#time for specterthief's opinions

[specterthief]

The "just not the dub" in your tags, thanks 🙏. (I do think the dub has its place and it's got some stuff but it's not necessarily the same show. And the original is just superior when it comes to the emotional beats. The dub I think tried too hard to be "funny" and it kinda took away some of the characters' good qualities (esp Reki imo).)

tbh ironically reki is the one character who i think suffers least from the dub because when the script is good his performance is generally really good on a technical level and pretty fitting to the character's original tone, and he seems to have suffered from the least like... active material changes to his characterization, i guess because no one really had any problems with reki lol

but saying "when the script is good" is kind of fraught in the first place, because untangling the absolute mess of the general scriptwriting from the intentional character changes from the actors improvising with no oversight is such an overwhelming task i've tried to break it down and given up multiple times already, so even generally feeling like reki was the character who had the best transition to dub he's still held down by being in this dub

i do think it can have some entertainment value just to watch a bit here and there to hear the characters speaking english but the fact that they self-admittedly completely rewrote characters and altered the script to the point of changing the actual plot and themes of the show just kind of supersedes the few praiseworthy things it's got, because it's treated as an equal and equivalent way of enjoying the story and it's just... really functionally not the same story. and now the fandom is full of people going solely off the dub and thinking it's the same story and projecting that back on the original text or gleefully praising the dub's (again, admitted) efforts to "improve" the source material and "make it gayer" by adding fanservice while censoring the actual text. it doesn't even hold up for a theoretical accessibility use case, before you even get to the story changes, because important information in the visuals that's conveyed in characters' dialog and tone in japanese gets completely cut or lost in english.

i can't stop people from enjoying it obviously but i wish there could at least be an understanding that it's not the same show and shouldn't be discussed as if they're interchangeable, and i'm always going to put disclaimers like that on any kind of recommendation because the original story is what i'm recommending and the dub isn't that. i love the original show and i want people to experience that as nearly as they possibly can, not someone's smug fanfiction pasted over the original animation.

[specterthief]

Ok, see, I only ever played the original release of ddlc, what do you mean that the re-release says that the plot of the first game didn't happen, that's so fucking stupid

yeah the new lore revealed through all the in-game files and stuff is "the girls are part of a virtual sandbox AI simulation to study artificial consciousness, monika had advanced permissions within the simulation to be able to report data, the bishoujo game structure of the original VN is the result of a rogue programmer altering it for his own purposes and either he or monika created the player character, who is not supposed to exist, and it was literally never meant to be an actual galge, the (third person slice of life after school special-esque vignettes about mental health) side stories are the 'control setting' where monika's advance permissions are suppressed and therefore the closest thing to how the characters would be 'normally'", basically. ddlc+ says there was never a "real" romance VN at all, monika is a regular old rogue AI in a setting that only resembles a galge because of some asshole messing with it, not a self-aware visual novel character because in the new story she was never "supposed" to be a visual novel character

and as someone who really liked the original and really likes the actual genre it was referencing i am. not a fan of any of this

[specterthief]

gimme the joe/tadashi fluff

send me the rarest pair you can think of and I'll tell you if I ship it and how I think it can work

oh hey it's a ship i have actually written before! needless to say i ship this very much and it's probably my favorite ship for both of them

i pretty much reverse engineered this one from all the yume interviews about their dating preferences, particularly starting from "shopping for ingredients and cooking a meal together" being cited as a date that tadashi would enjoy:

and leading to studying all the other answers and how they compare, like both of them liking simple/casual dates, tadashi paying for his date + joe having to save money, tadashi wearing simple fast fashion in his private life and having to dress up for work (because adam would harshly criticize his casual clothes) while the thing joe finds most attractive on someone is casual clothes they don't usually wear because he likes to see people let their guard down, (animedia september 2021) + the summer date Q&A mentioning that a chance to relax and let his guard down where he might "show a different side" is what tadashi would want from a date (animedia august 2021)... the things they'd both like in relationships seem to be surprisingly compatible and like they'd have a nice time together. they also have some really interesting parallels even in the show - they both have very similar conversations with langa and reki respectively about the risks and "stupidity" of skating, but coming from completely opposite places (joe coming from already totally accepting himself and what he loves, tadashi from terrible self-hatred and guilt)

and they're the two people who've stuck by cherry and adam's sides for the last seven years, also in very contrasting way... they both influence reki and langa to resolve things and are the two people who are most integral to langa reaching adam. despite not interacting directly they play really interesting parallel roles in the overarching narrative that make me really like the idea of seeing how they would actually interact, and it's so easy to imagine how they could post-canon if adam starts to rekindle his friendship with joe and cherry. i think pairing a character who's as openly and confidently sexual as joe with someone as repressed as tadashi is also really fun to think about, and that with all tadashi's Issues having someone so attractive and confident be interested in him could be a really good experience for him

i just think they're neat!! i think about them a lot!! it's very much a crack ship but i think they would genuinely work together and you can see that i've thought about this one a lot because i have citations prepared for it

