4 years too early for that.

That cloud in the top left is shaped funny…like a knight, maybe? (There’s a triangular bit that looks lik a helmet.)

I believe the bird is a bush warbler (uguisu), based on the colour.

So this is where you learn what the f*** a Gordius Wheel is…right.(sounds a bit pissed)

Seeing Kariya squirm…it makes me thank my lucky stars I had the sound off. My imagination makes the scene worse, though.

So fakers beget fakers and killers beget killers, huh? Not surprising.

“I’ve always told him he was doing the right thing.” – Because you didn’t know any better, huh, Iri?

F/Z 21

“Knight on Two Wheels” – What would that knight be riding, a bike…? (somewhat sarcastic)

…A motorbike. Close enough. (not sarcastic anymore)

The motorbike’s plate says “Fuyuki - Te” – instead of a licence plate combo, Japan has a single hiragana.

Well, at least now I know why you never hear of Kariya outside Fate/Zero much…those worms don’t give him long to live.

Isn’t Tokiomi dead though…?

Holy s***, Kariya, you just got framed! *yells in the tone of voice as if Kariya got owned…which he did, in a sense*

*brow furrowed* What’s up with the framing of Aoi’s killing that makes this seem like attempted rape…?

Kirei looks all dead inside. (LOL) I know it’s the animators’ fault that they didn’t bother with him in that scene, but…he has the eyes of a dead fish there, y’know? I can’t help but laugh.

F/Z 22

Never in my life have I seen a grandpa want to talk on the roof.

The grandpa reminds me of Rider…that’s probably where part of their relationship comes from.

You can see the lack of sleep is getting to Kiritsugu right now…his face looks a little sunken…

…Fate/ is apparently pretty infamous for treating its women badly from a feminist persepctive and I think I get why now…(referring to the death of Aoi and now Kirei’s treatment of Iri)

I think the scariest part of F/Z is watching th emotionless guy learn how to feel…kinda like Equilibrium, y’know?

Hmm? I wonder how this show will choose to end, since it’s signalling its end from 3 episodes out?

I predicted Rider would say something along the lines of “…befitting of the Rider class” and lo and behold! He did!

So Rider can summon a single horse as well as the entire chariot? *Saitama face* Okay then.

Number of Times Waver Appears: 1, Number of Times Waver Cries: 1, Number of Times Waver Blushes: 2

Come to think of it, even though I had that weird “Ohhhhhh! Great B*stard Archer!” reaction at first, Gilgamesh has shown up in most of the worst scenes of this show so far (basically, most of the “talking heads” scenes where he talks shop with Kirei). Then again, my change in feelings probably because I’ve had to keep a special eye out for Waver and knew Saber was the poster girl for the entire series.

The counter appears to be “time until the Holy Grail War”…well, that or its final conflict.

F/Z 23

I like how Waver’s joining in with Rider’s yelling.

I have the sound off, so now I’m just mentally narrating Sakura with this creepy child voice and it’s spooking me out…the Urobutcher could really go toe-to-toe with Stephen King if it weren’t my imagination…(LOL…?)

I feel sorry for that car’s owner…the car wasn’t meant to be wrecked…

I fully expect Berserker to be Lancelot or some other guy in King Arthur’s canon, judging by Saber’s reactio-hey, who’s Arondight…? Update: Oh, f***. It really is Lancelot. Turns out Arondight is the name of Lancelot’s sword. How did I know? There’s that upcoming Camelot adaption, isn’t there? Connect the dots.

Oh, f*** me – I feel conflicted. On the one hand, Lancelot’s hella handsome (and his dark hair is exactly my kinda thing), on the other hand…doesn’t he look like he came out of Castlevania or Vampire Hunter D or something??? F***in’ vampires!

Oh, f*** again, I stand corrected. Lancelot was handsome, before he became a Caster-looking…thing.

*bursts into spontaneous laughter* The new Lancelot looks kinda like Tsukasa from Dr Stone, LOL.

Number of Times Waver Cries: 2

Wait, isn’t Bucephalus Greek??? Update: No, he wasn’t. He was Alexander the Great’s horse. That explains why he’s Rider.

I was wondering how Waver managed to live long enough to be El-Melloi II when he was stuck in a battle to the death. Welp, that’s how he did it, folks! *points at screen*

Number of Times Waver Cries: 3…but…anti-climax, much, f***in’ Gilgamesh???

