#there was only 4 other people in the theater watching with us. don't know why I was expecting more in Oklahoma of all places

[vaultlink]

The Bocchi the Rock Recap movies were so much fun. The way they reorganized things and how they cut stuff down without losing much, it was worth the watch.

Using the kessoku band songs that weren't apart of live performances as montage music to cut down the cute girls doing cute things to the important moments without completely losing them was perfect.

And how they used segments from the early episodes as flashbacks, love it.

I can't describe the feeling, getting to the end of the second movie, seeing the shot at the end of Bocchi getting ready to leave home with her new guitar and the movie going to a modified version of the post credits walk down the street where she suddenly stops to think and it starts rewinding EVERYTHING all the way back to the first scene in the entire anime that had been skipped completely in the first movie, of elementary Bocchi being lead away by a teacher.

Oh how far she's come.

[oraclefreak]

Dead Poets Society boys headcanons I thought of while showering: showering edition (sounds ironic)

Charlie: bro uses an IRRATIONAL amount of shampoo. Most probably has finished one entire bottle in a matter of 4 days before (shampoo prices must not be an issue for him, I guess). His hair somehow isn't damaged, and not even god knows why. Takes an hour for him to finish showering. He talks in the shower, and if it's in Hellton showers he will talk to someone else while showering (Knox and him get idiotically philosophical; call it shower thoughts that are actually spoken)

Cameron: this mf measures the amount of shampoo he uses. I never knew someone who did this, but I can DEFINITELY GUESS that Cameron has a measuring cup just for shampoo. His showers are short compared to the others, probably because he doesn't think about other things rather than to finish showering. Uses more hair products outside the shower (the youngsters would call it 'styling').

Meeks: he's a little more normal. But DEFINITELY has realizations while showering, it's just that he doesn't say them out loud. Suddenly his mind speaks to him about how to set up the DIY radio to work or something like that and he won't talk to anyone after the shower until he has it sorted out (will go RUNNING like he's running out of time to tell Pitts). Probably 25 minutes long showers because he also uses a product to keep his curls okay.

Knox: who told this dumbass that putting on perfume while the water is running and he's still showering is okay? Multiple people had told him that IT DOESN'T MAKE SENSE, but he's like "no, guys, I swear it works... because the other day-", and he's mentioning an event that has nothing to do with putting on perfume in the shower. I can imagine one of his talks where he goes OVERLY philosophical and Charlie just tells him that he's 'talking stupid'. He takes (slightly) less than one hour just to not be called the one who takes the most time in the shower (a.k.a Charlie Dalton)

Neil: WHO put theater kid music in here? Social anxiety fears this dude. Not only he sings his favorite musicals, he also mumbles the dialogue for his next play. I'm certain that more than 7 people in Hellton have memorized at least one line from his dialogue just by listening to him (even if it's mumbling people can still hear him). Takes like 40 minutes for him to finish showering, and most of it is him trying to remember his parts in the play (sometimes Todd, who has them memorized after reading the script multiple times, tells him the next word and Neil yells it with excitement in an 'eureka' type of way). I think he would do a little skincare while showering, maybe just one product to clean his face and then wash it off.

Todd: always takes him 19 minutes straight to finish showering, some of the poets wonder if he has a watch to know when to come out (it has been proved scientifically that he does not take less or more than 19 minutes). Has a panic attack every time the soap slips. For some reason also uses conditioner... Who told him that he has to use it? I don't know (your hair isn't even that long, dude). Has the typical writer struggle of having an awesome idea but not having anything to write at the moment (has suffered the pain of forgetting what the idea was). Unlike the other poets, he does not do much after showering rather than brushing his hair and then dissociating (partially canon, I guess)

Pitts: he tried to get the shampoo out violently once, and it ended all over the place except his hand. He's more conscious about it now and it didn't happen ever again since then. He's a thinker, but not a philosophical one (like Charlie or Knox) or a genius one (like Meeks). His thoughts range from "did I turn off my desk lamp", to "TRIG HOMEWORK IS DUE TOMORROW AND I DIDN'T FINISH IT YET". Awfully specific but probably uses two brands of shampoo (I don't know where the idea came from but I can see it). Takes him a little bit more than 25 minutes to finish showering but does not usually reach 30 minutes long showers.

I don't know where all of these came out of.

[sezez]

So the Poppy Playtime Chapter 4 ARG has been shining a load of light on Harley Sawyer so I figure it's time I talk about it. (I just realize I've been dead for the past...two months? Anyway-)

So we know by now that Harley was part of this program when he was a child or teen possibly and he was favored by Elliot because of his intelligence. But he lack one thing that made the founder worried.

Humility

Harley did not care at all for other people and rather focus on the process and progress of things. He even lashed out at Elliot for being too soft, then stormed out. In a shred up document, he calls Elliot a backstabber for believing and having high-hopes for him only to be let go.

Which is why Elliot had to let him go and tell him to try and reconnect with other people.

(Which basically him politely saying "Go outside, touch some grass and visit a mental hospital)

And then when Harley became an adult, Leith is the one to hire him back into the factory. Which makes me curious as to why.

This could take place after Elliot's passing, but I watched a few SheepRampage's video and he theorize that Harley is the one behind his death; via using a Bigger Body toy to kill him. So if Elliot was in fact alive when Harley got hired, the doctor could have pretended to change and only go back to his usual self behind the founder's back.

And let's just take a quick moment to realize something; Harley could have very much been the one to place the dead body of a young boy in Elliot's house, to ruin his good name and his image as a family man.

(which is a extreme petty move, Harley. You really did that because Elliot said "No more experimenting" to you all those years ago?)

Anyway, back on track; I can guess that Harley was brought back as a desperate move by Playtime Co. after the Catnap Controversy. Which is where the Bigger Body Initiative was made then the rest is history.

Now, let's talk about the audio we hear when dialing the phone number the ARG gave.

So in the audio, we hear Leith, Eddie and Stella in a private room discussing about a mistake/incident that angered the Head of Innovation so much. It's also must be very bad because Leith ask Eddie if this will get out, to which the latter said they'll be in the clearing zone.

And Gerald Lockheart is back, (the same detective who investigated the Theodore Case back in the PPT Chapter 3 ARG) and he soon entered the room, and told the three Heads who is responsible; Harley Sawyer.

And that leaves a major question; WHAT is this mistake? WHY did it anger Leith so much to the point he wants to strangle the person responsible for it?

For the former, I think the ARG is giving a clear hint; the Theater Incident.

The theater has been mention quite a lot in most of the ARG updates, it started with a ripped apart Incident Report from a employee who was touring a bunch of people that led to a child getting hurt, they pleaded to not ever be mention and willing to do anything as long as they aren't blame for it because they honestly don't know what happened because it was so quick.

And now thinking about it, I think this is what the higher-ups were talking about.

But I decided to take it one step further, what if not only this resulted in a injury of a child, but also the death of Elliot Ludwig and the people who were being toured.

As for how it plays out (forgive me if it's so bad) ; So one day in the factory, a group of people were being toured around and reached the theater. Elliot was also present at the time, then suddenly Yarnaby comes out and kills the founder. Leading to a panic and possibly more deaths, and it's like a fire also broke out, base om a few pictures that have shown burnt toys and a poster.

And I know it's a sudden leap to think Yarnaby is the one who killed Elliot. But people kept pointing out Yarnaby is a yarn lion toy, and I like to imagine he is meant to be in the theater as entertainer. Along with the other characters teased such as the Piano Dinosaur and the Jester character we have yet to see.

Also Harley is likely the one to tell Yarnaby to attack Elliot, because he purposefully isolated himself with so he can make it very obedient and how dumb he is. Even finding the noises the thing makes entertaining.

So with the founder dead and a few bodies, this obviously furious Leith. And I think what Stella was trying to say before the Head of Innovation cut her off, is that they most likely had to kill any survivors of the attack to keep things quiet.

And even after all of that, they still kept Harley around because he may have threaten to blackmail them or because he is like the one thing that's still keeping the factory together. As much as they hate it, they knew the doctor can just kill them any time he wants.

[ahiddenpath]

Digimon Adventure 02: The Beginning

I just got home from seeing the Japanese audio/English sub. This is not a review, and I doubt I'll feel the same way about it in a few days, because I'm all up in my emotions and I haven't had a think on it. So here is nothing more or less than my visceral, 100% subjective reaction.

Extreme spoilers beneath the cut, spoilin spoilin all day long. Also cussing and blaspheming, apparently I like to keep it classy.

My head is a boiling vat of pudding.

As the film ended, someone screamed, "Toei why you gotta do us like that?!" Someone else yelled, "Jesus Christ I did not need that in my life." As we filed out, another gem: "They had a digital god in this one, and they still didn't unfuck Kizuna." (That last one, I think, while funny, was not relevant. This wasn't about the older kids, they had their turn and several more, lmao).

Some notes:

-Genuinely I was not prepared for a horror. Or child abuse. I love horror games! I watch them nearly daily! Did you know I have only once been more upset/disturbed by a horror video game than I was by this movie?

Did people take their kids to this? Like, that seems totally reasonable to me, taking your kid to digimon!!! Jesus cHRISt!!!!

-I thought my bar of, "I want to see the 02 kids grown up and interacting," was so, so low. I thought my bar could not be lower. But this was Lui's story, not theirs. And this is Toei's story, not mine, so I have to accept that... They wrote what they wanted to. But yeah, the bar I thought was low was not cleared.

-SOMEONE HELP ME, Himekawa is older than Lui. Himekawa's group, they were the first Chosen. Right??? Does the time line not shake out here??? Himekawa was probably about 10/11 when she was Chosen, and she's a full ass adult in Tri??? So, like, I guess the question is, how much older is her group than Lui at age 4? Are they at least 6 years older???? But- God what age would that make- God damn let me get the chart. Shit, I'm lost. Help??????

Shit I liked:

-Lui's second birthday scene

Not the original scene where Lui meets Ukkomon. This is the second birthday, his 8th birthday, where they sit in a dark room full of presents and treats. Ukkomon mentions Lui's parents and friends. They enter the room and proceed to not say a single ducking word while Ukkomon and Lui talk and talk and talk, and it is the creepiest and most atmospheric shit I have seen. Holy shit!!!!

Obviously, the audience already knows shit is fucked up with Ukkomon, but at this point, ooooooooooooooooo baby that tension is HIGH.

-Power in the hands of children

Ukkomon is, like, seconds old when he meets Lui. Lui is 4 and extremely disenfranchised, even for a 4-year-old. Lui wishes for what he doesn't have. Ukkomon devotes his whole self to those wishes.

What happens when a 4 year old meets a baby genie? When that much power is in the hands of the innocent?

You don't want to know, trust me. Lowkey wish I didn't know!!! Christ on a bike!

As much as we love digimon and the Chosen and all of that, it's always been messed up how much power they have, and how much responsibility. It's so much pressure, it's so high stakes! It was really cool to see Toei explore how sideways all of this could go, literally at any moment.

-A few character moments

Honestly that part where a girl is chatting up Ken and Wormmon is visibly pissed is, like, my favorite thing in this movie. Oh! Also I loved seeing the international Chosen, that was so great. The gut scream of WALLACE/WILLIS in the theater when he appeared!!!!!!

Bonus:

My husband said he liked how there was a command center in Imperialdramon's head. I think that was actually some kind of... plane??? Made by Ukkomon??? I have no idea. You know, the place where Ken and Daisuke are accused of flirting.

Stuff I didn't like

-It was half flash back

I'm being a little harsh here, because stuff other than flashbacks happened in the first 46 minutes, but... I checked my phone after the final flashback (not counting Lui jumping into Ukkomon in the end). I was 46 minutes into a roughly 90 minute film. I'm not against flashbacks in principle, and I tend to like new characters, but... This just wasn't what I hoped for in a movie about the 02 kids. I accept that this is 100% subjective.

-It was too damned fucked up for my tastes

Jeeeeeeeeeeeeeesus H Christ!!!!!

