ultraericthered

[ultraericthered]

Redemption Or Nah? #4

Continued from here.

Jet - REDEMPTION POSSIBLE. Jet was always trying to do what was right for those oppressed by the Fire Nation even when his methods were wrong-headed and he went to such extremes due to his heart being clouded by desire for personal vengeance against the enemy for what it took from him. Following the incident with Aang, Katara, and Sokka, he took Sokka's words to heart, reconsidered his ways and stopped being a terrorist. Even after he had a violent relapse and got brainwashed by the Dai Li, he was willing to put his radical ways behind him and be a changed man who could atone for his past misdeeds. He could've, had he only been allowed to live.

Cornelia Li Britannia - SEMIDEMPTION PLAUSIBLE. Cornelia always had her share of admirable qualites and her own set of values and ethics, but has committed atrocities against masses of other people that can never be taken back. While I'm not entirely okay with the ending the series actually gave her, I could imagine her beginning to turn towards the ideals and aspirations for peace with Japan that her younger sister had, and in the process recognizing the faults in her empire and family, thus being willing to stand up to them. She'd likely not live long afterwards, but her turnaround would be sincere.

Nagito Komaeda - REDEMPTION POSSIBLE. Had he not joined with Ultimate Despair and become such a psychotic, untrustworthy, self-absorbed person, he could've turned out alright, having friends he could depend on and learning how to make his own good luck.

Mariko Kurama - REDEMPTION POSSIBLE. She's a damaged, twistedly innocent little girl who was mentally conditioned to think violence and slaughter was okay. She was stupidly denied the chance for any redemption in the anime, but in the original manga she's able to find it at the end of her short life and is the catalyst for her papa to embark on a rough redemption arc of his own.

Fred Jones Sr. - SEMIDEMPTION PLAUSIBLE. This man was deep into the curse of the Evil Entity's treasure for a long time, and there really was no way for him to redeem himself, as he'd never gain the desire to want it. However, raising the baby he'd abducted from Brad Chiles brought out a paternal instinct in him and he actually grew to care, much as he denied it to himself. Raising Fred as his son saved the better part of Jones, who we see preserved in the Sitting Room. Of course he doesn't even need redemption in the rewritten reality since he's already an alright guy who didn't do anything villainous.

Shigure Sohma - SEMIDEMPTION PLAUSIBLE. Shigure's a born sociopath who knows what he is and gladly accepts it, not really capable of changing his ways entirely. But like Akito, he can start to care more about others, make better choices, and live his life atoning for the harm he'd wrought, which we see him starting by the end.

Monika - REDEMPTION POSSIBLE. Monika only goes bad because she has fourth wall awareness and existential turmoil. We see the same happen to Sayori at the end of the game. With a cleared head, Monika (as would Sayori for that matter) can recognize that she was going about things wrong and did terrible things to her dearest friends for no justifiable reasons, and is willing to make amends.

Saruman The White - NAH! Once Saruman turns to darkness and madness, he commits acts beyond the pale and feels absolutely no shame or remorse for being responsible for or complicit in such unspeakable evil. He covets power and thinks so highly of himself that he even had the ambition to claim the One Ring as his own and leverage that power against Sauron so that he could become the dominant dark lord ruling over Middle Earth. In the books, even after Gandalf breaks his staff, depowers him, and removes him from the alliance with Mordor, he goes and fucks up the Shire! Screw this old bastard, he's clearly not as good and wise as he proclaimed to be.

Smeagol/Gollum - NAH! I don't know how anyone could read or watch Gollum and come to the conclusion that he's not too far past the ability to make a permanent change to himself and heal from his ring-induced mania. The little stinker's the "a lost cause" poster boy!

Oswald Cobblepot/the Penguin - SEMIDEMPTION PLAUSIBLE. Most versions of the Penguin are morally bankrupt pieces of shit who would remain that way even should they become more accepted within society. The most I think Ozzy could ever manage would be a semidemption type of turaround, but never a full-on reformation.

Edward Nygma/The Riddler - REDEMPTION POSSIBLE. Again, I don't see most versions of Riddler turning over a new leaf, but there have been some who showed the capacity for it, and even in some of the DC Comics continuities he's put his criminal days behind him and become a detective who assists the law, so that could happen.