Uh, what’s up with Psalm 23:4? (I had to google that snippet of the Bible to find out its citation.)

LOL, Kirei and Kiritsugu have very similar faces. Didn’t realise that until now.

F/Z 24

It’s weird seeing Kirei full of fighting spirit…He’s still frickin’ Wolverine, though.

Is this taking cues from the Matrix? I bought it from the charity store the other day because I haven’t seen it yet, but I know Bullet Time from TV Tropes.

Now Kirei is channeling Bruce Lee, LOL.

Ouch…the bullet to the hand reminds me of the nail gun scene in The Island (which still freaks me out to this day). (…and now I’ve gone and done it – every time I think of that movie, I get the song The Island – part 1, at least - in my head as well.)

I can almost see Sakaido (from ID: Invaded) in some of these scenes instead of Kiritsugu…trust Ei Aoki and associates to do that.

I went to dump a screenshot in Paint and one of my Fate/ backgrounds from one of the previous posts was set to my background! (I have my backgrounds set to rotate every 12 hours and I have over 600 pictures for that purpose.) *sighs happily and incredulously* Well, whaddaya know…sometimes the stars do align.

I almost expected Shirley to appear, but it turns out it was Iri instead.

Kiritsugu still has his Command Seals so he’s still connected to the Grail War somehow…hmm…

C’mon, I predicted Gilgamesh would compliment Saber when she was down and bleeding.

F/Z 25 (FINAL)

Who’s Lord Justeaze?

Sakura has the same eyes as Kiritsugu. Dead, lifeless eyes.

Did Kariya just throw himself to the worms???

The Great Naked B*stard Gilgamesh.

A priest is a zombie, huh? How ironic.

Isn’t Gilgamesh annoyed by his lack of clothes…? Update: Never mind. He gets a cloth soon enough.

Wait, if Saber destroyed the Grail, who won…?

Huh? The timer ran out.

Aw, even Waver’s growing up.

One of the books says 零戦 (reisen) which apparently means “Zero Fighter [Plane]”. One of the sets of books says “William Shakespeare”, who I know is a Servant somewhere in the Fateverse.

The Bible verse is Job 19:25.

Lancelot’s head doesn’t disappear when the rest of him fades away…It’s pretty poignant.

Jubstacheit is the head of the Einzberns. Update: Think I had to google that.

“Becoming a hero has an expiration date.” – As much as I know that in my creative heart to not be true, my adult heart says yes, it’s true.

Welp, that’s the end of one series. Time for another.

#Fate/Zero

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sillyfudgemonkeys · 5 years ago

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My stance on P5 (cause apparently I need to explain myself :/)

So someone just told me someone was vagueing about me on the confessions blog (can’t say my name cause it’s against the rules but they’ll try to get as specific as they can 🙃 if you have issues just be a real anon hater and send to my inbox directly you coward). And I’m not going to do a reblog to that post, because I’m pretty sure that person must be on my blog. Because the post they were vagueing me about was......not tagged.....in the P5 tagged (I did not tag it as P5 nor Persona 5), it was just a post that was on my blog (now if it showed up in the tag or search I dunno why but I didn’t tag it for P5 for a gd reason cause I keep it to my blog). The post was me pointing out how P5 when they first enter Futaba’s dungeon they didn’t have shoes on, but after the cutscene they DID. The post was more comical (with me getting salty in the tags, but then you’d have to go out of your way to read my tags). And tbh, I’m half and half, yeah I know it’s a nitpick, and I’d just chalk it up to an animation error and let it go usually, but it’s P5 and that game is already inconsistent with it’s plot/world building/characters/anything important that I’m like “nah I’mma rag on it cause it’s just one more thing they screwed up” so I’m like half let it go and half rag on it (fun fact, when I saw they didn’t have shoes on I was gonna make a post saying “hey look this is cool, nice attention to detail” and then they messed it up literally 2 seconds later so dklsjf;afa yeah). (oh and btw, it wasn’t just “one” character, it was the whole PT cast at the time 8U” at least get it right 8U)

But the thing is......that was just a post on my blog, I’m not me berating the P5 tag. So that means you, person who vagued me, tend to go on my PERSONAL BLOG. So like....why are you on here? No, don’t ask me about me and P5, I will answer that, but you answer why are you bothering looking at my personal blog? Is it cause of certain content I post? Then just blacklist certain tags (like my “silly plays” tag cause nothing really interesting happens in that tag, or my more negative “persona problems” type tags), I know I need to be better at tagging my asks, but if you like my original content then just.....go to the OG content tags (aka videos/pictures/edits/coloring)? That way you avoid anything not made by me? Or if you don’t have a reason and you’re just here to be mad cause someone doesn’t like your game, then block me. You don’t seem to like me, so just....why are you here? You seem to want to ask why I’m here with P5, and I have my reasons, but if you don’t have a reason to be on my blog then why are you on it?

