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listening-to-thunder · 2 days

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City Hunter 2024

Don't mind me I just watched a live action adaptation of the show I absolutely imprinted on as a little fan sprout in the late 80s/early 90s and I have feelings?! (Tl;dr - the adaptation is so faithful I am so happy.)

So yeah. I watched the (censored) French version of the City Hunter anime during summer vacations and then languished as Sweden did not have City Hunter (or anyone who had heard of City Hunter, other than my little brother). So I did stuff like...record it on VCR, pause the VCR, and trace character portraits off the prickly cathode-ray tube TV. (Screenshot technology has come a long way!)

Later on I read the entire un-censored manga (with the original names restored!) in French, and downloaded the Japanese songs from some pages I found on AltaVista (which took forever on modem), and brough the full set back in Japanese after I lived there for a while. And then I found out there is an official "megafan gets transmigrated into the story"-manga about City Hunter, and I read that, too.

Basically: I have had this story in my life forever, and watching the live action movie now gives me echoes of all those feelings I had as a lonely fannish kid. Which is a weird feeling, but not in a bad way, because the live action adaption (not the first, but the first Japanese one!) is...good? It's fun! And it's as faithful to the original story as it could possibly be while also being updated for the 21st century in the best ways?

Okay, I'm just gonna dive in!

I love how prominent Shinjuku is in the live action. It's gorgeously shot, and you can really feel a sense of place. The characters always talk about "this city", and Shinjuku is that city.

And right off the bat Suzuki Ryohei gets to shine in a fun, fast fight scene with a manga flair to it!

Everyone in Shinjuku knows Ryo-chan! And here's where I will admit to my own ignorance, because reading in translation at a young age I honestly don't know if the manga touched on how Shinjuku as a place where the queer community meets? But here the owner of the bar Ryo rushes through is a glorious okama!

Saeba Ryo and Makimura Hidekyuki and HI MY FEELS. (I will probably get back to how much I adore that Ryo is played by an actor who's hit 40 - but Andou Masanobu is nearly 50?! HOW.)

YES GOOD the iconic coat from the manga (that I like a lot more than the silly little anime jacket) running down the streets of Shinjuku as the equally iconic red car (an old Mini Cooper?) races past the neon lights.

Oh man I have cried about this scene so many times. And here I just love how they got the dramatic rain in, despite the circumstances and setting of Makimura's death being different. That's what a good adaptation does: keeps things recognizable to the existing fans, while transforming it to something new and exciting. (I almost didn't see it coming because I kept thinking "It's not raining"...!)

Not to be shallow or anything but...HOT DAMN. Suzuki Ryohei!!!!

This was so delightful! Everyone was having such fun with the Mokkori Dance, and I am thrilled that they found a way of showing this side of Saeba Ryo without making him a sex pest. The mood whiplash from drama to the most frivolous silliness is extremely City Hunter, and the movie wouldn't have felt right if they hadn't nailed this. (With Ryo nudity. I am. Not complaining at all.)

Kaori's stare. Ryo's confidence. Perfect. No notes.

And then we get some T&A... and it's QUEER AS FUCK?! Instead of a strip club, in 2024 the Shinjuku nightlife scene is beautiful people voguing with a fabulous drag queen MC!

Showing off Ryo's impossibly good aim by following the bullet through a crowded nightclub was fun but again: look at this Shinjuku!! It's queer and diverse and I love it.

I could not believe how Suzuki Ryohei somehow manages to move like a manga character? He is so fast and so believable as a supernaturally good shot! I also liked how Ryo hid his gun as soon as he'd fired it - the enemy had already spotted him, so it wasn't that he was afraid of giving himself away? But he doesn't want to have a gun out at a queer nightclub, where it could start a very understandable panic.

Again with the Shinjukuness of it all...! Ryo's car is parked outside the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building (it was my favorite place to go hang out if I had time to kill in Shinjuku) - I think they're up in the observation deck, too?? The layers of nostalgia for me... it hits hard...

SPEAKING OF HITTING HARD I love that they gave Kaori her mallet!!! YES. (And they made up a cosplay event for it, where there was a tiny bit of T&A - but where the cosplayers themselves were making sure they looked as good as possible, showing off their assets!)

