#was trying to take a screenshot that i could edit to say 'sans fucked my mom' and apparently flew too close to the sun

[mirasays]

JAMBLR USERS REBLOG AND PUT IN THE TAGS THE FUNNIEST REASONS YOU'VE GOTTEN SUSPENDED. PLEASE

[insanelyadd]

I posted 301 times in 2021

152 posts created (50%)

149 posts reblogged (50%)

For every post I created, I reblogged 1.0 posts.

I added 744 tags in 2021

#undertale - 145 posts

#reblog - 144 posts

#papyrus - 137 posts

#letpapyrussayfuck - 57 posts

#swearing - 56 posts

#sans - 45 posts

#answears - 45 posts

#insanelyadd - 41 posts

#skelechara - 39 posts

#silly - 35 posts

Longest Tag: 113 characters

#i just sit in my head thinking on a loop and breaking stories down into their base nutrients with my brain acids

My Top Posts in 2021

#5

Wild as it is to imagine, I do go through my notes a few times a day and I always block any bots I see. Little bonus tip for those that may be knew to tumblr, if your blog looks like this then anyone paying attention to their notes for this reason will block you, so try to customize it, even if you make everything black and title your blog "just lurking".

Full post: 1346 notes • Posted 2021-11-03 19:51:15 GMT

#4

explain the entire papyrus iceberg please i know like 2 things on it

Papyrus' suit is a costume party outfit:

Papyrus' Battle Body is a costume made for a party he attended a few weeks before the game takes place, this is mentioned by Sans at the electric maze I believe.

Papyrus can't kill you:

Zarla made a post where they managed to screen record a fight with Papyrus where they were knocked down to 1HP and before they could heal they were hit with another bone and Papyrus immediately stopped the fight. In the GIF the bone makes contact and the soul flashes like it has been hit but NO HEALTH IS LOST. Papyrus is so against killing the human he can make attacks that do 0 damage.

Papyrus is the younger brother:

The official Japanese Localization of UT, for which Toby gave extensive notes for pretty much every line of dialog, has Papyrus refer to Sans as Nii-Chan. I would throw a screenshot as evidence but I cannot read any Japanese at all so I could accidentally put the wrong screencap, and unless you read it, it wouldn't really be helpful. If you do read it, get UT and change the language to Japanese. Another interesting thing is how Papyrus' speech is written in the traditional fashion which I don't think anyone else does.

Obsession with Spikes and Fire:

Flying:

Full post: 1540 notes • Posted 2021-05-21 06:33:19 GMT

#3

Came up with an idea last night that all Papyrus fans should come together and draw picture(s) of Papyrus saying fuck or swearing and post it on the same day so the people who constantly leave comments about how "Sans is gonna be so mad when he finds out someone corrupted his brother" 🙄 will be killed by the sheer force of it all instantly.

So anyways I declare that June 16th is Let Papyrus Say Fuck Day, all you gotta do is draw Papyrus swearing, or if you want, doing other things that the fandom at large would lose their minds over. Like Papyrus gambling or committing arson. It doesn't have to be high art, it can be a shitposty little doodle. Post it on the 16th and tag it with #LetPapyrusSayFuck as well as Undertale and Papyurs so everyone else can find them. Reblog this post or send it to your Papyrus loving friends, the more participants the better.

Edit: Please also add the tag 'swearing' so those upset by profanity can filter it, as it is one of the most standard tags for doing so. :>

3464 notes • Posted 2021-06-07 16:38:19 GMT

#2

OH MY GOD UNDERTALE IS TRENDING BECAUSE OF LET PAPYRUS SAY FUCK DAY HELL YEAH LET’S FUCKING GO

Edit: it's still trending the next day so I'm immortalizing it with the related tag

5096 notes • Posted 2021-06-16 18:03:10 GMT

#1

Oh you all know exactly what this post is.

Full post: 41911 notes • Posted 2021-09-15 09:04:14 GMT

Get your Tumblr 2021 Year in Review →

[illdothehotvoice]

Why Papyrus doesn’t hate puns (A small ramble to not be taken seriously by me :-) )

Okay okay. So before I start I wanted to say really quick this started as a post about Papyrus being autistic coded and then I started rambling WAY too much about this subject so I VERY quickly want to point out: I saw the interpretation that Papyrus hates puns because he takes them very literally and has trouble understanding them. THIS? Is EXTREMELY valid and I actually REALLY enjoy this interpretation even if it doesn’t align with my own that well. I just wanted to point it out because it’s neat and just wanted to say it’s safe from this post.

Anyways Papyrus. Puns. I’m just gonna say it right off the bat, it’s 12am and this is gonna be SUPER incoherent but main gist is, Papyrus doesn’t hate puns or even Sans’ specifically, he just doesn’t like BAD puns (or at least ones he personally thinks are bad cause he too makes some pretty awful ones).

For instance, Papyrus’ 3rd piece of in game dialogue was literally him making a skeleton pun. He was the first to make a pun out of the skelebros and this thought blows my fucking mind. He says this after Sans says they’re in the demo so technically, they never make their entrance (this is at the end of the Undertale Demo if you get through the Ruins without gaining any exp ^^ will post all of it later like promised just been busy).

This isn’t even the only pun he makes in game! (I was going through all of his phone calls and marking down every time he makes or enjoys a pun and it’s a lot of work so I haven’t finished yet but take a couple examples from that ^^)

(Said after calling him in that one room with the ice in snowdin near the snowman if called twice).

(This one is pretty self explanatory).