Okay, so first of all, I generally am of the opinion that a lot of recent media has substituted trauma for substance. It's easy to make an audience pity/relate to/feel protective of a character by showing them suffer.

Lui wetting himself was so disturbing for me- in children, that's often a sign of ongoing abuse. I could easily be reading into it, but that combined with the range of age of his bruises (and he had more fresh contusions, too, they start red and turn purple and brown and eventually a yellow green) hinted that this wasn't some one off occasion caused by a sudden spike of stress. That was Lui's life. And he really might have frozen to death that night, if not for Ukkomon.

In a way, if I'm right and not just reading into things, this scene was well done. But also, like... I just don't enjoy the substitution of trauma for gradually making us care about a character and understand what they've been through. It seems like some kind of heavy handed short cut, and it usually has the opposite effect on me- thrusting me out of the narrative and making me distrustful of it.

Or maybe I'm just distancing myself, because I genuinely get so upset.

And don't even get me started on the scene where Ukkomon dissolves. I was not ready for that shit. It was just too much for me, I'm sensitive, lmao!

-I'm not sure what I think of the Chosen reacting to Lui's story

I kind of felt like the Chosen were oddly hard on Lui? They weren't actually, in reality they encouraged him to find a resolution with Ukkomon and reminded him that relationships go two ways.

But, like. Could someone have, like... Idk I was really waiting for someone to cry or hug Lui or reassure him or something? Instead it was like, "Poor Ukkomon. He tried so hard and you relied on him too much!"

And my visceral reaction to that was, "UKKOMON KILLED AT LEAST ONE OF LUI'S PARENTS AND MADE THEM MEAT PUPPETS FOR YEARS, JESUS!!!! AND YOU WANT LUI TO GO SEE UKKOMON AGAIN?!?!?!?!?" Like, that whole thing was literally a nightmare??? But Ukkomon was an actual whole ass baby god, and then again, as my husband put it, "Ukkomon did what CPS wouldn't." Lui needed help, stat.

I'm gonna need some time to sort how I feel about this. I can say that, as I watched, I felt like the emotional tone was really off for the last half of the film. All I could think about was the horror, and any time someone criticized Lui, or even told him to go see Ukkomon, I was just like- MEAT. PUPPET!!!! MEAT!!! PUPPET!!!! (Did those kids that Ukkomon made Lui's friends also die?!?!?!). Literally, snow was falling and the Chosen were playing, and my head was like, MEAT. PUPPET!!!!

There's no walking back that emotion, at least not in a 40 some minute window. Not for me, personally. I'm probably going to have nightmares. If I knew going in that this was a horror, I'd be fine with that. But gdi I though I'd see my blorbos having good times mixed with a plot.

Instead, nightmares.

-Lui's final scene with his mother

Lui tells himself, "This time, when I go back in time... I won't rely on Ukkomon for everything" (paraphrasing). He sees his mother inside his memory of his 4th birthday. He says to her, roughly, "Lui loves you, please remember that."

And magically, the mom is kind to him that night.

Now, to be fair, even disastrous relationships can have good times. Maybe it would have been just that night that was better. But there was this feeling of, "Oh, if I just talked to my mother when I was 4 years old and horrifically abused, it would have been different."

That just isn't how that works. If I had to guess, the film is just supporting communication. But god, don't ever point back to the child victim like that. Too bad that 4 year old doesn't know how to communicate with his abusive caregiver! Things might have been different!!!!!

I'm sensitive to this kind of thing, so it's totally possible I'm fixating too much on this or blowing up the importance of this moment. But yeah, not a good emotional reaction to that.

In summary: this was not the film I wanted. In fact, it's a film that will stick on me like a burr, but like. In a bad way? But also it did have some killer ideas. Ukkomon has to be one of the most interesting things to hit Adventure in years. So much power in the hands of an innocent, so disastrous so very fast.

My brain is still pudding. Time for some nightmares. Good night, I hope the film didn't distress you if you saw it! And my sympathies if you took your children, the biggest of oofs (how could you have known??? You couldn't have).

[watermelonsloth]

Hi.... If you don't mind me asking, can I ask, what are your top 10 (or top 7) favorite media (can be books/ manga/ anime/movies/tv series/games/etc) and your top 10 favorite characters from any media ? Why do you love them? Sorry if you've answered this questions before......

Hello to you as well. I don’t mind people asking me questions and I haven’t answered this before. This is long so read more under the cut.

I prefer the number 7, so I’m gonna do my top 7 favorite pieces of media. Don’t let the numbers fool you, these are in no particular order. Also, be warned, I don’t know how much sense what I say will make to anyone who has watched/read these.

1 - Naruto/Shippuden (only those two and specifically the manga) - I have thought about, analyzed, and talked about this series too much to lie to you and say it isn’t one of my favorite series of all time. Even with all of its flaws, it holds a place near and dear to my heart. It has some of my favorite character work I’ve ever seen even with its imperfections, the first 27 volumes of Naruto are still some of my favorite written books/manga, Kakashi vs Obito is my favorite fight in any piece of media (quite frankly, the Naruto anime has ruined fights scenes for me), and this series is what inspired me to get into media analysis in the first place.

2 - Fullmetal Alchemist/Brotherhood - This is my legally obligated mentioning of Fullmetal Alchemist and the Brotherhood anime adaptation. Excellent character work (+actually good female characters), beautiful art, some of my favorite foreshadowing/slow burn ever, and commentary on the hubris of man and strength in collectivism while criticizing both the military and the institution of religion. Chef’s kiss! This is a great example of someone knowing what story they wanted to tell and fucking telling it. The biggest problem I have with the series is that every time I want to rewatch it, I feel the need to watch all of it at once and that’s just a lot of anime for me to devote my full attention to in one sitting.

3 - Madoka Magica (I can only vouch for PMMM, I haven't watched the other stuff) - Fun fact: this is the first piece of media to make me cry. Something about Sayaka’s story just… got to me. I really like this because it’s an example of a deconstruction done right. Of the few other deconstructions I’ve seen, they tend to be too shallow to even really feel like deconstructions or too dark. Madoka Magica hits that sweet spot of going to those deep and dark places while still maintaining a sense of hope.

4 - Across the Spiderverse - Since I’ve recently slipped into quite the superhero phase, all inclusions are superhero related moving forward. So I remember going into the theater to watch this completely blind. I had heard of Into the Spiderverse and had heard nothing but positive reviews, but I also wasn’t big into superheroes or Spider-Man so I never watched it for myself. I don’t think I made it through the first ten minutes of atsv before thinking “Goddamn it, now I have to watch the first movie.” Between the two, I had to pick atsv because, while I did like itsv, I had some problems with it. Namely, I thought that it underutilized a chunk of its cast (Spidernoir, Spiderham, Peni, and the villains felt wasted) and I thought they could’ve done more with the interdimensional travel idea. Atsv made these pretty much complete nonissues. The only character I felt like could’ve used a bit more attention was Spiderbyte, that was the only issue I had with it besides the movie ending before I was done watching it. Other than that, I don’t know what else I can say about this movie that hasn’t been said a million times before. The art is disgustingly, dream-crushingly good and if the writing doesn’t match that level of skill, it gets damn close.

5 - My Adventures With Superman - My Adventures With Superman has my favorite adaptation of Superman hands down. Yeah, I like my Clark Kent with a little more self-confidence, but for a Superman who’s just starting out and the story they wanted to tell, it works. As I’ve said before, I don’t care for him being used as a racial allegory but I do like them exploring his sense of identity. The series automatically gets points for two very underrated but important parts of writing: the main couple is actually one I can root for and it doesn’t waste the audience’s time. What I mean by not wasting the audience’s time is that they don’t draw out the Clark is Superman reveal or the will-they-won’t-they between Clark and Lois unnecessarily. It also has the first villains I genuinely want to strangle in a while (looking at you Amanda “The Audacity” Waller and Lex “Make Earth Great Again” Luthor). I can’t wait to see what they do with Superboy in season 3.

6 - The Batman (2022) - To continue the train of DC characters finally getting good adaptations: the Battinson movie. The set design, the cinematography, the action, the pacing of the mystery (it’s a long watch but it’s worth it), Alfred helping solve the mystery, Batman, Jim Gordon, the dynamic between Batman and Jim Gordon, Riddler, Catwoman actually mattering and having a good dynamic/romance with Batman, the balancing of multiple Gotham rogues, the humor that I didn’t expect it to have (especially from the Penguin). This Batman needs a Robin yesterday. This movie is probably my favorite movie on the list. I want to put emphasis on the set design/how Gotham looks. I recently started watch Gotham (the tv show) and I was so disappointed that Gotham didn’t look any different from a standard east coast city. But this Gotham looks like Gotham. This Gotham looks like a place you’d only live in if the rent was 25¢ a month or you couldn’t afford to move out. This Gotham looks like a city that would have some guy dressed as bat beating up criminals.

7 - Deadpool 3: Deadpool and Wolverine - I was weighing between including this or the live action One Piece and just decided to pick the one I had more to say about. This is the first movie to genuinely and consistently make me laugh in a while. The plot’s kind of meh; it’s a fun allegory for the Fox X-Men series but it wasn’t especially investing and the villains were entertaining but nothing to write home about. What truly makes this movie worth the watch is Deadpool, Wolverine, and their dynamic and development with one another. The development both of their characters got actually caught me off guard since, once again, this is a movie I went in mostly blind to. All I really knew about the Deadpool films were the humor and in my experience, comedies (especially dark comedies) tend to be afraid of getting too serious. But this movie actually balanced the comedy with the serious moments of development without either feeling too jarring or forced.

Talking about my favorite characters will be a lot quicker because I don’t actually have consistent favorite characters. My favorite characters change all the time because I have a love-hate relationship with many of my all time favorites and they shift depending on what I’ve been watching/reading/thinking about most recently. It doesn’t help that the qualifications for being on my list of favorites are: I’m not actively frustrated with their character writing and I find them entertaining.

If I had to say what my top 10, in no particular order, are right now, I’d list: Pein from Naruto, Sasori from Naruto, Joker from the animated Under the Red Hood movie, Kimihiro Watanuki from xxxHolic, Sam Wilson from The Falcon and The Winter Soldier, MaoMao from The Apothecary Diaries, Wade Wilson from the two Deadpool movies I’ve seen (the first and third), Robin from Teen Titans (the animated show), Katherine Howard from Six, and Hobie Brown from Across the Spiderverse.

[ghostflowerhotpotch]

I watched ATSV again in theaters and noticed some interesting things:

Gwen's dad at the beginning wears a Vision Academy sweater. Not only that, he's in the gymnastics group. This means that Vision not only exists on Earth-65, George has entered it. Maybe it explains how Gwen knew how to blend in so well. And that she chose to take ballet lessons because of her father.

When Miguel's universe was falling apart, not only he but Peter B. and other spiders were there. It gives extra weight to the whole Society thing. It's not just a sad story a random guy told, it was a catastrophe witnessed by several of them. I don't blame them for believing so much.

Peter and Gwen have known each other since they were 4, assuming she's 16 and George's speech after his death says he's known Peter for 12 years.

A spider person having their Sense Triggered when someone they love is not themselves in danger is not new. Miles felt his father falling at the beginning of the film. Pav felt Gayatri on the bus. But what is abysmal is that Gwen's felt between dimensions. In all other cases, they were from people present in the same space and dimension. So that says a lot only about the love she feels for Miles (and also about her spider sense.)

Oh these are interesting!

I actually notice that shirt on my last viewing! I cannot believe it took me this long to realize.

Funnily enough, my first thought when I saw this is that Gwen was Vision's and this was a shirt in support of her. But considering how faded this looks, your explanation makes more sense since I really doubt Visions Academy has lower classes than middle school.

Though not gonna lie, I found funny the idea that the visions in Gwen's world may be just another run-of-the-mill school, just to appear in Miles's world and be like "why did he get the nice version?"

May keep that hc regardless.

Oh I knew Peter was there from the first viewing, what I didn't realize was about the different spiders!

Let's see who he can spot.

