#writing a review on it right now

[motto-chanto-itte]

boku no kokoro no yabai yatsu is peak and everyone should say it

[ducktracy]

sharing a very sage bit of advice from The Simpsons' own John Swartzwelder that i've been trying to hamper down in my writing and drawing alike. let your inner crappy little elf do his worst

[pharawee]

Oh wow. Spirit Reborn (the original teaser has since been deleted) aka Khemjira Must Survive completely changed production companies and has been revived as Khemjira the Series by Mandee starring Namping Napatsakorn as Khemjira and Keng Harit as Parun.

I've just recently read the novel it's based on and it's an incredibly detailed horror novel steeped in Isan and (Thai) Buddhist folklore with very little BL stuff happening until the bonus chapters - presumably because it's not right for someone like Parun (a very respected practitioner of Buddhist "white magic") to consider or even get distracted by thoughts of that nature.

The original production received a lot of criticism for not sticking to the novel but I guess Mandee gets the Domundi bonus. Then again, Domundi isn't exactly known for... not being spicy. And here they can't even leave the spiciness to the side couple because they're Parun's students and have to adhere to the precepts too. Unless they rewrite the whole story - which would be a pity because it's so very clearly Buddhist and I really liked that about it.

[quaranmine]

On Wednesday before I gave my presentation I confessed to a new employee that I was worried it would be too long and she brightly told me her life hack was to just let AI rewrite things for her. She said I should put in all my talking points and ask ChatGPT to give me a five minute exactly presentation. I was like....how is the most polite possible way (since this is a new colleague I shouldn't get off on the wrong foot with) that I can express that I will Not be taking this advice. Ever. I told her that I didn't think we were allowed to use ChatGPT at this job (we most certainly are not, it is a nightmare for any type of protected information) and also that I prefer to write all of my own work. Despite my best efforts the last part of that was still passive aggressive, lol.

Something about being a writer makes it so that it's almost offensive to me for someone to suggest I use AI to do my work instead? Like, the day I reach the point where I let AI write something for me is the day y'all need to be checking me for brain damage because clearly I'm losing it

[dyrewrites]

Someone on bluesky bought one of my short stories and added it to a list of books they read this month, with a mini review, and I am dying. Dead, in fact, from the sweetness.

To any who put together lists of their favorite reads, or yammer about the books they love, linking to said books (that is awesome), I need you to know:

You are appreciated. I guarantee the authors of those books love you.

[scifrey]

Okay, so remember how I've been Ded Of Editing this last year and just absolutely consumed by bookish stuff?

The bookish stuff is now out in the world.

TIME AND TIDE

Releases November 2024.

Exciting news: the eGalley is up on NetGalley and Edelweiss! This means, with the promise of an honest review, you could potentially read the book right now. However, if you're not interested in an ARC, you can preorder your Copy Here.

*

Historical fiction with a touch of time travel, for fans of Diana Gabaldon, Alexis Hall, and Olivia Waite’s Feminine Pursuits series, where a modern bisexual woman is thrown into Regency England and must figure out how to survive, while she falls in love with a woman who will become a famous author.

Just a twenty-first century gal with nineteenth-century problems…

When Sam’s plane crashes catastrophically over the Atlantic, it defies all odds for Sam to be the sole survivor. But it seems impossible that she’s rescued by a warship in 1805. With a dashing sea captain as her guide, she begins to find her footing in a world she’d only seen in movies.

Then Sam is betrayed. At the mercy of the men and morals of the time, and without the means to survive on her own, she’s left with no choice but to throw herself on the charity of the captain's sisters. She resigns herself to a quiet life of forever hiding her true self. What she doesn't expect is that her new landlady is Margaret Goodenough—the world-famous author whose yet-to-be-completed novel will contain the first lesbian kiss in the history of British Literature, and a clever woman. Clever enough to know her new companion has a secret.

As the two women grow ever closer, Sam must tread the tenuous line between finding her own happiness in a place where she doesn’t think she’ll ever fit in, and possibly (accidentally) changing the course of history.

