#this is in the same series where she clearly just learned about the trope of the Noble Savage

[repotting]

What tf was up w that Madeline L'Engle novel that was like "to be a good Christian you shouldn't be homophobic! If people are gay it's Not Your Business. ☺️ (Btw yes they DO groom and attempt to rape teenage kids BUT like that's just what happens when someone's Very Sad so you should be the bigger person and forgive them!! 🥰 Right after it happened, child!)"

[thekingofwinterblog]

One Piece/Ranma - Amazons

So one huge Ranma Reference/inspiration that is stupidly obvious that i never really thought about despite having read both one piece and Ranma for close on 20 years now, is how blatant Oda was about taking inspiration from Rumiko's "chinese amazons" for the Kuja.

Though the actual japanese wording for the group isnt directly amazons(instead basically using their homeland of Joketsuzoku as the denominator of their ethnicity as opposed to the english official translation) in every other way they are stupidly similar, down to the meta beats.

Both are heavily Chinese inspired societies of warrior women, with similar architecture who's only settlement is a mountain town, who famously value strength above anything else.

Even our first main look into their cultures both feature competitive matches between amazons.

Both luffy and Ranma had a seemingly inconsequential match on these very same introductionary arena's that both ended up being some of the most important fights of their entire lives(This setting up everything Ranma ever learned from cologne, and for luffy this was the beginning of him winning hancocks heart and everything that came from that) where both wowed the onlooking amazons with their massive power, but also lead to both of them winning the heart of one of the amazons there in the long run(though for somewhat different reasons).

Also, Oda famusly made Hancock as "perfect" a romantic partner for luffy as he possibly could have in order to have some fun with parodying the tropes regarding love stories, with even her name Hancock being a reference to one of the big early names of rubber during the victorian age... but one aspect that was dropped for the final product was that Hancock was originally supposed to have purple hair... An aspect she would have shared with Shampoo, though her's is a bit different in shade.

the most important dynamic within both amazon cultures as related to the actual plot is between a younger, more contemporary amazons(Hancock and Shampoo), and their wiser older mentor who used to be incredibly beautiful but who's looks withered away with age.

For bonus points, both are famous for carrying around a staff in their old age.

The twist of course is that Cologne and Shampoo's relationship is defined by their shared blood and with the older woman loving shampoo dearly and generally doing everything in her power to help her achieve her dreams, while Gloriosa and Hancock do not share blood and have a much more tumoltous relationship though they still care about each other.

Furthering their meta connection, Both people also are essential for the story through introducing more mystical techniques into the story, With Ranma being taught several of Cologne's techniques, most famously his trademark hiryu shoten ha, while in One Piece, though they didnt introduce it, it was here where through the kuja we finally got a real introduction to the 3 colors of haki that would dominate the second half of the series.

Honestly im baffled i never really realized how much ranma influenced One Piece before, and how Oda managed to still make it his own while clearly taking inspiration from one of the big series of his childhood that wasn't dragon ball.

Also given how Oda was one of the first(and by far the biggest author) to just blatantly steal Ryoga's "Strong Guy with terrible direction sense" schtick with Zoro, i honestly dont get how i never really realized how much Ranma influenced One Piece before.

[violetganache42]

Highlights from a swashbuckling, futuristic watch party on this fine 6th anniversary of "The Shadow War!":

"No Sail"

The sail deactivating every ten seconds after despositing a nickel

"Warning: Never. Drink. Sea water! Tempting as it is, it'll just make you thirstier."

Mine!

Goofy pulling up a fake shark fin while Donald gets a real shark

Return of the Perfect Cast!

"Duck to the Future"

Godfrey and I DREADING this episode

Not Doofus Drake! ><

WriteBackAtYa: "Who doesn’t want lemonade made by 87 Doofus Drake’s feet?"

(No! Bad Will!)

Magica appearance?!

This episode predicting Scrooge being Doctor Who

$500 BUS FAIR?! DAMN INFLATION!

HDL's "adult" designs (It's not fucking hard to make them look like actual adult ducks!)

Old Man Gyro

Me: "Where's Time Baby when you need him?" Godfrey: "Again, same brain"

Take a shot every time WriteBackAtYa says "It gets worse"

Us HATING Future Webby's design (Her outfit is fine, but everything else? Bless me bagpipes, it's bad!)

Pay no attention to the witch behind the curtain!

Future Doofus being an absolute dick (Webby deserves someone better, and that someone is Lena!)

puffywuffy8904 and Alex: *pointing out how Drake is dead* WriteBackAtYa: "The orange traffic cone above his grave should be stolen by now"

Johnny Quest ass shot

Future Louie riding shotgun

Even in the original series, Dewey crashes a plane

Suddenly, THE HINDENBURG DISASTER

Scrooge disrupting the timeline with Webby saying she's not into Doofus (Thank you for setting the course for a good future, Scrooge. This episode was… UGH… Never again! ><)

"Sky Pirates…in the Sky!"