This is art to me.

Saeba Ryo. Stallion of Shinjuku. Blocking creepy otaku and audience alike from getting panty shots while not peeking under her skirt and also the horse head is his penis and...

This will take some processing. (While I giggle.)

THE most City Hunter shot of the entire movie. The crosshairs! Ryo shoving someone (Kaori) out of the way of a bullet! The bullet grazing his arm!! SHOOTING BACK AT THE SNIPER. Everything. Everything is perfect.

I am looking...respectfully...?

Their poses, the city... this whole scene felt like watching the manga come to life. Kaori needs a hug and Ryo hasn't gotten to the point where he can do "emotional support" in any other way than "revenge". Ahhhh the angst.

The movie's fights are so much fun to watch, because they have Ryo being a superhero with a gun (or: several guns), and then Kaori running around terrified but also so determined to actually fight. She shoves things on people! She hits that one guy with a pipe!! I love her so much.

IT'S THEM

FEELS ARE HAPPENING

(Ryo still doesn't do "hugging", but at least he's letting Kaori sob on him this time?)

Yes shooting a guy with an upside down revolver pointing behind you is exactly what I want from City Hunter, thank you! (Also the intensity Suzuki Ryohei brings out for Ryo's protective streak... It's so good...)

I just know that I am missing a ton of Easter eggs...! (I would be surprised if the framed drawing of a revolver isn't Hojo Tsukasa's art, though.)

And here we go! Now they're roommates! Kaori has her mallet! And her 80s manga outfit...! Aaah!!!!

Though they both wear shoes indoors which... I suppose even though they live there, the building isn't..."home"-coded? (I mean having that much real estate in the center of Shinjuku actually requires more suspension of disbelief than the gun magic...).

Anyway: it's THEM!

Sequel when? I really, really want one. They did such a fabulous job with this story, I want to see them do more!!

#city hunter netflix #city hunter #idk i need some kind of tag for when i just go off about something extremely niche??#notes

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smokeybrandreviews · 5 months

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Bone of my Sword

Scott Pilgrim is a franchise I hold near and dear to my heart. I was already a fan of the comic when it dropped way back when as I WAS those kids. When the OG graphic novel first released, Scott Pilgrims’ Precious little life, I was that twenty year old, hipster douchebag, who knew everything but absolutely nothing. I, personally, didn’t struggle with relationships (fortunate to have met the great love of my life early on and never looked back), but I had friends who were desperately trying to maneuver that mire of self-discovery and intimacy. Scott Pilgrim is the distillation of the Millennial experience during out prime years (if you buy into that sort of thing), captured perfectly on the page by Bryan Lee O’Malley. That said, the film adaption? Scott Pilgrim vs. The World? That is a Millennial culture milestone. When that movie released back in the early Tens, it spoke to me, directly. It spoke to a lot of us. We were those wayward idiots, living in garages, spinning our wheels in terms of careers, just vibing away to dope music and life experiences. I remember being that young, discovering The Killers and Kid Cudi, moving out of state on a whim just chasing new stimuli. Seeing that film, was like watching a crib notes of my entire life experience to that point and it left a strong impression. If I wasn’t a fan before, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World definitely made me one. I showed that movie to anyone who would watch it, gushing about its overlooked genius, and lamenting how there wasn't an anime or something, which adapted the entirety of the comic. Fast forward thirteen years later and, as if the Netflix gods heard me pining all those years ago, they delivered unto us Scott Pilgrim Takes off. I have feelings.