[corpsentry]

there’s something so epic about hetero chinese period dramas and i think one part of it is that there is absolutely nowhere in the narrative i could exist.

lately i’ve been on a western media detox— i’ve cleaned english language music out of my playlists and have never been able to stomach western dramas anyway, so that part is easy— which might seem funny, because if i’m in singapore and i hate it and i won’t touch american music then what’s left? the answer is the false binarism of chinese period dramas, at least for me. the badly written ones are misogynistic and stupid and the better ones are less of those things, but regardless the world that emerges is clean-cut and easy to parse. there’s someone to root for and someone to hate. there’s a girl and a boy. there’s the comedy and the drama, the sheer thick drama, the music that signals to you precisely how to feel before the scene even starts going

try to jam a fifth culture transnational transgender they/them with 2 mental illness and 1 autoimmune disease into this world and it simply doesn’t work. and that’s kinda epic lolzers! it’s like watching high fantasy, or super hardcore sci-if. it both represents a simulacrum of the real world and is so far from the reality you know that you understand it as a hypothetical universe, one that disincludes you on principle. i exclude myself from the story and in doing so fangfei from moyuyunjian’s steely gaze becomes all the more important. i give so many shits and laugh and yell and spectate. but i am safe from the eyes of its inhabitants. if i entered the story it would break. so i sit outside of it, clapping by myself

in other news, we gave up on mysterious lotus casebook 16 episodes in. there are many character archetypes in these shows that i can no longer stand; the salacious sexy seductive supervillain lady is not necessarily one of them but the way they did miss ‘this man didn’t even Look at me when all men fall at my knees so i hated him’ ‘no one is allowed to steal buttchin from me’ jiao was way up there. surely a woman can have multiple personality traits and yet you would think from this drama that that is not at all true. and the strange harem that grew around li lianhua despite his absolute loser attitude— like i get it, he’s the gintoki of this show, that’s hot, but the way the women who were into him were written made me want to Eat Horse. it bothered me that di feisheng and lianhua’s homo as fuck dynamic was so intriguing and them + fang duobing was a winning trio but all the women in the show were written like complete fucking ass, and one of the big antagonists being a woman, the stakes throughout were not only lost to me but also Pissed Me Off. also, that case about the corpse flowers dragged on forever and all my pocky wilted

I Just Think, women deserve better in these damn stories. make them slutty as hell, sure, but make them other things too and i mean this in the most generous sense. slutty and proud. slutty and weird. slutty and oblivious. literally anything at all so they don’t come out cardboard flat from all angles. this is why i have a personal vendetta against the ditzy clueless female protagonist as well because if everything stems from the fact that she doesn’t know shit it’s like please someone Please tell her shit i’m on my hands and knees begging. give her more to chew on she’s dying of boredom over there

this is why i liked the so called antagonist of blossoms in adversity best (spoilers ahead). he was cruel as hell to huazhi and gu yanxi’s only parental figure. he was paranoid and selfish and lonely and craved a son’s love from the one person he couldn’t hold onto. in the end he is pushed further and further by huazhi, who won’t give in, to isolate yanxi from the people he loves and to lash out at those people as a way of punishing yanxi. and when he dies it’s because of his own distrust, his own negligent parenting, his absent cruelty from decades of insomnia and lack of faith in his people. but he cries for yanxi, and there’s something so human about that. to think of evil not as a first principle but rather an adjective for a verb that is set in motion by other events. to be honest, i haven’t seen such thoughtful writing in any chinese period drama before or after that and i strongly suspect i will never see such writing again in this genre but man, it was so fucking good (spoilers end).

in the meantime, i’ve dragged my mother to moyuyunjian/the double for the return casting of liu xiening and wang xingyue who are Eating so hard. they’ve got wang xingyue done up with the sluttiest makeup and liu xiening is breaking my heart with her pout and her Sassy Mean constitution and this is a revenge story, yes, but it’s a double revenge story. it’s a grief story. and fangfei is carrying more on her shoulders than lingbuyi imo, and doing so with much more grace too. her step mom’s a dick but she’s a smart, 5d chess playing dick who wears hot shades of green so i’m personally interested enough to keep watching (something lotus casebook DID NOT accomplish with their epic female antagonist…. mein gotte). and the princess too. unhinged as hell but god, so charismatic. and beautiful, with scary big eyes and the sweetest head tilt. fun fun fun! that’s fun character writing right there. the comedy might be too straightforward for my tastes but everything else is kind of hot and sexy And after the coming of age ceremony when jiangli appeared amidst the flowers i felt my throat close up even though we saw her for all of one (1) episode). i was like yes. they got me alright. i Care now

really that’s all that matters isn’t it. we want stories about people we care for. we want to give a shit. why else would we listen to the stories of other people. we are looking for us and the people we love in them

oh also moyuyunjian soundtrack goes hard as hell i love a little three step waltz. here’s a pic from the ‘gym’ for ur time. guten night