Dewey wanting to tell his family how he got his hat

"Hey feet off the merchandise!"

Us singing the Sky Pirate song!

Scrooge's golden reaction after the song finished and the treasure was stolen

puffywuffy8904: "even though it was SHIT"

Any: "Busted" Me:

Webby casually gaslighting Louie into believing the Sapphire of Souls is real

Louie being the Gollum of the family

Don Karnage being a bad actor

puffywuffy8904: "you know who ELSE is a botanist" Me: "MY MOM"

Cater-chiller

Godfrey and Kaito stealing my thunder

Discord dunking on Dewey by freezing the stream during his Sky Pirate reprise

Even LAUNCHPAD was mad at Dewey for what he did! LAUNCHPAD OF ALL PEOPLE! That's how you know you and your ego trip fucked up!

Magica having a better disguise than Don Karnage

Sky pirates: "A Duel!" Godfrey: "(cue duel of the fates)"

The way Scrooge boards the Sunchaser with his hat full of treasure. XD

Webby revealing to Louie she tricked him: GASLIGHT GATEKEEP GIRLBOSS

Marshmello x DuckTales - Fly (Music Video)

Scrooge and the kids embodying the element of sassy

Puffy panicking about the family being out in space

"MARSHMELLO IS A DUCKTALES FAN"

This song being in a Fortnite event apparently

Treasure Planet

Everyone realizing Missy hadn't joined yet (The lack of "smash" was noticable.)

Me sharing Treasure Planet Lorcana cards

The offended "Ewww"

melcat33: "family clearly having a huge crisis" "MY JUICE" Tokuvivor: "If anyone needs me, I'll be in the kitchen drinking… juice."

puffywuffy8904: "HEY COOL A DEAD GUY"

Alex pointing out how the dying guys always have to give a vague warning

Jim: "Treasure Planet." Me: "Roll credits."

Delbert immediately being on board to tag along with Jim

The meta in "character-building months"

The TRANSITION from the Hawkins' residence to the Spaceport!

Captain Amelia appearance!

CYBORG…

John Silver 🤝 Hugh Neutron Calling Jim and Jimmy "Jimbo"

MORPH APPEARANCE

Learning the original Treasure Planet novel popularized a lot of pirate tropes

Everyone praising how it is a fun yet underrated movie

puffywuffy8904: "wait are they gonna kiss eww" Me: "Outside. Now!"

Subtitles dying as John Silver was berating the crew

"I'm Still Here" screaming 2000s-core

Subtitles near the end of the montage:

Star Wars doing the "Your father is the true villain" shtick first

TransedMyGender: "You know what's worse than a supernova?" Alex: "see your father leave"

Scroop killing Arrow!

puffywuffy8904: "there ain't gonna be a treasure planet 2 for us to worry about" melcat33: "don't you dare jinx us"

"oh shit, guess i have a kid now"

Morph messing with Jim

Missy FINALLY joining the watch party!

Morph custody fight

Everyone saying who they consider the best duck waifu (Morph can be a duck if he wants to. lol)

Suddenly, ROBOT

Learning that Jim was voiced by Joseph Gordin Levitt (NGL, he sounded a lot like Ben Schwartz at various instances)

The violins playing

"We're not a couple" Delbert and Amelia LITERALLY having a shipping moment immediately after

puffywuffy8904: "this guy stinks" Me and WriteBackAtYa's first thoughts:

THE MEME

"Woof."

Delayed subtitles

🎵Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate's life for me!🎵

The WONDERFUL meshing of 2D animation and CGI

Us @ Scroop's death:

Me: "BITE OF 87" WriteBackAtYa: "87 like ducktales?"

BATHROOM BREAK SPEEDRUN

puffywuffy8904: "hey you know what ELSE has robots and supernovas" Alex: "not Jimbo's dad"

Suddenly, HUEBERRYSHORTCAKE APPEARANCE!

This movie being TaleSpin in Space

Family is the greatest treasure of all!

WriteBackAtYa: "His mom is cool" Me: "She did her very best." WriteBackAtYa: "Like no one ever was"

SHIPPING UP TO BOSTON

Delbert and Amelia already having quatriplets quadruplets

DuckLooneyHistoria bringing up the 1988 Russian Treasure Island movie

[zenkindoflove]

Elain and the bond

I've been thinking about Elain's feelings around the bond and reflecting on various theories and what people hope to see.

I think that it's clear that Elain, as of yet, feels like the bond is something that has been done to her. Given the circumstances which the bond snapped for her and Lucien, and her own naivete about mating bonds since it doesn't exist for humans, it makes a lot of sense. She was in love with Graysen and being his wife was the future she wanted. At the same time that she was made fae and that dream was dashed forever, she feels this magical pull to a stranger in her chest.

I can see how Elain would feel that pull and draw and think that this strange magic is manipulating her feelings and fight against it.