Julia Carpenter is here! I am not really familiar with her character (I don't read comics, for now at least,) but hey, nice to see they are bringing some classics.

I'm going to assume this is Peter B, but I don't think anyone can blame me for mixing this one up if it isn't the case.

Cowboy Spidey is here!

This one we are going to wait for the HD version of this movie because I had a hard time finding a frame where I could kind of see them let alone be clear who they are.

I still need to finish that analysis, but honestly the organization as a whole works in some ways that upon reflection, not only I am not surprised they believe it, I'm more than anything horrified how no one realized how nuts the place was getting.

Good eye! I haven't noticed this one myself, and again, I had seen this movie several times. In my defense, sometimes the audio is hard to catch and I had issues catching stuff at it is. I really need to get a good version of this movie with subtitles.

But this is cool! It really goes to show how important was Peter for Gwen, they really had known each other since forever and I can't imagine not just how much it hurt Gwen losing Peter, but her needing to get used to reality of not having around after doing so for so much of her life.

Goddammit when I thought Peter and Gwen's tragedy couldn't get worse-

This one y'all know how I feel, and if you don't, here.

I still hope we get a more in depth explanation, though I wouldn't be surprised if we don't. Regardless, is undeniable how much Miles matters to Gwen, and viceversa.

Thanks for telling me this!

[castlebyersafterdark]

I don't know! Why am I like this!!

hehehe ok firstly, shoutout to the peeps who can't watch panels due to the celebs, i can't relate but i feel for you! i struggle to watch them because of the awkwardness of the fans instead haha - awkward questions, silly questions, repetitive questions, people who burst into tears when they come to their turn. im sorry i just find that hard to watch lol! maybe its my inner journalist itching to be there and ask the real q's. or maybe im too british! pull yourself together, man! (said in a stiff military accent lmao) just kidding.

but as someone who used to find it harder than i do now to engage in this kind of content, my unsolicited advice that may not work for you is to really focus on being interested in what they have to say or are trying to say and what that might mean. then your brain kind of cuts out/dismisses the umming and ahhing, just sees it as a side effect instead of a tick or annoyance. obviously some speakers are worse than others but i honestly find most people in ST to be ok speakers, with the worst perhaps being finn. the others are all amenable and confident public speakers. i get the finn angst, it's never comfortable to see someone else who is uncomfortable... but he's fascinating, so i try to treat him as a fascinating person to observe when the empathy kicks in too hard and makes me want to hide lol.

which leads me to say vinny I AM HUGGING YOU RIGHT NOW! can't believe people were mean about you crying when another started crying - this is literally pure kind empathy at work and you are such a dreamboat for that. me and my whole family are the same, so i feel lucky to have had that experience. actually we used to be told not to cry as kids, only because my mum knew it would set her off too (she was already crying as she said it haha).

Yeah - good advice!! I really want to listen to what these actors have to say so it's a major power through moment every time!! And yeah, also not saying it to be mean but it's the fans primarily, but people can't help the reaction they have, and I know I'd fuck it up if I tried to ask something in public, which is why I never would. Actually, I'd try to be really funny and charming and it would fall completely flat and make me just seem like an ass so also, would never approach the mic at a con hahaha.

It's the same with live music or theater - I have this sinking fear in the pit of my stomach sometimes where as good as the show is, god if something goes wrong on stage and they flub lines and have trouble recovering or seriously mess-up a song or have a mishap, I would be dying inside and probably have a silent internal panic attack myself and wish I was anywhere else!! Get a grip, man, I am saying to myself!!!

And... thank you for the kind words. It's ok, I've manged to come out on the other side fine and unchanged, with people in my life who've made it known it's ok to be emotional, and be too much, and to feel deeply. And there's nothing wrong with being a guy who tears up a lot. (Part of what draws me to Will - I love him and I love his sensitivity and the way he feels so deeply. I've never seen a character like him before. Why when people complain about him being a crybaby it's a major 'shut up and let him be' moment from me! And Noah seems to also be similar so I feel kinship with that lovely guy). Listen. I grew up with 4 older brothers so. The little gay baby is my lot in life and it's totally fine now, but there was a lot of enduring bullshit growing up and breaking away from terrible friends and then finding people who let you be you. That's the goal in life. Find people who you can support and who will support you in turn, all sides. ❤️❤️❤️

[joyce-stick]

Suzume Isn't Gay, But We Liked It Anyway

Despite not being as gay as Shinkai might have tried to make it during its development, Suzume is still quite a good film which we enjoyed immensely on account of its characters, compelling narrative, visual beauty, thought-provoking themes, and the improvements observed over Shinkai's previous two films. So this an essay about Suzume, about why it's good, what its themes are, and our glowing recommendation.

Transcript under the cut.

Previous video essay/transcript: Audrey's Best Girls Winter 2023

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Citations!

Baron, Reuben. “Director Makoto Shinkai on the Anime Artistry of Suzume - Exclusive Interview.” Looper, Static Media, 12 Apr. 2023, https://www.looper.com/1254434/director-makoto-shinkai-anime-artistry-suzume-exclusive-interview/.

Brzeski, Patrick. “Makoto Shinkai on How Anime Blockbuster 'Suzume' Reflects the Current State of Japan: ‘the Most Honest Expression I Could Put on Screen.’” The Hollywood Reporter, Penske Media Corporation, 7 Mar. 2023, https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-features/makoto-shinkai-interview-suzume-anime-berlin-2023-1235329404/.

Pulliam-Moore, Charles. “Makoto Shinkai Wants Suzume to Build a Bridge of Memory between Generations.” The Verge, Vox Media, 15 Apr. 2023, https://www.theverge.com/2023/4/15/23678724/makoto-shinkai-suzume-interview.

Jackson, Destiny. “Director Makoto Shinkai on the Tender Resonance and Maturity of Making 'Suzume': ‘I Think about How to Dig Deeper so I Can Emotionally Move People in My Vicinity.’” Deadline, Penske Media Corporation, 15 Apr. 2023, https://deadline.com/2023/04/suzume-makoto-shinkai-japanese-anime-weathering-with-you-your-name-1235325691/.

https://twitter.com/ao8l22/status/1513116464210919425

https://twitter.com/moogy0/status/1592346490315640836

I had a few good reasons to assume I would hate Suzume.

We've seen three of Shinkai’s films. Yes, those three. We liked Your Name quite a bit when we saw it in theaters, but its flaws became apparent on a rewatch a few years later. We did not like Weathering With You, which made its flaws apparent to us rather immediately. Never watched it since watching it the first time, but, I don't know, maybe we'll go back to it.Still, thinking about that film had us pissed off for a little while, although we're less pissed off now, for reasons we might get to later. So, when we went to watch Suzume, I was reasonably expecting to hate it, or, even worse, enjoy it, while seeing some intractable flaw in it that ticked me off immensely about it.

And… I found none! I mean, maybe I'll think of one later, but my current opinion of Suzume, as I write this hours after having seen it, (and speak it, 'bout a couple days after having written this) is that it was a pretty good film with a lot of breathtaking visuals, funny moments, some emotional bits, and no real huge flaws to speak of. In fact, not only does this film lack the biggest flaws of its predecessors, it's also got a few things about it that I appreciate more.

First thing I liked immediately: Girl. I mean, her name, is the title. It's no secret that we of the joystick system appreciate beautiful anime girls, and this particular such beautiful anime girl is good, both as the protagonist of the film who does all the proactive things to save the guy, which is different from the last two movies where the guy did all the stuff. I'm not gonna pretend like Shinkai is suddenly some kind of feminist icon now for correctly giving a female character some goddamn agency, but: it's a nice touch for us personally, given that… we like girls. It helps that Suzume is emotional and interesting and funny and has a pretty good arc through the movie and her voice actress does a good job- no, we did not watch the dub. I'll probably talk a bit more about her later, but I think she's good.

I think it's important to mention with regards to this girl, that she was, apparently, supposed to be gay. This information came to light in the English speaking anime community after a Japanese entertainment journalist tweeted a tweet sayin’ as much, and then professional translator Moogy went and tweeted about it in turn, citing this journalist as a source. I can’t find that this chain goes back any further than that, although I tried to out of personal interest, because, if I had, then I would’ve been able to write that into the Wikipedia page- which, I DID CHECK, and it briefly mentions that -

Okay, so, since writing that, another, Wikipedia-admissible, source, in the English language, emerged, in which Shinkai is interviewed, and confirms this to be true. So as such, I added that information to the article, with that source. Look. There it is! And it’s still there, probably, unless someone removed it while I was making the video.

In this interview, the interviewer asks Shinkai directly about this, and he says, “I’m surprised you know it! I’ve only told Japanese interviewers about it!” Clearly Shinkai is unaware of the power of Moogy. So, he goes onto say, that, yes, it was his initial idea for a companion, and that the theoretical character who Souta replaced would’ve been Suzume’s onee-san crush; that’s how I’m taking this whole ‘sisterhood romance’ thing. He thought he’d done enough with the boy meets girl thing, and he wanted to try doing something else.

His producer rejected it, because, in Shinkai’s translated words, “You may be tired of these romantic stories, but your audience loves it,” which, I believe, is a polite way of saying “I don’t think a gay film will sell.” The chair thing was chosen to “not make it too much of a romance”.

Shinkai further says— and this part kinda gets me— that he doesn’t think the story would’ve changed if it had been gay, or if Suzume had been a boy or non-binary or whatever. Quote:

“It's not necessarily the context of male/female; it's about a human overcoming something. In my future films as well, I want to focus on that human story as opposed to too much commentary on gender or sex.”

So, my reading of this response, and, take this with a grain of salt because it’s only my personal interpretation, is that while Shinkai was interested in making a gay film as a change of pace, he did not consider it important enough to insist on. There were other things he wanted to make the movie about, and he didn’t want to die on the gay hill.

And, y’know, that’s a shame, but I think it’s fair enough. I would have liked to see the alternate timeline where no one stopped him from making the film gay, but if it wasn’t already clear, I like the film that we got, and I don’t fault Shinkai for having other priorities as a director, like, for instance, getting his film funded and keeping his job. And honestly, I can halfway see the merit in not making it a gay film, because then it’d be a lot harder to, y’know, address the themes, without addressing whatever gay discourse there’d be that overshadows the themes.

I don’t say this to be like, “ooh, the film would’ve just been gay and that would’ve been bad,” it would’ve been good for the film to be gay, I just mean that a lot of the time people are more concerned about there being representation rather than the quality of the story in which the representation exists and it becomes the gay thing, rather than, the thing that happens to be gay, and that’s not always great. I mean, I guess we are getting a little bit of that just off of the knowledge that the film could have been gay, but at least I don’t have to think about talking about it too much past this point, because it’s, y’know, not actually in the film.

Shinkai said other stuff, too, I guess, about the animation and how the characters have different color palettes for daytime and evening and night scenes, which explains the very convincingly presented amusement park scene, that happens at night! So that was interesting.

Anyway, that’s the addendum I have about that, I’m gonna go back to the rest of this:

I have no idea if this would've been good for the film or not, but we have a different video being written about gay pandering, so, let’s move on then I guess!

The second thing that we liked was the film's opening minutes. And to explain why this is, I need to give a bit of context, I think. So, in short, after the 2011 nuclear meltdown and earthquake that irreversibly forever changed Japan and the life of all the people living there (and also delayed Madoka Magica's finale), Shinkai apparently decided that he wanted to make a bunch of films about it. About three so far, to be exact. Which, y'know, is not a bad motivation for making films. It's certainly a better motivation than I had to write this video

So, as such, his last three films are a novel fusion of wacky comedy, coming of age romantic melodrama, and disaster film. Your Name and Weathering With You had really slow buildups to the disaster part of the disaster film, to the point that mentioning it is almost a spoiler, but I'm going to assume it isn't because everyone has now seen those films. So they have a whole first half where it's just kind of weird supernatural romantic comedy slice of life hijinks but then it abruptly tone shifts in the second half.