(I also don’t want to look for the screenshot but he mentions somewhere his station is made of “Cardboardhydrates”. Also his whole “I’m sure you’ll find it quite SHOCKING >:-))))!!!” line. I could go on and on about puns he specifically makes. Also on a completely different note I need you all to know that Papyrus literally doesn’t know how to solve the X’s and O’s puzzles he just steps over the spikes and says “The solution is to be tall and handsome” he even says he just jumps over the gap on the big ice one, like this is a common theme throughout most puzzles. I am begging y’all to read all the phone calls and the ones with Undyne they’re so good qwq).

Side ramble aside: Papyrus is even shown to get upset at his OWN puns when he finds them particularly bad (ignore the youtube progress bar)

He says this when you’re in the dump in Waterfall btw.

Okay okay so Papyrus makes puns cool. But there’s more. In fact Papyrus even goes as far as to site Undyne’s Cool Shed-Based puns as why they’re friends. (Again it’s 12 am (going on 1am now) and if the screenshots aren’t readily available I’m not digging for them just trust me on this one. If you want to look for it examine Papyrus’ shed in Snowdin after befriending Undyne twice and he’ll say the line I’m talking about).

And finally just to prove it’s not specifically Sans’ puns he dislikes, here’s an instance of him enjoying Sans’ pun!

I love the little fake out here too qwq. Like you really think he’s about to get upset about it. Papyrus actually immediately follows this with a pun of his own if you call again:

Anyways conclusion: Papyrus doesn’t hate puns, in fact every time I look into this subject I find more puns that he himself makes. He just has standards like he does with everything else. Goodnight gamers.

EDIT: I do quickly want to say you could totally interpret the web ones as Papyrus not getting the joke (or in his own case not realizing the irony in what he’s saying, especially because later in this interaction he acts as is he was just stating a fact and not trying to make a joke) but I think Papyrus immediately making the fangs pun after clearly as a joke shows otherwise. But that’s just how I interpret it based on the timing of the lines. The fact still remains he makes puns of his own dhfjkdg.

EDIT...2!! (cause I thought of one last thing in regards to that line): I also want to point out the way he says website as “web-site” implies that that too is a pun but I ALSO want to point out he says online like “on-line” so I think it’s both a pun and a quirky little speech pattern of his. It typically only happens when he’s speaking about the internet and I think there’s definitely something to be said about that.

[evenastar-blog]

Archery in the Lord of the Rings: The Hobbit

To repeat: This post is from the viewpoint of someone who is an archer, certified archery coach, and literature nerd. 

About archery: Archery at its bare basic is about consistency. “Tubing an arrow,” aka shooting a “Robin Hood,” is the ultimate goal of a target archer and occurs when your second shot is the exact. same. as the first shot, and splits the first arrow down the center. Archery is also, as Kisik Lee (the National Head Coach of the USA Archery Team) once said, about confronting your demons: you can not lie to yourself when shooting, especially with a recurve or longbow. Your target will reflect your mental state. A real life archery club we have at my archery range is the 300 Club, where you score 300 points out of 300. Yes, this is a thing, yes there are people who can do it, yes I know several, more than several actually. Yes, some of them did it with recurves and longbows.

Book version: 

Smaug is in. the. air. He is HUNDREDS of yards AWAY. COMPLETELY OUT OF REACH. He is being shot at by a ton of archers whose arrows are not hurting him because his body is covered in protective scale. He has a weak point: a small hollow on his left breast. Presumably this is the weakness every hunter knows: the spot right over the heart. On a 3D target, this spot is about the size of a fist. SO Smaug is in the air hundreds of yards above them swooping around setting fire to everything and the weak point is the size of a fist. This is an amazingly difficult shot. My archery range/shop has tons of archers who compete nationally and internationally or who hunt. Maybe 20% of the archers I know can make this shot. 

The atmosphere around Bard is thus: “Already women were jumping in the water on every side. Women and children were being huddled into laden boats in the market-pool. Weapons were flung down. There was mourning and weeping [. . .] Now he shot with a great yew bow, till all his arrows but one were spent. The flames were near him. His companions were leaving him.” He’s alone and on the ground and near flames and oh!, he has one arrow left. Note how it’s a black arrow NOT a ballista-type arrow. Because he is shooting with a longbow. He has no ballista. There is no mention of him having a “Wind Lance” ballista in the book.

One arrow. He has one arrow left. The village he has lived in all his life is on fire. People are dead and dying. Trained warriors are panicking and abandoning their posts. HE HAS ONE GODDAMN ARROW. There are not enough words for how traumatic this is. Or how dramatic. There aren’t enough words to describe the immense willpower and composure an archer would have to have to even shoot this last arrow, let alone shoot it well. There are now a handful of archers I know who could make this shot, but there are exactly two I truly believe could have any chance at killing Smaug. This is not “ultimate” difficulty, this is so so so far beyond that.

And Bard does it. He fucking does it. Yes I’m swearing, swearing a lot, but this requires swearing because it is un-fucking-believable and maybe my swearing will in some small way help you who are not archers or archery coaches understand how completely goddamn unreal this shot is. 

Robin Hood shot his amazing shot in a competition, no fire-breathing dragons and people dying and sobbing around him. No one attacking him. 

Odysseus makes his amazing shot in a competition without anyone, certainly not a dragon, immediately attacking him. His home is not literally on fire when he shoots.

Bard’s shot here is THE shot of literary archers. THE. FUCKING. MOST. DRAMATIC. AMAZING. MOTHER OF ALL SHOTS. OK!?!?!?!?

