#the rest of the cast list is kinda meh

[fundiemental-shitposts]

Update: they got Ilona Maher too, I’m so seated.

Once again deviating from the original purpose of this blog because my favorite US-based story from this Olympics (Pommel Horse Guy) is going to be on Dancing with the Stars…guess I actually have to watch it now.

[videostak]

didnt end up watching lovers live cause i ended up watchig almost famous w/ my sister it was alright u kno like meh one of those 70s nostalgia movies that kinda annoy me. like that and dazed n confused type stuff rly annoy me. philip seymour hoffman as lester bangs was v cool tho lol. like idk felt appropriate casting. the rest of the movie was like alright not bad but u kno it bieng autobiographical makes u kinda want more but also knowing that its restrained a lot by being a safe type autobiographical movie u kno. wathcing it tho makes me think abt my life and music and where i should be or where i should go hmmm. like that record store just straight up hired me w/ no experience or anything just cause ppl here have such dogshit taste that the stuff i was selling made me seem really cultured lol. and i dont even kno if ill be able to get a job at the store downtown cause i realized that i probably didnt get it the first time cause theres like. no contemporary music i listen to. I just theres nothing i feel worht listening toooo idk stuff ill be like oh tahts cool but really think they didnt give it to me back then cause like i didnt say much abt new music and to be bleak abt the current music scene would def be a red flag for them like to be truthful lol. like that and i listed tons of freakout shit like brotzmann no wave  minimalism etc lolll. thought like itd make me look real smart but realized it just made them think to not put me behind the register lol. anyways thats prooobably why i didnt get it tho honestly they couldve just already decided not to give it to me from the start since it was a interview i got from a ex friends friend so like couldve just all been a formality. another reason is i had mentioned recently getting the stones first album on cd and the interviewer wass like “u just started listening to the stones?” and i was like ya basically LOL so that also probably cost me the job lol... which is funny cause now im like a huge rolling stnes fan tbh like just rly totally understand why theyre as popilar as they are and like v much will praise the stones over stuff like led zeppelin n stuff lol wel i guuess that isnt sayying tooo much since i rly have a tolerate/hate relationship w/ music like zep and who. anyways if i do apply again im gonna try to list new artists even if its shit i dont actually listen to like honestly rn just thinking ummm harry styles,tennis,beach house,black midi, death grips, sophie, maybe some more. of the ones there i only actually have listenend to tennis black midi death grips and sophie. but gotta have a list like that just so they think i listen to contemporary stuff even tho i dont :P just like b4 i thought there were nice bands and there are nice artists like sophie for sure is up there but like kinda become disenchanted w/ so many modern groups just knowing who theyre shamelessly ripping off u kno like every modern indie artist doing a stephen malkmus type voice/delivery or sounding like a bad cocteau twins parody or like if mbv were muzak. u knooooo. but i obv cant say that cause like. the new stuff is what sells and what they have to be savvy on since its like u kno theyre selling that new. wiiiish i could be in some positiion where i could state my opinion and get paid and be honest and ppl respect me. i guess thats the point of a journalist but obv writing articles abt how much shit sucks and why u should only listen to real artists like the stooges or the nutty squirrels and stuff w/ real deep actual depth that are actually saying/doing something like the b52s or cluster isnt something that is like contemporary -_- liiike idk just need tooo make some money i guess but i think its insane when ppl acknowledge my personality and opinions so im like i should exist on that alone lol. even w/in the time that i got rejected for that job ive listened to so much more and could genuinely add more to that list even tho i get into music at a snails pace. like b4 i just put dub on the application but now ive truly heard more reggae and could just list both reggae/dub together instead of just dub. sucks tho appplying knowing they rly dont care abt music or passion and just need someone who knows whats goin on w/ t swift n harry styles T-T they should hire me cause i see visions of god when listening to einstein on the beach very loud and focusing on the flute

[mandareeboo]

SU Music Rankings

Bc I can and I wanna start some Disk Horse rip. These are all in order of preference, with explanations, etc. It’s a long bitch. That said, I’m not counting little short jingles or small joke songs like Little Butler. This is the meat and potatoes of SU music- just under 30 songs. I might do the rest if people like my takes lol.

I scored it mostly on three bases- how dear it was to my heart, how much/often I relisten to it, and also what it means to the plot. That said, little fun songs don’t automatically go farther down than big, plot-heavy songs either! It’s a strange little balance.

Special Note: I don’t dislike any of this music! I love SU and that includes its bumps and glitches. I just pick favorite children lol.

1.) Change

Was there ever a more Steven moment than when he wiped the blood off his face and kissed it into sparkles? I think not. 

If “Be Wherever You Are” is an ode to young Steven, then this is teen Steven’s. Talking about change, and how much and how little it can do. How he holds his arms up for Spinel to hug him, so trusting. How he seems able to just. Break into soft tears at will, and not to be manipulative- it’s just his kind nature. The warmth in his voice. Fuck yesssss.

2.) Change Your Mind

This song is only fifty five seconds and it’s EVERYTHING to me. It really felt like someone was speaking the words I’d always held deep inside of me, unsure of how to say. It feels like a goodbye to someone who never really loved me. 

As much as I enjoyed Future, if this was the finale of SU, I would’ve been perfectly okay with that.

3.) Drift Away

This song gave me legitimate shivers the first time I heard it, and it still haunts me to this day. Spinel stayed, and waited, and all she got was a transmission thousands of years later. Fuck.

4.) Here We Are In The Future

THE MOVIE IS SU AS ITS BEST AND I WON’T BE SWAYED ON IT. Steven being a teen who loves his weird family but is growing just a bit sarcastic to their drama. The adorable love he and Connie share. His slow realization that he will always be working, always have things to do, is both somber and real. The Crystal Gems won’t be safe with one epic battle. They’ll be safe with years of hard work and love. HIS LITTLE HANDSHAKE WITH AMETHYST.

This is a helluva bop and a great way to summarize the main character’s backstories.

5.) Let’s Only Think About Love

Did ya’ll know that Zach Callison killed his throat with that last note? He gave his all for this performance in a vocal range he no longer comfortably do and by god did it SHINE. The FLAIR. The FORESHADOWING. All of the Gems all being awkward about Rose and Steven trying to bring them to the present. Peridot having a mini-existential crisis in a cute yellow dress. I love Zach Callison’s normal singing voice but man is that a fucking bop. Nothing will ever beat it.

6.) Here Comes A Thought

This bad boy helped me out a LOT with some mental issues I was dealing with in high school. I was unmedicated, unsupervised, and full of anxiety. I’d have break downs when I tried to speak about certain things. I couldn’t function. This song inspired me. It helped me feel okay with my intrusive thoughts.

And the episode! -chef’s kiss-. Once again bringing up the morally gray area of training child soldiers. Connie expanding her social group. Steven’s trauma hauling ass in that second half. The ANIMATION. Stevonnie’s gorgeous singing voice. GOD yes.

7.) It’s Over Isn’t It?

Just barely squeaking above Stronger Than You, this ballad is everything gorgeous. The whole episode is. I think Mr. Greg stands in the top five of my episodes for the entire show. It even got nominated!

There’s just so much about this song that I love. The gentle melancholy of Pearl’s voice. How the crew had to redo the shots for this bit bc Deedee went so fucking hard. The hard cuts between Pearl, remembering the love of her life, and Steven, who has begun to feel like he took her away. I’d recommend this song to anyone, regardless of what they do or don’t know about SU, simply bc it tugs so many heartstrings of love, loss, and responsibility.

8.) Stronger Than You

Did you realize this episode aired SEVEN years ago? This bitch was what got me into SU! Hearing about Ruby and Sapphire made my little gay heart so happy inside, and then getting a whole song confirming that they were a couple, that their love powered the strongest Gem on the team? Aaaaaaaaa

To this DAY I get excited when I hear Estelle start singing. This song is timeless. This song will live in media history. God I fucking love this song.

9.) Other Friends

I’m not the biggest musical person, so I hadn’t heard of Sarah Stiles before her casting as Spinel, but JESUS CHRIST the lady went hard. She went SO fucking hard. Sarah Stiles started on 100 and somehow just kept CLIMBING. You can just hear the sheer manic energy building in her voice, the anger and resentment. 10/10 Sarah Stiles is a queen.

10.) Independent Together

This made the list entirely bc the crew was like “you’re gonna get a himbo ass Steven-Greg fusion singing with Opal while Garnet flies across the moon on Lion while floating” and I am forever thankful to them for it

11.) Who We Are

Bismuth deserved more songs. ‘Nuff said.

12.) Peace and Love (On the Planet Earth)

It Could’ve been Great is EASILY one of my favorite s2 episodes. I love the entire concept of this song. Of Steven making music to reflect how much Earth means to him and his family. Of him teaching Peridot some self-care. Also Peridot’s singing voice is really cute and squeaky. 

I know it’s silly, but I would’ve really enjoyed a flip around of this in Future! Like Peridot reminding Steven how much he loves music, that he needs to take time to relax for himself, maybe with a new verse or just a remix of the original song!

13.) Something Entirely New

I watched this episode as it aired, and I legitimately almost cried. I love Charlyne Yi’s voice so much ya’ll- her raspy, not perfect singing voice against Sapphire’s deep soothing lull is great.

And to have Ruby and Sapphire’s meeting be the way it was- for Ruby to bemoan Sapphire losing Homeworld, to being stuck with a single Ruby, while Sapphire is a noble who has always been taught everyone in her “caste” is vitally important (and has, in her own mind, taken that to mean every Gem, as she should) and how they come together and make each other happy. Good shit good shit.

14.) I’m Just a Comet

The fact that Greg’s music career never really blasted off pisses me off to this day bc Tom Scharpling’s voice is fucking BUTTER. Also the song really feels like a jab at his parents now that we know the kind of dynamic he had growing up. “This life in the stars if all I’ve ever known” is definitely him wiping away their existence after reminding them (and himself) the things they used to say about him.

15.) Do It For Her

This episode. This fucking episode. This episode got me permanently hooked on SU. I’d just binged season 1 and was kinda meh about it overall after the bop of Stronger Than You. “Oh,” I thought to myself, foolishly, “I’ll probably just casually watch this from time to time.”

Like three days later Sworn to the Sword aired and that was it. I was hooked! Pearl’s gentle training song turning darker and darker, Connie’s accompaniment from nervous to determined to fully into such a toxic mindset. The fact that SU had the BALLS to discuss the repercussions of training child soldiers, now and later. This episode was everything to me, STILL is everything to me.

Six years and well over 100 fanfics written later, I think it’s safe to say this show swallowed me whole and never let go.

16.) System/Boot.pearl_final(3)

I debated putting this on the list because it’s not anything crazy important, just a way to show things are Wrong, but I had to do it entirely bc Pearl is so damn SALTY.

Like telling us about the Gems makes sense, she felt like she was given a duty, but she went so damn petty. WHY is that Ruby alone. Gross. This Amethyst is a trash dump. Wtf are you people.

17.) Full Disclosure

This episode really feels like a turning point for SU. Before, the show had its dark moments- but now we’re in the thick of it, and it’s not going away. Full Disclosure felt like an rebuff to the idea of returning to any normal we’d established in season 1. Gems are actually a giant species now. Gems tried to kill us now. There’s this Yellow Diamond bitch who got namedropped. Something about a Cluster. 

The song itself is BALLER, with its ingenious use of Steven’s ringtone and photos as he tries to decide whether to clue in Connie on all this nonsense. Meanwhile we, the audience, already know damn well Connie about to yeet some common sense into him.

18.) What’s the Use of Feeling Blue?