What I would love to see in their story is a little different than what I've seen some others express. A lot of people like the idea of Elain and Lucien falling in love despite the bond, sometimes even going as far to say they'd like to see her reject it and then they fall in love anyways.

For me, that would be a really dissatisfying story to tell with Elain's own relationship to the mating bond. I would much rather read about Elain discovering that the mating bond isn't something that has been done TO her but rather the mating bond IS her.

What we know about mating bonds is that they seem to be determined by a force that goes beyond basic magic. The characters often talk about how bonds come from the Cauldron, but that is their own religious interpretation of how the Cauldron works. Instead, we see across all of SJM series that mating bonds are consistent, even in worlds where the Cauldron doesn't exist. SJM uses the trope of the mating bond as a physical manifestation of how everyone experiences a draw they have to someone who they ultimately fall in love with. With Rhys and Cassian, we both know that they suspected the mating bond existed before Feyre and Nesta were fae. Before it had the ability to snap. And Feyre and Nesta also show clear signs of being drawn to Rhys and Cassian as well as humans.

Elain and Lucien never met when she was human, and something about either the situation they were in or the strength of their bond, made it snap for them soon after Elain was turned fae. Lucien was clearly showing mate behavior before Elain went into the Cauldron, indicative that he felt a similar pull to her even before it was possible for the bond to snap.

What I would love for Elain to figure out in her journey is that she was always going to be drawn to Lucien. Just like in worlds without mating bonds, where we feel an indescribable instant attraction to someone, Elain was always going to feel that way about Lucien. The mating bond isn't manipulating her feelings or her desires but rather those same attractions she would have always felt are amplified by the magic of the bond. I suspect this is one of the reasons she pushes him away and explores lower risk options and rebounds as she heals from her broken heart. She feels drawn to him but for many reasons she's not ready/afraid to explore what that attraction and pull could become. When they do start to learn more about each other, I would love for Elain to have this moment of acceptance about the bond. Rather than resenting it or loving Lucien despite it, embracing that the tether to Lucien has been apart of her since before she even knew him, and that the bond is just a way for them to access each others souls because they were always meant to be together. The Mother saw that and gave them this tether so they could find each other.

[princessofmerchants]

Cassian dreaming of Gwydion and foreshadowing Ataraxia and his own HEA 😭🙌🏻

[Cassian observing Ataraxia on Rhys's desk]

"The great sword's hilt was a simple cross guard, the pommel a rounded bit of metal.

Gwydion, the last of the magic swords, had been dark as night and as beautiful.

How many games had Cassian played as a child with Rhys and Azriel, where a long stick had been a stand-in for Gwydion? How many adventures had they imagined, sharing that mythical sword between them, as they slew wyrms and rescued damsels?

Never mind that Rhys's particular damsel had slain a wyrm herself and rescued him instead."

—ACOSF, ch. 42

My absolute favorite HOFAS spoiler after the break as I lose my mind over this moment in ACOSF after having read HOFAS 🥹

I am screaming at how this moment is in ACOSF, Nessian's book — then cut to HOFAS where Cassian's badass mate Nesta slays a damned wyrm with the same magical sword he's looking at here (which she herself Made by the way 💁🏼‍♀️), the same one that makes him think of Gwydion, which in fact is in his very same mate's possession by the end of HOFAS 😭🙌🏻‼️

All the times I read this before HOFAS, there was always something kind of bittersweet and sad about the way Cass's train of thought here ends on Rhys and Feyre and how badass his High Lady is, and how grateful Cass clearly is for the way she saves his brother by loving him...

I always assumed SJM was partly leaning into the fairytale trope of dragon slaying by looking back to that very first book in the series where she brought the Middengard Wyrm onto the page and used it to further characterize her main heroine at the time, Feyre.

Little did we know SJM, with this moment in ACOSF, was also pointing to the future and, for Cassian in particular, creating an echo simultaneously forward and back in time to when his own mate would go on to not only slay the same kind of wyrm, but would do it wielding the immense power of the very same new magical sword, Ataraxia, on the table before him — and only because he loves her and trains her to wield it 😭🙌🏻

Cass is filled with such longing in this moment. I'm floored in the most amazing SJM-induced way that this longing ABSOLUTELY gets fulfilled.

And again, in past readings of ACOSF that fulfillment was legible in part by how at the end of ACOSF Nes finally claims Cass as her mate then literally saves him when she erupts and Un-Makes Briallyn, in whose thrall he is trapped. That was always amazing enough, a beautiful HEA in its own right.........