Scott Pilgrim Takes off is a goddamn masterpiece! I absolutely adored this show. It's exactly not what you think and i thought making that choice, was a brilliant one. Don't get me wrong, i am a Scott Pilgrim purist but, if we're being honest, with two decades worth of perspective behind me, the OG Scott Pilgrim story is kind of bullsh*t. Scott is the worst and never really had to reconcile for that sh*ttiness. He dated Knives and never really caught any flack for it on his end. He mooched off Wallace until he started mooching off Ramona. Scott was a scumbag on par with e very other Evil Ex, with the exception of, maybe, Roxie. Removing him from the equation not only gave Scott the distance from his would-be actions to grow into a solid, redeemed character, but gave the rest of the cast that very same opportunity. It gave Ramona that opportunity, one she sorely needed. One that we, as fans, didn't even really KNOW she needed. Giving the big chair to Ramona allowed her to reconcile how terrible she was toward her Exes. It gave her so much more agency than just being "won" at the behest of the weirdly gross and aggressively abusive, Gideon Graves. Takes Off is as much Ramona's story as it is Scott's and that sh*t makes for the overall narrative, becoming something more. Adding Ramona's story to this tale, adds a layer of maturity, which makes sense considering it's been twenty years since Scott first punched Matthew Patel into pocket change. Altering the perspective from Scott to Ramona, taking the narrative from one of destruction to healing, absolutely MADE the entire franchise. Altering the perspective from Scott to Ramona, taking the narrative from one of destruction to healing, absolutely MADE the entire franchise.

This take on the story sees Scott actually "defeated" by Matty Pat and the ensuing mystery of his perceived "death" sends Ramona on a quest to find the truth. During this journey, SHE is forced to "fight" with her Exes, and by fight, i mean actually apologize to them for being a sh*tty person. Ramona finally stopped running after she met Scott and he basically murdered all of her evil exes. That made for, at the time, some cool imagery but it was, objectively, an absurd way to properly unpack your traumas. Especially the ones you create yourself. And let me tell you, that League of Evil Exes? Yeah, Ramona definitely created that sh*t. We get hints of each villain origin story in the film and graphic novels but Takes off is ABOUT those relationships and why they ended the way they did. It doesn't take long to understand that Ramona, too, is just as terrible as Scott, but in a different way. Seriously, Roxie's episode hammers that home with such intensity, you don't have a choice but to accept it as gospel. Every Evil Ex gets this treatment. Mostly. Once again the Katayanagi Twins get shafted but that's their thing and they kind of don't seem like assholes anyway. Not really in the previous takes on the story, either. Like, those relationships should have keyed us into just how f*cking destructive the trail to Ramona's flower truly was but we were kids back then, too, and that's the brilliance of Scott Pilgrim Takes Off: We're not kids anymore and neither are these characters.

I'm thirty-nine years old. While i love Scott Pilgrim for what it was, as a dude two decades removed from that time in my life, i can honestly say i was a f*cktard. All twenty-somethings are. We haven't figured out life, at all, and some of us won't even as we approach our mid-Thirties. By the time you're my age, however, once should hope you have a handle on your sh*rt enough to recognize that, maybe, way back when, during your Twenty-something scumbag days, that you were a little bit of a scumbag. That's what Scott Pilgrim Takes Off is doing. That's what the story is about. It's catharsis and acceptance which comes with the benefit of time and space. Bryan Lee O'Malley published the first Scott Pilgrim story when he was about twenty-five. That means he wrote it at an even earlier age and it reads as such. That narrative reflects the emotional maturity of someone who had experienced a handful of years unto themselves, outside the protective bubble of their parents, give or take. Takes Off is written by a mid-Forties, adult man, who has had a life. O'Malley has been married, found success with his goofy little story about wayward love, walked the Hollywood red carpet, made a name for himself, and suffered the sting divorce. He's not punching his problems or running away from them anymore, he's confronting them head on and accepting that, a lot of the issues in his life, are because of his choices. As i approach the cusp of the big Four-Zero myself, i recognize that. I accept that. I've been doing that. To see it happening in one of the most culturally defining stories of my generation, is both comforting and surreal. Scott Pilgrim Takes off is a wonderful show. It's the most appropriate period on a sentence we Millennials started writing way back when we took our first steps into adulthood and i love it for that. That said, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game is the best thing to ever come out of this franchise. Fight me about it.

#Scott Pilgrim #Scott Pilgrim vs. The World #Scott Pilgrim Takes Off

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an-angels-fury · 2 years

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Why Erik (and the story of the Phantom of the Opera) means so much to me:

Well, I think it's already obvious for everyone who follows me that The Phantom of the Opera (book, musical and movie adaptations) is one of my main interests and I created this page to spread all my love and admiration for this story and how it brings so much joy to my life.