I’mma admit it- I’m a Yellow Diamond stan. I’ve always loved her- her anger, her poise, her hardworking nature. I actively argued against the “Yellow Shattered Pink” theories back in the day. But, man, when this arc leaked? I got so overexcited I was too jittery to watch it for like two days. It’s easily my favorite arc of the series. The sheer alien nature of the zoo, the Famethyst, and absolutely Patti Lupone’s beautiful ballad. Goddamn. Yellow singing to Blue to try and help her regain her old status, the warble in her voice as she reminds Blue she misses Pink too, the movement of the bubbles as she talks about attack. It gives me shivers to this day. FUCK.

19.) Tower of Mistakes

This is, fun fact, that only SU song I have completely memorized. The story itself is kinda funny! See, we lost internet at my house for a solid 5 to 6 months when these episodes aired, so I only got a very brief window to view them all. But this was the first Amethyst song in a long while, and I didn’t want to forget it! So I keep replaying it in my head for ages. And that’s still definitely a thing.

Anyway will never not be sad that this entire song was about making it up to Garnet for Amethyst’s perceived slights with Sugilite (which was a two-way road), only for Garnet to pressure her into fusion later when pissed and never discuss it again bc Garnet probably never thought twice about it and Amethyst has the emotional openness of a clam that’s just been told its ugly. Helluva way to make someone feel like shit, G. Helluva way to bottle that shit, Ames.

20.) On the Run

I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a million times: Amethyst! Needed! More! Songs! 

The dichotomy between Steven’s play and Amethyst’s honest desire to run away from home is so well-done, especially when you consider a lot of Steven and Amethyst’s actions are playing together. The song is also near and dear to me simply bc it’s my favorite Amethyst episode to exist (well, maybe second to What’s Your Problem, but not by much). Moments like these are all the proof I need that they were right to fuse first.

21.) Be Wherever You Are

This tune really just feels like an ode to who Steven was as a kid. Trapped on an island with no way home, and he’s just happy to be with his friends. The stars are beautiful and not oppressive. Also that one animatic with Lars and the Off Colors playing in the Homeworld Kindergarten to this music was iconic and made this song get stuck in my head for a solid month.

22.) Familiar

I ADORE how the crew use bright neon colors to show how alien Homeworld can be. And Steven recognizing that the Diamonds treat him how the CGs used to, and how prepared he is to “fix” a broken family. It’s a soft, gentle tune about melancholy. Also the Pebbles are beautiful.

23.) Let Me Drive My Van Into Your Heart

Such a cute little love ballad, but every time I listen to it now I just imagine the heart attack Rose must’ve had at the line “And if we look out of place/Well, baby, that's okay/I'll drive us into outer space.” like there’s a Vietnam war flashback if I ever heard one

24.) What Can I Do?

I’m kind of neutral on this one? Rose and Greg both have great voices, but the song itself lacks many lyrics. I think it was definitely a good way to show Rose’s flaws in thinking.

Also, I’m shocked they managed cram that much vaguely sexual innuendo into two minutes, followed by how Not Hetereo that dance between Rose and Pearl was, and not get their asses chewed by it. You go guys.

25.) Cookie Cat

I love a lot of the vibes this song has. The lyrics are so damn prophetic, but they also sound like the kind of weird 90s commercials I grew up on. It’s been like two decades since I saw the Shirley Temple commercial but I’ll be damned if I don’t remember “Animals crackers in my soup! Monkey and rabbits loop-de-loop.”

26.) Giant Woman

I am. NOT the biggest fan of Steven’s original singing voice. I feel bad saying that, since it was just Zach Callison as a kid, but he never jived well with me for some reason. So I wouldn’t listen to this on the fly. 

The song itself is still really good though, with all sorts of fun animation of Amethyst and Pearl being bitchy to each other. It’s a bit sad in hindsight to see tiny Steven trying to get his moms to get along. Ahh, season 1.

27.) Strong in the Real Way

This song has SUCH a strong start. Pearl reflecting on Sugilite’s problems, but the show making sure to show us that Pearl’s lack of enthusiasm towards her also lends itself to jealousy as well as just general malaise. How much she cares about Steven, and wants him to grow up strong. 

And then Steven just kinda. Ruins it? I appreciate his enthusiasm for tryna bulk up but to take what was starting as such a rich, personal song and broadcasting it to random strangers just makes me a bit sad. Almost a bit angry on her behalf?

28.) That Distant Shore

I KNOW this is gonna create some discourse, but I’m just not the biggest Lapis stan. I love her voice. I love the visuals of the song. And I get why she felt afraid and needed to flee.

But Lapis never got to take responsibility for her own actions. And, in the end, the song feels hollow to me- because we all know she’ll never talk to anyone about it, know she’ll burst back in and destroy the barn, and no one will ever question it. I like Lapis a lot, but I feel like her arc never was fully finished. She never got help. She never learned to feel safe.

29.) Dear Old Dad

I’ve yet to meet a single human being who likes this episode tbh. There’s some great discussion about what kind of parent Greg is from it, and what kind of dynamic he has with the Gems that he felt he had to fake an injury to hang out with his son. Honestly the first half was fine and dandy. It’s just that then they Greg just went out of his way to drag Steven away from missions and such. It never jived well with his character before or after.

Also, is it just me, or does Zach himself sound like he hates the song as he sings it? There’s no passion or heart in his voice. It sounds like they told him to read off cue cards and he did. Tom Scharpling’s best attempts didn’t save this one for being a skipper. But the episode, unfortunately, isn’t, so it gets a spot on here.

[carriagelamp]

Weirdly enough, I often find myself reading less in the summer, since I have more time than I do during the rest of the year to do other things. Also artfight has been eating up more than a bit of my free time! But here’s a collection a graphic novels I sat around on the hammock reading, and some novels I finished up...

(Everyone go read All Systems Red, holy crow guys)

A Whale of the Wild

The “sequel” to A Wolf Called Wander, though it doesn’t actually connect to the previous novel except in the stylistic/thematic sense. A Whale of the Wild is very much a standalone novel. And a pretty decent one! Personally, I think I liked Wolf more, but this one was a pleasant, informative read, with just the right amount of crushing dread sprinkled in. It’s about a young orca called Vega who is learning to become a new wayfinder for her pod but who still has a lot to learn, especially in an ocean that is becoming increasingly hostile to orcas and the other sealife that live alongside humans. When a devastating earthquake hits, Vega and her little brother find themselves separated from their family, lost in a now horrifyingly unfamiliar environment, and fighting starvation as the salmon that sustain them become more and more unreliable. It’s a desperate fight for survival as they search for food and their missing family. This book is written for a middle grade level, and does a really good job of putting the current environmental crisis into an animal’s perspective while giving the readers something to hope for.

The Adventure Zone: The Crystal Kingdom

Every July I eagerly anticipate the next Adventure Zone graphic novel. This one is for their fourth arc, The Crystal Kingdom, in which Magnus, Taako, and Merle respond to a SOS from a floating laboratory that is gradually being consumed by crystals and which threatens the entire world should it fall into the ocean. Carey Pietsch’s art continues to be absolutely fantastic, so beautifully and hilariously expressive, and this one delivers some great Merle moments, lots of Carey Fangbattle, and, of course, Kravtiz. Kravitz, my beloved…

Anyway, I obviously always recommend these. If you’ve never gotten into The Adventure Zone, I totally recommend either trying these graphic novels — or even better, just go listen to the podcast because it really is both hilarious and creates a shockingly good and heart-wrenching story by the end.

All Systems Red

I’ve seen The Murderbot Diaries on my dash occasionally, and it always looked interesting, but a friend’s recommendation finally compelled me to read the first novella of the series. And holy shit y’all. Absolutely the best book I’ve read this month, it’s amazing. Mind-blowingly good. Also, if you’re like me and want a good audiobook, it’s a nice three-hour listen, very chill!

Anyway, All Systems Red is about a Security Unit, an artificially created being that’s part-organic part-mechanical and all-company-owned-and-controlled. However, self-named “Murderbot” has managed to hack into the system that suppresses its own will, and is now coasting along, doing the least amount of work its job requires not to be noticed, while preferring to spend all its time watching the hours and hours of soap operas it has downloaded into its brain. And it’s a tolerable if somewhat dull life, until the science team that it's currently rented to is attacked and the whole mission goes pear-shaped. Suddenly Murderbot has to scramble to keep its humans alive… while its humans scramble with the realization that their “SecUnit” isn’t actually a mindless robot like they had all believed...

This story is both gripping and hilariously funny. Murderbot has such a unique voice and perspective and it’s an absolute pleasure to follow its story. I reallly need to read the next book...

Asterix and the Banquet

A classic. I was startled when I realized I hadn’t actually read this Asterix story… but hell I’m not gonna complain, it lets me read one of the originals for the first time again! In this Asterix volume, the Indomitable Gauls and the Romans end up arranging a bet — the Romans intend to keep them under siege, trapped in their village, while Asterix is confident that he can easily evade them… and will prove it by going on a tour around all of Gaul, collecting iconic foods from each region in order to return and put on a fine banquet. So we get a fantastic adventure in which Asterix and Obelix run all over the country, pursued the whole way, while making cheerful stops at the various eateries along the way. Also the first book Dogmatix shows up in! All around, a wonderful read, fun like all the best Asterix comics are.

Beauty Pop v4

A less impressive graphic novel. The first Beauty Pop is one of my guilty pleasure manga because… it really is pretty stupid but in the best possible ways. I mean, the whole thing is framed around hairstyling battles, like a shojo sports manga without the sports. It’s bonkers. Unfortunately, the series does not really manage to hold up, and it really begins to feel repetitive and dragging as it continues… as a lot of series like this do. *shrug* Unsurprising but still kinda disappointing I suppose. The building three-way romantic tension is mildly interesting if for no other reason than the main character Does Not Notice and Does Not Care about any of it, which is amusing and refreshing.

FRNCK v5

Now this series only gets better and better as it goes. This is the first book of the second arc, and somehow the danger just seems to be ramping up and up and up. The cavefamily have lost their home… as well as Léonard and Gargouille. Heartbroken, shocked, and angry, Franck is the one who ends up shouldering the blame for their presumed deaths as the others mourn. Things only get worse when Franck finds himself separated from the family, and in the territory of another tribe, this one hostile and cannibalistic...

Haikyuu v5

I continue to read this series because it continues to be charming… though it is beginning to feel, maybe, just a little repetitive. Kind of an inevitability with sports manga. But so far it continues to be good enough to overcome that. I’m not sure what I can say about this series that I haven’t already, so I’ll simply say it continues to be one of the most impressive sports manga I’ve read, and the author does a fantastic job of creating engaging characters, fleshed out teams, and really compelling relationships. I do genuinely adore all the main members of Crows, along with a number of characters from the rival teams as well. And of course it has some kickass volleyball scenes that are just drawn so dramatically they can’t help but take your breath away a little.

M*A*S*H Goes To Maine

Meh. The original book of the series was actually quite good in my opinion. This one… considerably less so. The first part I enjoyed more, since it was about Hawkeye, Trapper, Duke, and Oliver Jones trying to set up the FinestKind Clinic and Fishmarket in Crabapple Cove (which… is just the best premise I could have ever asked for). However, the book spends most of its time describing the quirky lives and times of other people living in the area and I… just… don’t care. It was funny at times but… I just don’t care. I wanted to hear more about the main cast. Also I found this book felt more racist and misogynistic than the first which also put me off :/ Wouldn’t bother if I were you. Go read the first book instead, or better yet just watch the TV show which is an obvious banger.

My Heart’s in the Highlands

I have had this on my “currently reading” list for so long but I’m officially giving up. It’s a really good book in theory but my god I can’t get over the pacing.

It’s about Lady Jane, a woman studying medicine in Edinburgh in 1888, and who suddenly finds herself back in the Highlands in the 13th century. Lost and confused, Jane is now at the mercy Clan Donald’s hospitality while she tries to adjust to this new world and hunts for her broken time machine. Fortunately, this hospitality include a burgeoning friendship with a red-haired warrior woman, Ainslie nic Dòmhnaill, who opens Jane’s eyes to the way the world could be.