This is actually, I think, the source of both of these films' major issues. It's kinda cool to watch them the first time and then see the story's tone shift when the mid movie plot twist happens, introducing the big disaster scenario aspect of the story along with it, but the drawback to that approach is that you have, in essence, a movie whose plot twist is that it becomes a different movie. This both contributes to the odd tonal whiplash and also means that the supernatural disaster part of the film is weaker and not as well fleshed out as it could be.

Suzume, on the other hand, smartly introduces the main conflict of the story in the first act of the movie. This choice is good. The serious existential threat to Japan stuff that the film is about is the immediate focus of the film. This allows for a more balanced tone, as then the movie can comfortably use its comedic parts to add levity to its treatment of that harrowing topic, rather than the existential stuff comin' in like a sledgehammer to break a previously comfortable tone- which, I should say, IS a thing you can do, and IS a valid choice to tell a story, I just don’t think it was necessarily a choice that Shinkai handled well before. The pacing is much improved, as the supernatural aspects of the film are more evenly developed and the story has more time to explain itself. Mostly. There's like one scene I don't get. I’ll get to it?

Anyway, the end result of this choice is that Suzume feels like a much more focused and complete film, rather than two halves of different films. Aaaaaand, I appreciate this! A lot. I can see this choice maybe maybe maybe making the movie less interesting to some people, because it's paced more like a normal movie than Shinkai's other previous two romantic comedy disaster movies, but, hey, I think it's nice that Shinkai seems to be growing as an artist and a writer and a filmmaker, who made a normal movie that didn’t leave us confused, and disoriented, and confused, about what it’s about

Other things I like… I like the visuals. The animations and backgrounds and visual effects and the CG are all pretty fire. Suzume is generally a really beautiful film! We all knew this, but, really, it's really good. I like the chair thing. I like the way that the chair is animated. Apparently the animation of the chair was inspired by Luxo Jr., y’know, the Pixar short that became the origin of the Pixar lamp, and… yeah, I can see it. It definitely does have that old Pixar vibe of “inanimate object moving like a very real human inanimate object” that that has. I just like the way the legs move, and the way it emotes so convincingly with these subtle but credible motions.

There’s one scene involving a roller coaster that- that scene is incredible, that’s definitely one of the most visually novel sequences in all of Shinkai’s films that we’ve seen. I like the character design of the guy, Souta, also? When he’s not a chair, I mean. I dunno. The last two guy characters in the last Shinkai films looked like generic anime boys, but this guy looks like the kind of guy who I can believe a woman would find attractive. I like the look of his hair, I like how grizzled he is, I like his long gray coat, I like that you can look at this tired hunk of a man and immediately see that he’s been places and that he’s carrying some shit with him. Bonus points for that he looks like one of the Monogatari exorcists.

As for Suzume! Well, her design is maybe a bit generic, but… she’s a girl. It’s not like our standards are too high for girls. She’s supposed to be an ordinary girl, and, y’know, in this movie contrasting with this dude and then this chair, that works out well. And also, I appreciate that she rotates her outfits throughout the movie. My headmates and I love to see a woman change her clothes, not necessarily directly. I’m just saying, that denim jacket thing she had going on in Kobe, and when she lost her shoes in Tokyo and then borrowed Souta’s boots? Specifically borrowing the boots, because, the only pair of shoes that we own looks like this:

It’s a small thing, but like, Shinkai couldn’t make Suzume gay. Widespread trans representation in anime is a bit far off. I might well be eating off the floor conjuring table scraps pointing at a woman in a man’s shoes and saying “oi, isn’t it gender?” But like, 1, it’s a woman wearing a man’s shoes, and 2, yes, it is gender. And we like the gender. You cannot stop us! We did get to see the movie a second time with a friend, (thank you for seeing the movie with us, and reviewing our script!) and she insisted that the boots are femme coded, and, we disagree, unfortunately. I’m sorry, we cannot see these boots as anything but gender.

However! It is Shinkai’s fault that Onimai exists. That scene in Onimai is definitely influenced by that scene in Your Name. We know this because Nekotofu said so in interviews. Onimai is very good and based and funny, and this is a fact upon which I, and all of my headmates, equally quite agree. It’s nice to agree on something with all of yourself. SPEAKING, of the opening scene in Your Name:

Shinkai did not sexualize Suzume. So, if you hated that scene of Your Name, there’s none of that! There’s no chair peeping on Suzume or anything like that. So, if that knowledge helps you somehow, now you know.

Long story short. Should you watch Suzume. Well, yes obviously. By the time this video comes out, or, by the time you're seeing it, its theatrical run might be over, but like, if it’s not, then, yes, I recommend going and seeing it, like, today. And if it is, then remember to see it whenever it’s on blu-ray or streaming services or your local cat-themed anime distributor. Shinkai made a normal movie. I hope he makes an abnormally good movie next time. I believe in this man. Again. Somewhat. It’s not like it really matters what I say or think, but I do also hope that his next movie is just gay. I won’t matter, to me, or, to us, if his next movie is just a carbon copy of Suzume, but gay. I mean, he got away with making a heterosexual Your Name once after making the heterosexual Your Name. There is nothing stopping him. Except for the pigheaded businessmen who he may have to argue with.

Anyways, that’s that, I guess I’m going to talk more specifically about the plot now, so, if you didn’t see the movie, then, leave, now, if you care. If you did see the movie, or do not plan to see the movie, then, uh, don’t leave. Please. I’m going to put the Patreon credits here. It is not the end of the video. Please do not leave.

Intermission for extra thoughts and Patreon credits!

Hello everyone. This is Audrey, of the joystick system. The name of the brain that I’m the lead woman of. We’re still a plural system, as I’ve not forgotten, thanks to Luci and all my headmates.

As I already think I said, we saw Suzume a second time with a friend. As of this speaking, it continues to play in movie theaters, at least where we are, although it’s not showing nearly as often and probably not in as many places. Nonetheless, if it’s still playing in your area, I obviously very much recommend it. If you have the time and money to see it a second time after seeing it the first time, I think you should see it a second time. Because it’s good!

One thing I’d really like to change about this video, overall, is the tone of it. I think it came off way too much as “oh yeah, Suzume’s actually pretty good”, because I walked in with muted expectations, and then walked out feeling like it was pretty good but also kind of waiting for it to hit me that it’s actually bad… And, no, no, it’s an absolutely fantastic film and I imagine is probably going to line up with our top 5 movies of the year. Although, it’s not like we watch a lot of movies, so it probably won’t have too stiff of a competition. A different friend of ours saw it, and they absolutely loved it and had a lot of really good things to say that just made us like it more- so, yeah, no, Suzume is fantastic. Please watch Suzume. If you can.

I think I also should say, I disagree pretty strongly with the assertion that Suzume is “the same film” as Your Name and Weathering With You. As I’ve already said, the structure is much more cohesive in how it introduces the plot without the plot becoming the plot twist of the plot, and also there’s just a lot of improvements on writing and characterization and storytelling and the film is generally much more tonally consistent than either Your Name or Weathering With You. Sure, it’s a similar overall plot to both of those films, but I think there’s just as much merit in iterating on old ideas as there is in introducing new ones, and Suzume does a healthy amount of both. Maybe it’s a remake of the same movie, but if that’s so, Suzume is definitely the best version of that movie, and I think the growth Shinkai went through as a director and writer to get there is crystal clear.

And as I hope I’m about to make clear, the thematic weight of the film is much stronger as well. The decreased focus on the romance subplot helped a whole lot in that regard, I think, to bring the themes into greater focus, and like, gosh, is the film REALLY THEMATICALLY GOOD on top of being so well structured and written and visually spectacular. I walked into Suzume expecting it to be bad, I spent like two weeks while writing the script and making the video trying to think of flaws in this movie, and I can really only think of like two, which are one, that it’s not gay, and two, that some minor plot details are maybe a small bit inscrutable.

But neither of those things actively bring the film down! It’s just great! And, if we had the time to watch the film a third time and then do a complete rewrite of the script, I’d probably change the tone I took with it, but y’know what, I gotta say a thing, I’ve left people waiting long enough, this movie won’t be in theaters forever, so, it’s good enough, and good enough is perfectly good enough.

Also. The music was really good. It was a lot less intrusive than in Your Name and Weathering With You. Those two films really love going all ham on their mid-movie insert song sequences? In Suzume, the music is, the musical score, which is really really good and is used really extremely effectively in, specifically the chair chase scene, and the amusement park scene, and the opening of the film, and the big Tokyo scene, and really the whole film. It was just really very good.

And, other than that, I think I mentioned everything I wanted to mention in the script, so, uh yeah, that's that!

So, before we get back to the video, channel housekeeping. I don’t think we’re going to be able to keep doing videos, at least not regularly, as things are going. If you’re not already aware of the disaster life we lead, we’ve been aimlessly floating around quasi-homeless and unemployed, for about our entire adult life, and spent around three years crashing at a friend’s place, for longer than we should’ve been because of executive dysfunction, burnout, and general mental illness. And also money.

Most of the stuff we’ve been making our videos with, including our desktop PC, was stuff we got before we were quasi-disowned by our parents, almost, uh, six (note: four or five) years ago? and the rest of it is stuff we have, very not hyperbolically, emptied our bank account for because we kinda needed it. So, if that stuff breaks, and it’s going to eventually, we’ll be on even more hiatus until further notice. Obviously this is pretty untenable, so, we’re going to have to try to get a job, and I don’t see great odds of that working out for our transgender neurodivergent failwomanchild self, and it’s obviously going to mean we have less time to make videos and write things. Naturally the stress of our unstable situation has already been doing that job, but. Y’know.

So, if you want to help even our odds: Ko-fi or Patreon. That is currently our only steady source of income, and even a little bit extra would make a pretty big difference for us day-to-day. You can send us monthly donations through either, although, they take a smaller cut on Ko-fi, so, there’s that. Ko-fi is also the place for giving us money one time as opposed to regularly.

As for what you get out of this, well, besides the obvious your name here and access to our discord, you will earn our gratitude and also we will feel indebted to you, which will lead us to try our best to keep making things. And also if you ever encounter us in person, we’ll give you a hug, if you want one, as long as you’re not, like, creepy about it.

Is that everything? Um. Yeah. That is everything. Here's all the names of all the important people who...

Thanks to our generous Patreon backers:

Ada. Just Ada • Andrew P • Anime Omelette • ASabitsukiFlow • Brea • ColorfulCast • dameDiadora • deeso • Dorian Newlin • Duskpixie • Elvenoob • Emma • Femboy Bebop • Gwen Starlight • hikari no yume • Katherine Ullman • Kaylee Smerbeck • Korin • L Tantivy • Lilly • M • Mira Yeuden • Nichtschwert • Nik Gothic • Pigeon • R2Walker • RukaCollie • Sally • Saoirse Russell • Scimitar • SimplyAero • SleepySlug • Spiderrebelnews • Thijs • Trucy • Vile Lasagna

And, that’s that. Thanks to all of you, named onscreen and vocally, and also those of you not named but who’ve been watching, or encouraging us personally, for your support. Now, back to the normal part of the video. Spoilers for Suzume from here on, obviously.

Intermission over!!!

Okay, so, spoilers.

Plot of this movie! I’m just gonna steal bits of the Wikipedia summary, because I don’t want to write a plot summary myself and get waylaid.

Suzume Iwato is a 17-year-old high school girl who lives with her maternal aunt in Kyushu. One night, she dreams of searching for her mother (who, it's inferred later, died in a tsunami) as a child in a ruined neighborhood. The next morning, while headed for school, Suzume encounters a young man searching for abandoned areas with doors. He then is cursed to turn into a chair by a kitty cat who desires love and she runs away from home with him, and he explains that these doors in all these abandoned places are doors to an alternate dimension that occasionally let out supernatural beings called worms that do earthquakes, and they need to do the right rituals to close the door properly. So their journey across Japan to prevent the earthquakes and also get Souta back out of being a chair, thusly begins.