Harvey Dent/Two-Face - REDEMPTION POSSIBLE. Most versions of Two-Face aren't so far gone that the Harvey side of his personality has no chance of finally curbing the evil side and becoming a better man once again. It's just that most times, he's still a walking tragedy.

Victor Fries/Mr. Freeze - REDEMPTION POSSIBLE. Another tragic villain, one of the most sympathetic and morally justified out of all of Batman's rogues (mostly, versions will vary). He easily clears this.

Pamela Isley/Poison Ivy - REDEMPTION POSSIBLE. And yet again, while there are some versions of Ivy that will never take a hint and better herself, most iterations need only move beyond her constant misanthropy, resentment of all with whom she disagrees, and the extremes she'll go to in her protection of the environment in order to become a better person and adapt to an anti-hero role rather than remain a crazy evil plant lady (with Harley Quinn following suit!)

Ra's Al Ghul - NAH! Finally, another Batman rogue other than the Joker who cannot be cured. Ra's intentions always start from a pure and well-meaning place, but he's lived so long and had his mind twisted by so much exposure to the Lazarus Pit that he's lost his connection to the human heart and the ability to see reason, being a self-important, hypocritical, murderous madman beyond reform.

Talia Al Ghul - NAH! See this post. She's the daughter of R'as Al Ghul, raised on his ideology, conditioned to accept and condone his actions, and keen on finding her own way as the Demon Head's heiress and taking things with the League of Assassins in a new, more clean and modernized but no less unethical and homicidal direction. And she likes it that way, being in some ways more selfish than her father. She has redeeming qualities but is not redeemable.

Miyo Takano - REDEMPTION POSSIBLE. Yeah, if you think Takano is not redeemable in the end, you fundamentally misread Higurashi.

Manfred von Karma - NAH! Manfred's fairly old and has been a cold, prideful, ruthless, self-righteous and abusive asshat for years. After succumbing to the temptation to shoot Gregory Edgeworth and deliberately letting Gregory's son Miles live with the guilt, all while raising him as his own, grooming him to follow in his footsteps as a prosecutor while being very willing to throw him under the bus the moment he falls short of the expected von Karma "perfection", there was no coming back for this guy. Not to mention he's another who'd never want to fix themselves because he hates to admit to errors.

Matt Engarde - NAH! Just no. The dude is a complete psychopath.

Guren Ichinose & Mahiru Hiiragi - SEMIDEMPTION PLAUSIBLE. From where things are standing right now, I think both of them could end up attaining some redemption, but the problem is that they're still willing to sacrifice their souls, many lives, and who knows how much else on the planet in order to make things right again. It's just really hard to trust the two of them to make good on being truly selfless.

Krul Tepes - REDEMPTION POSSIBLE. Krul literally never asked to be made a vampire and do all the vile stuff she ended up doing, and even post-vampirism, what she most desires is to reunite with her brother, die with him, and be reborn with him as humans into a world that can be made better than it was before. She's selfish, but not evil.

Organization XIII - REDEMPTION POSSIBLE. While Xemnas and Xigbar are harder sells, the rest of the Organization was very much redeemable, and the tragedy with them is that they passed over the opportunity to find redemption because they were stuck in their own sociopathy and hell-bent on attaining hearts to gain new power and become complete existences no matter what they had to sacrifice, all the while being misled by Xemnas wanting to make a universe of nothingness and emptied out hearts over which he could be a god. Only the "Seasalt Ice Cream Trio" (Roxas, Xion, and Axel) were able to find anything close to redemption prior to the KH3D/KH3 era.

Brainiac - NAH! Later models of Brainiac can and have evolve into better entities with more sound logic and ethics, but the original Brainiac? He lacks the capacity to re-evaluate his own twisted logic and desires, and he works much better as a pure villain to start with.

Otto Octavius - REDEMPTION POSSIBLE. While there are a few versions of Doc Ock who go so beyond the pale that it closes off any convincing redemption for them, I think most versions have in them the capacity to change and do good, and a few of them (Raimi films, Ultimate Spider-Man 2012, Marvel's Spider-Man 2017) have done so.