[specterthief]

slides in with a crosscanon crackship bc that's how i roll: yusuke kitagawa/raidou kuzunoha (also i enjoy smooshing together crosscanon peeps thinking how they'd mesh if they actually met...)

send me the rarest pair you can think of and I'll tell you if I ship it and how I think it can work

ooooh not something i've considered before! i think it could be interesting, and it's plausible enough within the universe for raidou to end up in the p5 timeline for some length of time (intentionally or otherwise), and i can imagine how fascinated yusuke would be to meet someone from nearly a century ago - and someone who can see demons at that!! all the PTs would probably absolutely overwhelm raidou trying to figure him out lmao but i can see yusuke being particularly quick to try and spend time with him and get to know him. meanwhile raidou... he has a pretty high tolerance for eccentricity and i think he'd be pretty easily dragged into yusuke's shenanigans/nude posing/etc, and i can see him finding him charming (and wanting to try and do something about his dire finances, given that that would be the biggest reminder of his own time of anything here.) yusuke's eccentricity might actually make him a bit easier for raidou to get comfortable with than the other PTs at the start, because there's something kind of classic/timeless about his vibe compared to a lot of the others being very much Modern Teenagers.

there'd be a lot of room for them to genuinely bond given the opportunity too, i think, because despite the vast difference in specific circumstances, yusuke's complicated feelings about madarame and about being seen as a tool to be discarded by the closest thing to living family he has would be something raidou would have some Thoughts about... also the dead mom issues... man

i can definitely see some interesting potential here with the right setup!!

[specterthief]

gimme the sweet, sweet rin/rei (swimming anime) mess

send me the rarest pair you can think of and I’ll tell you if I ship it and how I think it can work

I LIKE IT!!! rei isn't a character i feel like i have an especially solid grasp on (honestly i don't have as solid a grasp as i'd like on any of the characters, i've only seen the first season once and would need to refresh myself on it to go too in depth with this) but i loved their interactions in the back half of the season and think it's a really solid ship. it feels like one of those casts where the rapport between the whole group by the end is so strong that basically anything could work with a little nudging, and i can imagine the s1 finale could put them in an interesting place. rei's seeing rin at his best, finally, being able to put aside his burdens and have fun with his friends again (i think he'd find that beautiful!) and rin's just had rei do this incredibly selfless thing for the sake of his friendships despite their one on one interaction before being so hostile... much to chew on there

i also think it's inherently interesting for rin's character to focus in on the one person on the iwatobi team he doesn't have deep personal history with already - maybe predictably considering my sk8 takes i like thinking about how a relationship could build with someone who only knows him as he is now without a "purer" past version of him to compare to

they're fun and good and i'm sure i will have more opinions to add when i've seen more of the anime/seen s1 again!!

[specterthief]

Rarepair ask meme: Flynn/Walter from SMT 4!!

send me the rarest pair you can think of and I’ll tell you if I ship it and how I think it can work

i am a fraud smt fan who still hasn't played 4 despite having it sitting on my 3ds since before the eshop closed so let me just drop that disclaimer here but at risk of sounding completely insane, i think there's some inherent eroticism to protagonist/alignment rep relationships that immediately creates an interesting basis to build a ship from. like in large part the representative will often be a major deciding factor that sways the player (and by extension the protagonist, who by their nature has to start the game uncertain of their values) and therefore there's a sort of seduction of the player-via-protagonist toward their beliefs. it's immediately this very fraught dynamic and even MORE fraught if you turn against them, especially with characters you have a substantial amount of time to bond with before your paths diverge, and it makes an interesting foundation to turn into something More either way!

so i don't know the smt4 reps well but i think just intrinsically yeah it Works yknow. plus they're like. samurai knight hybrids and that's inherently kind of homoerotic