First of all, I think that Shinkai did an excellent job conveying the pain of losing one’s mother. I say this, because, uh, we have also lost our mother, and grieved her loss. She’s not dead, in case you’re wondering, she’s just a worthless piece of human garbage. So, I guess it’s a little perverse to compare our being estranged from our shitty nuclear family as a result of the events of our entire life up until we were twenty to Suzume losing her single mom in a natural disaster when she was four, but I can’t pretend that the former experience did not lend itself to us empathizing with her, in general. Like, we did definitely cry. That’s a thing that we did.

I also like how cleanly the movie conveys this information within a few minutes. Like, you get the opening sequence of the small Suzume searching for her mother in the Ever After, and then she wakes up a seventeen year old, and you hear her address the woman who is her guardian by that woman’s first name, and it immediately clicks, "ohhhh… orphan, got it, got it, got it," and yeah. In contrast to the previous two films where Shinkai took half the damn movie establishing what these characters’ lives and their relationships with their friends and relatives were like, this kind of storytelling efficiency (which, is present throughout the film, in establishing Souta's relationships as well) is impressive.

And like I said, I like the immediacy with which the plot begins, with Suzume meeting Souta, being asked about the ruins, and then going to check them out herself. I like that there's not a whole album of insert songs in this movie, no fancy opening cinematic, no big deal montage, just a smash cut to the opening title card while Souta and Suzume are trying to close the door in the old bathhouse. It's clean. It's real good.

So, then Suzume tries to patch Souta up when he gets injured, and then he gets cursed by this cat to become a chair, and then the movie gets further good! Suzume runs away from home to help Chair Souta capture this important cat that's supposed to be keeping the earthquakes from happening. And this greatly aggrieves her aunt Tamaki, who's just been trying her best her whole life and everything and I will say, um-

I'm going to get to that!

So, one thing I have to say specifically- I had not read any details about Suzume's plot or interviews from Shinkai before seeing it, and I kind of got the whole deal immediately with everywhere that an earthquake comes out of being an abandoned place of gathering. A closed bathhouse, school, amusement park. This all feels very harrowing to see onscreen- as an American! even though it's clearly intended as commentary on Japan's population decline, because, uh, have you heard of dead malls

If they ever do an American live action version of Suzume, it'll be about them visiting abandoned shopping malls, probably. please do not do that

But yeah, like, we live in Portland, Oregon, and compared to having grown up in pre-covid Philadelphia most of our life, post-covid Portland feels like a ghost town. Like, it's not actually, there's obviously still people who live here, and I don't mean that derogatorily because we love Portland and we'd like to keep living here, if possible, not the least because we get easy access to HRT. But like, there's a lot of closed and abandoned places in Portland, so many empty areas and business that have been boarded up and closed to the point that at times, wandering through downtown Portland almost feels like living in an open world video game where most of the buildings don't have designed interiors.

Places that all clearly closed within the last three or four years, with their signage up and everything. Places that are left in stasis to lie disused or else be reclaimed by the homeless until the homeless get chased out by the cops. It's all just really… eughf. It makes us sad to see this place, this whole country really, be stuck in this kind of disgusting degradation while our government fails to provide for us, let alone adapt to the challenges ahead of us, just leaves all these places where people lived, where people are living, now, to stagnate and stand like zombies of a past we can't go back to

There’s a scene in Heathers, one of our favorite movies of all time, where the main antagonist J.D. has a whole emotional reflection on how the stability of this franchised commercial convenience store enterprise has kept him feeling like there’s continuity in his life, and like, yeah, that’s kind of a feeling.

[Video ID: J.D. (played by Christian Slater), a black haired edgy looking teenage boy of about 16-17 wearing a long black jacket, paces about the convenience store "Snappy Snack Shack", speaking in an affected hard to place accent, to Veronica Sawyer (played by Winona Ryder), a brown-haired teenage girl of around the same age, who is wearing a grey dress that exposes her shoulders accompanied by a blue flower brooch on her chest, and black overalls)]

Veronica: I see you know your convenience speak pretty well.

J.D.: Yeah, well, uh, I've been moved around all my life. Dallas. Baton Rouge, Vegas... Sherwood, Ohio. There's always been a Snappy Snack Shack. Any town, any time, pop a ham and cheese in the microwave and feast on a Turbo Dog. Keeps me sane.

Veronica: Really?

Like, it’s eugh, because, obviously as an anticapitalist, we kinda dislike these sorts of places, the shopping centers, the strip malls, the gas stations, we're against all of this bullshit on principle these places are all kind of intensely hostile to… life, in general.

But also, these places are a part of the world we live in, and they are stable! Relatively. They are kind of the only way we've known the world to be. And it’s sad to see that stability be ever so more greatly upset by the pandemic and the… everything, with nothing on the horizon to replace it. And if and when we see this kind of stability disappear completely, it’ll be sad, even if it’s replaced by something better. We’ll probably miss something about wandering these gross, heavily commercialized disgustingly homogenized nightmare places that’ve been cannibalizing our communities this whole time. Yeah, we hate it, but... it’s where we live, and we’re not immune to nostalgia.

Nostalgia is just a nicer word for grief

And this same very such eughf feeling is very much echoed in Suzume. There’s this deep and palpable grief for these places and the people who used to live here felt in this film, and inherent in expressing that grief is Shinkai’s expression of the, y’know, important stage of grief, i.e., acceptance. Because, to close the doors, Suzume and Souta have to not just, close it, but also think of all the feelings and experiences of the people who used to live in these places, and then… let go.

When the amusement park scene happens, the ferris wheel starts moving, and Suzume is drawn in by the image of the ghosts of the people who once rode it, Souta starts yelling for her to stop, to not go in- not the least because she can’t see what she’s doing and is putting herself in danger, but also because she cannot go back. Those people who used to sit in that ferris wheel, laughing, crying, living, in this place, cannot come back. Suzume can’t go back. This past can’t be gone back to.

Okay, so, one thing I missed when I saw the film the second time. When Suzume was drawn into the Ever After through the ferris wheel door, she was seeing herself of the future in there, and that, was foreshadowing the end of the film. I’m keeping this part anyway because the emotional impact of that scene was still as described even if this plot foreshadowing bit was something I missed the first time seeing the film.

I read a few English language interview articles with Shinkai talking about Suzume right after seeing the film, both because I wanted clarification before I ran my mouth on two things. 1, I wanted clarification on what the cat wanted. I’ll get to him. 2, I wanted to be sure my interpretation of the doors thing was on point, which it was. Shinkai talks in one of these interviews about how when covid was happening and Japan was still trying to have the Olympics happen, it felt really irresponsible and bad, and he did not agree with this. He says, and I quote,

“You were opening this new door and not sure of what’s on the other side without bringing closure or understanding or coming to terms with what’s behind you. I want to say a lot of the Japanese population felt the same way. There was this kind of awkward air about us, and it really wasn’t time to open new doors without first reflecting on what came before us.”

And like, yeah, I agree. I just really, really agree with this. It is indeed what I took away from the film before I read this interview. Suzume spends this entire movie reflecting on the past and trying to grow beyond that and ultimately the one door that she opens, on purpose, is the one that she decides to open intentionally after reflecting on what brought her to this point and deciding what she needs to do and

Eugghhhh

I’m just saying, it worked. It really did work. For us, at least.

Now, to be clear: Japan and the United States are two different countries, and, while there are similarities in how the pandemic left our societies, they're ultimately two different societies, and I don't really know jack shit about Japanese society- I'm just relating, my feelings, of my experience, uh, our experience, as an American, to the feelings that we took away from Suzume.

And... even if I understand this all right. If the people who need to see this sort of message saw it, or, like, took that away, or acted on it when it did... that’d be nice, but ultimately I don’t think that Suzume will move any politician or other person in power making these decisions in Japan, or any country, enough, or in the right ways, to have any impact on policy. But y’know, Shinkai’s just a guy making movies, and I’m just one of the various split personalities of a deranged F-list anime YouTuber, so whatever. Such is life. It’s at least a nice sentiment.

So, the other things, in no particular order. I did cry a bit when Daijin, the cat, got sucked up back into the keystone. He’s hard to like at the start of the film, for, y’know, the reasons why he is, but ultimately when you consider that like… he’s been trapped that way, the same way as Souta spends trapped as a chair, for years? Centuries, for all we goddamn know? Once that clicks, it’s really hard to not empathize with him. And yeah, he might be a god now, I guess, but who knows if he was a person before, or, what even, and just, I think, I think if you spend god knows how long as a sacred relic keeping Japan from being destroyed by earthquakes, you at least, at least, maybe, maybe deserve, if nothing else, a little pet.

[pets microphone]

that was your little pet.

In one of the other interviews Shinkai did, he talked about how Souta becoming a chair, and also a Keystone sealing away the earthquakes, is intended as a metaphor for the experience of pandemic lockdown. It’s not a directly equivalent analogy, but, like, it does make sense! Souta is being forced into a position of being confined, to keep this dangerous and virtually uncontrollable force of nature under control, for the greater good and long-term preservation of society. And when you consider that Daijin was in the same position for gosh knows how the hell long, it makes it a lot easier to empathize with him! He wasn’t being malicious, exactly, not, willfully anyway, he knew that vacating his position was putting everyone else at risk, but, he did it anyway cause he just kinda snapped, like, fuck this, I want to go outside! That does make a lot of sense! Also it sticks out, also, when Suzume screams at Daijin, because that’s, y’know. It’s a whole scene. I feel like I want to say something about this! But I can't really land on anything to say about it? But yeah.

I think the whole thing with Suzume needing to sacrifice Souta midway through the movie is really well done. It’s extremely funny to me that Shinkai apparently thought to stress this point of the movie as how important it is for her to make this difficult choice because of how people criticized Weathering With You for not really being meaningfully critical of the consequence of Hodaka un-sacrificing Hina? And also that Hina never really gets a choice in being un-sacrificed, far as I remember, so... [whispers] that’s a little unintentionally sexist,

but whatever. I’d have to watch the film again, and I don’t feel like doing that right now

Suzume’s aunt, Tamaki. I do like her. She’s a pretty level-headed guardian, as guardians go. I like that when she finds Suzume and Serizawa in the car, and sees that going to this door is important to Suzume, she’s not immediately like, “fuck your feelings, we’re going home”? She’s curious about the child under her care. She’s concerned in a way that she’s willing to not only go all the way to Tokyo, but also to follow Suzume the rest of the way to see what's up because she clearly understands, logically, that even if she doesn’t know what it is that’s compelled Suzume to go this distance, it must be something that she needs to sort the fuck out in order to move on with her life, and that’s kinda good?

Although I should note that while she clearly sees the pragmatic value in not fighting Suzume on this, she’s also pretty reluctant to. She has a line where she’s like to Serizawa while Suzume is asleep, let’s turn the fuck around and go back, she’ll give up. So, y’know, Tamaki’s at least more open-minded than our mom was!

Speaking of that. There’s this one scene in the film, where Tamaki loses her shit at Suzume. Goes on screaming on about how she hates Suzume and wants her life back, and then she runs off to Serizawa being all like “I think I’m losing it,” and it’s a whole thing. On our first viewing, this scene felt a little out of nowhere. It was a whole sudden shock to have this intense scene happen and then also its pivot back into the magical realism aspects of the film with the black cat’s appearance, which confused us a bit cause I don’t think that was really explained at all.

But, watching the film a second time, and seeing the arc of Tamaki’s frustration reaching its peak with the benefit of hindsight, it made more sense that she’d come to a rope’s end and flip out like this. She’s been chasing her niece all across Japan, she’s ridden for several hours in a busted convertible in the rain, she doesn’t even have a proper explanation, her coworker has raised to her that this might be a kidnapping scheme- I get it. It’s a scene that I get.

I still do not understand the role of the large black cat though. Our friend agreed that that part didn’t make a whole lot of sense. So, that didn’t change.