[webbyghost]

Watching Feast (2005) while I write and oh this is FUNNY funny lmaooo

[moss-reads]

the night circus is a fantastic book and i think has shot to the very tip top as my new favorite

what a beautiful and immersive bit of story telling

truly the best written thing i have ever read, and just the most wonderful story with the best pacing for the story within it and just fantastic characters

time to read the starless sea next, i know truly nothing about it besides it being a story about stories, and consider how great this story was?

erin morgenstern you are a fantastic author

[iiboronii]

Me upon realizing that I can just have an AU instead of writing an entire fanfiction about an idea I had in my head once:

[essektheylyss]

guess who wrote one single scene for the first time in months? this bitch.

guess what that scene primarily consisted of? wizard spell mechanics.

guess what the scene prior to this one primarily consisted of? also wizard spell mechanics.

guess what the scene I'm scheduling myself to write tomorrow consists of? to no one's surprise, it's ALSO wizard spell mechanics!

[sinterblackwell]

sigh…..when you discover a new favorite author whose writing is so clearly of a niche variety judging from the average reviews coming from other readers….😓

[quaranmine]

Things that Could've Happened in Firewatch AU but Didn't

Hi, and welcome to scrapped plot points. This fic had a general direction from the beginning but a lot of details came together as I went.

🔥First of all, I've posted the discord message before, but I actually originally envisioned it as "ambigious" whether Mumbo was dead or alive. This was scrapped the moment I tried to determine HOW one makes that ambiguous. think about it for a moment.

🔥I've also stated this before but I initially wanted this to just be a string of vignettes throughout the summer with no real plot or resolution to it. This is where I got a lot of early ideas for Grian and Scar hangout/character relationship development back in Dec 2022 (Scar and Top Gun, Scar's job as a door to door salesman, etc) (the salesman idea was actually from one of my tumblr asks, thanks!)

🔥Originally I....had more of a human conflict present? I actually struggle to remember some of what I planned because it got scrapped so quickly once I thought it through more. But you can still see references to it in my notes:

(last one is from first draft of chapter 11, one year prior to the final draft.) There's??? so much conflict implied here. Grian gets CHASED! people BROKE into his tower! someone STOLE THE BIKE! drama!!

I scrapped it because it was too unbelievable. Specifically, it was unbelievable for this plot line. I still had the same "truth" to the plot present—that there was no conspiracy and Mumbo had just died after being injured in a place outside the initial search zone. All this other behavior would have just been red herrings from people who had nothing to do with Mumbo's disappearance.

A lot of this also very reminiscent of the actual Firewatch game type of intrigue. I was always heading to a similarly anti-climatic ending (aka no overarching conspiracy) as the original game. But this did not fit. Because...why would someone else do this? They wouldn't have the same motivations as Ned Goodwin in Firewatch. It'd just be some pissed off teens/the firework couple who decided to mess with Grian to throw him off. Except they wouldn't know they were throwing him off anything, because they wouldn't know him, so it'd just be purely some third party messing with him. But I felt like real life is rarely this....malicious. I've had people go out of their way to harass me with road rage, sure. But all of this drama was scrapped because I felt it was SOOOOO unlikely for a random person to just be harassing Grian like this Just Because. It did not fit! It was so coincidental and requried people to make questionable decisions that I couldn't fit into any good framework of motive.

It was a bad idea and I'm glad I abandoned it. It might have been a good idea in a different context...but it did not fit at all here.

🔥I briefly toyed with something like what happened with Cian McLaughlin happening in this fic. Cian McLaughlin is an Irish man who went missing in Grand Teton National Park (nearly adjacent to this story's setting) in 2021. He was never found, unfortuantely. His case is notable because a woman provided a false eye witness report of seeing in a completely false location. On purpose, to be clear. She purposefully lied to the National Park Service about seeing him somewhere she didn't, while providing enough personal detail they thought it was a real report. She claimed to have done this to ensure that multiple locations were searched for him, to expand the search area, but she really just derailed over 500 hours of search time to the wrong place. It's so sad.