Venom - REDEMPTION POSSIBLE. Once again it's dependent on the version, but Venom as an antihero is a very common occurance.

Arya Stark & Sansa Stark - REDEMPTION POSSIBLE. We may never see it come to pass in the book series, and the "redemption" the show gave them was a bit rushed and clumsily handled, but no matter the ethics they toss aside and the lives they take, both sisters are at their cores their father's daughters and love their family, each other included, so finding their way out of the darkness is doable.

Daenerys Targaryen - SEMIDEMPTION PLAUSIBLE. I envision Dany having a "redemptive act that ends her life" sort of ending in the books narrative, and it was only due to bad writing that redemption was put beyond her reach on the show, so "semidemption" it is.

Tyrion Lannister - REDEMPTION POSSIBLE. Tyrion coming back around and pursuing redemption for his wicked deeds was actually given to on the show, and shown quite well in fact... had only the lead-up been written to earn it rather than whitewashing his character at every turn! Erasing himself from recorded history as atonement is especially solid: he won't be in all the literature he values so much.

Petyr Baelish - NAH! Incel, sex fiend, looter, schemer, manipulator, murderer, groomer, all around scumbag. There's no fixing this one.

David Xanatos - SEMIDEMPTION PLAUSIBLE. I mean, it's David Motherfucking Xanatos. He practically invented the semidemption!

[ultraericthered]

Chicken Soup For The Spirit: Sacrifice, Salvation, Redemption And Love

This may be the heaviest, most spiritually engaging post I've made so far, so please understand the risk it is for me to make it

So for this one I'm going to use a post from another user's blog and respond to the points made, which I figured was more sensible to do here than doing so in a reblog of that user's posts. And it's because I feel this person does get really close to what I myself view to be a universal spiritual truth about life, death, God and Jesus Christ, but also misses some crucial details that maybe they've not learned of or contemplated or maybe don't even believe in. I'm not here to judge anyone for their faith, I can only attest to what my own truths are.

For context, this came about in a post about the 2015 anime series Charlotte, where the blogger was commenting on the themes of the series and in particular one of the plot devices and core arcs, and tying them to the Gospel of Jesus Christ and her Christian faith.

I love how Ayumi's death is never explained. I mean, we get a whole time travel thing where she gets saved, yes. But it's never explained. We never get a good answer as to why she had to die. It's senseless and meaningless to watch, just one wicked person with a knife and then Ayumi's own power emerging for the first and last time as a reaction to the stress she's under. There's no reason for her to die. Except... as a plot device. An extremely powerful one. And handled so amazingly well, it doesn't feel forced, it's never forgotten, and it drove Yuu's entire redemption arc.

Now this is true shit: when I watched Charlotte I knew in advance that Yuu would go back in time and prevent Ayumi's death from occuring, but I knew that if I was watching blind I'd be calling bullshit on her death if the immediately following episode hadn't done such a masterful job giving it a realistic fallout, weight and significance beyond the Stuffed In The Fridge For Manpain trope. It's one of the few story elements in the show Jun Maeda handled perfectly.

I love how they handled Ayumi's death, because senseless, meaningless deaths happen all the time IRL. When it's a bad person, "oh, they had it coming to them," and when it's an old person, "well they lived a long, full life and it was time," but a kind and gentle child or young person, with nothing but love and compassion for others? And such a person dies in a freak car accident, or gets inoperable cancer at a young age, or gets mugged and stabbed by some weirdo in a dark parking lot. It happens. And there's never a reason for it.

As of now, this person has watched Jun Maeda's earlier (and far superior) anime series, Angel Beats!, which includes this very idea as a central theme to its narrative. It's a heavy thing for a fictional story to tackle, because it's such a nonfictional, all too real phenomena.

Except there is a reason. Sin is in the world, and death because of sin. Freaky accidents, disease, murder, natural disasters - all the result of sin in the world.