I think the reason why it felt out of nowhere to us the first time is because it was entirely too familiar to our real life experience. In the middle of Tamaki’s rant, Suzume responds by saying, “but you said, ‘you’re my daughter,’” referring to when Tamaki first took her in, and said that. And Tamaki snaps back, “I never said that.” Our mother also did this exact thing, vehemently denying that she said and did things that we definitely remembered her saying and doing. (There's a word for this, it's... it's called gaslighting!) Living with someone who denies you this much, who makes you question your memory and your sanity and your general perception of the world this much, by forcing their own grief onto you like this, is just… really, simply, awful.

Throughout our childhood, we heard our mom say similar shit to us numerous times. That we were a horrible incorrigible child, that she hated us for ruining her family, that she wished she’d aborted us— all those sorts of things. The tone of Tamaki’s unadulterated rage in this dialogue was all too familiar to those memories. So, yeah, on both viewings, we were, very uncomfortable. Even knowing it was coming the second time around, it kinda caused us to actively recoil in our seat, to the point that our friend who we were seeing it with noticed our reaction and held out a stuffed animal she’d brought with her for us to pet.

So, um, yeah, that specific scene may or may not have triggered the PTSD that we may or may not have.

Tamaki does apologize for this later!

And she also, debatably, gets a bit of a pass for this since she’s not Suzume’s mother, and thus cannot reasonably wish that she had aborted Suzume, but can instead wish that she’d not done the unambiguously good deed of keeping Suzume out of the Japanese child welfare system, which, I can’t imagine is a good experience for a child. I don’t imagine any country’s child welfare system under capitalism to be a good experience for a child, but, y’know.  Well, we’re also kind of entirely opposed to the traditional family structure and the basic premise of parents in general, because giving only one or two people total power over a vulnerable young human life is not an ethical tradition to have in any case, but… eugh. That’s something for some other video.

In an interview with Deadline, Shinkai talks about this scene, specifically quoting the “give me back my life” part, and he says that on some level, all parents feel that way to their kids. And that while he acknowledges that it isn’t by any means acceptable to ever say that kind of stuff to a child, it is, y’know, a feeling that is there that he poured into it, and that he wanted to be there, for the parents in the audience who ever felt that way and regretted it. This is how we found out that Makoto Shinkai is apparently not single and does in fact have a child.

He also says, in this other interview with the Verge, that, he wanted the film to provide for an opportunity for people of different generations to emotionally connect with each other. So, in that context, I really understand why this scene is here. It’s serving the purpose of setting up that emotional bridge, that door between Suzume and Tamaki, these characters of two different generations who ultimately come to understand one another, with the hope that audiences in a similar emotional position might come away from the film having felt some sense of healing by way of, y’know, getting that. And also Shinkai talks about how the idealized nuclear family structure is not a thing that’s tenable or possible for a lot of families in Japanese society, and, it’s not very tenable for a lot of people in American society either!

So I recognize the intent of this scene. I think it’s commendable, even. If there is a parent and child out there who saw Suzume together on whom this had the intended impact, I think that that’s wonderful. I sincerely hope that they exist!

Even still… we, were a child, who regularly had this sort of thing said to our face by our real life mother, and tried, in good faith, many times over the years, to repair our increasingly fraught relationship with her, and failed. I am deeply, regrettably cynical about familial relationships because of our traumatic experience with our own family. Our mother is not the sort of person who would come to meaningfully empathize with us through seeing this film.

And we really fucking hate her, so… yeah, this scene is difficult to watch. It’s difficult for us personally to feel any sympathy for Tamaki when she’s saying that kind of stuff to Suzume, and once it was over I could only really kind of feel glad that it was over.

But! It’s not like it’s the film’s fault that our parents were bad. I don’t think our reaction was intended. It just happened! It just happens sometimes that different people other than who the thing was written for react to things differently. That doesn’t make the scene bad, or any less valuable to include. And I do think that Tamaki’s relationship with Suzume is portrayed pretty well and with a surprising degree of nuance! It’s good! Tamaki is a good character and she means well! And I do like what Shinkai said in that Verge interview about wanting to portray other family structures.

However I think that their relationship would work better if she was gay, because honestly, that entire “get out of my life” speech would hit a lot more and probably work a lot better in the context of being directed at a gay teenager rather than an assumed heterosexual one. But, hey, we thought we were heterosexual for most of our life, so, who’s to say much of anything!

Was there anything else I forgot to talk about? Um…

We cried at the end of the film, both times we saw it!

And also, while this film couldn’t have improved our relationship with our mother, it did serve as a very good bonding experience with our friend. I’m really glad we took her to see it. She really liked the scenes where Suzume sits and steps on Souta as a chair, that that was clever, that they took the opportunity to get away with that with him as a chair. And she also agreed that the chair in general was really well portrayed visually. She also cried! at the end. the heterosexual chair film made a lesbian cry. uh, two lesbians, cry. I’m not going to say anything more than that.

Thank you to everyone who watched this entire video. I have an excuse to do a bad job editing it now because there’s not that much footage of Suzume available and it’s all gonna get me copyright striked anyway

To summarize, Suzume Good. Suzume. Watch Suzume. I’ve been Audrey of the joystick system, and I did not hate Suzume. Thank you. Goodnight

[filmnoirsbian]

A series 6 of pages from the graphic novel My Favorite Thing is Monsters by Emil Ferris

Page one: Karen (stylized as a werewolf girl) and Missy are two young girls watching a horror movie. Karen's narration says "Horror Theater played this movie 'Dracula's Daughter' and there was this one part where Countess Dracula kidnaps this woman named Janet..." Missy says "I think that the countess almost..." Karen finishes "...kissed her..."

Karen's narration says "That was the night we cut our fingers and became...blood sisters" and then "As I hung up my detective coat in the cloak room I remembered how I'd waited till Missy was asleep. I'd said, "You are beautiful" and then..."

A sleeping Missy says "...I love you Kare...I love you so much..." as Karen kisses her hand. Countess Dracula looks on and says "Oh Karen, you are far braver than I ever was!" Karen's narration says "I think she meant it because she said it from her asleep self not her awake self..."

Page two: The Next Morning. Missy and Karen are eating cereal. Missy says "Karen, do you think that a girl could become the bride of dracula's daughter?" Karen says "If they love each other then why not?"

Karen's narration says "I think Missy went home and asked her mom the same question because later Missy's mom called and demanded to know what we'd seen on TV..."

Karen's mom on the telephone says "Just some old Creepshow is all..." Missy's mom from the telephone says "That junk! I really should not be surprised as people of your class never protect their kids from bad influences!" She hangs up.

Karen's narration says "As I sat in school (getting my daily doses of paper airplanes) I thought about how that had been the last sleepover we ever had. Over the next few weeks I heard that all of Missy's monster magazines got replaced by hair and beauty mags. Her boardgames, like 'Haunted House' got replaced with, 'The Mystery Date Game'..."

Page 3: Karen's narration says "But we are still blood sisters, so no matter how mean Missy is, I can't be mean back. Her blood is inside of me. Sometimes I think if you were to put one of those x-ray machines up to me, you would see the old Missy, the Missy from when we used to love monsters together and I have to protect that part of her..." Karen gives a thumbs up to this x-ray picture of old Missy.

Page 4: Karen's narration says "...Because inside of Missy that part is in a coffin, in a crypt, staked, and hungry and all alone..." Missy gives a thumbs down to her x-ray self. Missy says "Only 3 things matter! What you wear how you do your hair and...the boy that you date!"

Page 5: Werewolf Karen and Vampire Missy embrace in a stairwell. Karen thinks "I don't care if it turns out that this was all a mean prank...for right now I get to hold her in my arms and stroke her hair." Missy says "The times when I'm with you are the only ones when I'm...myself."

Page 6: Missy's mother calls down the stairwell and says "Missy! What are you doing in the stairwell? Come back to your guests!" Missy tells her "So the neighbors don't see Karen getting on at our floor, she's taking the elevator at the floor below ours." Missy's mother says "Finally you're being sensible about that...girl!"

Still embracing, Karen says "Missy, you sure your mom won't come down here and catch us?" Missy says "She never walks down the stairs in high heels when she's been drinking. She'll be passed out by ten tonight. Horror Feature is playing 'Carnival of Souls' tonight...um...wanna call me and we can watch it over the phone together?"

Karen says "Sure."

[fareehaandspaniards]

All 20 unhinged prompts for Maria Ushiromiya + A wildcard: Would this kid be an iPad baby if she were born in our time?

( @izunias-meme-hole )

Unhinged prompts

Maria Ushiromiya????!! Okay! I'll do my best to answer

1. How do you think this character would fare in a zombie apocalypse?

Die third probably (After some relatives). I think her out-of-the-box thinking will get her through the first day or two. But... too young, too naive and spends too much time in her own imagination :Р

2. Favorite hc for this character?

If Maria had grown up, it would have been a truly femme fatale around the age of 25! She would have been independent of people (because she is already used to being alone and with her magical friends), complex, intelligent, and probably wouldn't see men as anything more than entertainment because of her father who abandoned her and Rosa. She would be the opposite of Rosa :P

3. Make me a hc about [insert topic]

Hmmm... I have not so many headcanons about her and since you didn't choose the topic...

Food! Maria isn't picky with food, and also, despite living with her mother, is quite capable of cooking something for herself, and in general can live independently at the age of nine. But only if she has to. If someone else is around, she will dump the responsibility for herself on someone else xd

4. What snacks is this character getting at the movie theater? Where are they sitting? Do they turn off their phone or are they a criminal?

I don't think Maria needs snacks while watching, much less a phone! :D I think she is able to immerse herself in the movie to the point where she can see it as reality. Hence, food or extraneous noises will distract her

5. How would this character act on social media?

Maria is an adept of holywars in commenting on everything….. She has her irrefutable opinion, and she will prove it to you for five hours, even if she is wrong…. And her blog would be cottagecore style and overall very cute <3 The main thing is to remember to agree with her

6. How would this character answer the trolley problem? Then how would they actually act if faced with it?

MARIA CAN'T BE ASKED TO SOLVE THESE PROBLEMS, YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND. She will probably create such an unbelievable scenario that from the trolley problem you will come to a situation of her demon army taking over the world.

If she were faced with such a problem, I think…. She would panic, but she would save one person, her loved one, instead of several others…. and she wouldn't regret it!

7. What’s your favorite thing about this character?

Well… I can't say we're alike, but I too was a kid who spent all my time in my imagination. I was so caught up in the game that I didn't notice my parents around while my dolls ran back and forth and tackled scary obstacles. So I can imagine how important her imaginary world of witches is to her, and why she treasures it so much. Even if she becomes convinced it's all Beatrice's fiction, she'll still hold a little piece of faith deep in her heart that it was all real

I love how Maria is shown from completely different angles. I love exploring child characters, and I didn't expect Maria to be so unusual and fascinating in the manga

8. What would this character’s favorite kind of weather be?

Absolutely definitely a thunderstorm with heavy rain! So everyone is sitting at home and Maria is enjoying the company and family coziness :3

9. How far would this character get attempting to climb Mount Everest?

THIS GIRL is gonna climb Everest!!! She will just deal with all the difficulties with her imagination, and in the end she won't even notice them. As long as her head believes that Sakutaro is helping her climb higher, she'll be able to handle anything

10. How would this character feel about [insert topic]?

Boom, randomizer said: topic is internet!

Maria would probably like to have some influence on the internet. You know, have her own channel, blog, community, uh, something else, and be in charge of it. You know, if she and Ange started some project together, they wouldn't be able to finish it as they would fight forever for leadership haha, just like with magic. I think Maria is the kind of person who would try to gather like-minded people around her, but would be interested in too narrow of topics to really have fans and followers

11. Forget the sex or die trope. This character must attempt to rob a bank or they will die. Do they succeed/how much do they get? (If you have extra time, what’s their plan? Who is their crew?)