Movie version: 

There is fire, ok. His is alone, ok. But he’s on a tower, he has a better angle from which to shoot. His son appears for more drama. Because THAT wouldn’t distract an archer. Not. At. All. I’m sorry but the chances of any archer making this shot are at least halved by their goddamn kid appearing. You need to be able to concentrate, you cannot make the shot if you’re worrying about your kid. THAT IS NOT HOW ARCHERY WORKS. OK. YOU NEED PERFECT CONCENTRATION. IF YOU HAVE A SINGLE FRACTION OF A SECOND OF THOUGHT YOUR SHOT IS DONE. LITERALLY. NO MATTER HOW EXPERIENCED YOU ARE. Also, can I just say, you are sending the message to your kids that it is ok for them to come back to help when their parent is being attacked. I don’t want any kid I know coming back. I want them to go be safe. 

Note also how there are no people screaming and weeping in his vicinity. In the book it was clearly a war zone. In real life in a war or bombing or terrorist zone, there are the sounds of crying and of moaning. JRR Tolkien knew this, he was on battlefields. Well, there is one moment of people screaming but as the focus leaves the people the screaming stops. How convenient and not at all like a real war zone. You want drama and tension? Leaving the screaming in the whole time would have worked. All you had to do was make it quieter than the music and dialogue. Then again, maybe they that’d be too realistic and cause problems for people. . . ? I know they were super careful with how the tower collapsed in Return of the King, they didn’t want it to remind anyone of the Twin Towers. 

OH LOOK. SMAUG LANDED RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU. IN FACT HE LITERALLY LINED HIMSELF UP WITH YOUR FUCKING ANGLE. IT IS THE STRAIGHTEST SHOT EVER. ALSO IT IS WELL IN THE RANGE OF THAT BOW. THE DIFFICULTY OF THIS SHOT WENT FROM INFINITE POINTS TO MAYBE 100 POINTS. OH AND SMAUG’S EVEN GETTING CLOSER FOR YOU. HOW KIND OF HIM. THIS IS THE TYPE OF SHOT ALL HUNTERS DREAM OF: BECAUSE IT IS PERFECT AND EASY AS HECK.

Ok, we are just going to casually ignore the problematic physics here because I have no patience to deal with that. Not the physics of the arrow. Not the physics of the bow. Actually no. We do have to talk about this. I’m still ignoring that arrow because it is ridiculous, but I will talk about bows/slingshots briefly. (Anything I say about either of these also applies to the construction of the Wind Lance.) I did a quick google search and made some edits to the photos I found to help you understand this quick detail:

On both a slingshot and bow, you have this oh so important piece connecting your tips. A continuous piece made out of one material. 

Here’s a screenshot:

This. This would never work. The reason this doesn’t work is because the force of the shot would catch in the string and bow parts and break everything, BEFORE the arrow leaves. SO the shot would never land. The boy cannot successfully connect the points. It needs to be CONTINUOUS. Bard would just cause everything to break and collapse on top of them. In fact, the bow could very well explode because of the sheer amount of force that would be caught in the limbs instead of successfully leaving with the arrow.

How do I know this? Because I’m a friggin’ archer and guess what we do with broken bows for fun when we’re young foolish archers? Yeah. I have actually done something very much like this (sans setting the arrow on a person because that is so so so dangerous) and it’s SUCH A BAD IDEA. HOLY SHIT IS IT A BAD IDEA. Bad ideas might be ok when being attacked by a dragon if it, you know, worked. Does it work? NO. FUCK NO IT DOESN’T.

And now, let’s talk about the use of the son some more. I liked Bard in the books, I HATE the movie version of him (character, not actor, to clarify). Because this scene is never ever EVER appropriate. I give ZERO fucks about the fact that there is a dragon attacking. ZERO. THIS IS NOT OK. The consulting archers on this movie SHOULD NEVER HAVE LET THIS HAPPEN. You know why? Because as a goddamn archery coach I can tell you: kids emulate what they see on movies. The guy who plays Hawkeye? Causes me real life problems because my kids try to emulate him, which usually means they don’t look at their target when shooting or look away from it as they make the shot because “but Hawkeye doesn’t.” You know what happened after this goddamn Hobbit movie came out? I had two students setting up to try this. I HAD REAL STUDENTS DO THIS SHIT AND THANK FUCKING GOD I CAUGHT THEM BEFORE THEY COULD CARRY THROUGH BECAUSE THIS IS DANGEROUS. ONE OF THEM LITERALLY WAS TRYING TO USE THE SHOULDER OF THE OTHER AS AN ARROW REST. I loved loved loved LOVED Peter Jackson for what he did for the Lord of the Rings. Now though? If I ever meet him in real life instead of asking for an autograph and just gushing about how amazing he is, I would have to ask him some questions. One of which would be who his consulting archers were and why they gave this the ok. Because it is not ok. It will never BE ok. Out of all sports, archery actually has the second least amount of injuries despite the fact that we are using real weapons (if I get shot by one of my students’ arrows it WILL puncture). The reason we’re able to accomplish this is because we take safety very, very seriously. And movies like this make it a lot harder to ensure the safety of both students and coaches. 

(No blame goes to the actor of Bard. As far as my movie knowledge goes the director and consultants were in charge of this decision.)

I’m assuming they made the choices they did to add drama. Because obviously the book version was boring. Apparently. And these days in movies audiences love big (the bigger the better) monsters walking directly at them while threatening them. But this is not dramatic. This is not NEAR as intense or dramatic as the book shot, because Smaug was untouchable and out of reach. 

They added the son for drama and to reinforce Bard AS A SHITTY FATHER. Sorry, probably they meant to show him as loving, kind father, which he is, in the books.