OK, I'm not sure how accurate this is. The primary reason there is death in this world is because the human body is not designed to be forever sustainable, so eventually the human mind and soul will be untethered from it, vanishing from the material realm and leaving behind the cold, vacant body, resulting in what we know as "death." Premature deaths, however, do occur because there is sin in the world. In the realm of the spirit beyond this life, the realm of God, sin does not exist, and therefore neither do accidents, disease, natural disasters, and murder or crimes of any sort. The existence of sin in the human heart and on Earth is a defect, an anomaly that infects the world around us in ways we may not ever fully understand. In spite of this, Jesus spent his time on Earth attempting to teach and show us how we can fight back against sin and beat it, how to make things in our world "on Earth as it is in Heaven", and how to evolve our own immortal spirits so that even death will hold no power over us.

As a Christian, I believe that God is 100% sovereign and in control. So everything that happens, He either caused it or allowed it. Including the deaths of good people.

Seldom ever do I believe God causes anything that occurs here on Earth - He allows everything that occurs. Turning His attention to any one thing happening here in this physical, mortal, material realm is a rarity because He is perpetually causing and sustaining everything. Everything Everywhere All At Once - what we know as God made it all manifest into being and keeps it all going for perpetuity. Yes, this includes everything wrong in our world, but that's on sin, not God.

Do I understand it? No. Do I get mad at God for it sometimes? Ohhhh, you better believe it. Sometimes I have trouble trusting Him because I'm afraid He'll take everything away from me. (I'm not perfect. I've had a lifetime of crap that left me terrified and angry about a lot of things.)

Never should anyone have to live afraid that God will take everything away from them. God does not pick and choose when to let someone live well and prosper and when someone will be met with misfortune. And He most certainly would not want us to fear Him and what He might do to us in our lives, whether it be to punish us or to abuse us for no particular reason. God did not create us with a spirit of fear, He does not fear us, and we need not fear Him. God is love, not fear.

So I'm not gonna try to explain why bad things happen to good people, because I don't understand it. All I want to say is that there is a Biblical parallel between Ayumi and the Bible's story of salvation.

And here it comes. I must say, paralleling Jesus Christ and Ayumi Otosaka is not something I ever expected to see and address.

Ayumi's death became a plot device to drive Yuu's redemption arc. In a sense, she became his sacrificial lamb. Yuu lost everything when he lost her, and his life went completely off the rails until Tomori tricked him into facing his own fears and feelings for his sister. Ayumi was a sweet child that never hurt anyone. There was no reason she should have died. She did nothing worthy of death, she just existed, and someone decided to hate her for existing. And so she did die. And the hater who killed her escaped without a scratch. And Ayumi's death became the catalyst for Yuu to heal inside from a lifetime of wounds inflicted by the neglect and abandonment of everyone who was ever supposed to be there for him.

This is all accurate, but I still gotta see where you're going with it...

When Jesus died on the cross, there was no reason for it. Jesus was without sin. It was senseless, it shouldn't have happened. People were jealous and angry at Him for pointing out their sin, their greed, their lust. So they killed Him. There was no reason for it. Jesus shouldn't have had to die, because He did nothing worthy of death. He just existed, He did what was right in all circumstances, and people hated Him and killed Him.

This is also quite on point, but I do have some quibbles with it:

1. To say that Jesus was "without sin" is technically true, but the reason he was so is because he always, without fail, repented his own sins after they'd been committed, because he understood that it is wrong to sin against any of his brothers and sisters under God. He did have some sin in his heart and did err at times (cursing the fig tree, losing his temper in the temple, being irate or angry at his disciples, feeling like God had forsaken him) because he was still human, but as his soul was spiritually evolved to perfection, he would always confess his wrongdoing and repent of it after having calmed himself. As stated above, he was committed to "doing what was right in all circumstances", for he was the Christ who so loved everyone.

2. I don't really agree with capitalizing the "H" in Jesus' pronouns the way I would for God, as that puts God and Jesus on too equal a level. Yes, Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah, the immaculate and holy Son of God who embodied God in spirit, but as I just said, he was human. His soul ascended into a higher form of spirit after he left this world, allegedly placing him at God's proverbial right hand, but I don't believe that exactly made him a deity himself. Jesus is the perfect man, the ultimate spiritual evolution of the human soul, the one who has achieved the greatest closeness to God. As I've said before, "oneness with God" does not mean you lose your entire previous identity. Jesus was not "God made flesh". Jesus was/is himself.