You probably already noticed as well that I have a thing for dark, monstrous characters who are capable of unspeakable acts of cruelty but are also misunderstood, pathetic (and when I say pathetic, I say in the sense of being worthy of pity and simpathy) and needy for the smallest bit of human affection (Anakin Skywalker and Carrie White are two of my favorites characters that are definitely included on the top of this list 😍)

So, as it might be stated, it isn't big news that I felt so drawn to my dear boy Erik. For some, he's better known as the scary and frightning Opera Ghost. For others, the talented and majestic Angel of Music. And don't get me wrong, he's, in fact, all that. But those are not his only facets. He's so much more than those titles. He's not truly a mystical being or a supernatural entity. He is, above all, HUMAN. A MAN. A REAL man, of flesh and bone. He's a exceptional, genius and extraordinary person.

His presence itself is powerful enough to silence a entire room full of people. He has the power of creation and destruction in his hands, capable of composing the most heavenly melodies that make every spirit cry and soar in delight and, at same time, punishing his victims in the most painful and agonizing ways to the point of making them crawl and beg for death. His angelic, enchanting voice, hard as lightning and soft as candlelight, is able to penetrate your soul so intimately to the point of touching the depths of your core and hypnotizing even the most sane mind. With a single gesture, he makes you bound to his every will. With a single song, a single note, your heart is no longer yours. Now your heart longs for him and only him. It beats and it bleeds for him.

In this moment, there no difference between you and him. It feels like you always knew him. It feels like he was always part of your existence. He knows you. He lives in you. HE IS YOU. This is the sensation that invades me always when I read about, watch, talk about or think of Erik. This is the sensation that, right now, is possessing me while I'm writing these words. He's here, singing songs in my head. He's with me, inspiring me and motivating me to share my art, to open my heart, to reveal the real me to the world.

Since I remember and knew myself as a person, music was always very present in my life and, as time passed and I grew up to learn more about myself and acquire new hobbies and passions, like drawing, reading and writing, my love for music not only remained but became stronger to the point of revealing to me and the others around me another gift of mine: singing.

Right now, in this moment of my life, I find myself reflecting about this constant inner conflict of mine between the role the society expects me to play and the personal search for my real vocation. When I finished High School last year, I was still very insecure about college. I wasn't sure about which university I wanted to go to, nor which course I would like to major in. I was always a dedicated and hardworking student, so my parents didn't mind at giving me a year to rest and think better about it, something that I'm totally grateful for. Still, a part of me wasn't at peace. I kept comparing myself to all my other friends who were already in college, who seemed to know exactly what they wanted, the path they wished to follow and and what the next step to take. Everybody seemed to know their place. Except me.

I'm still at home, seeing people with the same age as mine not only studying, but also running after jobs to pay for their studies. It's like everyone had already accepted the fact they're adults now and the responsibilities that come with it while I'm the only one who is being lazy and refusing to grow up for being too scared of letting go of my comfort and stability. Even with my parents being kind and patient with me and never putting any kind of pressure on me, I have a hard time trying to stop putting pressure on myself, which can become pretty exhasuting.

Luckily, a month and a half ago, I started to attend to weekly sessions with a vocational coach (I'm still in the middle of the process) and I'll confess you: it has been a very liberating experience. I'm in a journey of self-knowledge where, day after day, I'm not only feeling more confident about my abilities and aspirations, but also understanding better my fears and where they come from. "Yeah, that's really nice, Bia. But why does this have anything to do with Phantom?" Don't worry, my dear, we're about to get to the point of this post.