Instead of focusing on the FORCE of heat (because that much heat close to you? It’s like a physical force that pushes you back), instead of focusing on how it was his last arrow and he’s by himself . . . because they didn’t. Not enough. They focused on adding a bunch of other stuff going wrong like his son coming and the platform he was on falling, and his bow breaking. This all took away from the drama of him, alone, surrounded by fire, with one arrow left.

I don’t think we (generally speaking, like in general in Hollywood) really understand how to create tension and anxiety in films anymore. How to do drama. We’ve embraced the whole idea of “bigger is better” and a direct threat coming directly at you is scary and “the more going wrong the worse things are.” It’s really disappointing how many movie directors are going this route. I’m not going to do a huge analysis of psychology here, or explain the other strategies of creating drama and tension. But sometimes, smaller is more threatening because it is harder to see and hit; sometimes having a threat that ignores you because you’re not even worth its attention is more threatening because it reinforces the message that you don’t matter (whereas if they’re threatening you directly it’s reinforcing your importance as a threat to them, that they feel the need to deal with you); sometimes it’s just one thing that goes wrong that ruins or can ruin everything.

Conclusion: I will never stop being disappointed and frustrated about this scene in the Hobbit. They had such a beautiful moment and they dropped the ball. And it’s all the sadder because of how on point they were with the Lord of the Rings movies. I was so excited for this, because Bard to me as both literature nerd and as an archer and coach has always been a source of inspiration and awe. 

Peter Jackson was always so aware of his audience and how his movies would affect them for the Lord of the Rings (again, such as ensuring the collapse of the tower in RotK did not mirror the collapse of the Twin Towers). I’m very disappointed that he was not more conscientious when directing this scene. 

I will not apologize for my vehemence. Because setting aside my love of stories as a literature major, stories and entertainment influence reality, and the depiction of archery in movies directly affects me as a coach, and the other coaches I work with. As I have already made clear. Anything that has played a role in causing my students to be in an unsafe situation is something I have to be passionate about because it is my job as a coach to keep them safe. 

I hope this post showed you how amazing Bard is in the books and gave you greater appreciation for the Hobbit. But I also hope it has made you think about your art and how it might affect people. If you are going to share your writing and art with the public, you must be aware that you have a responsibility to think of how it will affect the real world. We can’t all be perfect, and we can’t think of everything. But we must be aware that it’s not “just art for art’s sake” or “just for fun.” It has real life consequences. I also do hope this post might have shown you a bit of how complicated movie making is, and help show how much skill and devotion Peter Jackson has sunk into not only the Lord of the Rings trilogy, but also the trilogy of the Hobbit. Even if I personally did not care for the Hobbit trilogy near so well. Peter Jackson and all the people involved in the films have to make a lot of decisions, and their decisions are much more important than just “what would be cooler.” So despite my issues with this specific scene, thank you, Peter Jackson and all who were involved in the making of this movie. All I ask, if any of you happen to see this, is that you remember that kids emulate their heroes (and with heroes as cool as the characters in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings? how can they resist?)

[lottesseenaghoul]

RE:169 quick thoughts before I go into rabbit hole of tg posts on tumbler (edited)

So I was expecting the scans to come out on Thursday but was surprised to see some fresh panels in the uta tag and FLIPPED.jpeg at my behavioural economics lecture. Honestly not the best place for getting a nosebleed xdd

Anyways here are some of hot takes I got from reading the chapter. More nuanced meta probably on its way. I read it on mangastream and I did screenshots there.

The chapter starts with the first part of Uta’s tattoo quote and ends with the second part, forming a sort of narrative framework to read it.

We jump straight into the fray, with contrasting shots of Yomo’s damn fine looking face and Uta’s there as well, clearly guided by very basic thinking and mostly intuitive, emotional impulses:

Like this is typical, stereotypical “unhinged” face people do in mangas. A mix of enthusiasm and bloodlust, it says this guy went “insane”. Ugh. Uta’s mental health warrants a LOT of unpacking nevertheless so let’s leave this face’ implications for later. 

We glimpse their fight styles then:

Uta is on the offensive, honestly his is such forceful, visceral way of attacking here - straight up fuck up your opponent with the sheer force of your blow. He is shown to be a lot more nuanced and deliberate in previous fights, steering clear from attacking and content with evading the blows, dealing some psychological damage afterwards. But that is Uta just half-assedly toying - clearly he doesn’t stop himself with Yomo. The reasons can be manifold - that’s how they’ve always done it; he’s so pumped, he stops thinking and loses himself in pure bloodlust; he’s in a serious crisis - this is my preferred angle.

Now his fighting style, besides the raw strength behind it, is also quick and agile. In a second Uta gets behind Yomo, and tries to strike through his body mid-air. His face looks like this:

Very unstable.

Uta’s pupils are incredibly large here - again, a visual reminder how little conscious control he might have in this situation. OR how vicious his intents are.

My impression is that when he’s led by such murderous motivation (whatever its composing parts), Uta moves intuitively, we don’t see him playing around or allowing to be struck. Here he has the initiative but Yomo can so far fend off or otherwise deal with his attacks.

I’m honestly so thirsty for Yomo in this chapter, just look at this fine motherfucker:

{I’m interjecting to thank my lord satan for my pan-shipping, slutty heart because now UtaRen became another ship I love. Add in some Itori and you have another one. This one just keeps on giving <3}

Also Uta is so messy here, my baby all playful like a rabid hyena. 