I was like, this is an intriguing case. What if this happened with Mumbo? What if this is why he was in a different location than the search was? Because someone falsely reported him being where he wasn't? But I faltered on it for many reasons. First of all, I felt it was kind of disrespectiful to Cian Mclaughlin and his family to blatantly draw off details of his real life disappearance in such an obvious way. It's a recent one too. This is not a cool mystery detail, this is real life and a real person and a real grieving family. Secondly, it goes back to the problem with the other issue about people interfering the case: why? You could ask why this woman interfered with Cian's case too, and that's real life. But in a fictionalized setting—why? What would it add, when I know that the truth of what happened to Mumbo was going to be mundane anyway? Why introduce this bizarre secondary plot element just to distract Grian and the reader? It could have just been a mistaken report, not a purposeful one, but it's just derail the story in a very unsatisfying way.

In the end the only remaining trace of this idea is Grian in chapter 5 (?) saying that someone had seen Mumbo at the Cloud Lake Trail and provided an eyewitness report. Which, for the record, is supposed to be an accurate account—he did go there, his car was there, and he did get spotted there at the beginning of his trip. He just diverged from the trail at a later point.

🔥I meant to do a fun little formatting thing and have Mumbo's past through processes and actions be intercut with Grian's present-day processes in Chapter 11. Or to put that more clearly, when Grian was running down the mountain away from the fire (but before he saw Mumbo) I wanted his choices to be contrasted with the ones Mumbo made. It would've been a stylistic choice. Mumbo's paragraphs might have been in italics, and I toyed with doing a right alignment instead of left alignment so it'd really stand out. The idea was to show how their two independent thought processes converged and led them to the same point on the mountain at different times. It would've been the only time in the story we ever got something from Mumbo's POV.

I scrapped this because I hated what I'd written in Mumbo's sections and never got around to rewriting it or adding it in retroactively. I think it was a cool idea but I did not pull it off. I don't the the fic is worse for it, though. I think it does a good enough job leading the reader into that parallel without spelling it out Quite that much. I also kind of....like that Mumbo never has his own voice in this story to explain his own decisions. It's sad, but it's part of the story.

🔥I seriously did not always have the main wildfire at the end of the story in the plot. I actually initially had Scar just coaxing Grian to tell him where he was, or allowing the search and rescue to come find him. And that would've been it, the search and rescue coming.

🔥Or.....when I toyed with whether or not Grian and Scar should meet at the ending of the story, I also considered an alternate ending where Scar came to Grian to rescue him. That he reported Grian's location to SAR, and then came himself. I scrapped this because it made no sense logistically. It's all well and good for there to be a dramatic scene of Scar coming to Grian's aid and them meeting for the first time in person. But Scar is miles away. And more importantly, Scar has an established disability and chronic pain that limits the trails he walks on. He specifically says he hasn't explored trails too far from his lookout because it'll pretty much wipe all his spoons for ages. (well, he doesn't say spoons because this is the 80s, but that was the meaning.) I was like okay. He's not only far from the trail but he's literally physically unable to make it there in time and one thing I'm NOT doing in this fic is undermining his disability (especially since I already had to make him a ~certain~ degree abled in order to do the job.) So I kept him in his spot. I think it added more tension anyway, because it's such a special kind of horror he experienced having to witness everything go down but be unable to help Grian other than over the radio.

🔥Speaking of the wildfire, I had a version where Grian escaped it for an embarassingly long time. Like until January or even February still (of this year!) The idea was the Grian outran it and then got found. A lot of this was just that I didn't want to figure out how to write him surviving a wildfire. I knew it'd be difficult and straddle the line of unbelievable. I wanted to take the easier way out of writing the scene.

But honestly...there was no way else the scene could've gone. I spelled it out in chapter 8 with my rather blatant foreshadowing—you CAN'T outrun a wildfire. I mean, I guess in good circumstances with good wind and experience you probably could. Afterall, hotshot crews and wildland firefighters are able to get in and around the fires without (normally) casualties all the time. But fires move faster than people. WAY faster. It'd just be a disappointing conclusion for Grian to somehow be the Super Lucky One who somehow skipped being in the danger. No, I had to follow through with what I'd set up and just go for it.

🔥I also entertained an idea of him sheltering in the overhang with Mumbo. It would've played out nearly like the fire played out in the main fic, the only difference was with him. It was the most "meaningful" option for shelter (since the other options were no shelter, and random shelter.) He would've been surviving death right next to Mumbo, who didn't survive. I could have made that very poignant if I wanted.