BUT TO THIS CASS OF ACOSF CH. 42 I SAY: YOU HAVE NO IDEA OF THE RICHES OF DREAMS FULFILLED YOUR HAPPILY EVERY AFTER WITH NESTA HAS IN STORE 😭 JUST YOU WAIT MY DUDE

(Can you even imagine how Cassian must have felt, what his reaction was when Nesta came home after her adventures with Bryce in the tunnels under Prythian, and he learned what Nesta did to that wyrm with Ataraxia? He must have melted into a mated puddle of goo to the tune of "That's my fucking mate, y'all!" 🥹)

[veliseraptor]

January Reading Recap

Thousand Autumns: vol. 3 by Meng Xi Shi. This book is - I don't want to say growing on me because it was never not one I was enjoying, but it certainly got interesting in a new way in this volume. The shift in the relationship between Yan Wushi and Shen Qiao feels like an important one, even if it doesn't last, and the glimpses at a background for Yan Wushi not elaborated upon certainly have me intrigued.

I have the whole epub of the fan translation for this one and might end up just reading it through to the end without waiting for the official translation volumes to come out (though I'll probably read those too, because I like reading more than one translation where I can).

Conspirituality: How New Age Conspiracies Became a Health Threat by Derek Beres, Matthrew Remski, and Julian Walker. Sometimes you read a book on a really interesting subject and it just kind of makes you want to read a better book on that subject. Based on a podcast of the same name, this book was...fine? But it remained relatively shallow, and heavy on the examples rather than the analysis. It was more of a survey of instances where health and wellness/conspiracy thinking intersect than it felt like it was taking a deep look at where and why those intersections happen. It was interesting, and I learned some things, certainly, but it didn't quite dig as deep as I wanted to go.

In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado. What a fascinating piece of work. I don't have a whole lot of coherent things to say, except that I don't read a lot of memoir and I'm glad I read this one. I think I liked it better than I liked Machado's short story collection - certainly it was doing very interesting things with form and style in a narrative built loosely on the skeleton of a memoir. It's funny, because I could see myself finding the conceit here irritating or pretentious, but for whatever reason I think the vulnerability of the project undercut that aspect for me.

Dead Country by Max Gladstone. Mostly this book reminded me that I really want to reread the Craft Sequence, so I started doing that. Calling this an intro to that world feels weird - it doesn't really feel like an entry-point to me, despite the fact that it's being marketed that way - but perhaps that's me with the benefit of having read the other books but slightly too long ago to clearly remember them. (Hence the reread.)

Based on my vague recollections I remember liking his other books better than this one, but that's me comparing some books I really liked to one that I enjoyed but wasn't blown away by. But I'm still coming back to read the next one in this series, so I can't speak too harshly of it.

Faraway Wanderers by Priest. I really enjoyed this one! I love the way that Priest writes banter/interplay between two characters, and she definitely has a thing for people who are equally fucked up being fucked up together that I appreciate. Another thing to appreciate about this one is how (relatively speaking) tight it is - there's not a whole lot of wandering, despite the title, and the plot keeps moving in a pretty linear direction from start to finish. I love my longass cnovels with multiple arcs, but it was a little refreshing to read one this contained. It's not in my upper echelons of danmei I've read so far, because it doesn't hit my favorite tropes quite as hard, but I'm glad I finally got around to reading it.

Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh. Probably wins my favorite book I read last month challenge. The ending got a little deus ex machina for my taste, strictly speaking, but not so much that it ruined my experience - and I genuinely enjoyed the refreshing experience of reading a book that was digging into some messy shit in a way that I found satisfying. I felt like some of the character development could've used more breathing room/space, but maybe I'm just picky about that, and the propulsive pace did keep me reading this one so fast I think I finished it in two days.

This is really petty but I also appreciated the author's willingness to have the protagonist/narrator be not the picture of good progressive politics. It allowed room for the, you know, development, and in the current genre climate I don't take it for granted.

Spin Dictators: The Changing Face of Tyranny in the 21st Century by Sergei Guriev and Daniel Treisman. I don't quite know what I feel about this one. The basic argument Guriev and Treisman are making is that dictators have changed strategies in the 21st century from what they call "dictatorships of fear" to "dictatorships of spin." I think the main critique I came out of it with has to do with the authors drawing too stark a line between their dictatorship "types" and not necessarily acknowledging that a leader can move between them, or use elements of more than one "type" in different places. Like any binary, it obscures fuzziness of categories and potential overlap in favor of trying to make clear distinctions. This is particularly visible in the way that their writing about Putin feels dated just from the initial 2022 publication date.

There were a couple other things that struck me as weird (I suspect the authors might be a bit to the right of me, and there's at least a whiff of classism about their characterization of "the informed" as a class of people); on the whole it felt worth reading but also like a book I want to talk to someone else about to help process my thoughts.

Lords of Uncreation by Adrian Tchaikovsky. I love Tchaikovsky's work, and this conclusion to the Final Architecture series is no exception to that. And that's all, she wrote.

Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon by Wole Talabi. I wanted to like this book more than I did - not that I didn't like it, but there's so much interesting stuff going on that it felt like didn't quite add up to a greater whole. A solid three star read, though, in the sense of "I'm glad I read it, and if someone else mentioned they were reading it I would probably provide my favorable impression, but I'm not going to go out of my way to recommend it to others."