Despite all the refinements older Uta keeps about himself (suave clothing, neat hair, designer mask studio, antiques in glass cases, chess), he didn’t seem to have done much growing up, emotionally. Donato comments on it like that:

You just gotta love the fact that for most of the manga Uta keeps the facade of actually being the least reckless of the ghouls. But I trust Donato on this, who seems to know Uta’s darker impulses fairly well. Possibly better than Yomo and that dude got his fair of beating from Uta too.

What got me interested is how Amon had commented how pointless Clowns endeavours were. Initially I thought it’s Donato who said it, but later on he tells Amon that he would soon understand...

Oh Amon looks fine AF too. Be still my slutty heart!

Furuta says something possibly pivotal for the incoming plot arc:

(IDK wtf this is, but if even Furuta comments on it as if he was both grossed out/scared, it must be important. Oh, he meets Kaneki too, no biggie. “That’s just freaky!!”, I love you Nimura)

Back to my boys, Yomo is getting beat up but mostly evades Uta’s attacks and looks more and more pissed. Uta just looks like a dumbass. Or rather as stupid as cats who torture smaller critters for fun and recreation do:

Also we get a glimpse of his kagune. It seems to be very elastic, easily changing shapes as Uta sees fit. It was just this gigantic mass of RC cells in the beginning panels, now it’s much more resembling the spider legs en masse that we remember from his fight with Juuzou:

But what is most important here, we finally get the first shot of Itori. She is wearing a mask in the beginning, and it’s important in context of what Uta will be saying shortly: edit: It’s Itori speaking, thoughts on that in a different post.

She’s an observer in that panel, very significantly voiceless, not shown to be nearly as amused as Nico here:

Uta’s Itori’s words are honestly a key to Clown’s philosophy and deserve a meta of its own. [In the beginning I thought these were Itori’s words, especially after I saw “Kanekichi” being mentioned; it’s how she had referred to Kaneki before.] - no wonder, it was my brain’s way to remind me I was far too concentrated on Uta to consider the awesomest queen Itori :/

Uta Itori says something very interesting here:

Obviously, if he were to be an OEK, first or the second one, that would be right up the alley. But even if not, it hints at very interesting possibilities. I want to see Ishida expand on it in some flashbacks. 

The most important words are coupled with shots of Itori slowly taking her mask off. It has a very dramatic effect.

Theres a heck ton to unpack here. Honestly I would never think Uta would look at his value system from that particular angle. Edit - and he wouldn’t because he is currently in the midst of a mayor meltdown. It’s Itori who actually bothers with explaining.

He She refers to the coldness of their existence as ghouls, of how senseless it is - like a vast, cold void stretching infintiely in front of them. 

Uta’s ways of searching for warmth are probably the only ones somebody as uprooted as him could come up with - he sees drawing blood, wounding (but also getting wounded - Uta seems to have a very laissez faire attitude to him perishing eventually as we remember from his talk with Donato).

According to Uta  Itori, Yomo is the warm one. For him her, it’s via bloodletting that he can get closer to taste it. Edit Uta def seconds that in the panels to come with his own actions

 I still think there’s some theatrics involved in this speech, as the next panel shows....

God, way to make your opponent unsuspecting of your next move Uta. 

And we get another important shot of Itori. She’s clearly positioned as somewhat stradling the line between Uta and Yomo but this series consistently shows her as being closer to Uta nevertheless.

Her eyes are shining so bright here, it’s clear she’s in deep thought and possibly a bit torn apart with what’s happening here. What Uta says clearly strikes a cord but her taking the mask off, idk it may signal some important differences between her and Uta’s worldview. That or it’s a sign she identifies with his words deeply. Edit ditto, these are her words and the scene took entirely different meaning and made me Love Itori, the first time since reading the series.

Honestly Uta is just beginning tho, as he has some creepy words about dreaming of the day where he would get his hands stained with Yomo’s blood. He actually left Yomo on the ground to have this mini speech properly. He’s posturing as far as my impressions go - Uta reverts to his younger persona, sans earlier sentiments of not wanting to cut his fun short by killing the only one ghoul who could match him somewhat. 

The most important thing in this chapter is what Yomo says next...

Here Uta is, going off about his strange blood kink and Yomo goes all shonen manga on him. But it’s not the same shonen posturing he did in previous chapter. We don’t see his eyes - we see Uta’s and that dude is honestly #shook. 

Naturally he reacts in ways only Ishida can think of. Honestly how Yomo’s words are literally drowned out by Uta’s uncontrollable and histerical laughter is such a masterful move:

This is the guy who dug up Ren from the ground because he was his “friend”. Now he’s just a mouth apparently.

Idk but this seems like the key panel for analyzing Uta from psychological angle. This dude most pronounced feature is his mouth which is nothing like human’s or ghoul alike. It’s like he’s truly the chaotic trickster god with none of the sentiments he was hinted to possess.

I was talking with @gaiajulz and I love how she pointed out that it seems like Uta is actually drowning out Yomo’s heartfelt words and he isn’t even fully aware he’s doing it. With Uta’s firm worldview, he’d rather go full crisis-mode instead of acknowledging how vulnerable and in need of closeness he is. 

Honestly Uta is soo Washuu-like in this panel, like Furuta’s older brother or something. First screech like a  Cthulu monster and then do a little happy dance!

What’s important is how Uta links what he sees as Yomo’s nivete with his emotional honesty and lack of any hidden agendas. Yomo is pure and good and this is why he is naive enough to trust a world like this. Uta saw so many sides to it, he literally sees no other option than to play the fool, including fooling around with one of the precious few of potentially close people in his life.

I also think he kind of looks like crying? From laughing so hard maybe. 