But I disliked this because I'd already written the part about Grian deciding to move on. I felt that bit of the scene was really key for the message of the story as a whole.

I wanted Grian to make the CHOICE to live instead of just refuse to move and survive anyway. You know? Grian, in-universe, would have no idea what decision would lead to his survival. But as the author with the power to do what I want, I knew he was surviving all my options. So my options were: 1) easy scene to write where he survives but doesn't experience much danger, 2) hard scene where he survives and makes the conscious decision to live and move forward, and 3) medium difficulty scene where he survives but was still emotionally stuck-in-place.

(Above: some random notes I typed about the finale scene options on my phone, in a situation where I should NOT have been writing fic notes on my phone lol)

In case it's not obvious, the final scene is the second one—Grian makes that key decision to live, but still experiences the danger I've set up so that I can follow through on the tension I created.

🔥I restructured the final chapter so that there was a bigger gap in time between Scar and Grian talking about Everything and Grian arriving. I initially had it when Grian essentally just came...and then like 5 mins later they were laying all that out while Grian sat on the bed. It just made the vibes of the scene Off. It was too quick, not satisfying. So I kept most of the same dialogue and stuff and structured it into a chapter where Grian meets Scar, and they kind of spend a mostly chill afternoon talking and hanging out until they delve into the Deep Stuff later that night while stargazing (let's be real you can never go wrong with stargazing for a deep scene.) I felt it was likely they'd kind of pretend everything was "normal" at first until they were more comfortable in each other's prescence. Also, we ALL know the middle of the night is when the real stuff comes out lmao. You can see my cut up and reused pieces of the original chapter version in the indented italic parts of chapter 12. I liked some of those interactions so I wanted to preserve them somehow even though the final chapter was structured in a way that cut it out.

So far, that's all of the major plot differences that I can think of at the moment. Some of the other elements (like the mistaken permit situation) came into play after I already had chapters uploaded, but I don't have a concrete idea of what might have happened in their place. Chapter 9 really evolved and got out of hand as I wrote it, but I knew from a few chapters earlier that he was going to do Something that got him fired. So I was able to refine the specific actions when I got there, since I just knew it had to be major and outlandish in the name of getting more information.

I had most of this story worked out ahead of time. But there were absolutely major changes that happened during the course of writing it. I was just fortunate that my intense outlining and focus on it ensured that I never encountered a situation where I had to make changes that majorly affected an already uploaded chapter. Yay for sticking close to the general outline even when the details were in question!

If I think of anything else, I'll reblog this post. :)

[infriga]

I watched the live action One Piece because of you and your excitement over it and I really loved it, so thank you! Wondering if you have suggestions of where to go next? Read the manga or watch the anime? It honestly seems a bit overwhelming, so not sure where to start.

That's awesome! I love inspiring people to try One Piece, it's a really fun ride! It's always great seeing new fans coming in to enjoy the series! 🤗

I wanted to be as informative and thorough as I could for anyone wondering about this, so this might be long, but I'll provide a summarized version to start then include the long version under a readmore if you want more info in order to decide. Sorry if it gets a bit rambling lol.

So the answer to the "anime or manga" question is not necessarily complicated, but it is a little more nuanced than some fans will lead you to believe (a lot of manga-only elitists have a hate boner for the anime to a degree that imo isn't warranted) . There are a few major factors.

Summarized version:

1) this one's obvious, but bears saying; if you prefer manga, go with the manga, if you prefer anime, go with the anime. If you like both, go with both, unless you only want to consume one. Some people tend to gravitate towards one over another, and that's fine.

2) if you're interested in consuming both, I recommend starting with the anime, then going to the manga after, to avoid tainting your experience with the anime by comparing it to the manga all the time. If you only want to consume one, stick to the manga, because it is the better version. If you're on the fence or haven't decided yet, start with the manga then decide if you want to also try the anime later.

3) if you want to consume the anime, then determine how much of the original experience you want to be retained. There's not many filler episodes, but they do exist, and there are watch lists that explain which episodes to skip if you don't want to watch them. Otherwise obviously the manga is the true original and is the best version of the story. The anime isn't terrible, I still enjoy it, but it does have its flaws compared to the manga. That said, it does also have some benefits you can't get from the manga such as the top notch voice acting (at least in Japanese) and incredible soundtrack. Also the animation in Wano has been sending One Piece fans to the emergency room with priapism lately so do with that what you will.