And Jesus' death is the catalyst for our healing.

And this is where the core of my post lies.

For the collective healing of humanity? It was. Where I vehemently disagree with Christian orthodoxy is on how and why it was. For some reason, most likely due to how the preaching of the Apostle Paul were translated and construed, Christians came to believe that from the moment humans began sinning, humanity accumulated some sort of "sin debt" that we could never pay to God, therefore we were all doomed to have death snuff out our lives rather than have us live eternally through the soul, or otherwise be cast away from God, damned to Hell and absence from His love forevermore as eternal punishment, so the only way the debt could be cleared and God could forgive humanity as a collective enough to allow them eternal life after death where they can be welcomed into Heaven to live with Him rather than isolated from Him in Hell was to spawn His own son and offer him up as a sacrifice where he'd take the burden of all the collective sins of humanity upon himself and be torturously punished and put to death for them in place of the real sinners, all of us.

When you apply any scrutiny to this narrative and think hard enough about it for even a few minutes, it paints God as a complete monster. The ultimate cosmic abusive parent who'd come to hate and never forgive any of his children for any misbehavior and misdeed he'd take as a slight against him unless his one special child took all the punishment for all of it himself, and then even afterwards he puts a condition on his love by having it so that only those who believe in him and accept what his son did for them all can join him in Heaven, while those who don't he'll damn to Hell and coldly turn away from. And notice I did not capitalize the pronouns there because what I'm describing is not God: its man's perverted idea of God, one that projects upon God human qualities and insists he'd think and act as humans might. But a truly holy, righteous, loving God would not be like that. I know in my bones, my heart, and soul He's not like that.

So the "salvation" and subsequent "redemption" that I believe Jesus' death was intended to achieve is as follows: Jesus was on Earth to preach, teach, and guide. He was there to tell the world what things are truly like in the spirit realm of his Father God, and what God, through him, commands that His chidren do on Earth so that it can become a better place more akin to that spirit realm, our souls could mature and evolve, and we could, with a fuller understanding of the meaning of life, become closer to God in all His perfect love for us. And while he was teaching humanity in many ways, he mainly taught by example, by being the perfect human living the perfect life. And he knew, he fully understood and knew well in advance, that the ministers and teachers of the law would hate him for it, and that they'd eventually seek to silence him by taking his life. And he knew what a contradiction it was, that he, the best of humanity, a man without sin, should be punished and put to death as though he'd committed the gravest of sins. So that became a core point of the image of him on the cross - that by all logic, it should be any given person among the entire human population on Earth other than him up there and being made to suffer and pay for their sins. But the message he was sending to humanity by turning himself in, getting put through all that needless pain, and even forfeiting his own life as the penalty for crimes he'd never committed was that "I don't deserve this, this should be happening to any one of you, or all of you in fact. But I would never let it be you. No matter the gravity of your sins, no matter how many times you sinned, I would always throw myself between you and the punishment, and take it myself. To spare you. To save you. Because that is how much I love you all, without conditions or exceptions." In spite of how horrible and painful and unfair it was, self-sacrifice for the people he loved was the perfect way that a perfectly lived life would end. Through his death, Jesus wanted to show us the depths of how much a human should love their fellow human, their sibling under God, and with it, the depths of how much God loves all of his children. And he wanted everyone to understand that to follow God's will and intentions for us, to truly live life, we all need to love one another in the same unconditional way. Not that we all should punish one another, but that we should all be prepared to take on anything for the sake of those we love, no matter how scary and painful it might be for us. We must all be ready and willing to put it all on the line to spare our family from suffering. In our deeds as well as our words, we must love as we first were loved.

And as one last bonus, he also showed us how when one's soul is fully evolved, having achieved oneness with the progenitor God and unshakably strong in spirit, death holds no dominion over them, as demonstrated by him just waking up and continuing to live and breathe a mere three days after his own death, as though the death had not happened or at least not impeded his ability to go on living. This is what Jesus wanted us to see through his death and revival. This is how he has saved and healed us, as once a person believes in him, believes in what was told and shown to them about God and the Christ, that person's soul is more open to embracing the love of God and the meaning of life, which makes it easier to find Heaven after that person has passed on, something that was nigh impossible for souls in the BC Era. This is how and why Jesus is our savior.