Listen. It drives me nuts. This book should be completely up my alley, it has everything I like — IT HAS ALL OF ITS HISTORICAL FOOTNOTES CITED AT THE BACK, LITTLE EXTRA DETAILS ABOUT EVERY CHAPTER. THAT’S MY SHIT RIGHT THERE. DO YOU KNOW HOW MUCH I LIKE BEING ABLE TO GO OVER HISTORICAL DETAILS?? AND WELL RESEARCHED FOOTNOTES?? And yet it doesn’t. Fucking. Work for me. It has a kickass Scottish warrior lady as a love interest! It has a badass lady doctor! It has fish-out-of-water culture shock! But it also has a completely meandering plot, no sense of building tension, and a romance that just happens out of nowhere and feels completely unearned and uninteresting.

I would genuinely just rather read Outlander again, which I know has its own host of problems, but at least Outlander felt exciting and interesting and tense and funny. The romance built in fits and starts, it was complicated, and kept me interested. That book had me hooked (and has me hooked every time I reread it) whereas this book I’ve been sadly picking at for months like its a plate of overcooked spinach. This felt like an attempt at a queer, historically accurate knockoff which I would normally be super into but which just could not stick the landing.

Moomin on the Riviera

My first time actually reading anything from the Moomin canon. I have zero idea how to feel about it! It certainly is as feral as I’ve heard described! Overall, I think I enjoyed it but it sure made me feel strange emotions I didn’t know existed. I’m not even going to try to describe it. Read it if you want a batshit insane anti-capitalist comic.

Surviving the City

This was good in some areas, less good in others. It had a very interesting indigenous perspective on life in the modern city, the foster system, and The Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women issue, which I’ve never seen handled in a book before. Something about the pacing did not completely click with me and I found myself getting easily distracted, but it’s definitely worth the read just to experience it and look at the issues it deals with through the characters’ (and author’s) eyes. It did give me a lot to think about and wrestle with, which is sometimes the best thing a book can give you.

Torchwood: Pack Animals

A really fun read, more so than I had ever expected! If you like Torchwood and want more stories about the team before everything goes to shit, this is perfect for that. It includes the entire cast, an interest mystery to be unravelled, lots of slavering monsters, Rhys being really wonderful and sweet (which I didn’t know I wanted until I read this book), and all the humour I expect from Torchwood. I had to send a lot of quotes to my long-suffering girlfriend who a) does not watch this show but b) needs to tolerate it because I find it too funny to keep to myself. It was good enough to make me go out another book of the series since this was the only one my library carried.

[tigerkirby215]

Ranking all the Ranger subclasses (D&D 5e)

(Artwork by Terence “Terrylefruit" Cantal. Made for Riot Games.)

This is a repost of a Reddit comment I made a little bit ago to a thread talking about Rangers. I felt like I made a decent enough writeup to post it here on this Tumblr.

I’ve got exams for my summer courses to study for which is why builds have been slow, but I do have a few ideas in the pipeline for what to build. For now enjoy my quick-ish thoughts on every Ranger.

Beast Master

Don't play Beast Master without Tasha's rules. Just don't.

Post-Tasha's it's an alright pet subclass. Your companion can do good damage, with the Land companion being able to knock people prone and the Sky one being able to survive with Flyby. The thing is that Ranger has better sources of Bonus Action damage and the main reason to have a companion really is to divert some attacks, which is where the problem with Beast Master comes in. The Sky companion won't get hit if you're not stupid but it's really not that great overall, and the Land companion is pretty much objectively worse than the Drakewarden companion (discussed later.)

Add in the need for Wisdom and you have a meh subclass overall even after Tasha's "buffed" it. It does what its built for now (which is a far cry from how it was in the PHB), and if you want to play that sort of character it's perfectly fine. But I absolutely wouldn't go out of my way to play one outside of a very specific build.

1/10 Pre-Tasha’s, 7/10 Post-Tasha’s

Drakewarden

Beast Master's younger, cooler brother. Let's just go down the point-form list of why Drakewarden is pretty much objectively better than Beast Master:

Drake actually does decent damage (2d6 + PB, assuming you can use the Drake's reaction every turn which you should. Even if you can't you can have it try an opportunity attack.)

Drake actually has decent armor / selectable resistances (14 + PB fuck you +1 over Beast Master lmao)

Drake's damage scales midway decently (IE you don't have to wait until level fucking 11 for more damage although the Drake does have the problem that its initial d6 + PB bite is always non-magical RAW)

Drake gives you resistances

You can use the Drake as a mount if you're Medium sized (it comes online slower than a Paladin's Find Steed spell but...)

Oh and the thing can fly at level 7 (but not when you're riding it.) It won't have Flyby but it can still maneuver around well.

You (and your Drake) get a Breath Weapon that does Fireball damage; that's pretty cool. I know you get it at level 11 but Fireball on any class is still Fireball.

Having a Flying mount by level 15 that also basically has Warding Bond cast on it is also a better capstone than "Zephyr Strike affects your pet" don't @ me.

Excluding the fact that "I don't always want to play a character with a dragon companion that breathes fire" Drakewarden is pretty much objectively better than Beast Master, at least in my eyes. 

8/10

Fey Wanderer

Fey Wanderer similarly suffers from the "you have to have a specific character in mind" problem. With that being said I'm playing this subclass currently and lmao it's kinda busted. Damn good innate spell list, ability to do extra damage (it rewards spreading damage out but tbh with Sharpshooter it's not a bad idea)...

Otherworldly Glamour is just dumb. Do you like having Persuasion checks higher than the Bard's Expertise? Get +2 or +3 in Charisma before taking this class and enjoy your +7 Persuasion checks it's silly.

Beguiling Twist can really augment a charm-based team if you don't mind blowing your reaction constantly. There's a lot of neat ways to use this ability and it rewards creativity imo.

Fey Reinforcements is freaking insane for action economy. Summon Fey is an incredibly good summon and being able to cast it (at any level!) and also cast Hunter's Mark is such an insane boost to DPS. No joke taking 11 (or more like 12) levels in Fey Wanderer just to take the rest in Cleric / Druid for higher level spell slots is insane value.

And Misty Wanderer is... alright. Misty Step is a good spell and you can keep your allies safe, but the real capstone is at level 11 not 15.

9/10

Gloom Stalker

What is there to say other than "it's Rogue with spells and Extra Attack instead of Sneak Attack." Well Umbral Sight is objectively broken; just full-stop. Being essentially permanently invisible can be really unfair and a DM either has to make monsters play stupid or play needlessly smart just to get around this ability in certain areas.

Umbral Sight is unironically what carries Gloom Stalker until level 11 (although Dread Ambusher is certainly not bad and who doesn't like a Saving Throw proficiency?) Stalker’s Flurry and Shadowy Dodge are both incredibly good insurance of your damage output and survivability. The only criticism I have for Gloomstalker (other than the fact that Umbral Sight is objectively overpowered and you'll be accused of being a powergamer) is that it's kinda boring sometimes. It feels a little too much like you're playing a Rogue with spells and Extra Attack instead of a proper "Ranger" I guess. 

9/10 possibly even a 9.5/10

Horizon Walker

The problems start and end with Planar Warrior. It takes your Bonus Action (annoying but not game-ruining) but it also has a 30 foot range limit for some reason? Some people say that this subclass "rewards a melee Ranger" but melee Ranger is trash (take it from a guy who played a Chinese Knockoff Paladin by making a Strength-based Horizon Walker with a Greatsword.) Talk to your DM about removing the range limit on Planar Warrior and this subclass becomes a lot of fun, because it's legit my favorite subclass despite that one flaw.

Ethereal Step has crazy utility, Distant Strike is just good (in general), and Spectral Defense... eh well it's basically just Shadowy Dodge from Gloom Stalker. Not to mention that the innate spell list is very good (although perhaps a little Concentration heavy.) Again the problems with this subclass start and end at Planar Warrior and if your DM allows you to fix that one problem then it's good.

6/10

Hunter

Pack Tactic's video explains the subclass better than I ever could.

The tl;dr is that it's outdated and could easily be made good by giving it an innate spell list or a few more features.

At level 3 Colossus Slayer is your best bet, although Horde Breaker can be really cool. Giant Killer is a trap don't take it too many conditions to play melee Ranger which is bad.

At level 7 Multiattack Defense is your best bet by far. Escape the Horde is a trap; just take the Disengage action or the Mobile feat (or just don't move near enemies pepega.)

Volley is objectively better than Whirlwind Attack because WWA requires you to get surrounded which is never a good move. WWA could use a rework to make melee Ranger more viable :p

At level 15 Evasion is your best bet by a country mile. Stand Against the Tide is bad even by "melee Ranger bad" standards Uncanny Dodge would be better for a melee Ranger (and would still be bad lmao.)

Yes this Ranger does get Rogue level 7 features at level 15. Doesn't make it a bad subclass; again it's simply outdated.

7/10

Monster Slayer

Do yourself a favor and just don't. The best summary I've heard of Monster Slayer is that "it makes you feel like Batman in the Justice League in the sense that your friends will have super powers and all you'll have are a bunch of dinky gadgets."

Hunter’s Sense is alright shouldn't cost an action. Slayer’s Prey is objectively worse than Hunter's Mark... shame your entire freaking subclass is built around this feature. :)

Supernatural Defense is... passable. Not good not bad can be good against specific enemies I guess? Magic-User’s Nemesis sucks because your Wisdom isn't going to be high enough for this to be remotely difficult, especially since most casters have high Wisdom scores.

Slayer’s Counter is mediocre at best. Again only good against casters. This entire subclass is weirdly tailored to deal with casters who don't show up frequently enough to make this subclass worth it. Even if you're fighting against casters a Barbarian with the Mage Slayer feat is better at locking down squishy Wizards.

3/10

Swarmkeeper

It's an odd duck, because it simultaneously has a lot of abilities that offer tons of flexibility but collectively feel like they're very underwhelming overall. Let's address them one by one:

Using Gathered Swarm for extra damage is nice but it's worse than Hunter Ranger.

Moving enemies around is nice but it's a Strength save against your Wisdom, which won't be too high as a Ranger. You can do it every turn though?

Free movement is nice but yeesh you're only moving 5 feet?

Mage Hand is nice. Faerie Fire and Web are nice. All your other spells are mediocre at best but hey they're high level you won't get to use them anyways.

Writhing Tide is just bad for the sake of being bad I have no idea why WoTC thought giving the Ranger a flying speed higher than 10 feet would be broken.

Mighty Swarm makes your meh Gathered Swarm ability slightly less meh. Knocking enemies prone is okay if you have melee allies but it screws over your ranged allies, and getting Half Cover is nice but not exactly game-defining. (If you need cover just run behind a wall you should have a bow.)

Swarming Dispersal is cool but it should be gained way earlier imo. The fact that it's limited is icing on the "meh" cake. This entire subclass radiates "it's cool but why am I playing this" energy: I don't know what to do with the in-built flavor and the abilities don't really cater to any unique idea. This subclass ironically feels like "Hunter Ranger 2" since it's so vanilla.

5/10 maybe 5.5 if I'm being generous

[heretherebedork]

So! At the request of @thequeenofsastiel and after seeing @absolutebl's latest post about Most Disappointing BLS I'm making my two negativity lists.

They are: Don't Bother and Fuck This Show.

Don't Bother shows are the disappointing ones. They're the ones that just kinda fell flat in general, acting or writing or... whatever. The shows that didn't work for me on such a fundamental level that I don't think anyone should bother.

Fuck This Show mostly consists of the bury your gays trope with the occasional abuse as romance. Very few shows in this category.

I will only be including shows I have finished, so no MODC or Grey Rainbows because I stopped both of them before the end!