4) determine how much time you're willing to invest. The manga is going to be the fastest way to consume the series, but there is a fan edited version of the anime that speeds up the pacing to match the manga, and thus takes a lot less time to catch up on. You can also read the manga then look up your favourite scenes in the anime as a supplement without investing into watching the whole anime, either shorter or longer version. The only thing to keep in mind is don't ever skip any canon arcs, you WILL regret it later. Oda never forgets.

Where to watch/read:

If you want help finding a good place to read or watch the series, for free or otherwise, let me know and I can provide some links! I can also provide recommendations for which movies to watch and when if anyone is interested in those, or even just OP fanfic recs if there's a market for that lol.

Now, for:

The long version (oh god I'm so sorry this got so long I am incapable of talking about this topic succinctly):

1) what type of media do you prefer and have an easier time consuming? Comic or animation?

I have an anime only friend who struggles with reading comics for some reason (he can read books just fine, but he struggles with comics and he doesn't know why), but he loves the anime, and is even currently rewatching it so we can catch up on watching Wano together since that arc is ending soon and we like to wait and binge entire arcs instead of watching weekly. If you prefer one over another, then whichever that is, is fine fine to go with. If you don't have a preference, then your next factor is:

2) do you want to only consume one, or are you open to consuming both?

I read the manga and watch the anime. I get a slightly different experience from both, I prefer the art and pacing of the manga, but I love the voice acting and music of the anime, and some moments just hit harder for me in the anime. I haven't cried very often reading the manga, but I have cried quite a bit more watching the anime when seeing the same scenes, like full on sobbing at some points ngl. It's not that I think the moments are done better in the anime or that they're not just as sad, but I have an easier time crying when seeing something in motion with sound for some reason. I rarely ever cry when reading books or comics. It happens, but not as easily or as often. Also while the animation throughout most of the series is middling (not bad but not amazing) for most of the series, aside from major fights, the most recent arcs have seen a huge upgrade in regards to the animation, WCI to some extent but especially Wano. The animators have just been going HAM on the animation during Wano. Like, it's all but impossible to find good examples without spoilers because of just, how many spoilers there are at that point in the story, but I'll at least show Luffy being pretty lol:

That said, the anime isn't without its flaws, but I'll get to that in a bit.

If you do want to consume both, then personally I recommend watching the anime first. I find people who read the manga first are more prone to comparing everything in the anime to the manga and wanting things to fit 1:1, which I think puts the anime at a disadvantage and makes people a bit more hypercritical of it. But ultimately this is up to you. Maybe you don't know yet if you'll try both, in which case the manga is probably better because it's the version that, by its nature, is the best version, and will give you the original experience, and you can decide later whether you want to supplement that with the anime as well.

If you only want to consume 1, at least mainly, then the next factor is:

3) How much of the original experience do you want to stick to?

The One Piece anime doesn't have nearly as many filler arcs/episodes as other long running shounens have had in the past, and past Enies Lobby there's almost no filler arcs whatsoever, aside from the rare 2-5 episode arcs, usually ones that advertise the movies that came out not long after they aired. But there are some full filler arcs earlier in the anime, and the general consensus is that most are pretty meh. Not horrid, but nothing special, and many of them ended up accidentally contradicting canon when new information about the world or certain in-world systems came out later. There are watch guides for skipping these widely available, and most OP fans do recommend watching the G8 filler arc because it's viewed as the only one that is on par with, or at least close to, canon content. I enjoy it myself as well personally.