I’m not saying this to be mean, but I don’t want to be policed, esp if someone is going to be hypocritical about it. And it’s annoying to see vaguing (cause imo you are as bad as someone who sends anon hate, but you don’t have the balls to just send it to me directly XP)

Ok now where’s my stance on P5? I don’t like it, but it’s a part of a larger series and lore which I do LOVE! Which means, considering I’m a LORE WHORE, it doesn’t feel right to just skip a game esp if it could contain info about the MegaTen/Persona lore (or even Character lore) I want to know. In fact, I really hate it when I’m talking lore with someone and if expanded info is brought up from a side game they are like “Oh I didn’t play that game so it’s not canon” No Bethany, just because YOU didn’t play a game doesn’t mean it’s not canon. And no, no one is bullying you over the fact you didn’t play it, you just don’t like being wrong and the person was like “Ok well it IS canon and it’s in the game, you don’t have to play it but you.....can’t ignore this fact, also why are you arguing this part of the lore when it’s heavily established in said game you ignored???? I mean you do you but don’t get mad when someone corrects you. No one’s forcing you to do anything.” Ahhhhrrrrgggh so many convos I’ve seen happen, I’m not going to be on the end that I hate. DX<

Also, P5 is not the entire Persona fandom, so while I put up with it and indulge in it by association, it doesn’t have the ownership of the fandom (like with all the original games+ spinoffs+all remakes/ports and P5S/P5R included, but not mobile games, it’s only 23% of all of Persona in terms of game entries, and that’s overlapping with crossover games, and if we included other stuff P5 is def a minor aspect in terms of entries). It’s not that hard, I’m just a bigger all around Persona fan than I am a Persona 5 critic (I don’t want to say hater, because it feels like it sounds like I’m hating it just to hate it, when really it was a game I was excited for and loved and then it just burned me bad and I’m just dealing with the scorn). Always keep in mind, I loved P5 before I hated it, it’s probably why I’m as salty about it as I am, because I love P5′s potential and....I was just let down (it wasn’t unrealistic expectations, like I said earlier, P5 contradicts itself.....all over the place, it’s hard to ignore and it’s not something that was as big of an issue, or even an issue at all, in other games).

Why do I still post P5 stuff when I don’t like P5 (by which I mean...posting about the OG manga raws, or wanting to do a partial game to anime dub or even would be willing to help with editing a fandub for the anime)? Because I remember being a newbie Persona/Megaten fan, getting into the series, and wanting to know more about it and it’s side materials but then not being able to have access it any of it (because it was still prettty niche when I first joined and I had no money at the time). I want to give people access to it! Sure it’s harder for me to now to devote time to it (than it was a few years ago), but I want to help with giving access to this Persona/Megaten stuff now that I have some ability! And it also means P5 as well gets some of that love. 8U

As for why I was replaying P5, so this is one thing that’s making me wonder if you are a regular on my blog or not because I’ve been talking about playing the Korean version (but in my one post I forgot to type “silly plays P5/Persona 5 KOREAN” so yeah I forgot to specify Korean at the end). So tbh....I’m actually ignoring P5′s writing while I play (cause I’m just going through the gameplay motions), cause I don’t know korean. 8U And I’m mostly using that tag as a means to point out different things in the korean ver (no that much, but yes Ryu’s shoes ARE censored 8U). But why? Well.....I talk about it here and there but anon/person....1) I’m a trophy whore, I love plat trophies and P5′s is super easy I can get it (and I’m not above playing bad games, oh yeah burn, I’ve played a lot of bad games for plats, and I’ve also played the same games multiple times for plats, I do this to myself but really I don’t mind replaying P5 4+ times for 4+ plats esp since I don’t really have to pay attention). 2) I’m a big MegaTen/Persona collector, I want all the plats I can have (I plan on platting the other versions of the all the dancing games on Vita and PS4, P4G, and the versions of Catherine I don’t have, like I legit have a gd excel sheet keeping track of the versions of Megaten games I don’t have yet....I’m just doing P5 cause it’s 1) one of the easiest to do and 2) it was easier to get my hands on them atm). I don’t talk about my trophy hunting on here that much tbh, but that’s.....really a big reason why I’m doing it (plus with the Korean/CHinese ver I don’t have to pay attention to any story so it’s all good! :D) Yeah I do it to myself, but I don’t really mind. 8U And I mean I tend to keep most of my P5 issue on my blog too. I think the only two posts that I put in the P5 tag were 1) a few consistency issues I wanted to meme about (aka the I’m about to head out post, which was actually the 2nd post I made on that topic but I decided to just meme that one, so I thought it was better than me just bitching, at least I tried to make it a bit funny yet informational 8U), and 2) something that I tbh had an issue since I back when I liked P5 (aka wishing they worked on speeding up the loading times and the fast forward feature), so since I was playing the game I was like “That reminds me, man I hope they fix this in the re-release!”. As for english P5, the only reason I’ll be playing P5 OG in english is for either archiving reasons or research reasons (probably both at once so I don’t have to play through it more than once again).