There's definitely sequel bait at the end, though, and I probably will read the sequel if/when it appears. I'm intrigued enough, and the setting/worldbuilding is different enough - to get me that far.

--

I'm currently rereading Three Parts Dead by Max Gladstone (Dead Country made me do it) but have We Are Satellites by Sarah Pinsker proximately on my list for a book club; I'm on a bit of a fiction kick looking at The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler, He Who Drowned the World by Shelley Parker-Chan, The Water Outlaws by S.L. Huang, and Too Like the Lightning by Ada Palmer as possible next-ups as well. I'll get back to my long, long nonfiction to-read list eventually. (in the meantime I've got my long, long, long fiction to-read list.)

[strawberryjamsara]

was wondering what your thoughts are on the women of persona 3? I've seen you talk about yukari a lot but what do you think of mitsuru, fuuka, aigis and chidori?

I sort of had a big review of Persona 3 a while back where I talked about my feelings on reload and loving it after seeing a let’s play of the original and hating it. But to reiterate:

Mitsuru: She has a lot of shortcomings in the narrative, but I still think she’s pretty solidly written. I can at least see why she cares about her dad, in opposition to Haru’s cartoonishly evil father, though I wish the story spent a little more time having her grapple with the implications of inheriting the big evil coorporation that started this mess. Like, I know I’m biased because I hate capitalism, but I think she should have denounced the Kirijo name and did her own thing, and also punched that cop in the face too. I enjoy her arc about learning to open up and enjoy being a teen though. I will say, her social link is rubbish. Clearly written with shipping first and exploring her character waaaaaay last. So yeah, good character, could have been better.

Fuuka: I think too much of Fuukas arc was fromtloaded. When she shows up she’s seemingly weak willed, shown through how she can only sit back and scan enemies, but powerful in how she can get her bully to respect her through her kindness, and her scanning ability wins you the fight. But for most of the game, her dialogue is mostly just her finding the full moon enemies which is a shame. I think her final awakening might be the best in the game however, though it’s in stiff competition with Junpei. I think her bond with Natsuki is legit great. I got emotional when Natsuki was like ‘the biggest bitch in the school is leaving and you’re sad’ like noooooo Fuuka cares so much about you and that’s her strength! I will say, again, her social link is really bad. It’s not shippy bad like Mitsuru, but could they not think of a better story for this main character than learning how to cook?

Aigis: I said before that in my first watch of P3 I hated the game, and I REALLY didn’t like Aigis. Having this robot who buries her face in your bare chest and watches you sleep made me feel like I was witnessing somebodies fetish put into this jrpg. On a playthrough of reload however, I grew way more attached to her. The whole ‘robot learns to feel’ trope is very standard, but it’s one I love all the same, and there were a lot of moments I appreciated like Aigis getting excited over ladybugs, or imitating Junpei. I also think that SEES felt way more like actual friends when playing reload, which made me far more convinced that Aigis would come to see them as a found family rather than in the original where the mc would only interact with the other characters if they were romancable, and also cheating is mandatory. I also watched the movies after beating reload and this isn’t really relevant but: I sorta see Yukari as the main love interest in the game version and Aigis as the main love interest in the movies. But yes, it took me till reload but I really like Aigis. Oh yeah and her social link is 10/10. Just hanging around with her and letting her enjoy life. It’s always cuter, and more romantic when they do this with the social links instead of GET YOUR WAIFU GO FETCH.

Chidori: Chidori is so good. It makes me wish that the Persona series would have more ‘canon’ romances instead of making every woman that moves a romance option for the player because the romance between Chidori and Junpei is so fucking good. I think she’s a real embodiment of the themes the game has, of loving life and living to the fullest because it will end someday, instead of moping around waiting for it to happen. I think her existence also shows off how horrid Stregas mindset is, because they’re readily willing to dispose of her because of their belief that nothing in life matters. I love that she has a full character arc learning to appreciate life through the people around her, as her art begins to reflect this new state with her drawing of Junpei, and I LOVE if you engage with her and Junpeis love story and help encourage Junpei that it’s worth trying for this relationship you get to save her in the end! It’s a nice little ‘Okay, did you understand the themes we’re trying to put forward here? If so, you get a reward!’ moment. My one nitpick is, I wish that in the route you save her, she showed up during the ending. Maybe in the segment where you’re walking around, you see Junpei talking to her and when you question it he’s like ‘What are you talking about, Chidori’s been in this class for a while.’ I think it’d be cute. But yeah, 10/10

[bl-recs-and-reviews]

This is BL challenge for you (if you choose to accept them).

1.a) Please write your top 3 or top 5 favorite tropes in BL.

b) From each trope, write at least 3 BL that you love.

(Feel free if you want to write the reasons or not of why you love them).

2. a) What is the first BL that make you want to know more about and eventually love BL?

b) What is that one BL that have a special place in your heart (for whatever reason)?