Don't Bother:

The Cupid Coach: Think Birdemic meets Thai BL. Random long shots of cars pulling into spaces, wooden acting and then a random cast change that fit about as seamlessly as my attempts at sewing. Not good.

My Boy: Still going but the same as TCC above. Yes, it's a pulp. Yes, my expectations are low. But they are not this low. It's not good, full of stereotypes and bad side characters and it's improved by their removal.

Padayon: Interesting idea, dull, dull, dull, dull and choppy and tried to be too heavy handed with the message.

Wheel of Love: Ehhhh. EHHHH. The BL sidecouple was... fine? Barely? But just absolutely not worth it.

Influencers: Had potential, squandered it entirely, was mostly stupid. Meh. So, so meh.

Diving Into Love: Insipid and pointless and not pretty enough to be worth it.

Boyband Love: They completely broke the side couple that was the only chemistry on the whole show at all and the rest was just... meh.

Pearl Next Door: Watch the first episode. Watch the last episode. You'll be at the EXACT SAME SPOT IN THE PLOT. What waste.

Stranger's Kiss: Had potential. decided to do too much, wasted it all.

The Shore: Fuuuuck 'it was all just a hallucination but actually he's real' as an ending. Like... goddamn, seriously?

Evening Cafe: Nope. Just more than meh. SO much more than meh.

The Best Story: Like... nothing. This was nothing and it ended on nothing and it's not exciting and it could have been so much better.

Your Home: How many of these bromance-BLs will I include on this list? As many as I need to.

Alright! With that outta the way, let's move on to...

Fuck This Show:

Fish Upon The Sky: Abuse to romance?! Oh yay. Fuck this show so hard. One of the only shows on this list without any death.

My Toxic Lover/Worth The Wait: Also no death but incoherent, pointless, filled with stupid characters, relationships that don't make sense AND ends with 'it's all a dream?' yeah, no.

Meet My Angel: Fuck this show so hard. Literally a show about an angel, a man with AIDs and his death that ends on a fucking cliffhanger? Nope. Nope. Nope.

My Extraordinary: An entire show where the two main characters die halfway through after getting exactly one episode to be gay and the rest is about the Het Pain. The worst.

So... now, admittedly, these lists are specifically designed to be about shows that I don't think anyone should bother watching. These are the shows that I was glad ended because I was tired of watching them.

I don't tend to put out a lot of negativity but I hope this little list shows a bit about my taste... considering it's mostly really obscure shows no one else ever watched.

[textpost-ronpa]

May I ask for your opinion on the DR series? sorry to bother you i do that a lot hehe

Not sure if you mean DR in general or like specific things about the series, so I'll just talk about the games (while trying to keep things as spoiler-free as possible)

DR1: First got into the series when I was 14 because I saw a clip of the first trial's execution (yes the first chapter was spoiled for me but it was on me) and thought the premise was kinda cool. I was absolutely mindblown the entire time I played after the first chapter.

SDR2: The ending felt meh to me the first time I saw it, but I did like the rest of the game. Since I was still thinking abut pursuing a career in the health care industry when I first played, I also connected so much with Mikan that it was almost kinda sad.

DRAE: I sucked ass when it came to the gameplay, but I still enjoyed the story since it gave me a much better appreciation for Toko.

DR3: I really liked Future Arc since it had more of a VLR-esque feel to it (especially w/ the bracelets), which is interesting since ZE is another Spike Chunsoft series. Also the Future Arc OP freaking slaps. Despair Arc was fine, no real specific feelings towards it.

DRV3: I like the DRV3 cast the most. I also love the fact that this installment somewhat deviated from the usual hope/despair motif to focus a bit more on truth/lies. Also, I bawled my eyes out at the end of Chapter 4 bc HE DESERVED BETTER

And now some other misc thoughts:

- This may seem weird coming from someone who goes by Mod Tsumiki, but I'm kinda neutral towards Junko. Like, I don't hate her, but she's not one of my faves either.

- Kaimaki is my biggest DR OTP, with Tsumioda as a close second

- The games' English voiceovers are great for the most part, but I can't quite say the same about the anime dubs (I can't take DR3's dub seriously at all)

- I'm surprised by how the series is suddenly skyrocketing in terms of popularity in 2020. Like apparently even Game Grumps is playing the first game now.

- While I'm a big fan of DR, I probably would've loved Distrust/Beta-Danganronpa; as a bit of a horror fan, the gritty atmosphere and elements of trust/distrust would've appealed to me.

- DR is also what introduced me to Zero Escape, another series that I love.

I might do a character tier list but idk yet

[spaceorphan18]

SpaceOrphan vs Glee Season 3

for @yesandmusicals who wanted to know

Yes, let’s talk about my dislike of season 3, because that’s always fun!

So, first of all, I want to say for the record, I actually don’t believe Glee was ever that well written.  I’m not one to bash RIB (though I have issues with them), but I think the novelty of the show, coupled with the great music, good performances from the cast, and some fun things within production, made this show memorable.  And, in the beginning, it had Jane Lynch delivering some dark and edgy comedy, which people were fascinated by.  

But were season 1′s plotlines all that good?  There’s a fake baby, and standard teen drama, and Will going through some kind of weird mid-life crises at 29, and most of the interesting characters were really in the background for most of season 1. 

And then season 2 happened and... I don’t think it’s that great?  You’ll have to forgive me - cause I’m a Kurt/(Blaine)/Klaine fan - and I do think Kurt’s story in the first two seasons is best this show ever is as a whole, but I think a lot of season 2 was a mess, and kind of coasted on being popular.    Season 2 became big and flashy and everyone loved it until they didn’t anymore.  The show really had a quick shelf life, and looking back, it’s kind of surprising the show made it all the way to six seasons.  

(I actually really enjoy season 4-6, so I’m glad they stuck it out.)

Anyway -- by the time season 3 came around, the burnout was real, and they brought in new writers (who I don’t think helped much) -- and the show was now trying to service so many characters that most of the (terrible) plot lines they had were stretched way too thin -- with the exception of the Finchel story line that went in circles cause they were waiting for the inevitable conclusion to happen in season 4.  

To be more concise, though, here is a list of reasons why season 3 is my least favorite:

The aforementioned big cast of characters who got episodes devoted to them instead of the long arcs that seasons 1 and 2 gave the characters.  This made the season feel disjointed and messy, and no one got a satisfactory amount of screen time.  

On top of that -- they were backed into dealing with The Glee Project, and while Unique and (arguably) Joe were decent characters, Rory was not. He felt like the most pointless character to ever waste time on.

The season is broken up into three segments (1-8; 9-14; 15-22; sectionals, regionals, and nationals) and while this structure is all fine and dandy on paper, the plot lines for the first and third segments were terrible.  (I don’t necessarily mind episodes 9-18 plus The First Time, but the beginning and the end of this season just kinda sucked.)

In the first third -- we have possibly the worst story lines of the series.  I don’t think Santana’s coming out was done very well.  No one cared about Sue and Beiste in a love triangle.  The student elections just were weird.  And then there was Shelby and Puck -- and I can’t say how much I HATE that story line, because it leads to some of the worst moments the show has.  People often don’t even think about Puck that much, so this isn’t talked about very often -- but even beyond the grossness of a teacher/student relationship, how Puck treats her is truly one of the most disgusting displays of a relationship on this show.

There was the issue that they literally did not know what to do with Quinn so they made her crazy, and then hit her with a truck.  I’m not even a Quinn fan but, good god.  

The last third was marred by the fact that Rachel Berry was given everything on a silver platter and I wasn’t here for the -- give Rachel everything show.  I don’t hate Rachel, she was a great character in season 1.  She’s a great character later on in the series.  But the writing around her character, especially at the expense of many other characters, became grating -- especially in episodes like Promasaurus and Props.

One of the by products of season 2 was that Hummelberry became a thing, and instead of understanding that Kurt worked just fine as his own character, they now had to tie Kurt in with Rachel, their stories became paralleled, her issues became his issues, and he became her emotional prop of a sidekick.  

Which also made Finchel and Klaine stories become paralleled a lot (glee loves parallels, and it used to parallel Wemma with Finchel - which makes more sense, tbh.) 

Because Kurt was relegated to sidekick for Rachel, Blaine ended up being relegated jukebox singer, with little to no development outside his one episode and the rare Klaine story line.  

I think they mishandled some of the bigger social commentary stories.  The Kurt/Bullying storyline resonated with a lot of people, so suddenly Glee felt the need to go address all the issues facing (young?) people and it ended up doing a 180 from its darker roots.  And thus we get an awkward Santana coming out story that focuses more on Finn; Karofsky’s suicide attempt in a tonally disjointed episode, and Beiste’s spousal abuse story line - which is... what?  

Also, let’s not forget that Sue being pregnant for half the season is indeed a story line.  

The competitions I think were pretty bland, since it was already telegraphed that they were going to win Nationals because they lost the year before -- and half the cast is graduating.  The show outgrew it’s original premise of underdogs trying to win a competition, and while the writers clearly needed these posts for their structure, the character arcs were far more interesting than the weak aspect of competition. 

And then, of course, the whole issue with the Tongue Tied scene during Nationals, which yes does annoy me about the lack of Klaine kiss (the fact that the writers didn’t even think that Kurt and Blaine should celebrate together tells me that it’s more than just censorship) but more so the fact that Emma gives her virginity away as trophy for Will that disgusts me more. 

As for the censorship thing, while I think there might have been some, I think it’s more so that the writers couldn’t focus on any one character for any length of time, and Klaine in the background was not Tike in the background.  And in comparison, when Finchel is getting all the foreground, fighting for scraps made it difficult to watch everything else.  Not helping is the fact that Darren was doing movies and musicals, and wasn’t around for a bit that also added to lack of screen time.  

Oh, and Finchel had an argument over chairs.  I don’t actually hate the scene, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention it.  

Did I forget anything? 

And I know, I know - damn, S.O. that’s a lot.  Believe it or not, there are some good things (COOPER!) about season 3, I don’t hate it to the point where I can’t watch it or anything, and all the rest of the seasons have a ton of flaws as well, but unlike every other season, the high points don’t outweigh the “meh”-ness that this season unfortunately suffers from, hence me liking it the least. 

...and now you know the rest of the story.  

[catbowserauthor]

Dragonball 30 Day Challenge: Day 21 Favorite Movie

So I actually really like most of these movies. I’ve never been bothered by the “it wouldn’t fit into canon” argument. I view them as fun AU adventures so I just judge them based on their individual traits. I won’t be including the specials in here as I think that’s a different topic.

So, let’s do a quick countdown to my favorite, from the worst to the best!

16: Resurrection F: Sorry, I have never been a huge fan of Freeza. He was fine as a villain in the Namek saga and his unexpected return until he was killed by Trunks was interesting. Beyond that, I don’t find him an engaging bad guy. He’s a Bond villain. He’s not fun for me to watch and him growing that much stronger in four months is stretching my sense of disbelief even for Dragonball. Vegeta getting robbed of that kill was crap and introducing Whis’ ability to rewind time killed any tension for future battles for me.

And I don’t wanna talk about what they did to Gohan.

15: Lord Slug: There’s nothing “wrong” per say with this movie but it’s just...well, it’s Piccolo Daimao all over again. So, it’s kind of boring. I do like seeing the colder climate as Toriyama didn’t draw that very often (claims he hates the cold so it’s usually summer or spring in his manga) so we didn’t get to see it as much. I also love the brief interaction Goku has with Gohan during the battle and Gohan and Icarus are way too adorable.

14: Bio Broly: Okay so I don’t hate this movie. It’s not good but I don’t think it’s utterly horrible like some people do. But the reasons I like it might be different than others. I like this one because you get to see Goten and Trunks’ friendship. You see them pal around, you see them argue but then when they’re close to getting killed you also see Trunks refuse to leave an unconscious Goten to die alone. I freaking LOVE that.