As for P5R, uhhhhh I’m excited for Kasumi (Jose is cool too, and the new dungeon has me interested too, and all the P2 demons coming back to it makes me wonder what else is/if anything is coming back), she’s my main draw. Yeah it’s connected to P5R, but she looks so much like Hamuko I JUST HAVE TO KNOW WHAT’S UP WITH HER! Hamuko’s my girl, and I need to know if Atlus is going to do something with that, or if I need to be pissed for them literally lifting Hamu’s face! Am I gonna get pissy about P5R’s new add-ons (aka, I’m aware that P5R is probably going to keep the issues from OG P5, so I’mma just judge P5R based on it’s new content)? Yeah, if they kept up the same writing P5 OG had. So yeah, I’m probably going to get pissy if they eff it up, but I’m not going in pissy, going in with really low expectations tbh, but I’m giving it a chance. But if they don’t eff up the new stuff then......that’s good! It means they did something right. So far Kasumi is not Marie so we’re off to a good start. I’m hoping the keep that momentum. 8U

So yeah, I think I have valid reasons for staying, maybe you don’t like it anon/person, but they are there.

tldr; someone feels like the need to police me despite the fact they could just ignore me (even tho it seems like they specifically came to my blog to get mad, rather than me clogging up the tag, like I post there maybe once or twice every 2 months). My stance on P5 is that I deal with it cause it’s part of a bigger fandom I’m a part of and the fact I love the lore of that bigger fandom so it’s not like I can ignore it. I also have a Playstation trophy problem. 8U And I’m excited for Kasumi is that so bad???? (also I didn’t mention it, but Anne/Haru are enough to keep me around 8U)

#silly talks #i'm actually on my last 3 trophies for korean so after that i"m going to chinese #I don't mind the new teacher #not my main draw but I'll give him a shot #also mementos mission is a good manga to read #not canon and still perpetuates issues with mako's character #and the fact that those guys totally gave that one shadow a mental shutdown i'm not letting that go (esp since if they did that'd be so #INTERESTING please dont' let that go to waste mangaka ;w;)#but the mystery is really fun and I like it #i really need to post those raws tho #fdklsajf;lakjfl;a i just....oh man......it's a lot #it's easy to find me and look at my trophies #i have 151 plats yeah I have issues #getting plats is fun ok???? :w;#but yeah I'll try to get working on the P5 OG raws #i love anne and haru ok????#sure I have issues with their writing but I just really like them still

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zenlesszonezero · 15 days ago

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As the conspiracy reaches its finale, the Void Hunter joins the fight.

Uncover the Conspiracy in Zenless Zone Zero's All-New Version "A Storm of Falling Stars", S-Rank Agent Hoshimi Miyabi is here! With S-Rank Agent Asaba Harumasa Limited-Time Giveaway! Pre-register to obtain additional rewards.

#Zenless Zone Zero #Miyabi #Harumasa #HoYoverse #zzzero #zenlesszonezero #Mobile Game #Anime Game #Gaming

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nigeiadigitalmarketingcompany · 5 years ago

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Links 7/31/19

Digital Elixir Links 7/31/19

Yves here. We had a terrific event last night with Lambert’s Dem debate live blog. Over 400 comments, many incisive and funny.