Of course she will rob a bank XD And she will do it in a very lavish, bright and pompous way!!!! There will be fireworks, people in different costumes, shooting and many other things. Her gang will consist of an army of beasties, Sakutaro and Beatrice

12. This character suddenly finds themself on the titanic. Do they survive?

Yea. She was among the first on the lifeboat and didn't even realize how it happened herself

13. Shopping timeeee what outfit/style of outfit does this character put together?

But that's probably for an adult Maria….. She wouldn't be afraid to look “weird” in public, so she'd probably be dressed either like this ^ or something very colorful

14. This character comes suddenly face to face with a dragon. Befriend or slay?

Befriend! :D

15. This character is sent a scam email by the fae requesting they type in their name for a free prize. Do they fall for it?

She does, she does!!! Well, the first time XD And then she'll probably read a spell to give the offender diarrhea for two weeks.

16. What hurts this character the most emotionally?

Trying to smash and destroy her little miracle of magic! You know, there are those people who will prove to you that what you thought was luck or blessing (or magic) can actually be easily explained by science and math and shit. And they don't care if your little miracle makes you happy. Oh, it's people like that who can break her sensitive heart. Aaaaand Rosa

17. What gives this character the most comfort?

Support. Also when everyone around is in a good mood. She doesn't have to be afraid or worry about others, she can live a little in her world and try to find happiness with the help of magic once again

18. If this character is from a more modern setting, how do they fare when dropped unceremoniously with no warning into the middle ages? Or if they’re from a more fantasy/old timey setting, the other way around? You get the idea

I can't make up my mind XD on one hand, Maria is quite capable of taking over the kingdom by becoming a court wizard or something. I think she would be VERY convincing regarding her magic. And on the other hand - you know, little girls better not go alone in medieval times :0 She'll either become a saint, or a head warlock, or die very quickly

19. This character received a mysterious package in the mail containing a genie lamp. 3 wishes, the usual rules, go!

Oh okay. The first is to make sure mom never gets taken over by an evil witch again! Two, that everyone believes in magic with Maria. And three, I don't even know. Either daddy's return or something tangible like toys or candy. And MAYBE a magic wand that would allow Maria to control everyone around her!

20. This character is being marooned by pirates on a deserted island and the pirates say they’re allowed to bring three things to the island. What do they bring?

Sakutaro, dark magic grimoire and mom...? Mom can be a thing for her in some sense, I think. Well...

21. A wildcard: Would this kid be an iPad baby if she were born in our time?

Unlikely… Gadgets can replace the play of imagination, and Rosa would likely have been desperate to soothe Maria precisely with an iPad like so many irresponsible parents do. But Maria is too intelligent and independent to lose her mind in silly toys and cartoons. If she had used a cell phone or an iPad, it would have made her imagination even stronger! But it wouldn't have made her forget about regular games and entertainment! I think Maria would be great in Minecraft

[floralegia]

4, 19, 27, 29 for the writing ask game! 💜💖

EEEEE thank you!!

4. How many WIPs do you have right now?

OH GREAT SO YOU'RE COMING FOR MY HEAD RIGHT FROM THE START

Well, I counted 29 for this post, but as I noted there that doesn't include the plot bunnies chilling in my ideas doc (aka The List™) or either of the two bingo cards I currently have out, which between them have I want to say 32 prompts? So, you know. :'''')

19. Give us a small teaser from one of your WIPs.

There's important stuff being said, probably, but the only thought Pete's brain is capable of processing right now is this one: Oh my God, he's such a fucking DILF.

Well, okay, that's not exactly true, because as soon as that thought slides through his psyche, it butts right up against the answering one that shouts Patrick! That fucking DILF is fucking PATRICK!, and then he gets sort of stuck in that loop for a little while, until at last the DILF thing overpowers the shrieking confusion of the fact that up until a couple of minutes ago, he'd only known Patrick Stump as a sort of sweaty, scowl-y, angel-voiced teenager, and the whole thing starts over again with the urge to drool dramatically over the glasses and the beard and the fucking build of him, Jesus fucking Christ.

Suffice to say, it's been a challenging few minutes.

27. Is there a fic you were nervous to post/share? Why?

There have been a couple of notable ones in recent memory, one that I won't name because I ended up posting it on a sock account and then this one. In both cases, I was essentially scared of being harassed over the content of the fics; the unnamed fic contains a couple of noncon scenes, and obviously the linked fic is Waycest, lol. Both have been received pretty well so far (touch wood), so, I mean, I'm definitely building up confidence, I think? I very strongly believe in the idea of writing whatever and who cares what people think, but also I am very small and very frightened lol. It's a whole thing.

29. Share a bit from a fic you’ll never post OR from a scene that was cut from an already posted fic. (If you don’t have either, just share a random fic idea you have that you don’t plan on getting to.)

Random fic idea, under the cut because it's a bit long: P2 RHPS AU feat. Bandom At Large!

Due to watching the video of Patrick's performance of "I Can Make You A Man" for the 2020 RHPS charity livestream--which, oh my God, by the way--I was struck by the idea of a Rocky Horror AU. To be clear, I don't mean an AU based on the movie the Rocky Horror Picture Show, I mean an AU about the boys putting on the Rocky Horror Picture show. So really, I suppose, it's a college community theater AU of some kind, but it's focused around RHPS. Not that I've been involved in a production myself, other than at CTY, I suppose, but having done community theater generally and attended RHPS productions, I think I can make a fair attempt.

So, anyway. Pete is running the thing--whole thing is his idea, he's the director, etc. I feel like this is likely not the first year, and in fact Pete likely inherited the production from an upperclassman. But they had a lot of people graduate last year, and they're having trouble backfilling those roles, so in addition to directing he's reprising his role as Rocky. They're advertising hard for musicians, too, because Pete--being a go big or go home kind of guy--ALSO wants to perform with a live band this year and do a proper Rocky Horror Show production, rather than perform in front of the film as they've typically done. That's how Patrick gets involved: he shows up to inquire about playing in the pit, because he's always trying to pick up odd musical jobs here and there to pay for school, and in true Fall Out Boy fashion he ends up singing a little bit and Pete's like, wait, no, holy fuck, sing this, throws the book at him, Patrick sings a bit of one of Frank's lines, and that's all she wrote. They've been having a particular amount of trouble casting Frank, and Pete decides Patrick is perfect for the role, which kind of baffles everyone else, especially Patrick, but Pete's like... distractingly pretty, so against his own better judgement Patrick agrees.

Beyond that, I'm not sure what the actual, like, plot would be. I think Patrick has a passing familiarity with RHPS but definitely not intimate knowledge, so partially he has to get up to speed. Partially, too, he has to overcome his stage fright and particularly his aversion to appearing on stage in front of a bunch of strangers while wearing sexy outfits and doing a lot of slutty slutty things, so there's that, but idk if that's a "plot" per se. There's also the implication/background of the production being sort of scrappy, but I don't know that that's a "plot" either, really. Hmmm.

Well, in the meantime, other notes that I had in my head include Gabe Saporta as Brad because I think that's really funny given his everything; Joe and Andy are definitely involved, I think with Joe playing Meatloaf and Andy drumming, or maybe Andy's Meatloaf and Joe is Riff Raff???? General DCD2/bandom cast... Uhhh, Ray should definitely be in the band/pit, Hayley Williams and Gerard are Magenta and Columbia (not sure which is which--I like Gerard as a sexy maid, so maybe he's Magenta???), and then that leaves, what, the criminologist??? Oh, and Janet, obviously. Maybe Greta from the Hush Sound is Janet? Or Vicky-T, that would make a lot of sense. Frank is either in the pit or he's the stage manager or something. Or crew. He kind of has insane stage crew energy. Mikey is... there. Possibly pit as well. Possibly just hanging around and the joke is everyone's always like, Mikey what the fuck are you doing here???? and he just shrugs and the answer is that he tends to get dragged into things Gerard's involved in and this is no different, but really he's just hanging around.

[99pansy]

ok so i was looking at that ex-mcr fan's blog for the ss/mayo lore and i just scrolled past this and im genuinely so confused where they got these claims from because i scoured the internet and couldnt find anything do you have any idea

oooof i've seen this post and i know about a couple of these. i can give you a little rundown from what I know

frank using the n-word

this one isn't true, but he did do something stupid. based on the comments from this post, he retweeted something that used the n-word in a casual way

when people called him out for it, he doubled down and defended use of the word. when someone continued to challenge him, he blocked them and called them an "annoying simpleton"

i do think this was obviously in poor taste, but 2009 was a different time and people did dumb shit like casually using the n-word and thinking they were more progressive for it

i don't believe current day frank would be stupid enough to do something like this. all of the evidence has since been deleted, so hopefully he learned something.

gerard disrespecting women on twitter

this one is sort of true? but the way it's phrased in the post is sensationalized. based on this post, a girl made a twitter account just to harass gerard.

i guess gerard replied to one of their messages with "I’d smash your face for six bucks and a Dr. Pepper #dieslow"

as the post i linked says, it's kinda dumb he took the bait. again, i don't think current day gerard would've gotten angry enough to do something like this

anyway someone came at him for saying this and let him know the girl was apparently only 16, to which he replied "actually…I wish I had the science to turn me into a 16 year old girl for 4 days. I’d really disgust you then #smashedface"

(no sc for this one but i remember it pretty well)

as the post i linked says, gerard was getting harassed a lot around this time with "baycest" and other weird shit on twitter. this was the peak era degenerate mcr fan behavior. i remember someone on here actually carving "baycest" into their leg and posting the photos. it was a weird time to be a fan and I'm sure it was hard for gerard as well

gender-based slurs on stage

i can't find any evidence about this. gerard did do some weird stuff on stage around this time but i can't find a record of him using gender-based slurs on stage. I'm not sure what they might be referring to

frank's abortion jokes

i specifically remember this one, so i can vouch that it's true. so frank was watching one of the transformers movies after it came out in theaters, and a woman with a crying baby was in the theater with him. so he tweeted something ""joking"" that she should have aborted her baby with a coat hanger. yikes?

the same post actually mentions this a little further down

i was also able to find a screenshot of it, but it has since been deleted. hopefully that indicates some growth on his end

ray saying women shouldn't be allowed at public toilets

he did tweet this, i don't know why lol. i think he's just being stupid? this one has to be the most innocuous

anyway... i'm obviously still a disgustingly huge fan of the band even after knowing this stuff. people can grow, change, and learn from their actions. people make mistakes. i personally would be fucked if someone was keeping a record of all of the stupid things I've said on the internet throughout my life! i still believe in them and hopefully anyone reading this can too.

[anonymous-dee]

Ranpo! Is! Autistic Coded!

Hear me out! I definitely think Ranpo from BSD is Autistic coded! It only occurred to me during my second watch-through but a lot of his mannerisms actually match up a lot with my own experiences as someone with ASD! :0

I found a whole article explaining a lot of different things that make him Autistic coded so I'll link it here! But I'll also make a TLDR version too in case the link doesn't work!

BASICALLY!

1.Infodumping/Overtalking

2.Missing tons of social cues

3.Obliviousness in many situations

4.Not understanding/feeling/expressing emotions the same as others

5.Comfort objects and stimming

6.Meltdowns

7.Sensory issues (especially with clothing)

8.Hand flapping

9."Childish" or unusual interests/hyperfixations

I love him so much! (Even though Akutagawa is my ultimate favorite character)! I would love to elaborate on the points made above but the article does a better job than me!

UPDATE!! I JUST STARTED WATCHING SEASON 4 SO UNDERNEATH HERE WILL BE S4 SPOILERS!!! PROCEED WITH CAUTION!!!

So based off of all of the Ranpo LORE revealed in the first episode his Autism beams are stronger than ever because HEAR ME OUT!!!

So it's revealed that Ranpo always gets perceived as childish even when he doesn't wish to be perceived that way (I know he's 14 but he says something along the lines of like "Here we go again, getting treated like a child") which is something many people with Autism (me included) have to deal with from our NT peers

AND! Not to mention the particular eating habits from when Fukuzawa was taking him out to eat red bean bowls with mochi in them and he didn't eat any of the mochi (in any of the 20 bowls)

AAAAAND! This is the spiciest part! It was revealed that Ranpo kept getting fired from jobs because of how blunt he was with the truth and how he would easily confront his superiors about their past or their crimes! It's so hard for many Autistic people to keep a job oftentimes because many of us don't understand social cues!