The chapter ends with my baby going full kakuja (predictably it’s his shifty face that’s the most inhuman part here, just a mass of flesh) and this flirty words:

Renji seems so shocked, it’s possible he had never seen this form. Either way he’s speechless.

And Uta’s philosophy is hinted at again - he’s willing to trample his friend just to feel anything. 

What we are dearly in need of is some good meta on Uta’s mental health, how his values feature into it and how his own actions contribute to it unraveling. Obviously such speculations are about as scientific as psych profiling but I feel it would be very important to try and understand this character better.

And boy, is there a lot to unpack here... 

Edit - crossed the parts where it’s suggested it’s Uta who summarizes Clown’s philosophy. It’s Itori and I don’t get my brain could hint at the discrepancies in my own thinking but not make the definite link. Gotta love that sweet ADHD folks.

[time-scar-webcomic]

Hey I read somewhere on your blog that you believe that Sans doesn't remember the resets and just figures out that it happens. Since I'm on the side of Sans remembering resets can you show me what evidence or argument you have for your opinion. I want to find out which is more likely to be cannon (cause I don't think Toby said anything about that).

EDIT: I wrote this about a week ago and thought I’d completely lost it. But I managed to find it today so I’m posting it now. I’m not bothering to re-read it however. So this was written a week ago so my mood was probably in a different place than it is right now (aka more combative and aggressive). Anyway here ya go. Hopefully I wasn’t THAT big a jerk here;

I haven’t finished my Pacifist run through yet so I don’t know if he says anything in that playthrough, but considering most of the direct contact you have with Sans is in the Genocide run through it may not matter (Please don’t correct me if I’m wrong. I’ll get to Pacifist when I’m ready myself)

At the end of Genocide, (If you’ve played the game before obviously) Sans reveals a lot of info about how much he knows regarding the resets, and it’s very telling as to HOW he got the information.

When he confronts the human in the Hall of Judgement at the end, it’s because he’s reached the conclusion that the human will not stop and nothing can change that based on him just watching the Genocide run from a distance. He’s also come to the conclusion that the human is impossible to stop, THIS he mentions based not on what he remembers, but by what he’s discovered himself.

He mentions talks a lot about “our Reports” and stuff. (forgive me if my exact wording isn’t correct) as well as “their analysis”. He mentions how “they” have been monitoring the situation and have “noticed a lot of flux in the timespace continuum” and how timelines keep changing and altering, and through analysis “they’ve” come to the conclusion that he human is the one responsible for the changes in events, always in the human’s favour.

(That seems like a very strange question to ask if he knew for a fact, isn’t it?)

If Sans simply remembered the timelines and knew the human could reset things then why the hell would he need data and analysis to know all that?

He has residual memories, but then so does everyone else. He mentions that “He can’t help but feel that we were once friends”. He mentions this not as a memory, but as a lingering feeling (much like Toriel remembers which kind of pie you like although she’s not sure HOW she remembers or even knows that). Sans has a feeling that there was perhaps a friendship between the human and himself, but he cannot really remember it. Which is PART of the reason the whole thing has him so despondent. He realised that a reset doesn’t just take away what could have been a happy ending; it doesn’t even have the decency to let you REMEMBER the happy ending.

So he uses that residual memory as a weapon to literally backstab you. It’s another ploy to cut you down because at this point Sans is pulling out every trick he has the longer you’re able to keep up with him because he’s just fucking done with you. Later on if you KEEP coming back and fighting him he says “if we ever WERE friends, don’t come back.”

People seem to forget that Sans is a LIAR. He lies throughout most of the game. And a LOT of the things he does are deliberate ploys to misdirect or hide the truth. Most of the time it’s not malicious, most of the time it’s legit just a survival strategy, sometimes it’s just to be a bit of a jerk because Sans is a practical joker by nature, but if you start becoming a problem in a genocide run, he doesn’t magically start telling the truth all the time. He only starts mentioning a memory of being friends with the human after he starts sweating and getting tired in the fight. He realises you’re not as easy to put down. and only THEN does he even bother mentioning the possibility of being friends before. It’s another ploy using what little info he has. Even Sans’ info says he’s “the easiest enemy” which is an obvious lie. People forget that Sans is all about misdirection and blatant lying in various degrees which is part of the reason his fight is insanely frustrating. He keeps telling you things about his attacks or what’s about to do which are either misleading or just outright untrue.

So Sans has residual memories, but that doesn’t mean he remembers anything with clarity. He’s no different from the other monsters. He just happens to be insanely smart, and he’s extremely scientifically minded. I’m not sure who the “They” are that he talks about. My first instinct would be he’s talking about Alphys but he never mentions her by name so I’m unsure about that one.

But again, the point is, why the hell would Sans talk about reports and data to “figure out what’s going on” if he remembered and could just say “oh shit! The human’s resetting to get the odds in their favour!” you don’t need all this science hoo-ha for THAT! If Sans remembers the resets and decided he needed to do a bunch of science to figure out what’s going on… he’d be kinda stupid wouldn’t he? And Sans has shown through VARIOUS other situations in the game that he is ANYTHING but stupid.

People mistake Sans’ deductive reasoning for “oh he remembers!” and for the life of me I cannot understand why. If people actually listened to what he says instead of memeing about bad times maybe this wouldn’t be such a problem. But honestly, if you’re somebody who actually played Genocide (unlike me who watched it on youtube I guess) I can kinda understand missing some of this, since you’re so stressed out by the fight and trying to survive you may not be absorbing Sans’ conversation. (Much like I had people tell me they actually completely missed Papyrus leaving the Royal Guard when he calls you in Waterfall because the person playing is so busy trying to survive Undyne’s attacks that that little bit of info often goes unnoticed)

Why would Sans be such a special snowflake to remember things when literally NOBODY ELSE (besides Flowey but he’s a special case) remembers anything but residual stuff? It just doesn’t make sense.