Hope you’ll join us this evening at 8 PM EDT (Lambert opens up the post a wee bit earlier) for what the peanut gallery hopes will be a Harris v. Biden or maybe even everyone v. Biden slugfest.

Does My Cat Want Me to Lick Her Back? Atlantic (resilc). Eeew.

RNA recovered and sequenced from 14,000-year-old mummified wolf New Atlas (furzy)

Met Office: UK’s 10 hottest years on record occurred since 2002 Guardian (Kevin W)

Coke and Pepsi abandon the plastics lobby CNN (Kevin W)

Living without water: the crisis pushing people out of El Salvador Guardian (resilc). We pointed out years ago that potable water was the critical resource that would become scarce first….

Why a cure for dementia would trigger a crisis Financial Times. This article is appalling. It presupposes that a treatment would require cancer-level intervention and before and after monitoring. It also asserts that “the disease cannot be reversed,”, when small scale studies have found cognitive improvement for some with relatively short-term (12 weeks) consumption of silica water. See https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22976072

China?

Hong Kong protests: ‘I’m in Australia but I feel censored by Chinese students’ BBC (David L)

Please Stop Beating Us’: Where Were Hong Kong’s Police? – Video New York Times (UserFriendly)

China, U.S. Resume Trade Talks Amid Trump’s ‘Rip-off’ Accusation Bloomberg

Lambert notes per below “Cooling off period”:

JUST IN: #HongKong issues storm signal no. 8. stock trading to shut after 15 minutes @business

Hong Kong Starts to Shut Down as Tropical Storm Approaches: https://t.co/32OdJdjSzY

— Fion Li (@fion_li) July 31, 2019

Your Next iPhone Might Be Made in Vietnam. Thank the Trade War. New York Times (UserFriendly)

China Covertly Subverting Trump Reelection Free Beacon. UserFriendly: “Congratulations democrats, now every electoral loss is illegitimate.”

China Is On Track To Beat Its Peak-Emissions Pledge ars technica

North Korea ‘fires two ballistic missiles’ BBC

Brexit

EU must give way over backstop, says Johnson after rebuff by Varadkar Guardian. Resilc: “This will go smoothly.”

The Politico morning European newsletter version, emphasis theirs. Maybe Johnson believes his bullshit about bullying the EU?

MORE OF THE SAME: The U.K. will leave the EU at the end of October, come hell or high water. Boris Johnson’s EU counterparts have got the message he has repeated one way or another every single day since taking office as prime minister last week. Now it’s being directed to his Irish colleague Leo Varadkar. “On Brexit, the prime minister made clear that the U.K. will be leaving the EU on October 31, no matter what,” Downing Street said in a readout of the pair’s call Tuesday.

Varadkar’s response: The Irish government said Varadkar refused point blank Johnson’s request to reopen divorce talks. “Noting that the Brexit negotiations take place between the U.K. and the EU, the Taoiseach explained that the EU was united in its view that the Withdrawal Agreement could not be reopened,” a statement from the Irish government noted drily.

The backstop has to go, Johnson repeated. But it won’t, was Varadkar’s answer. The Irish leader “emphasized to the prime minister that the backstop was necessary as a consequence of decisions taken in the U.K. and by the U.K. government,” Dublin said.

Brexit causes UK car industry investment to crash to ‘pitiful’ £90m Guardian

Quarterly Bulletin No.3 2019 Central Bank of Ireland. PlutoniumKun: “On Brexit. Revises growth prediction from 4.1% to 0.7% in the event of a no-deal (worse than previous predictions).

”

US Anti-Abortion Group Uses Big Data to Manipulate Argentinian Women: Report teleSUR (furzy)

Syraqistan

Bahrain Follows U.S. Lead on Executions LobeLog (resilc)

Intra-Afghan talks only after U.S. agrees to withdraw troops: Taliban Reuters (resilc)

Imperial Collapse Watch

On Costliest U.S. Warship Ever, Navy Can’t Get Munitions on Deck Bloomberg

Bolton Proposes and The President Disposes American Conservative (resilc)

Pentagon Study Shows Violence Has Skyrocketed in Africa Intercept. Resilc: “At the DoD it’s called market development….”

Trump Transition

The Trump Administration’s Death Penalty Cult Nation (resilc)

U.S. judge tosses Democratic Party lawsuit against Trump campaign, Russia over election Reuters

Federal Judge Overturns IRS Donor-Disclosure Change Wall Street Journal

While Trump spews hate, I continue to do my job GreenwichTime (UserFriendly). Rep. Tlaib, originally in the Washington Post.