13: Return of Cooler: I think my issue with this movie is the same issue I have with Super in general. It’s focused on Goku and Vegeta almost the whole way through. We get small cuts to the others but otherwise it’s just them. I like both these characters but I like to see a mix of the cast so that’s why it falls lower.

12: Dragonball Super Broly: Okay so I really like the adaption of Dragonball Minus. It turned out way better than I hoped and the animation in this movie is absolutely amazing. I’d recommend it just based on that alone. I really enjoyed the new characters. But again, not a fan of Freeza and the fact it was really only Goku and Vegeta—again—really hurts it for me. Still a fun movie though.

11: Wrath of the Dragon: This one has a really fun plot and it’s neat to see Trunks really bonding with someone. I think the brief interactions at the BBQ are some of the best. The downtime in this movie has some of my favorite moments. The final battle is fun but I think it would have been better if someone other than Goku got the finishing blow.

10: Super Android 15: This one, again, I really love for the downtime! Seeing Goku’s family shopping, going out for lunch—I love that kind of stuff! The Androids themselves are interesting enough and while I know a lot of people don’t like it, I really like they gave 15 a redneck accent in the dub. Gave him some character. I also love Gohan and Krillin trying to help even though they are completely outmatched. Gohan throwing himself in front of a blast to protect his father who is creating a spirit bomb is one of my favorite small scenes.

9: Broly Second Coming: The interactions between Videl, Goten and Trunks are pure gold. I’d love to see them just...shooting the breeze with each other. The battle against Broly is fun but I love the ending where Goku pops in from the Other World (presumably) to lend his aid. That entire family Kamehameha is just brilliant.

8: Battle of Gods: So this is going to sound weird because Beerus and Whis are some of my favorites in DBS. I did not like them here. No idea why, just didn’t. The Super Saiyan God ritual is kinda weird but I love all the character interactions before this! This is what I really love about Dragonball, all these interesting personalities working off one another. I like how Goku and Beerus’ fight goes and the animation is really well done. Pretty solid. And Vegeta defending Bulma—awesome.

7: Bojack Unbound: This is how I pictured Gohan growing up into after Cell—still studies but plays outside and still trains and ChiChi being okay with it. This is the personality I love Gohan with—confident but not overly confident, shy but with pride in himself and a great blend of his human and Saiyan sides.

Freaking. Love. It.

The rest of the movie is meh. Save one element—Goku saying “screw it” to the rules and intervening to save his son

and Gohan utterly owning everyone with SSJ2.

But I have to rank it high with having my absolute favorite characterization of Gohan.

6: Broly the Legendary Super Saiyan: Yes, I’m ranking the old one higher than the new one. I don’t care. I watch this one more.

I like the aliens, I like all the other characters being involved. I love the fact that Gohan is a kid in this one. I love Vegeta’s being utterly and completely terrified. I love Piccolo coming in for the save, I love Goku forgetting about the battle and Broly and rushing to try and save his kid. And when Broly threatens his son...

“Kakarot, how much do you love your son?”

“Gohan, leave.”

“But Father—“

“NOW.”

I think having more characters and introducing peril to all of them makes it more engaging.

5: Dead Zone: Quick trivia fact, this is the movie that got me into Dragonball. I caught the end of it on Cartoon Network and was intrigued from them on. I really like that this has a younger Goku. Goku from the Saiyan Saga to the Android Saga is probably my favorite characterization of him. That really shows here. He doesn’t care what beef Kami and Garlic Junior have. He’s there for his kid. “Return my Gohan!” There’s so great choreography in this one too and more martial arts than just ki blasts which I always love seeing.

4: World’s Strongest: Little Gohan is fun. I love seeing him interact with Goku’s friends and an enemy that still thinks Roshi is the strongest makes for some great throwback scenes. I like seeing Goku’s friends get involved in the action. Goku intervening to protect his son against a brainwashed Piccolo and Gohan having to watch the two men he admires most in the world fight makes for great drama.

3: Fusion Reborn: This movie is just fun. It’s wacky, it’s crazy, the fights are insane, the dialogue is hilarious, it’s bright and colorful and Goku and Vegeta while being the main heroes don’t completely dictate the plot. There’s enough fun stuff going on with other characters that I can enjoy any aspect of this movie.

2: Tree of Might: The scents between Goku and Gohan are why I love this movie. Them playing in the tub, Goku letting him keep Icarus in a cave in the yard...the ENTIRE scene of Goku trying to break through to Gohan once he’s become a giant ape just breaks my heart. “Gohan! It’s Daddy!”

Then having time cut off his own son’s tail to save him and ooo, Goku’s “I’m so done” glare to Turles. I adore that when Goku is at his lowest, it’s his son’s voice that gets him to stand back up.

1: Cooler’s Revenge: I like these slice of life moments and this movie has lots of them. I love Goku and his friends and son just wanting to go on a camping trip. I love that Cooler comes not to avenge his brother but because Freeza being beaten by a Saiyan looks bad on their entire family. That is brilliant.

This scene:

Daddy Goku for the win here. I love how they show his relationship with Gohan in this movie. They’ve always been my favorites so I’m biased by nature. I love how the battle against Cooler goes. I love how they have to struggle not to use their ki when they’re tending to Goku. The characters and scenarios in this movie really make it for me.

One thing I noticed as I did this list is that most of my top movies have Gohan as a kid. I don’t think that’s random. I much prefer his characterization at that age and I like it when the others can still contribute to the plot. But as I said, except for my top most disliked one, I really like all of these in some manner. They’re always a fun time!

[losingmyjustice]

@nurotoxin​​​ sent;

scraTCH THAT [ everything ( minus appeal ) ] + glados

Thoughts & Feelings

Send [ word ] + a character name for my muse to talk about that character.

"Unfortunate that I ended up running into her." beat. "Or rather, that she ended up approaching me. Because, clearly, the first thing you think of when seeing a stranger sitting alone trying to get some peace and quiet is how great of a test subject they'd be. Absolutely normal."

"Also, I'm quite annoyed by how persistent she is — clearly there are more cooperative people she can irritate with her tests, yet she still sees it necessary to bother me despite how I've opposed to it since the get-go."

"Frankly, I don't get it, how she can loathe me to bits yet still be the one initiating an interaction. Sounds rather self-sabotaging, if you ask me. I'd think both of us would profit from it if we'd avoid each other."

Send [ oops ] + a character name for my muse to blurt something about that character.

"If you think about it," he spoke, while not thinking much about it, let alone how offensive it might be. "to claim she's taller than me is ridiculous."

"Her, er, vessel had been assigned by the Stars upon her arrival, right? It's not ... bound with her, so to say. Meaning, should one put her into a tinier vessel similar to the ones you find in Craft-Punk, then she'd have a new, much smaller height than she initially did, while still being the same person. Therefore, her vessel being taller could be compared to someone wearing high heels, no? It's not her, physically, being taller." he’s just salty.

"— Should she argue about this, then just put her in a 2ft tall vessel and see if she still believes it's fair to judge height per the vessel she's in. I bet she'd hate that."

Send [ think ] + a character name to know my muse’s thoughts on that character.

You squint as she took her leave. Despite having her back turned, you're rather certain she's aware of the stare piercing her, though really it'd only be all the better if she is.

All she had said is for you to wait with no further explanation. Likely bringing something, you reckon. You did scoff that you'd leave immediately just to spite her, but both of you know that it won't come to such — it's difficult to find a quiet spot as is with all these celebrations, and you genuinely don't have the energy to bother today. So here you are, grumbling; What the hell is her problem?

If you'd only go by the 'tests' she offers, you'd think of her as a joke. You still do, but — aside from amusement, what's there for her to accomplish? Granted, she does gain some info here and there about Spirale, but apart from that? If that's it, she sure picked quite the horribly inconvenient way to approach the matter. Someone who'd seek actual results wouldn't do that. What's worse; that isn't it. If it'd be just a puzzle enthusiastic scientist wanna-be would be one thing, but only a glance on her attitude and you'd argue her to be worse than the imbecile Dimitri, for obvious reasons. So why? Is she studying people and their way of thinking solely to understand them? That'd barely make sense, considering how she gives no damn about humans to be this interested. Hell, you'd not be surprised if she'd replace her test subjects with these stupid turrets if she could, considering how she reacted when you tossed it the other day. So, what is it then? You can't fathom a potential goal she might be seeking that isn't ridiculously outlandish.

... Maybe she doesn't have a goal, you think. Perhaps she truly is driven by the concept of 'doing science' alone, like she had been programmed to do — and that's all she does, despite the fact that she isn't even where the task was given to her. Gathering information just for the sake of gathering information, with no slight interest on who it aids, or who it expenses. A pointless routine, pretty much. "Despicable," you find yourself muttering, seeing her return again from a distance. You can't imagine anyone living content and happy without having an aim they're striving for in life.

You'd know.

Send [ heart ] + a character name to know my muse’s true feelings for that character.

As much as I'd love to say he's holding a front or whatever, unfortunately, beneath the disrespect is just the same thing but bass-boosted. True, he did act on prejudices at first, but his assumptions had been more than confirmed to him by now, so really he'd call it horseshit if you were to speak to him about how he's got to be open-minded and etc.

However!! While he does have more respects for a snail than for GLaDOS, it might come to a surprise to you when I say he finds her much more tolerable than Dimitri! So hey, at least she got that going for her! Even if he'd never admit that. There are several reasons that go into this — for instance, the fact that she isn't love-struck & her actions (cough, life) not entirely centered around such do make talking to her less annoying. You could claim that she's love-stuck by science, I guess, but she doesnt whine about it. GLaDOS is also far less gullible, much more observant; while it was fortunate for Clive that Dimitri wasn't alike to her in that aspect, conversing with a fool that has only one thing in mind is hardly interesting, and at some point forward even the thrill of deceiving them was gone, more alike to a ludicrously boring routine. It hurts me to insult Allen like this but, yeah — speaking to someone who's less naive is, ultimately, less tedious.

Also uh, this is sad to say but, yknow, Clive keeping up an act around Dimitri at all times was draining — smiling while wanting to strangle someone is!! not a fun thing. Neither is acting like you're a fan of a work that had your parents killed. But, with GLaDOS, he doesn't have to pretend shit. To put it bluntly, it's a relief he can be the asshole he wants to be without repressing it. And, relief makes stuff more tolerable! For him.

There's definitely the comfort of 'im having a bad day and im about to make that everyones problem' that he was unable to do all these years but, hey, you didn't hear that from me.

Regarding testing, they're not always horribly annoying to him unlike he'd claim — especially the ones you could (almost) compare to puzzles; they do catch his interest, and there's always the satisfaction you get when you got it right. However, he'll always be awfully reluctant to do the tests despite how intriguing they might be, and should he end up doing it anyway — never express that delight. Maybe a smirk might slip, but should she point that out he'd make sure in one way or another for her to take that back, or reason said smirk to be something insulting against her — yknow, the usual. Clive wants to be as inconvenient as possible as a 'test subject', and, is doing a good job at that. While yeah, the tests can low-key be temporarily nice, you won't find him miss these should she finally leave him alone. There are a lot of things he's missing, but GLaDOS and her Tests will never be on the list, really.

Send [ body ] + a character name to know my muse’s body language around that character.

So, uh. we both know he's emotionally unstable, right. Talking about his Body Language when he's acting like that is,, difficult, since it depends highly on his mood swings and I'm not about to count them all,, we'll be here forever if I do that. All I can say is that he's surely tense & sensitive whilst it.