[specterthief]

for the meme, joe and cherry's dynamic in general >:3c

reverse unpopular opinions

I ACTUALLY REALLY ENJOY SO MUCH ABOUT IT IS THE THING, i think their antics are really funny and they serve a perfect purpose as foils to the younger characters (and having characters who are largely static to balance out the very tumultuous drama that reki/langa/adam/tadashi have going on was a really good choice and roles that they serve really well.) i love the contrast between their apparent life-long constant bickering rivalry and the fact that that still means they've been friends for 20 uninterrupted years. i love the difference in their outlooks on that relationship and what that says about their respective emotional maturity, with joe being very conscientious about how important that friendship has always been (and how adam is hurting for not having someone in his life like that) compared to how cherry seems to take joe's constant accommodation for granted. i think the fact that the series makes a point of how important platonic connections are while actively acknowledging (and not condemning) m/m romantic attraction as an option (unlike a lot of sports anime about Really Intense Friendship) adds a really interesting vector to how their relationship fits into the narrative. in particular i think the fact that for joe, a character who's openly very poly and loves flirting and dating and hooking up with girls, that his longest lasting and most emotionally significant relationship is a friendship is an interesting characterization beat itself, especially in a series where he's surrounded by messy unrequited love that Does Not Fix Anyone who doesn't also have strong friends and community to lean on. joe being very open and confident and having blurry boundaries between S and his day to day life compared to cherry's strictly locked down divide between his work and his true self is also SO GOOD for The Allegories, and the fact that this is the one place where joe doesn't really get it is an underrated point of tension that i really want to write something digging into sometime.

i'm really curious to learn more about their youth in the OVA and i'm ESPECIALLY curious if their popularity in s1 is going to lead to them getting more devoted character arcs in s2, since i think there's a lot that could be done with them if they actually get a chance to grow and be challenged by a narrative they're more central active players in. i think cherry in particular could really go some tasty places as a character from being put in a situation where joe as a constant stable presence is actually tested and cherry has to be the one to Be There and work for their friendship. put them in the plinko i would love to see it

also because i can't talk about their dynamic without talking about the shadow of adam looming over them: the contrast between the way they both relate to him (cherry being far more forgiving but not understanding adam at all, joe understanding adam better than almost anyone else but not personally forgiving him, the whole way that forgiveness is decoupled from sympathy, aaaaaa) is delicious, i am so excited to see how things shift between the three of them after the finale and how joe and cherry's own relationship might change now that their relationship as a trio seemingly will.

unironically one of my favorite dynamics in the series, i just don't talk about it very much because i have been a victim of the wizard's curse (really really specifically into it platonically or exclusively one-sidedly in the past) so i appreciate the chance to go off about all the stuff about it i do love about it, thank you lmao

and tbh maybe s2 will shake up their dynamic in the right way to get me into the ship, utsumi and okouchi are unhinged so i'm not ruling anything out

[specterthief]

Hello! For the fandom ask game, 2, 8, and 24 please.

love your fandom ask game

2. a headcanon you weren't sure about at first but have come to like!

hmmmmm, this isn't exactly a headcanon per say but the best thing i can think of is that, for persona 5 fic, i used to really not like ren amamiya as a choice of name for the protag, but thanks to a lot of amazing writers in the fandom who use it i've come around to it a lot and like it and akira kurusu almost equally now!

8. you hope more people will come to appreciate _ (a ship, a trope, an episode, etc)

going back to sk8 for this once since it's my main fandom right now, i really hope people come to appreciate the writing of the original story and the cast more outside of just the couple biggest ships/nuclear found family tropes! it's such a beautifully written and paced show with genuinely really deep themes and a heartfelt message, and a cast with incredible chemistry and parallels between everyone that makes for one of my favorite mixed-age friend groups i've seen. i'd love to see some more gen and whole-cast appreciation since it's a part of the series i find so beautiful!

24. how has fandom positively impacted your life?

hyperfixation go brrrrrr

no but for real, it's given me motivation, purpose and joy through some incredibly dark times in my life, it's let me meet all of my most incredible friends and connected with people all over the world, it's inspired me to study japanese and encouraged me to learn how to do things i never would have thought i would be capable of, i made a whole ass visual novel as a fan project!!!! it's something that has given me so much happiness and gotten me through a lot and i'm so grateful for the experiences i've been able to have through fandom and the people i've met in it

[specterthief]

6, 16, 25 for the fandom meme please :D

✨ love your fandom asks ✨ 

6. something you see in art a lot and love

i love when sk8 artists draw adam in casual clothes but with the spiked hair and big sunglasses in lieu of a mask or things like that, just having him like... out of politician pleasant boy mode and expressing himself happily but just as a Guy and not totally in costume. it's always fun and it always makes me happy!