Jeffrey Epstein’s life ‘in jeopardy’ as powerful pals ‘don’t want their secrets out’, victim’s lawyer claims Sun (resilc)

2020

Who won the Democratic debate? Winners and losers from July 30 CNN (UserFriendly). Cillizza is not following the house party line…..

It’s Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren v the ‘No We Can’t’ Democrats Guardian (resilc, furzy)

Stephen Colbert Hits Longshot Democrats for Spewing ‘Republican Talking Points’ at CNN Debate Daily Beast (resilc). When you’ve lost Colbert…..

Can Someone Please Vote CNN Off the Stage? Bloomberg

Next one goes to CNN: Who wrote these terrible debate questions? https://t.co/QMk2nYFtn8

— Slate (@Slate) July 31, 2019

Coalition to air anti-Medicare for All ads during Democratic debates The Hill (UserFriendly). A pox on them.

Democrats Are Veering Left. It Might Just Work. Politico

A Guide To Bad Faith Arguments Against Bernie Sanders Medium (UserFriendly)

Democrats fail to address working-class issues during the second Democratic debate Vox (UserFriendly)

More Presidential Candidates Taking Strident Pro-Caviar Stance To Appeal To Democratic Socialite Wing Of Party The Onion

How Joe Biden’s privatization plans helped doom Latin America and fuel the migration crisis Grayzone

Stop Suing Patients, Advocates Advise Memphis Nonprofit Hospital System ProPublica (UserFriendly)

Apple put an iPhone in everybody’s pocket — now its growth depends on putting devices all over our bodies CNBC

Equifax is going to rip you off again BoingBoing (resilc)

‘Do ‘Big Four’ Tech Monopolies Deserve Their Antitrust Investigation? Yes Federalist. UserFriendly: “When the libertarians are calling to break up big tech….”

Regulators Found High Risk of Emergency After First Boeing MAX Crash Wall Street Journal. Grr, the Journal put this up just as I was turning in, otherwise I would have posted on it. From the summary:

An internal risk analysis after the first of two Boeing 737 MAX airliner crashes showed the likelihood was high of a similar cockpit emergency within months, according to a Federal Aviation Administration official familiar with the details and others briefed on the matter.

The regulator’s analysis, not previously reported, showed that it “didn’t take that much” for a malfunction like the one confronted by the pilots of the Lion Air flight that crashed into the Java Sea last year to occur, one of the people briefed on the analysis said.

Class Warfare

We Should Thank Amazon for Letting Us Have Jobs New York Magazine (resilc)

DoorDash Tip-Skimming Scheme Prompts Class-Action Lawsuit Seeking All Those Tips That Didn’t Go To Drivers Gizmodo

How Over 25 People Got Scammed Into Working At A Nonexistent Game Company Kotaku (Kevin W)

Private Equity’s Next Leveraged Buyout Might Be the Oval Office American Prospect (resilc). Where have they been? Over half of Wall Street revenues comes from PE. That includes “Government Sachs”. Rahm did a turn in a PE firm.

Globalization Isn’t Dying, It’s Just Evolving Bloomberg

Antidote du jour. Lawrence R from the Pleasant Lake newsletter> “Male Eastern Forktail (Ischnura verticalis). Odonate males are usually more brightly colored than females and are more often seen at the water.”

And a bonus (Bryan W):

Do not attempt to outsmart a Sulphur-crested Cockatoo. It won’t work. pic.twitter.com/CABkzq9Dw7

— Helen Dale (@_HelenDale) July 26, 2019

See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.

Links 7/31/19

from WordPress https://ift.tt/2T3u0wh via IFTTT

#Digital Marketing #SEO #Social Media Marketing #Nigeria Digital Marketing Company #Lead Generation

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mrjoelgarcia9 · 8 years ago

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Let’s Talk #SailorMoon R: The Movie

The first theatrical Sailor Moon film was based on the original show’s second season and titled Sailor Moon R: The Movie. When it was originally brought over to the United States by DiC and Pioneer, it was heavily censored and oddly renamed Sailor Moon R The Movie: The Promise of the Rose.

Viz Media, the current North American distributor of Sailor Moon, has recently produced a new uncensored English dub. After being theatrically screened in theaters around the United States and Canada earlier this year, the film (with its original title) has been released for the first time ever on Blu-ray alongside an obscure short film.