However!! I'll ramble a bit about his usual demeanour w/ GLaDOS when things are "fine", whatever that means when talking about Clive

If he's just 'kinda there', as in low-spirited yet still well enough to talk shit (which is the 'usual' in their interactions IG) you can absolutely expect him to intentionally sit 'wrong' yet comfortably — just, y'know, to express disdain even further. Usually, it'd mean he's rather comfortable around you, but in this case, it's frankly just a lack of care of what GLaDOS thinks of him. She already knows he's got issues smh why bother giving a good impression,, Guard isn't really up either, slacking far too much to be so — just this state of "meh." where he very well can complain about the situation at hand without leaving despite it. Uhh, what else — ah and he got his hat off, likely just cast aside somewhere. shrugs

If Clive is ACTUALLY spacing out, be it to the extent where he trails off and loses his line of thoughts like all 30 seconds, or even as far to where he doesn't respond at all — if he's standing, sitting, henceforth, one thing for sure his posture would be slumped, although seeing how it's usually a thing that happens gradually, he'd stop sitting so improper (aside from the slumped posture, of course) so there's that, at least. Guard is obviously thrown out of the roof in such things. Whilst sitting there's also this habit where he'd tip with his fingers on the palm of the other hand (imagine like playing on a piano) or instead have a fist resting in it (as if you're counting for rock paper scissors) while he's spacing out— I can imagine GLaDOS would have already picked up on that to tell when he's getting lost in thought again.

Obviously, he got better days than that, where he'd care to keep up the manners you'd expect from him — but rest assured if he has the energy to act normal, he'll also have the energy to leave should GLaDOS show up. So, the next best thing is where he's irked, which. Well, that's not all too fun either, but. He'd sit upright, arms crossed, perchance even legs crossed, rather tense, you get the idea—much less cooperative too, but what else is new.

[wearesorcerer]

For the d&d meme: 2 and 3

YAY! AN ASK! (Ahem.)

|| 2.) Your favorite character that someone else has played. ||

This one is kinda hard. Not counting Collectivists (it’s Moxie) or one’s I’ve not witnessed in play, I’ma have to say Mikey.

Mikey was a friend’s bareknuckle boxer Fighter (because this was 3.5 and he was taking after his Bard father, who wasn’t Lawful). The character was woefully suboptimal, but did an excellent job of becoming one of the two hearts of our fairly large party (the other was the idiot halfling rogue/sorcerer; long story) and got lucky in fights for quite a while, so we all naturally gravitated towards the character’s generic charisma (no, I have no idea what his actual stat was).

Unfortunately for us, he got coup de graced on a side quest we were doing because half of the players couldn’t attend a session and the DM decided to have us investigate goblins or orcs or something. The chieftain knocked him unconscious, then took the opportunity to cleave him in twain. T_T

|| 3.) Your favorite side quest. ||

I don’t actually have a favorite, so instead I’m going to tell you about the most memorable. Same campaign. This one overtook the main plot. Be warned: it’s long. It’s also why I don’t care for side quests.

This was our DM’s first time running a homemade campaign and his second time DMing ever (the first was the semester before, when he ran the module The Standing Stone; it ended in a hilarious near-TPK). We started in a tavern (like you do) not knowing each other (like you do). Thanks to the halfling’s backstory, we all got drawn into a barroom brawl against a local criminal. That pretty much formed our party and got us hired to investigate a cult of Nerull that had taken up in a nearby abandoned temple (of Pelor, IIRC).

During the boss fight against a couple of higher-up cultists (I forget how many, but one had swords or something), one of the enemy casters decided that it would be a good idea to place a necrotic cyst on the halfling.

There are EVER so many reasons why this was a terrible idea.

Necrotic cyst is a 2nd-level spell from Libris Mortis (pg. 68) on the Cleric and Sorcerer/Wizard lists (meaning we’re fighting 3rd- to 4th-level casters). On a successful melee touch (spell) attack, the target has to make a Fort (Con) save; failure means they get implanted with the eponymous cyst. Depending on where they were touched, they might not even know they bear it. The cyst does two things:

Makes the target more susceptible to necromantic stuff. -2 on saves against Necromancy spells and effects, but also +1d6 damage from the natural weapons of undead.

Enables the use of other spells. There are nine other necrotic spells in Libris Mortis which rely on existing cysts. This was the main problem.

Before I get into why those other spells were the main problem, I need to explain a few things about the metagame.

The DM was a touch...conservative, shall we say, with what he would and would not allow source-wise. Despite this, he had a penchant for picking up the latest splatbooks (non-setting specific and Eberron) and taking material from them. As a player, he mostly played Fighters and was not (at that time) big on mages; thus, he didn’t have a good grasp of what spells were and were not especially powerful based on (sometimes foreseeable) consequences.

The halfling was intended to be a dual-wand wielding sneak-a-sniper, so went Rogue/Sorcerer. Because of what this build required, he put many of his early levels into Sorcerer instead of Rogue when we needed a party Rogue, yet somehow managed not to cast much of anything. In the end, he was terrible at literally everything except lying.

Naturally, the enemy caster succeeded at planting the cyst on the halfling. I’m not sure why the caster felt the halfling (not just a halfling, but a halfling child) was the best choice for harboring a cyst that’s designed to screw with the enemy long-term and we had plenty of other party members who could have served for such a host, but whatever. The halfling failed his save and BAM! We’re in trouble.

Like I said, necrotic cyst enables nine other spells -- almost like a Cleric domain, as the others span 1st through 9th levels (no cantrips). However, they all require the caster to possess a “mother cyst” (a flavorful feat tax; eh).

The 1st-level spell is yet another detect something spell, but it only detects necrotic cysts. Meh, but it means that we can’t go anywhere near these cultists without them knowing we’re there.

It was probably the 3rd-level spell, necrotic bloat, that was the reason we felt the need to get rid of the cyst in the first place: the caster deals Level x d6 damage (so 5d6 to 6d6) to the target and half of that damage is “Vile” (horribly evil, can only be healed within the area of a consecrate or hallow spell).

I say this because we were never told (or I forgot if we were told; this was 14ish years ago) why the halfling was reduced to something like 1 HP, but the halfling was basically out of commission entirely as we struggled to figure out what we could do.

That was months of out-of-game time.

First, we turned to my character’s mother, a Dwarven Cleric; she was unable to do much, sadly.

Then we heard about an enclave of elven druids who might be able to remove the cyst. They were on the other side of the mountains, so it would be a long journey to get to them and it wasn’t assured that they could (or would) help us.

So we journeyed.

And were constantly waylaid by undead. Lots of undead. Lots of weird undead. (The DM had fun dragging up monsters from Monster Manual III, which I’d written off at that point. He did this largely because I had, but slightly because he had a hard-on for Eberron shit.)

We did manage to get to the enclave of elves and had them remove the cyst. The halfling’s player felt like they got to do basically nothing the entire time, another player switched out characters twice (one was boring due to how he made it, the other died; the third one developed mysanthropy [became a wererat] resulting in awesomeness), a third player spot rotated at least three times, and we had traded the quite fun Mikey for the Paladin no one liked, so we were not having fun.

It was after the enclave that we (well, I) realized something: we were being scryed upon. Our DM finally told us about necrotic scrying.

As it turns out, the 2nd-level cyst spell functions almost identically to scrying, but only on subjects with necrotic cysts (it also has a few other, largely meaningless drawbacks). Scrying is a monster of a spell, which is why it’s a 4th level spell by default on the Druid and Sorcerer/Wizard spell lists (that’s 7th class level for the prepared casters and 8th for Sorcerers); Clerics treat it as a 5th-level spell (10th class level), Bards as 3rd (because they maxed at 6th-level spells in 3.x, so they got it at the same time as Wizards). A caster with scrying can manipulate events from far, far away with little effort; it’s the spell for a BBEG for many campaigns. Making it a 2nd-level spell just makes it scarier.

It was at this point that I yelled at the DM:

If you give a continent-spanning cult of evil an easy means of scrying, you’ve given its upper echelons full access to the ACTUAL spell.

The ordinary spell scrying relies on familiarity; it’s one of the few instances of sympathetic magic in the game. By enabling someone an easier way to scry on one character and putting that someone into a large organization in a low-rung position, you’ve given the higher-ups a means of seeing the rest of the party and thus the ability to scry on them through normal means.

Meaning that the cyst became obsolete not long after the first casting of necrotic scrying.

Meaning the undead continued to bother us every night (and somehow never get seen on watches) even after we got the cyst removed.

The next step was to look up a means of blocking scrying. Our other caster having left the party long, long ago (player went to grad school) and our halfling being utterly useless, we had to track down a magic item to shield us from scrying.

So the DM made us negotiate with a dragon to get one out of its hoard.

The dragon could have easily killed us, for the record. It was astonishing that we were able to get the thing at all. Somehow, we got some like two other items, one of which was a cape of the mountebank...

...that the halfling promptly stole that night while everyone slept and used to abandon the party.

It was only after this point that we managed to get back to the main plot. We had been playing for a little over a year, may have been at fifth level at that point (it might have taken longer), and had next to no magic items (other than the anti-scrying device and maybe something else we got from the hoard). We got maybe two sessions after that before getting TPKed.

[ladylilithium]

Everyone in the Frozenverse looks so similar, so that if Hans was standing directly behind Oaken with a beard, no one would recognize him.

I'm sorry anon. For some effing reason Tumblr didn't work and I had to rewrite my answer again, and it's so annoying 🙄. I'm losing my mind.

But back to the answer, you mean this part?

Gotta say, nice catch anon. I'm not very good at looking deep in detail to trailers. It kinda spoils the fun for me and secondly, I'm more of a casual fan when it comes to Frozen; I like the hansdom and helsa side of the fandom, and perhaps a bit part of anything else, but I'm still more of a casual.

Tbh I didn't like the first movie that much, but I liked it's potential. With that being said, I'm still going to analyze your hypothesis because is fun (also because I never get asks and I feel so honored right now :'v).

So there are actually two guys in the same scene where Oaken is. These two guys.

Let's just go right off the bat and discard the first one, since his skin is too rich to be tan. I can picture Hans being more tan after years of hardwork under the sun, but that skin tone is too deep to be considered from white to tan. And the jet black hair is too dark as well. You see hair dye existed around the time where Frozen is inspired (even way back before), but it was mostly natural, with not strong chemicals we use today. And thus the hair wouldn't look that dark, a trail of it's natural color should remain . I personally, see that background character as an entirely different from Hans. And also is a bit iffy if a white character suddenly looks like that, don't you think? If I were part of the writers I would warn them that this could fall in blackface category, and Disney of course, doesn't want that. So this guy is not Hans. ❌

The second guy on the other hand...

let's make a small list of similarities, shall we?

Brown auburn hair (with red undertone). If Hans somehow wanted to pass unrecognized with a beard and dying his hair, this would be more likely the end result.

White skin.

Same hairstyle.

Same bored cocky... face? (My interpretation lol).

But that's about it... I think his eyes are too small and dark to be Hans. Granted, the quality of this pic is shit, but still. The biggest giveaway for me is the nose. This character has a big rounded nose, Like a pig shape, while Hans' nose is pointy and angular.

See the shape between shadows and lights? So this guy, is not Hans either.❌

I think at this point, is too late to introduce Hans again. As far as we've seen, I don't see how Hans can fit into the plot of Frozen 2. Unless the New lore and mythos connects him or his family directly, I see no reason to put him again in this film.

From a narrative standpoint is unnecessary. As sad as this sounds, Hans is unnecessary for Frozen 2. If I were part of the creators staff I would've made sure that he can fit into the plot or.... not adding him at all. You see the biggest problem that Frozen had was that Hans is not really a necessary character, you could easily erase him from the movie and the conflict would still be there between Anna and Elsa. The writers (and some fans) tried to explain that Hans was the catalyst reason of why the conflict started but really.... that's not true. We also never see a clearer POV to make us understand his own development. He goes to good baby boi to ultra evil instinct in just one scene. There is no pacing or believable hints that make us mistrust him, and we cannot take him seriously as a villain because we don't see the build up either. We don't see his progressive turn to evil, so the final product is bland. AFH made a better job since we can literally see his POV, but not everyone read the novel. And so some came to the terms and accepted Hans as a villain, some others are like meh, who cares, and some believe that he needs a second chance because he clearly has the capacity of compassion and empathy.