The BL can be in in the form of manga, manhwa, manhua, books, tv series or movies.

Thanks so much if you want to answer this long ask.

This looks like fun :) I accept!

Sorry for the late reply this took a while to answer properly ❤ It' so hard to choose

1. Top 5 Favorite Tropes in BL and corresponding shows (in no particular order)

Arragended relationship: - Seven Days (manga) - Now this is one of my favorite manga of all time. So simple yet so good. How you end up falling in love with someone as a result of an experiment - Ookami e no Yomeiri (series/manhwa) - This one is beautiful to look at. Not for the people that cringe at furry stuff. It's an arranged marriage, and how by observing/looking at the other person you like what you discover. - Kieta Hatsukoi (series/manga) - This one is probably known by all. Cute, simple, funny and light hearted. Honestly the more time goes by, the more I think of it fondly ❤

Enemies to lovers: - We Best Love (series) - It's not everyday that a show manages to do an enemies to lovers twice with the same couple. I particularly love S2. And how the love is clearly still there but the hurt is still hurting. - Bad Buddy (series) - Not perfect but with perfect moments. Some amazing scenes that will forever be my favorite. The rooftop scene particularly makes me put it here ;) - Semantic Error (series/manhwa) - The best kbl out there. Proper enemies to lovers, with an adorable height difference. Amazing. 10/10

Miscomunication (done right) - My Personal Weatherman (series) - I am currently losing my mind over this show because of how many of my favorite tropes are happening in it. They miscommunications on this show feel very true and understandable. And despite them they sometimes do manage to communicate well :) - Escape Journey (manga) - Ogeretsu Tanaka is one of my favorite mangaka. And in Escape Journey she manages to make a very realistic depiction of a relationships between flawed people who's happiness is stopped by their lack of communication - Cupid's Last Wish (series) - This is one of those underrated gems that not a lot of people have watched. But let me tell you I loved it, so much. Especially when you have complex relationships, made complex because of unresolved feelings and lack of understanding of the complexities of other people. I love it when characters fuck up and then have to learn to fixs thing properly

Opposites attract - Doukyuusei (manga/movie) - I feel like I talk about this one all the time, but I love it so much. It's such a good story. The pace, the build up, the characters, the love, the everything. I just love it very much. Sunshine x Glasses guy basically xD - King's Maker (manhwa) - What's with me and blond action mains and calculating dark haired with glasses smart guys? In any case, one of the only manhwa's I've read. And I love it. It's got politics, angst and pinning. What else do you need? Kabe Koji (series) - Guess who's also a sunshine boy in love with a dark broody guy? This is the epitome of opposites attract, and japan knows how to do them. Another little hidden gem that maybe not a lot of people know

Hurt/comfort - Mou Ichido Nandodemo (manga) - This is one of my favorite use of the anmesia trope. It's a short manga, where amnesia comes to fuck us around but then it gets overcome in a really cool way. One of my favorite mangas :) - Mainichi Seiten series (manga) - This was one of the first long series of various volumes that I read. It starts very lightheartedly and then goes to sorta dark places. I really liked it because of how bittersweet it was - Oni to Tengoku (manga) - This one is a comedy. With an age gap and questionable behavior older men manage to have a very sweet love story while healing from past trauma. Isn't it neat? Also I love when sex is used as a healing tool, it resonates with me

2. a) The first BL that made me interested in BL

My gosh this one is hard. I don't really remember cause it's been forever. And I was always into "unusual romances". I really liked the strong "bromance" between Zoisite and Kunsite in Sailor Moon, back when I was a kid. I think the first BL coulpe I consciously liked was Touya and Yukito from CardCaptor Sakura. So I always had a penchant for liking those secondary couples. I guess there was no proper first BL that made me interested in BL. I just ended up finding the genre because I had a prior interest.

However, probably my first proper BL was Junjou Romantica. It was the first long length BL anime that I saw. I was blown away. Up until then it had only been crumbs and soap opera side couples. Oh, how things have changed since then :)

b) A BL with a special place in my heart

So many. And it always changes. But I guess one that will always have a space in my heart is the combo Tokyo Babylon and X/1999. CLAMP's golden age of mangas are some of my favorite of all times. And X was so good (but forever in hiatus). The characters, the conflicts, the angst, the everything. Subaru and Seishirou's love story. The fate of the world depending on Kamui's love. Where else are you gonna find a story where the choice that might save the world is the selfish one? Where realizing that you're in love with your childhood friend is what might stop the fighting? And also this moment:

source

If you know, you know. I wonder what I would think if I read it now, but still forever in my heart.