16. a tiny detail in canon that you want more people to appreciate

god i have so many tiny details i could pick but i am going with a topical and extremely tiny one:

reki builds gunpla

25. a piece of advice for taking care of yourself in fandom spaces

do everything in your power to divest your fandom experience from algorithms as much as possible and learn how to use all the tools the sites you're on provide for you to see what you want and avoid what you don't want. if you don't know how to do that on tumblr/twitter/AO3/etc there are people who do who will help you. the for you page is the mind killer etc

[specterthief]

thancred + 7-10 :D

character ask game

7. What's something the fandom does when it comes to this character that you like?

i was explaining to someone the other day that i know he must be the devs' favorite because they actually let him visibly bleed when he's injured more often than anything else and that's kind of how i feel about what little i've seen of fandom stuff too. people are out there lovingly putting him in the horse plinko and i appreciate that

8. What's something the fandom does when it comes to this character that you despise?

Conveniently Nuclear Found Family haunts me everywhere i go

9. Could you be roommates with this character?

he seems like he'd be a deceptively decent roommate honestly?? i think we could at least stay out of each other's way

10. Could you be best friends with this character?

proooobably not in that he falls into the category of blorbo men where i love them in fiction but would find their personality really grating on an irl man

[specterthief]

Adam and/or Langa for unhinged character bingo?

adam:

*aunt issues but i think it qualifies

**again, baby ainosuke. get him out of there

***we know why he's like this

langa:

i say "they just like me frrrr" not in an "i kin him so much uwu" way but specifically about the bit where reki calls him american and is like "whatever, same thing" when langa reminds him he's canadian. i felt so seen

[specterthief]

for unhinged character bingo, Touga if u watched rgu (from ur p5t post abt "revolutionize" I assumed)

touga kiryuu my [incomprehensible]!

*not from mikage oh god can you fucking imagine

**baby touga specifically. help him

[specterthief]

any variation of "[sad character] needs a hug" :D

C: Neutral. A good author might be able to sell it, but a bad one will kill it deader than dead.

something i can enjoy reading in the right circumstances, though not necessarily something i usually seek out!

it's definitely up to the execution and it can put me off a fic, though, since often find a lot of this particular kind of h/c to be really ooc, since i find that characters' personalities often end up getting sacrificed in favor of... very same-y comfort??? it's hard to explain, but a lot of sad characters i like are sad while also being assholes, so if i'm going to go for soft h/c i still want them to feel like themselves

[specterthief]

Tadashi for the character bingo perhaps?

TADASHI... i didn't think all that much about him on my first watch but the more time goes by the more he ends up consuming my thoughts. he's such a messy, complicated character who carries SO much of the plot despite him having what seems like a small, insulated role on paper. the layers of subtext in his whole story are so rich and end up being so integral to the entire heart of adam's narrative (which is itself the heart of the whole show - "sk8 is the story of adam searching for his eve", in utsumi's own words) and i'm constantly finding new things to pick apart about him and it's so interesting to me. he has so, so many problems and i can't wait to see how he develops now that he and adam are moving in a hopefully more positive direction

[specterthief]

For character bingo, gonna ask Reki!

reki! i like him! i think about him a lot because he's very important to the story and the themes and everything and he's a good little guy, not my fave on a personal blorbo level but a really fun character. he has a really really interesting meta-narrative as someone who's SO shonen-protagonist shaped but has to grapple with not actually being the "main character". i've made the comparisons to wakaba from utena before, but in a way a big chunk of the story really is like "what would rgu feel like if wakaba was an equally focal protagonist" and the answer is: fascinating, and does some really cool things with the idea of "side characters" with comparatively understated issues still being integral to the big dramatic story-defining character conflicts! and reki's strong characterization is the main reason why that works so well

"i do not understand the hype" is specifically in the sense of how he seems to be the #1 character in fanon for people to project on and use as the subject of so much of the ventfic and angst and h/c, including sometimes lifting traumas from other characters (i am not telling anyone not to write/enjoy stuff like this, do what you like! but it's not for me and i don't get it being so ubiquitous with reki specifically)

[specterthief]

Tagged by: @chidorinnnnn

Tagging: @beyondplusultra, @prezaki, @theexistentiallyqueer, @bardofavon and anyone else who wants to do this and steal it from me

The rules: Choose one, both or none of the following tropes!

slow burn or love at first sight // fake dating or secret dating // enemies to lovers or best friends to lovers // oh no there’s only one bed or long-distance correspondence // hurt-comfort or amnesia // fantasy au or modern au // mutual pining or domestic bliss // canon-compliant or fix-it // reincarnation or character death // one-shot or multi-chapter // kid fic or road trip fic // arranged marriage or accidental marriage // high school romance or middle-aged romance // time travel or isolated together // neighbors or roommates // sci-fi au or magic au // body swap or gender bend // angst or crack // apocalyptic or mundane