However, in order to bring him back, he MUST BE a protagonist/coprotagonist. He must have a good amount of focus, so we can see his progress and development as a character to redeem himself, because regardless of how his life was, how scared he might had been, he still tried to kill someone. And that means a whole lot of screentime and interaction with the rest of the cast/characters.

So when the hansdom or helsa fans still claim that he's going to appear as the plot twist or whatever, I'm like

But idk, it could work... as it could not. I think is a poor choice to add Hans in frozen 2 as a secondary character and make a half baked story for him again. No one would take his redemption seriously imo. Not even as a character, he would become just that annoying side character that no one likes lol (Like scrappy doo).

.

.

.

PS: SHOULD HE HAPPENS TO APPEAR AS A SMALL CAMEO JUST TO BE THE PUNCHING BAG OR TO BECOME MORE EeeViIL FOR FUTURE SEQUEL I SWEAR TO GOD-.

[lena-in-a-red-dress]

Season 5 Wishlist: Moment #6

Lena and James are curled up on the couch together, obviously reconciled. Someone remarks on James' lack of eyepatch.

"Yeah, I got clean bill of health. Which is good, because I was not looking forward to spending the rest of my life as One-Eyed Willie."

"Goonies," Brainy recites crisply. "Released 1985, starring--"

"I dunno," Lena cuts in with a smile as Nia distracts Brainy from reciting the entire cast list. Her fingers stroke the edge of James' eyebrow, where a fresh scar sits knitted into his skin. "I was kinda digging the pirate look."

James blinks, his eyebrow lifting under her touch. "Really?"

"Yuh huh," she giggles, cheeks flushing. Maybe she's a little wine tipsy. A little.

"Wow. I would... not have expected that."

"Meh," Kelly chimes in with a shrug. "I was always more of a Mary Read girl myself."

"Oh my god, same!" every woman in the room exclaims.

Including Lena.

[pixie-mask]

So I was planning to make this post to just gush over how much I’ve fallen in love with Milo Murphy’s Law, but then I remembered that I’m not that good at writing coherent thoughts, so I apologize for this rambling mess if anyone reads this.

The Show Itself

So, yeah Milo Murphy’s Law. I remember hearing about this show last year and of course saw that amazing peach clip, but other than that I didn’t look much into it and just let it be. 

However on the one time youtube actually gave me a good recommendation and I ended up in a loop of MML clips. (namely clips of Dakota >.>)

In the end I’m so happy to have finally given the show a proper try because it is amazing. The animation is really nice and at various moments there’s these really amazing bits of really fluid animation for certain movements.

Also I tend to be kinda meh to iffy about shows where there’s songs involved especially continuous shows but the songs in MML are so enjoyable. They’re either catchy, funny or both and actually an enjoyable treats to listen to.

However all of this is even more enjoyable due how fantastic and the setting and characters are. 

I mean I’ve seen characters or similar things where a character/the protagonist has some sort of “affliction” that causes trouble for them routinely and the show typically focuses on the characters ups and downs, struggles to make friends, their hardship of being accepted and other things. So it was so nice to come into a show where Milo is just a walking chaos magnet but he’s already has friends, is well liked and no one is ostracizing him from the community or from activities. It’s like so nice to see a story where all of that is avoided to focus on what adventures and mishaps the characters can get in and out off. 

At the same time it’s nice to see that Murphy’s Law is understood with a healthy dose of realism (as far as cartoon can get) in this show. Milo understands Murphy’s Law can be a problem and doesn’t get offended when people want to be cautious around him and others aren’t all that jumpy around him. I mean they glance around their environment every now and then but they aren’t constantly panicking 24/7.

I also love that that there is a generation of Murphy’s. Like despite the curse like nature of Murphy’s Law the Murphy men have been able to find wives that dearly love them and carry on a family. I constantly think about it whenever I see Brigette and Martin or Milo and Amanda interact.

Speaking of interacting I love these characters. All of them are really enjoyable. Even characters that aren’t really set to be all that pleasant; Mr. Block, Elliot, Savannah, Brick, Bradley; I find to be really enjoyable. I like that Melissa is allowed to be this tough girl without the show trying to go frequently out of its way to mention how she isn’t girly, but then she’s also got fears that aren’t mocked and is a nerd who works on making sure her grades are always good and is just so sure of herself. I like how Zack is this ex-boy band member whose allowed to be on the cowardly side and more sensitive without being criticized and is willing to try to turn situations around and grow through his experiences with Milo.

The rest of the cast is golden as well. It’s been a while since I’ve seen a show where the school faculty was actually really fun to see and not overly stupid, neglectful or constantly angry. It’s nice to see that the school staff has actual personalities and are capable of getting along with their students. The other students are pretty fun to and really help round out the characters. Also the Murphy family is just so sweet. I love that Sara can be so geeky without being mocked, that both parents are successful but also very caring and supportive off their children and that they don’t let Murphy’s Law hinder them in being around one another. I’m not going to go into too much about them (running out of energy) but I have to give alot of props to Amanda’s character. While she’s set up to the be this tightly wound perfectionist its nice to see that she’s able to be silly and have fun and I was so thrilled that they didn’t try to make a long standing story thread about her being a perfectionist and Milo being being basically an embodiment of chaos get in the way of their relationship developing.

Even the more minor characters really fun. I genuinely enjoy Trucker Ted’s whole gag and get a little excited whenever I see a truck on the show. Seriously I regret getting into the show so late, but I’m glad I finally did.

My Favorite Characters

Since I’m running out of energy I’m just going to list my favs and bullet point why I like them.

Vinnie Dakota

His build/design

He’s so short, like what only a foot or so taller than Milo and co

He’s adorably chubby and yet light enough Cavendish (or Cav is just really strong) can easily lift him up or hold him

The fact that he’s just had the hair for his entire life just in varying sizes

And thanks to Cavendish we also know he’s got a decently squishy face apparently.

His Personality

Like he’s played mostly like a typical laid back guy but he’s surprisingly grounded. I seriously did not expect for him to point out Cavendish’s flaws and make some solid arguments given their season 2 predicament. Like how Cavendish needs to stop gunning for trying to save the world and how they can’t risk their jobs because they can’t time travel and fix things like they used to and they have to pay for rent

He’s also genuinely nice. I seriously love how him being nice made his disguise work for him during the second Pistachion take over and how that never came back to blow his cover.

Also despite how things are going he does try to make the best of things. 

Give this man his action moment.

I’m serious about that previous statement btw. He made a one liner, slid over the roof of a car, did a dramatic dive and tried to ram an airboat through a steel grate. Just give him his successful moment

He’s clearly being set up to be one of the more action oriented characters and overall he’s pretty good at it

Extra things

The fact that he’s a near bottomless pit when it comes to food

He was utterly adorable as a child

He loves animals and the zoo

And speaking of which I think it’s a shame that we haven’t seen Dakota eating animal crackers in this show

He’s an absolute angel of a best friend

Milo Murphy

His personality

I love that Milo is a sweetheart who understands peoples caution around him at time, but I love that it doesn’t stop with him being nice until he hits the usual dramatic breaking point

It’s nice to see that he can have a healthy level of sarcasm or frustration with both other’s and Murphy’s Law itself

It’s to see a character like this with a nice but also rounded personality instead of the whole nice until a breaking point or nice with no concept on how to be mean and when someone is being mean to them.

Murphy’s Law

Yeah Milo’s past and current events are hilarious. You can never tell how things out of control and as such it brings some fun when we get to see how they resolve themselves or what Milo will use to fix the problem.

Diogee

I don’t have much to say about Diogee.

He’s one of the (or the given my memory) cutest designed dogs that I have ever seen

I thought I would get sick of the “go home” gimmick but I ended up liking it

And his episodes are surprisingly fun

And yeah. Like I said I’m love this show but lack of coherent thoughts and running out of steam has made it difficult for me to continue writing more for this post.

[nmzuka]

Worst Total Drama character per season?

oof that’s a hefty question haha... it’s hard cause typically I enjoy each character to some degree or at least for what they bring to the table/dynamic of the season? let me think....

TDI: I would say Courtney cause she was the character I disliked the most but then again she still HAS character so I’d have to say Beth is the worst cause I just.... find her so bland and uninteresting?

TDA: would say the same as above honestly tho Courtney did a 180 for me and became a character I enjoyed when she was playing more the antagonist role for the later half of the season lol I know a lot of people who liked her hated that but it only made me actually like her idk something about her being insufferably whiny was entertaining to me. Beth is only worse this season and she really should have been outed instead of Lindsey (still very salty Beth made it all the way to the final when it should have been Lindsey >://// )

TDWT: this was a good season and def my fav overall so it’s hard to pick who was “worst” out of it? Harold maybe?? he’s always been lower on my list of characters I like so I wasn’t torn up seeing him go pretty early on *shrug* I’d also maybe say Duncan? he’s entertaining enough but I’ve never overly cared for him in any season (so the ending portion of TDA wasn’t great for me since it was p much all characters I didn’t care for ffff)

TDRotI: egh it’s probably easier to list the people I liked lol.. this season didn’t have many good characters in my opinion... like I can’t say I dislike them but I don’t find them as good as the original cast? I loved Sam and Dakota and enjoyed Scott being the worst at trying to be a villain lol everyone else was just very meh to me...

All Stars/Pahkitew: I actually....didn’t finish either of these season haha.... AS I know is garbage but I was having fun watching Pahkitew but fell out of it at some point... no one really sticks out as really bad but also no one really sticks out as someone I loved either?? 

TDRR: this was the season they finally got their groove back I think and I really enjoy all the characters to some degree at least. I feel like they all at least brought something to the show that was interesting/entertaining. I do wish the show had more like down time?? we didn’t get to see the characters interact much across teams it felt like so I don’t feel as connected to them as we got to be in past seasons. I do feel the finale was kinda weak unfortunately which sucks when the rest of the season felt very strong... which leading back to the original question might be because I didn’t care much for The Police Cadets? like they weren’t bad but *shrug* idk who I would have put in the final over them but would have preferred a different team I think...

(sorry I could only give a straight forward answer for like the 1st two seasons really ffff like I said I do like most of the characters to some degree at the very least)

[tigerkirby215]

I can’t make builds so let’s talk about the latest UA

I can’t make builds right now so let’s talk about Feats. I’m honestly a big fan of feats but I do think that ASIs are a little too strong by comparison in 5e. I feel like in order to compete with ASIs in 5e a Feat needs to do one of two things:

Offer new unique abilities that provide a large boost to your character’s capabilities so that taking them is worth sacrificing an ASI. (Feats like Crossbow Expert, Great Weapon Master, Warcaster, etc.)

(Half Feats) Provide a nice bonus to reward you for slower progression, or for having an uneven ability score to increase. (NOT ATHLETE, but feats like Linguist, Resilient, and the racial feats from Xanathar’s)

For the most part feats do accomplish these two concepts well but there are some feats that are laughably weak (Keen Mind, Weapon Master) while others are way too good. (Lucky.) I think that Feats should remain as options for players who want to build a specific build. They shouldn’t be the “best” choice but rather they should be inherently optional for those who want the power boost they provide.

With that in mind we got an Unearthed Arcana for Feats, and since I want to do more on this Tumblr than just make League of Legends builds I figured I’d throw my thoughts out into the wind.

Artificer Initiate

The main strength of this feat by far is that the spells are added to your spell list. This means that Artificer Initiate is a very easy way for just about any spellcaster to get access to Bless and Cure Wounds / Healing Word. These spells are fairly independent of their spellcasting modifier so getting both of them as a Wizard, Sorcerer, or even Warlock can be good in a pinch.