For a review of Sailor Moon R: The Movie (and Make Up! Sailor Guardians), feel free to keep reading. There will be spoilers.

Like with the show’s original English dub, I did not watch any of the three films when they originally aired on Toonami. When the original Japanese version of the show began streaming on Hulu, I assumed the films would either be uploaded onto the service or included alongside the Blu-ray and DVD releases of their respective seasons. This film’s North American re-release comes a little more than a year after Sailor Moon R was fully released on Blu-ray and DVD.

However, it is coming out at the right time, with the franchise currently celebrating its 25th anniversary and the fourth season of Sailor Moon Crystal (presumably) premiering later this year.

Sailor Moon R: The Movie features the team being confronted by an alien named Fiore. He wants to fulfill a promise he made to Mamoru years ago and sees Usagi as a selfish girl preventing him from being with Mamoru. When Luna and Artemis realize he possesses the powerful Xenian Flower, a destroyer of planets, it is up to Sailor Moon and the Guardians to stop Fiore before he destroys Earth.

While the film is set during R, it is strictly non-canon.

While it could take place anytime between episodes 77 (when Usagi and Mamoru got back together) and 82 (when the team went to the future), there is one big problem: The Black Moon Clan’s sudden disappearance. They are neither seen or mentioned in the film, which leaves open a major plot hole of why they did not try to capture Chibiusa when the Guardians and Tuxedo Mask were off Earth. It does not hurt the film but it could have easily been fixed with a throwaway line.

Consequentially, this causes Chibiusa to contribute very little in the film. She mostly serves as Usagi’s motivational speaker, encouraging her to go save Mamoru and telling Luna and Artemis that Sailor Moon is everyone’s mom. Admittedly, the latter line was clever foreshadowing since this film came out nearly two months before it was revealed in the show that she is Usagi and Mamoru’s daughter.

Despite the plot hole, the film is really good.

It had a great story which presented something the show rarely did: focus on Mamoru. While the show had previously revealed his past, the film expands upon it to seamlessly integrate Fiore into the story and the first time he met Usagi in their reincarnated lives.

Fiore is a great villain for the film. It was refreshing to see someone whose priority was neither to conquer or destroy the world, which was instead the flower’s main goal, and quickly recognize the team’s secret identities. His relationship with Mamoru is shown to be aggressively possessive due to the Xenian Flower’s power. While the film never outright states Fiore's true feelings for him, it is implied by how disgusted he looks when Usagi tells him that Mamoru is her boyfriend and Ami says that Mamoru is probably “popular with the guys”.

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He also heavily resembles Ail from the Makaiju Tree filler arc. In the original Japanese version, both characters were even played by the same voice actor (Hikaru Midorikawa).

The voice acting is equally great in both its original Japanese and VIz’s new uncensored English dub. The latter is superior to the old DiC/Pioneer dub by faithfully translating the original dialogue, not adding noise to the intentionally silent moments, and avoiding dumb lines such as “Moon Mama”.

“Moon Revenge” is a great song which perfectly fits the climax’s tone in the same way “Moonlight Densetsu” did for the first season finale. “The Power of Love”, the replacement song used in the DiC/Pioneer dub, is better than the music featured in the DiC seasons but still sounds dated and more like something one would hear at a nightclub than a theatrical film.

The film’s only other flaws were the Xenian Flower’s quick death and the CG asteroid sequence that has not aged well and looks extremely blurry in HD.

When the film was originally released in Japan, it was preceded by a short film titled Make Up! Sailor Guardians. It features Usagi and Chibiusa overhearing a conversation about the Guardians, with Usagi getting annoyed by how they recall everyone except Sailor Moon. It mainly serves as a quick introduction to the main characters and is helpful for those who may want to see the film but do not have time to watch the show. The short is also making its North American home media debut after being theatrically screened with the film.

There were a lot of great moments in the film, such as Mamoru telling Usagi he considers her to be his family, Sailor Venus realizing the flowers are the monsters, Tuxedo Mask stabbing Fiore with a rose, and the aforementioned first meeting between Usagi and Mamoru. The short also had a funny moment where Usagi tries to apologize for being a crybaby only to then start crying.

Sailor Moon R: The Movie and Make Up! Sailor Guardians are both Highly Recommended. They are available to own on Blu-ray and DVD from Viz Media. The film is also available on iTunes but only in English and does not include the short.

Until next time, thank you for reading!

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