Long story short; Sans is smart and figured it out using the tools he had available to him. He didn’t need a “special circumstance” (ie memory) to get the answers. He had exactly the same info as everyone else, but was intelligent (and distrusting) enough to look into the situation a little deeper since he had the resources to do so.

I had to watch a little of this fight for these screenshots and I hate watching this fight more than anything in the world so I hope you’re happy)

[deltaengineering]

Fall Anime 2017 Part 4: Screenshots don’t lie

Saturday’s a very busy day this season, and all the sequels are hitting too. Time to get to work!

Previously:

• Part 1: Maximum Something

• Part 2: The snooze cruise

• Part 3: Fooled again

Burendo Esu (Cat Balls the Animation)

Blend S is the story of schoolgirl Maika that has “mean eyes” (basically, she has tsurime in a tareme world), which prevents her from getting a job other than the one in a moe gimmick-themed café, where her duty is to make “mean eyes” at the customers. The other waitresses play a tsundere, an imouto, an idol and an onee-san. So yeah, that’s one way to get your standard moe show cast together. But wait! The twist here is that Maika is not actually mean! Quite the opposite actually! And that goes for all the other waitresses too! While girls getting forced into moe archetypes is a pretty amusing/scary concept, this is of course a Kirara manga, so they’re just different moe archetypes underneath. In short, the concept doesn’t amount to much. As far as Kiraralikes go, this isn’t a bad one though. It’s colorful, cute and a little funny, and splits the difference between a pure moefest like Knohana Kitan and the more structured comedy of a Working (obviously). Only the pervy Italian manager and his obsession with his blob underlings gets old pretty fast. If you’re down for a show like this, this is probably the one to watch, because unlike Konohana Kitan I didn’t wish for it to end.

Code: Realize - Sousei no Himegimi

While we’re on the topic of “best of the breed”, Code: Realize is an upmarket otome harem. I know, right. The setting is a basic steampunk universe, the bishounens are Arsène Lupin, Victor Frankenstein &c, and our bland heroine’s super special trait turns out to be killing everything she touches due to some jewels in “her heart”. I mean, who hasn’t been there. So everyone wants to “steal her heart” and Code: Realize is very keen to point out the double meaning of this constantly. Hey, we kinda did it in Katawa Shoujo so I can’t really complain. The thing is that Code: Realize is very obvious, but it’s also not all that bad – the fact that is has more going on than nothing at all already makes it the best otome harem since Akatsuki no Yona: It looks fairly pleasant, none of the main characters are tremendous assholes, and there seems to be some sort of story to go with the pretty boys. But it’s also not as hammy and ostentatious as, for example, Dance with Devils, so it’s caught in a middle ground where I can appreciate it not sucking tremendously, but I also don’t feel like watching it – because it’s too respectable.

Dynamic Chord

Dynamic Chord is another otome VN, this time about rock bands. Since this is 2017, apparently the production committee thought they could cut out the middleman, leave out the bland girl and just make a boyband anime instead, because those are all the rage right now. So it’s Tsukipro, apart from the bit where Tsukipro looks like a Ghibli movie next to this. Dynamic Chord is a production catastrophe that looks closer to a no-budget gag short of the Pikotarou Lullaby type (note: I mean “catastrophe” in the absolute sense, for all I know this could all be calculated perfectly and the producers are laughing all the way to the bank). The show consists almost entirely of two things: Long, quiet zooms and pans over stills, and montages, mostly of “performances”. Those performance themselves are really something else too. What if I told you that this is a show in 2017 that does not seem to feature ANY 3DCG? Turns out 3DCG actually costs money too, so when the band plays, they do paperdoll tweens of 2D artwork. Oh, and outside the performances lack of CG means you get the worst animated car since the QUALITYVAN. There’s also just baffling stuff like walk loops that don’t loop. Given that these montages are all endlessly long, you might think there’s not much space for a story. And you’d be right. Basically nothing happens, the singer of a band gets a bad case of the broods so some guy from another band has to substitute  for him. That’s it. Would have easily fit into 3 minutes, but I have to say that by the end of this show’s 24 minutes, I was straight up laughing my ass off when the next montage of bad stills started right after the last one ended. That’s something, right?

Garo - Vanishing Line

I’ve seen Garo before, but last time I didn’t know it was a tokusatsu meta-franchise, the anime versions of which really only share that there’s a gothick looking motherfucker fighting horrors called Horrors. So this has little to do with the last ones: different crew, different studio, different setting. Because this version of Garo is most definitely set IN AMERICA: The main character is a gothick looking motherfucker called "Sword” that charitably resembles Hellboy, and less charitably resembles a Leifeld original. He rides a big hawg around a Big Apple, eats big bloody steaks and looks at big boobies a lot because you know, setting. It’s charming in its idiocy, and this is MAPPA so you get a lot of fights with very nice animation too. I could watch this simply for the action, but I won’t because there’s a Murrica-sized caveat here: The fights take place at night, are edited very rapidly and most importantly their idea of an impact frame is to do an extreme camera shake effect with intense motion blur. And there is a lot of impact frames – believe me, that might have been the easiest screenshot to find for an article yet, and I highly suspect I could have found worse ones if this wouldn’t bring the point across already. I simply can’t tell what the fuck is going on because everything is an incomprehensible mess, no matter how nice the frames beneath the effects are. It’s pretty infuriating because this show is one mouse click away from being a good time, simply disable your After Effects layer with the shake on it. But I can’t do that for them, so Vanishing Line ends up being a bad time instead. And even if you are interested in some big, zany action in the ol’ Gotham, there’s a little something that makes Vanishing Line instantly obsolete:

Kekkai Sensen (Blood Blockade Battlefront) & Beyond

Yeah boiiiiiiii, Kekkai Sensen is back. I had forgotten how fun this show can be, and we’ll discuss the reasons shortly. A lot has happened since 2015, and I have a good reference point for it now: Kekkai Sensen is basically One-Punch Man without The Joke. It’s an universe full of all sorts of crazy nonsense and a bunch of cool dudes that try to keep thing under control, usually in an explosive manner. The one really important thing that Beyond changes is that it’s not directed by Rie Matsumoto. Shigehito Takayanagi is taking over, and while that guy is a noted jobber of little distinction (previous credits: TWGOK, Dagashi Kashi and uh... Toyko ESP...), he’s at least enough of a craftsman to imitate Matsumoto’s style very well. I only found out about this after the fact, and wouldn’t have noticed the difference otherwise. It is noticeable if you look for it though: this episode has all of the stylish action antics, but none of the more moody content that Matsumoto’s original character (do not steal) White brought to the show. I liked most of White’s scenes with Leo and they gave season 1 some welcome emotional grounding, but to be quite honest, it’s not what I watched Kekkai Sensen for. I can definitely accept losing it if this time the show isn’t consumed by White’s subplot and doesn’t culminate in an ending that not only is all about her, but also comes out a season after everyone stopped caring because auteurs can’t manage a production. With Kyousougiga and Kekkai Sensen S1, Matsumoto has shown a 100% track record of donking her endings, so I’m not complaining she got replaced with someone who just gets the job done. Especially if it’s still Bones relying on Yutapon for action cuts; when shit hits the fan, it looks straight up incredible and makes me question why I slummed it with My Hero Academia for three seasons when I can get the same amount of awesome fights in a single episode of this. And hey, White is still in the ending, so maybe we will get the less crazy end of it covered as well. Just keep the priorities straight this time around, please.

Houseki no Kuni (Land of the Lustrous)

Houseki no Kuni is a manga about gijinka gems of indeterminate gender that takes the amusing step of Mohs hardness directly translating into Shounen Powerlevel™. Apart from that, there’s not much content in this episode 1: We get to know the characters and a glimpse and how a society of a bunch of brittle gems in makeup works. What makes this interesting is that the setting is intriguingly vague and very pretty (think: Haibane Renmei), and the characters seem to be fairly strong and likeable. Not exciting, but I could see myself watching this just for the atmosphere. The big downside of it is that it’s a 3DCG show, and not one of those fancy mocapped ones either. The animation is, in a word, bad: robotic and clumsy, as usual. I’ll readily admit that in screencaps it looks great, especially the crystal shaders that would be difficult to pull off in 2D animation. Houseki no Kuni seems very okay, but it has a hard time on this crowded Saturday so I don’t think I’ll bother with it right now. If it delivers in the long run, I’ll readily admit it to my backlog though.

Love Live! Sunshine!! S2!!!

Sunshine’s back as well, and finds itself in an awkward spot right away. This first episode has a lot of things to get out of the way: Tying up the last season properly because the final episode of S1 fumbled that, reminding the audience of the characters, and setting up a new drama arc. In practice, that means it ends up feeling a lot more like the lost E1S13 than the S2E1 it is, because the other two aspects are pretty pointless: Reintroducing the characters just means they all shoot off their catchphrase in turn, and the brand new conflict is (hold on to your seats for this one) that the school is getting closed and there’s a new Love Live. With all these things going on and none of them being all that interesting, the episode feels very rushed and just accomplishes establishing that yes, it’s a Love Live show. I guess that is exactly what it was meant to do and I can say that at least they have it out of the way now. Well, the last time I said Sunshine had gotten something out of the way, it was the obsession with µ’s in episode 1, the getting out of the way of which ended up lasting 10 episodes. It’s gone now (thankfully), but maybe I shouldn’t assume too much here. So yeah, fairly weak first episode, but it’s not like I wasn’t going to watch this to the end and even at its most rushed and pointless it’s still Love Live: a polished Five Guys hamburger of a show that doesn’t exactly need to be great to be a joy to watch.

Two Car

I expected Two Car to be That Show: the one where a schoolgirl discovers her sudden love for Thing and goes on to experience Thing with the help of her friends. Two Car isn’t in the K-ON/Bakuon/etc mould however, it’s much more similar to the sports show style of Girls und Panzer, wacky sport with themed teams of contenders in a world where everyone seems to care about it a little too much. It helps that real sidecar racing is already weird as hell (looking forward to the breathless Anime Now article about how it’s a thing that actually exists) and is less motorcycle racing and more Twister on a fast-moving platform. Quite coincidentally, Two Car is also tremendously gay, as you’d expect from a show about two-girl teams in very tight leather crawling over each other competitively. The main girls aren’t even so blatant (and shown to have a crush on their male instructor, who has taken off to the aptly named Isle of Man), but the opponents are all some sort of standard yuri pairing. So yeah, the setting is a goofy blast, but I’m sad to report that episode 1 has tremendous structural problems. All the team introductions are very clumsy and intercut with an equally clumsy introduction of the setting, the sport and the main girl’s extensive backstory. I will give this more chances because the setup has a lot of potential, but I really hope this shapes up on the storytelling front or I won’t make it very far in.