This was a lot of fun! Thank you so much for the ask ❤

[thisweekinfandomhistory]

hey v and emily! thank you for doing this podcast! i really enjoy getting to listen and learn with you. i just finished episode 23 where you mentioned libba bray et al being problematic and my curiosity is piqued. i read all of libba bray's books as they were coming out, so for some of them it's been quite a while. were you referring to book content or irl event(s) or both? i would love to know more if you have the time

V here -- I LOVE Libba's The Diviners series, but it also has a lot of things that could have been handled better if she had put in the research. For example, it's yet another example of the Bury Your Gays trope/the Evil Lesbian trope, and she put significantly less research and work into writing 1920s LES Russian-Jewish culture than she did any other non-WASP culture in the series. Given that it's a series ostensibly ABOUT eugenics in America as a necessary evil of the "American Dream," the fact that she kind of lumped Sam's VERY NOT-WHITE IN THE 1920s experience into being One Of The White Characters drives me nuts. (Also she gets her Yiddish wrong.)

I also don't personally love the AGATB series, because it's just not my flavor of genre fiction, but this blog does a pretty good breakdown of why it doesn't hold up to 2023 standards of responsible representation/inclusion, especially wrt the "heroic" main character being a British colonist in India.

Bray spends two whole paragraphs describing the Indian marketplace. It’s not just for scene setting; she’s using her setting for novelty. The problem is that people are never novel to themselves, nor is their own culture novel to them. So using another culture for novelty means twisting the depiction for the purposes of entertaining outsiders. The result is exoticism.

Are these unforgivable evils? No. And honestly, compared to how A LOT of YA books older than, like, 2017, hold up to 2023 standards, I also personally fully acknowledge that my complaints about The Diviners are more like quibbles than anything with actual weight. It's not like she's Laura Ingalls W*lder. I also do think that there is almost no way to write historical fiction that is both accurate and critical of the structures that upheld the kyriarchy of the past in a way that is still suited to a STORY that is interesting and readable.

But I also think that, particularly with regard to AGATB, Libba was writing outside of her lane -- like... I'm not sure that any white westerner should necessarily be the person trying to tackle a fantasy series in British-occupied India, because our education on that time and place is steeped in Orientalism and even the most woke among us aren't authentic voices of those who suffered massively under that occupation. So IDK. AGATB came out long before We Need Diverse Voices, and you can tell.

With The Diviners, I mostly get frustrated because she clearly put A LOT of attention and care into writing Memphis' Black experience and Ling's Chinese-American experience, but she didn't afford the same research or care to Sam's Jewish experience because she didn't even do enough research to know that his experience WAS racialized (and he would have suffered xenophobia to boot, being a Russian immigrant).

tl;dr, she's not #cancelled -- hell, I write drabbles for The Diviners whenever I get the opportunity! -- but there are some glaring instances of ignorance and privilege in her writing that are a bummer.

[soul-dwelling]

Would FF have been improved by the White Clad members having better motives? Atleast some of them? But I guess with the endgoal being death it wouldnt really work without them being "crazy". Maybe leaving it ambigious if merging with Adalla would just be a global suicide and not some transformation or transcendece would have improved it? Dunno, maybe this was the only way to archieve the theme (if it wasnt changed in the middle)

I think any motivations would have helped make these characters more memorable and engaging--not even sympathetic, just someone whose story I want to read. 

What was Haumea’s motivation? It is defined so late in the story that I still, when re-reading, feel almost zero empathy for her. I wish there was a choice made to better show that she can hear too many thoughts, the thoughts being so much about dying just depressed her, so she wanted to stop hurting--and instead we have another potentially disablist “mad” character. This isn’t Stein where you see Stein still lives his life regardless his condition--this is just “insane character, so villain” trope. 

It’s why your remark, that the goal being death wouldn’t work without them being considered insane? Yeah, that’s because that seems to be the actual plot of this series, that these characters are just losing their minds, thus that death is preferable. 

But the story doesn’t do enough to make that seem like the option, for two reasons. 

First, you can see that Haumea is the only one obviously feeling his death drive--and, not justifying her desire for death, but at least you understand, with that much pain, why ending her suffering is preferable, however insane it comes across. 

But second, on the flip side to this, the way Haumea was defeated was by Shinra doing toxic positivity talk--because things weren’t so bad for him, so they shouldn’t be so bad for Haumea, so stop being “crazy”! 

…That’s not how this works. 

Haumea is in pain. The way to address her mental illness is not to say, “Things are great for me, I don’t get why they aren’t for you, just listen to me and your parental figure Charon and stop destroying things!’ At best, Shinra just finally says, “Look, I’ll re-make the world where you don’t have your ability, Haumea, and that will stop your suffering and somehow ‘cure’ your decades of trauma!” That is not how responding to trauma works. (Please forgive me for conflating insanity and trauma--these two are not the same.) Living after trauma is a lifetime of adjusting each day to that trauma--and this shonen just takes the most cliche approach to act like Haumea just gets better from  it. 

What was Charon’s motivation? Again, I wish it was telegraphed more clearly that he saw himself as Haumea’s parent, because until we see him tending to a baby Haumea, he just came across as the guy who has to hang out with a younger coworker. (I am avoiding discussing that last scene of the two, given how people read that romantically--which, blech, no.) 