That said, one of my biggest gripes about the anime, especially after sabaody up until Wano, is how it takes Odas more mild level of sexualization in comparison and dials it up to 1000. At its worst it has taken scenes where a female character is introduced with a full body shot and a name/title card in the manga, and turned it into a scene where the camera zooms in on her boobs, thighs, waist, butt, and then slowly pans up her body starting from the feet, including boi-oing noises or weird many sound effects with each zoom in shot. It also increased the boobs sizes and decreased the waist sizes constantly, put a lot more effort and attention into boobs jiggles than was necessary, and at least one point they even blatantly zoomed in on Nami's boobs bouncing isolated on the screen while she was running for absolutely NO reason. Oda doesn't do this in the manga. He doesn't introduce women in bits and pieces focusing on their body parts in an oggling manner, he doesn't put their boobs front and centre unless it's maybe by accident because of necessary framing. Even when he has sexy shots of women, they're usually full body shots that also even manage to serve as establishing shots most of the time. I also often get the feeling that a lot of it is also him being aware of his target audience in Japan, which is teenage boys. You can see a lot of how his approach adjusted when he has a different audience in mind in the Live action, not only regarding stuff like diversity (which WAS present in the original, their real life equivalent ethnicities have been said to be diverse for a long time, but Oda himself, as much as I love him, only has one skin tone marker in his whole house apparently and he uses it for every single character in colourspreads and covers, including the characters that are supposed to be black, and the anime isn't much better on that front, so it's nice to really see the proof of the diversity visually in the live action in a way that doesn't come across as clearly in the anime or manga), but also in regards to adjusting shounen tropes to better fit a live action setting. You can see in a lot of his SBS answers that he takes his target audience and what he wanted to see as a young boy into account a lot even if he might otherwise explore different tropes or depictions or structures in a different medium or genre.

BUT the anime does have its flaws. I won't pretend that Oda doesn't draw his female characters sexier as the series goes on, and while he also does with the men (Zoro canonically has the biggest bust size on the crew according to Oda lmao) it's not to the same degree as the women. This is especially concentrated around Nami, possibly because Oda's wife is a Nami cosplayer and iirc he met her while she was cosplaying Nami. It's the most overt in certain later arcs, but not too present in earlier arcs up to, say, Sabaody. But, while he does draw the women sexier, he's not... Idk the right terminology to use but he doesn't employ an oggling pov towards the women very often. Not never, but compared to the manga you relatively rarely get much particular purposeful focus on body parts like boobs or ass, there's also never any panty shots (seriously, not a single one in the entire series). That's not so say that the series is always perfect in this sense, but rather that's to compare it to the anime. And while there are some things One Piece doesn't do perfectly sometimes, there are also a lot of things it definitely gets right about how the women are written as complex multifaceted people with conflicts and motivations just as deep and diverse and complicated as the men. They mostly just look extra seggsy sometimes, at least the main ones do. And YMMV, but personally I'm okay with some sexiness, so long as it doesn't compromise the characters story and personality and doesn't go overboard to the point of being softcore porn, which Oda doesn't do in the manga. And I also don't like how often criticism of sexiness turns into shaming any clothing that shows more skin. There's a difference between disliking fanservice and going full conservative prude.

Now from what I've seen this has gotten significantly better in Wano in the anime, probably because Oda himself purposefully played down even his own horniness during Wano because of the focus on traditional Japanese aesthetics and dress. Idk if it will get bad again after Wano, but a lot has changed regarding the way the anime is animated and directed since the last time it was bad, so hopefully not. But this can be a significant barrier to the anime for some people. If that's the case, then I definitely recommend the manga. It's the original, and in comparison it is practically chaste. It's not prevalent throughout the entire anime, it's mostly bad for the stretch from Fishman Island to the end of WCI, which consists of 3 big arcs and 2 smaller in-between arcs, but improves significantly in Wano, and isn't too bad in arcs before Fishman Island. Still more egregious than the manga, but not to the same degree. So it's possible you can tolerate it for that stretch since there are still lots of good moments in the anime in these arcs too. Though I'll note that there's quite a bit of censorship in the anime compared to the manga, Zeff eating his own leg for example, while included in the live action, was not included in the anime. Instead he lost it when it got caught in some ship debris while he was rescuing Sanji from drowning. Stuff like gore and blood are also tones down a lot. The live action honestly isn't any more gory than the manga is, even at the beginning. There's even less blood in the live action, the wound Zoro got from Mihawk was nastayyyy in the manga. Bro nearly got bisected fr.