Other than that the ability to cast spells with tools is nice but ultimately pointless. It’s good if you’re playing an Artificer / Wizard multiclass but Artificers can already cast spells through their infusions. Ultimately this feature of the feat would work better if there were more Intelligence casters in 5e.

It’s a very fun feat for roleplay and has good utility, but I don’t think anyone’s going to be begging to get this feat.

4 / 5

Chef

How the mighty Gourmand and the “mighty” Song of Rest have fallen. Okay let me start with the obvious: the “treats” you can make are complete fucking trash. They’re laughably underwhelming and serve more as a ribbon ability than anything.

As for the Song of Rest-esque effect Song of Rest was already a grossly underwhelming ability for Bards. It’s really sad that it was so underwhelming they flat out gave it to everyone (at the cost of a feat) but I don’t think that harms the Bard class too much.

Just overall the feat really doesn’t live up to the fantasy of being a cook. Two underwhelming abilities for the price of an ASI? No thanks.

2 / 5

Crusher

“Hi I’m playing a Champion Fighter with a Warhammer!” The utility of this feat starts and ends with the critical hit modifier which I’m gonna be honest is insanely overpowered.

“But what about moving people? My Monk can now push people off cliffs!” Have you ever played a Minotaur? To be fair you probably haven’t. Pushing people around will hardly ever be useful. There’s perhaps niche utility in pushing someone away so you can run without provoking opportunity attacks but the Mobile feat does this so much better while also giving you additional movement.

Perhaps the only niche use of this feat is that it can increase your DEX, making it a good Half Feat for Monks that isn’t fucking Athlete.

1 / 5

Eldritch Adept

I really like this feat. It’s kinda become a running gag on this account that I really like sticking Warlock levels into things, and while it isn’t just for the invocations that’s definitely a big part of it. There’s a lot of really cool invocations that you can grab to make your character mildly magical without messing them up by multiclassing. To name all the invocations you can get as a non-Warlock:

Armor of Shadows is, has, and always will be the invocation you take more for character flavor than for practicality. Reddit has been theorycrafting how to break this feat with an Abjuration Wizard but I think that’s a bit too niche.

Beast Speech is really cute conceptually but will rarely be useful. I can guarantee that every single Druid and Ranger is going to hoover up Eldritch Adept just to talk to their animal companion though! (This would’ve been a nice feat to put in my Kindred build if it had existed at the time.)

Beguiling Influence... take Skilled instead. Maybe some niche use for the Half-Elf Rogue who wants proficiency in literally every skill in the game.

Devil’s Sight! This is the main Invocation people are going to be looking for! Magical Darkness is incredibly hard to use effectively and this invocation is pretty much the only way to make it not completely useless?

Eldritch Sight: at-will Detect Magic is never a bad thing but it always suffered from opportunity cost. This makes it available for Bards.

Eyes of the Rune Keeper: just get the Comprehend Languages spell tbh. It’s a ritual after all.

Fiendish Vigor is alright. Decent on an Eldritch Knight as a backup Second Wind.

Gaze of Two Minds is far, FAR too situational to be useful.

Mask of Many Faces is a god-tier invocation for Arcane Tricksters. It ticks me off that you can’t take this feat as a non-caster for a regular Rogue to gain access to this.

Misty Visions depends on what your DM lets you get away with using Minor Illusion for.

Thief of Five Fates: just get Bane from another source.

It kinda bumbs me out that this feat is restricted to just magic users, and I feel like that part of the spell could be removed. Also kinda bumbs me out that you can’t blow two feats to get Agonizing Eldritch Blast (Magic Initiate [Warlock] + Eldritch Adept) but I sort of understand why that’s a thing. But invocations are the perfect example of something worth losing an ASI for.

5 / 5

Fey Touched

Here’s the first feat that I think is a little too good. Let’s get the elephant out of the room first: Fey Teleportation. The differences between the two feats are as follows:

Misty Step from Fey Teleportation comes back on a short rest.

Fey Teleportation is locked by race.

Fey Touched gives you two spells.

Fey Touched lets you add the spells to your spell list.

Oh and let’s talk about some of the spells that are in the Enchantment / Divination school: Bless, Command, Detect Magic, Dissonant Whispers, Heroism, Hex, Hunter's Mark, Identify, and Sleep. (Just to name the notable choices.)

This feat should’ve been a full feat (no ASI.) Adding both Misty Step and Hex to your spell list as a Cleric or Paladin is more than enough to make this feat OP. If Artificer Initiate is a full feat than this should be too.

5 / 5 - OP award for being OP

Fighting Initiate

This should be a half feat. Actually: this should be merged with Weapon Master. I personally already Homebrew the Weapon Master Feat to do this along with the effects of Weapon Master (+3 weapons, +STR or DEX.)

If this was done as an eratta to Weapon Master (instead of its own feat) the feat could be taken by Wizards who want a way to defend themselves, Rogues who want more options Scimitars cough while also honing their own skills, or Barbarians who just finally want a fighting style. I’m glad something like this is finally being considered but please just buff Weapon Master instead.

4 / 5

Gunner

Crossbow expert for guns. A lot of people interpret this as a silent endorsement of guns in D&D or a hint at a potential official gunslinger (sub)class but really I just think Jeremy Crawford got sick of people asking him “does Crossbow Expert work with guns?” on Twitter.

gun / 5

Metamagic Adept

IE the feat that’s making Reddit throw a hissy fit. Does this suddenly make the Sorcerer class useless? Well excluding the fact that Sorcerers get way more sorcery points, metamagic options, and the ability to turn their spell slots into Sorcery points (and vice-versa)? Put bluntly your options are:

Make (Charisma Mod) creatures succeed their saving throw for your spell. (Rarely going to be used unless you’re already a Charisma caster.)

Double the range of your spell. (Maybe useful for a Cleric to extend the range of Cure Wounds idk.)

Reroll (Charisma Mod) damage die. (Kinda useful for spells that roll few dice.)

Double the duration of your spell. (Perhaps some niche use with certain spells.)

Can’t use Heightened Spell

Can cast one spell / cantrip as a Bonus Action. (One use of a bonus action spell isn’t really worth a whole feat.)

Cast 2 spells without verbal or somatic components. (Can’t be counterspelled!)

Make a spell of first or second level hit two targets. (Actually has some niche use for certain spells. Particularly nice to get extra value out of healing spells.)

(UA)

Change the damage type of a spell. (Maybe useful for Tempest Clerics? But barely.)

Ignore cover. (Very rarely useful.)

Reroll a spell attack once. (Kinda meh; might be useful if you have a very big attack roll spell but you probably won’t.)

I think the main thing Reddit is upset about is two uses of Subtle Spell for a Wizard but... if your player took anti-counter spell insurance instead of an ASI let them have it? Chances are you’re way too counter spell-obsessed if the Wizard casting a good spell once and awhile ruins your game.

As for the feat itself? The two that rely on your Charisma mod are hard to use for that exact reason. Beyond that there are some interesting ones beyond “anti-counter spell insurance” but I feel like two Sorcery points to use on metamagics isn’t enough. Probably a testament to how underwhelming the Sorcerer class is as a whole.

3 / 5

Piercer

It’s Savage Attacker and Brutal Critical combined in one half feat. I guess if you’re using Piercing weapons but I can’t shake the feeling that Savage Attacker would be the better option.

One interesting thing to note is that essentially all ranged weapons do piercing damage, and this feat doesn’t have a melee limitation like Savage Attacker. This could be a good feat for a bow fighter to do more reliable damage.

The irony though is that even though this is essentially just Savage Attacker I’m forced to say it’s overpowered since it provides more utility than Savage Attacker (assuming you don’t use weapons that don’t do piercing damage) as a half feat. This isn’t really a testament to this feat being overpowered, but rather that Savage Attacker should honestly probably be a half feat as well.

2 / 5

Poisoner

This is how poisons should work! It’s perfect for someone who wants it, and it looks well-balanced overall. The gold cost, action economy, and CON save requirements makes this feat fair for the DM.

It’s interesting that this feat allows you to ignore resistance to poison but not immunity. Poison was one of the elements Elemental Adept couldn’t affect which was part of the reason that Green Draconic Sorcerer was so bad (among the zillion and one other problems with Poison damage.) Overall this feat is really awesome but it’s held back by poison damage as a whole in 5e. Basically if this was for any other damage type than poison it would be great (which makes me wonder what this feat would be like with flaming poison.)

4 / 5

Practiced Expert

This is basically a slightly worse version of the Prodigy feat but it’s a half-feat and it’s for all races instead of just for humans and half-races... honestly  Prodigy is such a shit feat that I see no issue with this. I already let non-humans take Prodigy in my campaigns. My only real complaint is that this feat proves that Prodigy (as well as the Skilled feat) should probably be half feats.

4 / 5

Shadow Touched

Darkness is very hard to use without abilities to see through it (Devil’s Sight.) But other than that what can you get? Disguise Self? Just take Eldritch Adept instead for unlimited Disguise Self. There are very few low-level Illusion / Necromancy spells when compared to Divination / Enchantment. There are some midway decent ones (Inflict Wounds) but is it really worth it to lose an ASI for Darkness and Inflict Wounds? Put bluntly: no. Maybe some niche use for Darkness spam Warlocks to get an extra “spell slot” but it’s still underwhelming.

2 / 5

Shield Training

It’s nice to be able to grab a shield as a caster who likely has their off-hand open anyways. It’s also nice for a fighter to be able to “chance stances” and drop their AC in exchange for harder hits. The only part that bugs me about this feat is that the fantasy of an arcane caster using a shield as a focus is weird to me. I feel like there should at least be some sort of gold cost to convert a shield into a “not-quite Ruby of the War Mage” that can be used as an Arcane Focus.

3 / 5

Slasher

This feel like the best of the damage feats since it actually lets you do some unique stuff. Being able to slow enemies (without fucking Sentinel) lets melee fighters keep their allies safe, and giving allies disadvantage to hit you allows you to be a lot sturdier.

The sad truth is that this is probably the most underwhelming of the damage feats though. It’s very hard to use this feat as anything other than a Swashbuckler Rogue, and in order to get Slashing damage as a Rogue (Scimitar) you’d need to blow another feat or do some multiclassing. Slows in melee range are largely useless, and the crit is unreliable. I really want this feat to be better.

4 / 5

Tandem Tactician

Here’s the one feat I honestly have a big problem with. I don’t think being able to Help as a Bonus Action makes this feat OP. (It’s nice for anyone to be able to gain access to a useful Bonus Action without multiclassing.) But the problem lies in the fact that this feat lets you affect two people with the Help action. This makes the ability to give two melee allies (such as your Rogue) Advantage even more broken. People can already testify to how strong Mastermind Rogue is for its action economy increase.

And the best part? This feat still fails at giving Bonus Action Economy to “everyone” since backline characters can’t use the 10 foot range Help. I’d much rather this feat be given 30 feet, and Mastermind Rogue given an eratta to have its ability reach 60 feet or something idk.

1 / 5 - OP and dumb award for being OP and dumb

Tracker

“LOL RANGER IS OFFICIALLY USELESS NOW XDDDD” Jokes aside Hunter’s Mark and tracking abilities is good value for a half feat. Magic Initiate (Warlock) or Fey Touched are still probably better than this feat, but if you need the Survival skill then this is helpful.

4 / 5

FINAL RATINGS

Favorite Feat: Eldritch Adept

Least Favorite Feat: Crusher

Most OP Feat: Tandem Tactician

Weakest Feat: Shadow Touched / Chef

Overall this Unearthed Arcana excites me because I’ve always liked Feats and thought that they were cool. In my opinion it’s much more interesting to create a character with unique abilities over one that’s just traditionally strong. A lot of these feats need revision but I hope that practically all of these get published so we can make some truly unique characters with them.