We are all broken and hurting, because the world is broken and hurting. If anyone can come to that place where they can realize that Jesus didn't have to die, but that He did die for them, that person can accept His sacrifice and let Him heal them.

Yes, that is what I just laid out! I just had to provide my own details for the context for as to why "he didn't have to die but died for us", for why it was such a sacrifice and how it can heal our broken spirits.

Because unlike Ayumi, Jesus didn't stay dead. Yes, we see Ayumi again, but there's a big difference between Yuu going back in time to save her, and Jesus literally raising Himself up from the dead.

True. Ayumi stayed lifeless and buried after her death, only coming back to us via time travel shennanigans. Whereas Jesus arose from his death as though he'd just been out for three days taking a nap.

Ayumi didn't save Yuu all on her own, Tomori had to finish the job. But Jesus can heal us entirely on His own because He is ALIVE. He alone had power over death to bring Himself back to life, and He alone has power to heal everything in our hearts that's crushing us and killing us. He's just waiting for each of us to let Him heal us.

Jesus is alive and well in spirit just as God lives within all of us. We all have the potential and capacity to become Christ-like, but only he was able to be the Christ in his lifetime, and the Christ he remains even now, so he can heal us and bring to us salvation, redemption, mercy and love, in life and after death, should we only call out for him and let him do so. He is not our king, he is not our master, he is not our God - he is everyone's big brother, the uber big brother to all who ever lived and will ever live still. Here's here to help us whenever we may need him. And lord knows (literally), we need the help a lot.

Speaking of redemption, I've got another post to make...

[ultraericthered]

Small Comforts #10

Just as warmth of food and drink is comforting during cold weather seasons, cold food and drink is comforting during the warm weather seasons. In the summertime in particular, it's very soothing and refreshing to enjoy some ice cold organic lemonade, sweet iced tea, ice cream treats and fruit-flavored popsicles in well conditioned interiors, so I make certain to do so on plenty of summer days.

[ultraericthered]

I did see this when I was a kid and I Have Some Thoughts:

I definitely remember the dragon (obviously), but I did not remember that he was Burgess Meredith. And this humble, well-mannered magical child therapist is not what the original folk song conveyed but by God, Meredith goes ridiculously hard with the portrayal. He gives a silly cartoon dragon way more dignity than was warranted.

The references starting at 2:46 (Cinderella, Alice In Wonderland, Peter Pan, Rumpelstiltskin, and The Wizard Of Oz) are a riot.

Jackie looking through the magic puff to see the giant pirate for what he truly is on the inside, a baker which he becomes a bit later, is probably the image I most remember from this thing. (Funny bit of trivia - the character is labeled "Pirate / Pieman" in the credits and voiced by Robert Ridgely, who'd become the voice of a more well-known "Pieman" in Strawberry Shortcake just a few years later.)

This was written by a writer of the Rankin-Bass holidays specials and it shows by the ridiculous ways they try to tie the song into the story. The second part of the first verse is omitted, the boy's name is Jackie Draper but they give "Jackie Paper" context by having Puff literally put his soul (his "living thing") into a paper duplicate, and the lyric about pirate ships doesn't apply to the story, it's just there so Jackie can somehow hear it and so that segues into Very Long John's appearance. But the Third Act Breakup is by far the dumbest part, where the lyrics so do not match the context of what happened in-story. "Painted wings and giant's rings give way to other toys" now has zero meaning to it, "Jackie Paper came no more" turns out to be a goddamn lie, Puff's response is him just moping and doping over Jackie doing the thing he literally told him to do, and then the minute that verse ends, Jackie runs back into the scene, rendering this whole plot point something that might as well not have happened. You could have Jackie run to go get Very Long John instead of Puff telling Jackie that he needs to GTFO and nothing would feel missing.

But it's hard to fault this special of too much when it was the first public broadcast to accurately discuss social anxiety and depression, and the fact that it treats a deficiency or mental illness of any kind as a condition that can and should be treated as one lives with it was quite revolutionary for something that was made in the late 70s.

Did anyone else watch this as a kid, or was it just me?