What was Lisa’s motivation? We know Lisa got here because she didn’t want to become an Infernal like her parents--so…she gets bit by one of Giovanni’s bugs on purpose to unlock her powers, when said bug could have infernalize her anyway, and…I guess she was fine with the blame to turn the world into a new Sun, killing everyone? 

At least Sho was raised in a cult, so that is easy enough to bypass. What was Arrow’s origin story? Was it the same? 

Honestly, given what my friend and I write, you can have enough original characters and the explanation just be, “This is a cult, they are desperate to belong,” and have that be enough motivation to work. The problem is, once you have those cultists learn this plan is going to kill them, there is no way you don’t have some characters bail on this plan, whether because that is realistic (“I don’t want to die, I just wanted to belong”) or because that makes your story more interesting (it introduces conflict within the ranks of the Clads, it potentially weakens them to help it make sense how the good guys can manage some minor victory against a conspiracy that includes the entire government and the entire state religion). 

I think that ties into your point, that maybe leaving it ambiguous what the Clads had planned would have been better--because then you are just kicking that can down the road until the big reveal. But to make that work, you need to show that the Clads were a place that you get why these people were here. My friend does a great job writing Clad original characters where you get why they are here and feel that sense of belonging--you don’t have to agree with their actions, but you get how this is a found family, however toxic it is. It’s like the first live-action Ninja Turtles: you get how the Foot was able to con these teenagers into committing crimes, because the Foot was targeting wayward youths like Daniel who felt they didn’t belong.

[bumblebeehug]

i think a lot of the times that were mentioned in the og posts are seen as makarov ignoring/not acting interested in his guild members, but i think that he still deserved his title as a beloved grandpa. like, i definitely agree that he’s extremely flawed, and though it may feel unfair towards the other characters, i think it makes him an even cooler character. because as we saw in the first episodes, makarov has an easygoing friendly act, but he has a lot of authority and could see through kageyama’s courage (or lack thereof). he gave kageyama space to admit to himself that he didn’t want to be a bad guy, and clearly this “giving space” theme is something makarov uses throughout the course of the series.

what i’m trying to say is that while part of why he’s flawed is bc he doesn’t know much about his guild members, him not meddling with them is what makes them trust him. makarov knows that everyone carries their own past and their own problems, and he’s a steady rock that doesn’t ask for anything in return. lucy didn’t have to explain who she was, why she had run away or anything, so she felt like she could come to him with any problems - same with mystogan. (he messed up a little with cana, but at the same time, she could’ve insisted more on telling him about gildarts, but truth is: she wasn’t ready within herself to come clean, so the interruptions were most likely something that came with relief for her)

i would compare him to a cat owner: a cat owner who picks up a scared, injured stray doesn’t demand to know everything about it. if the owner wanted to know everything about their cats, then they would get bred cats with proper knowledge about its background. no, with the stray there are going to be unknown traumas and injuries, and the trust will be null if the owner demands contact. so instead the owner gains trust and love by giving the cat space - just like makarov and his guild. he lets the cats (guild members) come to him when they’re ready.

everyone in the guild knows that there’s no judgement with makarov. they know that he trusts that they can handle the secrets they have, and if not, they’ll come to him for advice.

makarov messing things up by this off hand approach is a repeating theme in fairy tail - the romeo macao incident in the beginning of the series, when laxus is introduced (clearly his hands off parenting didn’t work with neither him nor ivan) and then of course the most obvious one where the guild disbanded. still, it gives the show dimension and proves that everyone has flaws and that everyone still can find ways to overcome them.

in a way i kinda feel like the first impression we get from makarov in the series is the same with how the guild members see him in the beginning. then, as more of the story plays out, they learn how flawed and complex he is, but he still manages to regain our trust, over and over again, which makes him just as powerful as we initially thought he was in my opinion. everyone grows up thinking that their parental figure is perfect, but then we learn that they aren’t, but we learn to love them unconditionally either way. and with that said, the found family trope in Fairy Tail really earns its place.

When I first became a fan of Fairy Tail I really had this notion that Makarov kind of secretly knew what was actually going on with everybody but knew he had to let them sort out their own problems. There are even fics written about this. But with these latest rewatches I'm realizing that really...isn't true?

When listing potential future guild masters, he said mystogan was a "silent recluse" who "wasn't really leader material." He's a whole-ass prince in edolas and literally the most noble person ever.

He unknowingly interrupted cana like three times when she was trying to tell gildarts he was her dad. So he wasn't aware of Cana's reason for being there.

He brought natsu and Gajeel to the guild, but was more surprised than anyone when a barrier revealed they were over 80. So he wasn't aware of the eclipse project.

He had no idea Lucy was a Heartfilia until Jose told him.

Idk kind of a small and belated realization but sort of interesting.