Though I will say that I think one thing that helps make the more sexualized aspects of the series feel more balanced and a lot less center stage is that Luffy himself, the main character, is completely and totally 1000% gender blind. He's not blind to stuff like masculinity or femininity, but he's blind to whether masculinity or femininity is something that is only applicable to men or women. He likes plenty of manly things, there's a gag about him not wanting frills on his shirt because he doesn't think they're manly and he doesn't like that, but he doesn't think that it makes a man less of a man if he wears a frilly shirt, and he's not opposed to wearing other clothes that might be more feminine coded like his fuckin cute li'l dress thing in Egghead, or the literal dress he wears proudly for all of 3 seconds in Film Gold lmao. There are plenty of men in the series who wear frilly shirts. There are also men who wear makeup, wear pink, crossdress, etc. Luffy could not give less of a shit what men, or women, wear. He does not discriminate between women and men in how he treats them in any way shape or form, his awareness of gender expression is limited entirely in how he personally expresses *his* idea of *his* gender. If a woman pisses him off he'll beat them up just as easily as he will a dude. If a trans man says they identify as a man, he'll refer to them as a man, even if they have a more feminine appearance, and vice versa. He does not blink an eye at non-binary/genderfluid/queer characters, etc. That's one of my favourite things about his character, in part because I'm aroace and identify with him and his gender blindness a lot (among other things, he is an aroace icon for a reason lmao), but also because it's nice to have a 100% gender blind character as the main pov throughout the series.

Then there's the final factor, which is

4) How much time are you willing to spend?

The anime is undoubtedly the longer time investment. Which can be good or bad depending on your view. I know when I caught up sometime after episode 505, I was devastated at not having any more episodes to watch. I started out thinking "this will take me forever and I probably won't finish it", then shifted to "damn those 100 episodes went by fast, but that's okay, I still have 400 episodes left" to "200 episodes already? Well I'm not even halfway yet, that's fine" to "300... Oh God I'm already more than halfway" to "400!? Where are they all going?? Why aren't there more?!?" to "well I HAVE to read the manga now because I can't stand to wait for the episodes to come out weekly" then I banged out the rest of the series in the manga in a few days like I was a drug addict trying to hide my stash from the police by snorting it all at once. So to some, the length can be a blessing rather than a curse lmao. But if you are worried about length, the manga is a lot easier to go through without taking months and months to catch up, unless you take your time reading it. There is a fan edited version of the anime called One Pace, which takes out all the filler and adjusts the pacing to be closer to the manga, which might also be an option if you want to watch the anime but still want a less exhaustive itinerary to watch. They. Might even edit out a bunch of the excess sexual shots and editing in the anime though I haven't watched it myself to determine that. The main issue is that One Pace hasn't completed every single arc, but it is an option for watching the arcs it does have. I know Dressrosa is one of the longest arcs and might benefit from some trimming. I also recommend, if you choose the anime, to watch episodes in batches rather than weekly. While the pacing of the manga is quite a bit faster, so it lends itself to weekly updates better, the anime does suffer from being watched weekly. I've always binged arcs all together and I find that improves the experience a lot.

Aside from that, you can also always just read the manga then only look up and watch particular scenes you wanna see in the anime to get the experience with the voice acting and music and animation, without having to invest as much extra time into it. I may not be a dedicated anime hater, but I do agree that the manga is undoubtedly superior to it as a whole, so while I don't think there's anything wrong with being anime only, if you are open to both, but only want to choose one to consume, it's the manga all the way. You only have to start at chapter 1 and go from there. Or episode 1 for the anime.

I hope this helped, and wasn't too confusing or overwhelming. I know how daunting the series can be to get into so I wanted to try and be comprehensive and objective, and provide some approachable options for people new to the series by explaining some pros and cons of each approach.

[ygoartreviews]

Dragoroar

It's December, and you all know what that means, right? Time to remember the 21st night of September, and what better way than with a card involving Earth, Wind, (Water), and Fire. Easily the most hilarious part of this card is Redox in the top right. Clearly the most logical place to put the Earth attribute, vestigial winged, heavy ass dragon is directly in the sky, rocketing down towards Blaster like a meteor. Which, by the way, background-wise, this card feels like it should only really have Tempest and Tidal here. There's a raging thunderstorm in the sky and a roiling, edge of the planet sea there, but absolutely no fire or volcanoes or whatever else for Blaster, and Redox only kinda gets the rocks that are hurtling down with him (also just realizing now that there's a whole landmass at the bottom there........ It blends in so well with the water that I thought it was ALL water..............). I also must say... Tempest does not look good at all from the side. It feels like someone other than the person who did the art for the individual dragons drew this one, because I don't think Tempest's eye is supposed to be positioned like that (there's some other noticeable stylistic differences too). All in all, the boys got together to roar at each other, and it seems to be causing some havoc.

Rating: 7/10, Do you remember? Now you do

[readingthief]

I just read the first Heartstopper book and oHmyGoD it’s amazing.

It made me scream.

I’m going to run to the store right now and get the other three eeeeee it’s so good.