[ultraericthered]

#but every man is a dead little boy

In retrospect it's so fucking obvious that's what the lyric was getting at (especially since it follows with the one about "other toys"), but for a long time I thought it meant that Jackie Paper literally died one day and that's why he and Puff no longer saw each other afterwards.

At least I never thought he died from smoking too much weed!

Dragons live forever, but not so, little boys...

[ultraericthered]

WRONG.

It's the root of self-respect.

Without desiring things, you'll never accomplish anything. You need to let yourself desire things. And you need to let yourself pursue the things you desire. That's the only way you stop living for others, and start living for yourself. You need to look at your life, and ask yourself what you want out of it. And then you need to pursue that.

[ultraericthered]

I love the anime so much

[ultraericthered]

The iconic Looney Tunes shown on the side image and the Disney Silly Symphony knock-offs in the thumbnails so do not go together!

TUBI IS STREAMING 800 LOONEY TUNES CARTOONS!!!!!!!!!!!!! FOR FREE!!!

THIS IS NOT A DRILL!!! for years and years i've had people asking me where they can watch LT cartoons--AND NOW YOU HAVE AN EASILY ACCESSIBLE ANSWER!!!!!! this is about 80% of the entire LT filmography, so HOP TO IT AND GET TO WATCHIN' CARTOONS!

[ultraericthered]

I kind of like those two as well, just no so much how they're used.

In retrospect, it's funny how Dress-Up Darling got so much flack for supposedly being male-gaze goonerbait over the years when thematically and aesthetically, it's developed into the most Girlypop(tm) anime rom-com of the modern era.

-It's focused on the nitty-gritty details of fashion and makeup.

-The vast majority of the cast is women and girls in non-sexualized roles that represent a vast swath of the female experience.

-It pays homage to bastions of shoujo culture like cross-dressing, host clubs, and queer longing.

-Both EDs are retro-tributes to old school bubblegum pop in music and animation alike.

-Gojo is as much a dreamboat boyfriend as Marin is a dreamboat girlfriend.

Like, I realize most people bitching about the fanservice moments haven't even watched the show and are judging from an outsider's perspective. And you know me, I am in no position to criticize anyone else for criticizing over-sexualization in the anime industry. But as a legacy fanservice hater, I cannot imagine making an enemy of a show like this that's so clearly in love with women and values their vast contributions to fandom culture and just, like, culture in general. We should be celebrating Dress-Up Darling, not dismissing it because it has the gall to be the one fanservice show that actually manages to make its sexy bits meaningful and entertaining.

Or, you know, at least watch the damn show so you can direct your anger where it's actually justified:

[ultraericthered]

the directors themselves confirmed the tiger from kpdh isn’t a demon, but a spirit animal!

we never got a clear explanation if demons other than rumi are able to walk free in the human world, and now the chances of that are even lower considering the tiger isn’t a demon at all 😭

it lives in the barrier between the demon and human worlds, in other words the honmoon! which makes sense how it’s able to use the honmoon as a portal and teleport

the tiger is also referred by the directors as he/it!

hoping they go into this a bit more if we ever get a sequel. it seems like the girls themselves draw their weapons from the honmoon, so i’m wondering what else is there in the in between. not to mention it’d be nice to know how jinu and the tiger first met!

source: https://youtu.be/DiyGzB7ihR8?si=FGKWoV--8GP62o2C

[ultraericthered]

I'm currently watching "Assassination Classroom".

I've reached ap. 19, and...

THAT'S WHERE THE RAMEN MEME COMES FROM????

EDIT: AND THE GUY WHO SAYS THIS QUOTE ALSO VOICES FREAKING DIO?? THIS MEME KEEPS GETTING CRAZIER BY THE MINUTE!!!

[ultraericthered]

Kanade did love Otonashi, but the bittersweet thing is that she and Otonashi loved each other in very different ways. Kanade looked at Otonashi as being her hero, her savior. Like almost a respected paternal figure who she placed on a pedestal above her. After all, she owed her whole childhood to him, as without his heart she'd have died some time shortly after infancy without having gotten to really live and accomplish anything for herself and for her loved ones. She wants to know she is loved by Otonashi too and to hear it from his own lips, but her way of saying "I love you too" is to simply thank him for what he did for her, repeatedly. Otonashi meanwhile had clearly come to love Kanade in a deeply personal and familial way similar to how he loved his own little sister. He wanted them to remain together and live together like family so that they could continue to share a loving relationship that he'd not take for granted the way he did with his sister prior to her death. The love between them was mutual but never exactly mutual either (and I'd like to think not romantic.)