Another thing was that Ranpo automatically assumed that all of the tiny details he noticed were common knowledge and that everyone was on the same page as him, when in actuality he was noticing things that nobody else had yet to pick up on!

There were many other moments where Ranpo either didn't pick up on social cues or said/acted in ways that were out of pocket or not "normal" if that makes sense, and it only strengthens the argument that Ranpo is Autistic coded!

FUKUZAWA IS SUCH A NICE ADOPTIVE FATHER TO HIM OKAY AAAAH I'M ONLY ONE EPISODE IN BUT LITERALLY I LOVE RANPO SO MUCH! HE JUST LIKE ME FR FR

OKAY SO ANOTHER EDIT/UPDATE!

IN EPISODE 2 RANPO SAYS SOMETHING VERY DISTINCT AND APPLICABLE TO MOST PEOPLE WITH AUTISM AND IT WAS THAT "There's something that everyone else gets that I don't"

And then he has a small meltdown in the theater and you can clearly see people are starting to stare if you look closely

I literally relate to him so much so much so much

IN EPISODE 3, Ranpo also notes that he can't pay attention to things he has no interest in, which is something I personally really struggle with (especially as a college student RIP)

I'm not 100% sure if his breakdown at the end of episode 3 would constitute as something that should be added to this list, but I think it's noteworthy because I myself have also had similar meltdowns that went very similar to Ranpo's and I want to mention it.

I know I keep expanding this list as I find more and more content but somehow Ranpo's existence and the way he is unanimously respected and loved by the ADA is somehow really validating and comforting to me at the same time. I know BSD is fiction but somehow I see myself in Ranpo and yearn to be loved in the way that he is by all of his friends.

[unforth]

@ltleflrt in reply to your comment, I can only think that the people who say "this would be cool if it were real" are either very young or just extremely isolated/insulated and have never had the kinds of experiences that sound totally batshit impossible except that like. They literally happened to me.

When I was in grad school, I hit it off with a woman, like, we really got along and were well on our way to being besties within a few weeks of knowing each other. The first time I was over at her house, it came up that she went to the same undergrad as my brother, and I mentioned that he ran the radio station there. She gave me this look, went to a pile of papers on her table, flipped through it and produced a photograph of her standing with my brother. She and her friends had done a radio drama. They'd celebrated at the end by taking a pic with the station manager. This was a normal thing for her to do. Her then going to the same grad school as me was a coincidence, us both being gamers was a coincidence, us meeting was a coincidence, and the series of coincidences culminated in me holding this goddamn picture of the woman I'd just met, two strangers, and my brother.

When I was living in NYC, I gave up my seat to a stranger on the bus. She was elderly, and using a walker, and she started to talking to me cause I'd initiated by offering the seat. "Oh, see that building over there? My son used to be a teacher there," she says, using something she can see out the bus window as a conversation starter. "Oh," I reply. "That's where I went to elementary school." Because we're in the neighborhood where I grew up, and yes, I went to school there. "What are the chances...?" we both muse. "Nonexistent," she says. "He only taught for a few years. He's in Florida now. It didn't work out for him." "I mean...we could see...the odds are tremendously low but you never know and wouldn't it be cool...?" And yes this woman's son was my fourth grade teacher. The odds that I'd meet a random person on the bus, then get to talking, then find out that we had a connection, were fucking millions to one, but it actually happened to me.

Whenever I see a really unlikely story on this website, I remember that if I pulled out the most exceptional, weird, out-there stuff that's happened to me, it'd sound absolutely impossible. So, I give people the benefit of the doubt that their hand-selected-from-their-entire-lives anecdote that sounds nigh impossible could actually have happened. Why should I doubt it? If I took either of the above stories out of context the "oh I'm so clever I know this must be fake and made up for (why?????)" crowd would jump on it as Not Real! Made up! But I have no reason to make up a story like that. I get zero benefit. Tumblr clout isn't a real thing, and if it were I sure as fuck don't have it. I think I've had five posts break 1k notes in my entire decade on this website.

I'd rather just believe people. It's so much easier. If they are lying, that's on them.

So when I get a "this must be internet fake" reply on something much LESS outlandish than the above - people doubting that my mother...is a real person? who likes fan things? who might talk about sex??? - I'm really just completely baffled.

Like look, my mom will turn 79 later this year. She was 6 when Isaac Asimov (who my grandfather knew, by the way, speaking of outlandish unlikely scenarios) finished writing the Foundation series. She was 10 when the Lord of the Rings came out. She went to Cornell when she was 16 and tells me stories about the young dude nerds who loved LotR so much that they carried their copies around campus. Those guys would be 80 now. They were geeks before many of the people on this website's parents were born. Mom had just turned 22 when Star Trek: The Original Series started airing. She was hooked immediately and watched the whole series, and the movies, and took me to Star Trek 4 as my first movie theater experience (I was almost 4), and watched ToS in syndication, and loved sci-fi and Murder She Wrote. When I asked her, "do you ship Spirk?" she looked at me like I'd grown a second head, cause she had no idea what I meant, but when I asked her, "do you think that Spock and Kirk were a couple?" she also looked at me like I'd grown a second head, because fucking duh.

It's not a myth that fandom existed before us, before the internet, before our parents, our grandparents, our great-grandparents were born. Some ancestor of mine squeed over the newest Jane Austen chapter (change locality based on origin, but the idea stands). Their ancestor got weak in the knees over Tom Jones. Go back enough generations and someone was fanboying over Euripides (that's a lie, I'm not Greek). But the point stands.

Fandom isn't new.

And don't even get me started on sex. I shouldn't have to explain to literally anyone ever born that sex isn't new. Where the fuck they think babies come from?

I just. This idea that anyone comes onto Tumblr.com to lie about their real lives is fucking bizarre. Just relax and believe people. What's the damn harm???

[brsb4hls]

I'm truely conflicted here.

Watched 'The Marvels' yesterday. There were 7 other people in the theater with us. 7! On a saturday.

And I don't wanna say it, but I get it.

It has nothing to do with the cast tho.

Iman Vellani is adorable and funny, she has such positive vibes, I could watch her forever.

I liked the first Captain Marvel Movie. I liked Monica Rambeau in WandaVision.

Zawe Ashton did a good job.

But the story was basically non-existent and I didn't feel anything.

And that is the problem imo.

You need to resonate with something.

But there was no suspense, since there were no stakes. No actual danger.

Carol is way too overpowered and should not have a problem fighting Dar-Benn.

They tried to raise the stakes with the bangle and the weapon and the switching, but Dar-Benn still didn't feel like a threat at all.

(That was what my brother and brother-in-law were criticizing the most. Someone who can power up a whole sun should have been able to just chop off Dar-Benns arm at one point. The bangled one of course)

And Dar-Benn's backstory was way too short. Like, 15 minutes more of her at the start of the civil war, of her witnessing the sun over Hala getting dark, of her seeing loved ones suffocating, would have been enough for people to feel for her.

That was definetly something that was missing.

The relationship between Monica and Carol needed more depth too.

It wasn't a bad movie (and certainly not worse than Antman 3 or Thor 4), but it was shallow.

Which is ok for an action movie, but if it wants to be a shallow, yet entertaining action movie, it needs better effects and fight scenes.

I need to be blown away by visuals at least.

The Marvels was just kinda in between and kinda meh.

And I hate it, because it gives people fuel against female lead action movies.

I am aware that it's unfair, but movies like 'The Marvels' have to work way harder to convince people, because like I said, other MCU projects were 'meh' as well, but still got better feedback (underserved, but well).

So I'm mostly pissed that they messed up a great premise.

The Marvels all working together f.e. and learning to coordinate their switching was great, some of the switch fight scenes were pretty neat, too, so there was potential.

But it didn't go anywhere and Dar-Benn was wasted.

Best and most creative scene was with the flerkittens of course, that rescue was insane and so funny, if they kept that tone for the whole movie, it would have been way better.

(Also a lot of stuff made no sense. Like the Kree soldiers immediatly fighting in the Khan residence, after they just got out of the flerken pocket dimension, they didn't know where they were and who they were fighting.

Carol constantly flying off felt weird and a bit too unconcerned, the movie only started to get into it's flow a bit after all three were on the spaceship.

After Kamala was in space there was no threat to the Khans anymore, so why did they have to come to s.a.b.e.r?

It all felt disconnected and random somehow .

Which is a shame.

I will tag this as critical of course, but I don't hate the movie. I was entertained enough, just a bit disappointed because of the wasted potential.

[pandasmagorica]

First watch: 10 Years Ticket episodes 13-16 (finale)

Episode 1-4 notes

Whew! That was a wild ride. Great twists, great flashback reveals, great performances all around. I highly recommend this show. Content warning for violence - it is a crime drama after all, one that focuses more on the criminal's families, with the criminals more as side characters who wreak havoc.

The only complaint I have about the writing is that a significant character does something very stupid which does not end well.

We do get more about the QL subplot between two middle-aged women, neither of whom dies.

Lots of other people die.

I learn more about Thai Buddhist funeral customs than I ever learned before.

I haven't mentioned that a lot of the story revolves around characters' love of film. I used to be very much into film, not so much in my later years, but I can tell it means a lot to them and adds to the texture of the story.

One more thing I thought about is that this is Ohm Pawat's at least second series as a son of a family that is warring with another family that used to be friends. Of course, Bad Buddy was a comedy with some drama, and 10 Years Ticket is hard drama with sparse comic moments, but the parallels are interesting.

Spoilers follow

No, the two women don't end up together again, but they end up on good terms. I have mixed feelings about this. I think it's justified dramatically, but my lesbian bestie tells me lesbian stories rarely end well. It's too much to ask one series to carry that weight, but I hope among the lesbian series we'll be getting this coming year and - if we support them - beyond that happy endings will be abundant.

We've known since episode 4 that Luk didn't do it. We learn why she confessed, and that she didn't know who actually killed her lover/Phukao's (Ohm's) step-brother Mai. We see the killing in a flashback, that, as we saw in 9-12 with the police lieutenant, the big boss took Piak's gun and shot Mai, then returned the gun to Piak.

We learn that, despite treating Kongkwan and her family as enemies, Phukao loves Kongkwan (and vice versa) and we watch their relationship soften and develop further. We didn't get the Bad Buddy parents to openly accept their children's relationship. We do get the 10 Years Ticket parents, at least the surviving ones - Phukao's parents Santi and Sai and Kongkwan's father Somkiat - to accept the relationship.

Yes, I said surviving ones. Kongkwan's mother Veena makes the mistake of filming the aftermath of a killing at the big boss's home, then showing it to the police inspector - who was there at the time - after he arrests her husband when they plant drugs in his truck. The inspector frees the husband, but later ransacks their home when Veena returns home alone. The next thing we know, the police are showing up at Somkiat, Veena, and KongKwan's home to let them know about Veena's death. I know this was needed plot-wise, but I wish they had written it some other way.

Phukao wrongly blames himself for Veena's death, and says that if he hadn't brought Kongkwan home late, Veena would still be alive. Actually, it's more likely that Somkiat and Kongkwan would also be dead and, depending on the timing, possibly Phukao. But because they didn't know what happened when Veena came home or why, they had no way to know that.

In a confrontation in the theater, Piak kills the police inspector and his assistant, then Piak and the big boss kill each other. I'm not an expert on gun violence but it strained my credulity that Sor and Plu weren't injured or killed during the standoff. It's bizarre to watch Pin (Sai's old flame) and Sor walk through the bloody theater aisle - aren't they afraid of leaving shoeprints?

At this point, everyone who was a witness to who actually shot Mai is now dead. Fortunately, Chalee, one of the drug dealers, turns himself in and talks, resulting in Luk's release from prison five months later. I guess he didn't mention Sor (Gunsmile's character) and Plu (Off's character) as they are still free to attend the film screening the characters stage as a memorial to Veena.

The end