Nobody can tell me that Kanade didn't love Otonashi.

She wanted to hear him say he loved her.

Kanade is not predatory. Admitting you love someone that doesn't love you back will tear you apart inside like nothing else. Kanade was never out to hurt anyone, not in battle, or in any conversations she ever had with anyone. She wouldn't have asked to hear an "I love you" over and over again if she didn't feel the same way.

But the entire reason she's here is because she couldn't tell him that when she was alive.

I think maybe she's hoping that, if she doesn't say "I love you" back to him, she can stay. That just saying "thank you" will satisfy her without taking her away from him.

But... that's just not how this world works.

If the Japanese says something different, plz lmk. But based only on the English version, this is what I came up with.

[ultraericthered]

Watching my adventures with superman and wondering who voices Brainiac since his voice irks me so much (which is kinda the point, he is the villain)...

It's fucking Leland from Evil, of course it is, I hate that little shit

Also he's 70 years old???

[ultraericthered]

I wasn’t really paying attention during the dragonromper part of yesterday’s e3 so I had to do a double take when I saw this girl smoking the fattest blunt imaginable

[ultraericthered]

On one hand, Sephiroth is an actual nightmare fuel character and any time he shows up during the OG and Remake games it's ALWAYS a stress-inducing moment because of how violent and terrifying we know he can be.

But on the other hand, his official character profile pic is so chill and normal lmao

He doesn't even look particularly deranged or intimidating. He looks pretty calm. Almost expectant. Like buddy, do you need something? Need a snacky-snack? I think I have some leftover cheez-its around here somewhere if you're interested.

[ultraericthered]

I know I've said this before, but I do believe what "the enemy" actually ends up doing with their own ways of dehumanizing others and doing those others harm with the mental lens of dehumanization justifying it to themselves is, ironically, dehumanize themselves (and by this I don't mean that they literally transform or devolve into subhumans or inhumans, but that they fall far below the baseline standard of human decency and civil human behaviors). But in our ability to recognize that such self-dehumanization is paradoxically born only from the deeply innert, immutable, fundamental humanity that even these monstrous people, just like every person else in this entire world, retain at their very cores, we can avoid falling into the trap of wholly writing them off as lesser beings that don't count as real human life with real human feelings and basic human rights the way they do us, and keep a check on ourselves so that we don't lose the broader perspective and become creatures of hatred ourselves.

Some arsehole on one of my posts literally described humanism as an "absurdly naive, politically illiterate position."

Just say you think that there are categories of human beings that are acceptable to dehumanise and go, you rancid motherfucker. Stop hiding your bloodlust behind fancy words.

[ultraericthered]

John Byrne's Superman run is undeniably divisive, but if there's one consistent thing I can firmly say was beneficial in the long run (Aside from Lex Luthor being a billionaire, Bizarro being made by Lex, and a small handful of other stuff) it's Clark's connection to Earth and Krypton. He's a child of the stars, but he only really grew up on one home, a human home. He'll cherish what little he has of the planet he was born on, ponder upon the life he could've had, and long for a culture that he is disconnected from... but at the end of the day Clark was raised within the human experience, the good and the bad.

Granted, I do feel like this idea could be streamlined in execution, but overall I like this idea and I think it can work without demonizing Krypton or entirely dismissing it. I like Clark barely having a connection to Kryptonian culture in his earlier years outside of the rocket that brought him to earth. I like Clark finding out more about Kryptonian culture as time goes along, either through traveling the stars or through Kara. I like the emphasis on him not only being good natured, but also being nurtured by good people as well. I love when the guy who everyone is likely just gonna see as all-powerful at first glance IS shown to be not only a good person, but also undeniably human as he is otherworldly. A son of a destroyed star, raised by the better part of Humanity.

I hope I explained my thoughts properly, but that's my take on this matter.