During the sessions, I talked a lot about my love for the arts and how impactul they were in my life. My couch told me I have a huge necessity to express myself and to help other people. I consider myself a very sensitive person (I feel things very deeply, even though I don't always demonstrate it and I make many life choices based on my emotions - not solely on them, but they are definitely a big deal for me), but I'm also very quiet and shy. And that's one of the aspects of Erik's character that I relate so personally with: we both don't enjoy talking and being surrounded by crowds. Our souls are a burning tornado of chaotic emotions, but we have a hard time trying to open up about ourselves using common words. But through the arts, we find a channel to transmit our feelings in a language that we and others can understand us. Everytime I draw or sing, I feel this wonderful and cathartic sensation of freeing myself from my fears and insecurities, even for just a moment, of revealing a part of me that no one else knew until now. And, just like Erik wished with his whole heart to teach and share his many gifts with the world, I wish to use my empathy and deep desire for self-expression to try to understand the complexity of the human soul, explore their infinite facets and inspire other people to find themselves just like I did (and I'm still doing every single day of my life).

Erik's loneliness, his fear of rejection and desire for acceptance and love are also characteristic traits that not only me, but also many others, can relate to. I mean, I definitely have my moments of peace and pleasure when I'm by myself and, after all the abuse, trauma and abadonment Erik has been through during all his life, it's obvious his issues are much more serious and complex than mine. I was raised in a warm home full of love and I was always surrounded by friends and family members who cared about me, accepted me with all my flaws and supported me when I felt lost and helpless. I never doubt that I was truly, deeply loved. But this never make the nightmare of suddenly, one day, waking up all alone and realizing that there's no one else out there to take my hand, to hold me tight while I'm shaking and sobbing uncontrollably, to ease my fears with a calming voice whispiring in my ear "It's okay, I'm here with you, you're safe..." totally disappear.

That's why Erik and Christine's bond is such a high spot for me in the story. People could talk all day long about how their relationship was 'gross', 'toxic', 'abusive', and that what Erik felt for her was nothing but pure obsession. I surely agree that what they have was unhealthy and wasn't built in solid ground or in the best conditions to become something safe and long lasting. It's a point of view to be considarated, but you have to be careful with it because, if you summerize all the narrative like this, you might risk to erase most of the symbolism, the complexity and other subtle, but still essential elements of the characters' development, making your take in the story, if I'm really being honest, quite shallow.

I just love the concept of music as a heavenly, divine force that is just powerful enough to bring two lonely souls scarred by death and the pain of loss together and unit them so strongly to the point of bringing new inspiration to their art and making them feel more alive than they ever did before. These two remarkable, passionate and gifted individuals, whose images in the mirror reflect each other's spirits, create a unique bond between them and, through it, find shelter, build a home and bring out the best versions of themselves. They are the light to each other's darkness. They are each other's angels of music.

And, to me, that's where the true beauty of Erik lies: he's not only a mere representation of our dark impulses, the mysteries and fears buried in our minds' subconscious or the ugliest parts of the human soul. Erik is the light we hide behind our shadows. He is our fascination for the unknown. He is all the goodness and dreams and potential we think we are forced to hide behind a mask because the society taught us that being different is wrong, that we should feel ashamed by what makes us special, that our singularities transform us into deformed monsters.

I have no doubt that if Erik was raised in a very similar environment as I was, he could have become the best version of himself and make a difference in a world, just like I dream to do one day. He makes me remember that I shouldn't let myself be shaped by societies' expectations and that I don't need to live my life to satisfy the others' necessities. If I want to free myself from these chains, so I can finally compose the Music of the Night, I need the courage to finally let my inner Erik, my true self, bloom.

#too many phantom feels #this bastard will never fail to make me cry 😭#the phantom of the opera #phantom of the opera #poto #le fantome de l'opera #gaston leroux #erik the phantom #erik poto #erik x christine #eristine #phantom x christine #poto e/c #my thoughts

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food4dogs · 1 year

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WEEKEND CHAT :: 9 JANUARY 2023 :: TV DRAMA

Hello all,

I'm trialling a new home for my YouTube Weekend Chat longer writings - especially for TV/MOVIES/BOOKS - as Tumblr makes the writing & publishing process a lot easier. I hope you don't mind; do let me know if you have any problems accessing these posts here.

I'll catch up with three big Netflix TV productions today; before that, a quick bit of news:

The new show by the team who brought us DarK was .. not successful enough? 🤔

‘1899’ Canceled After One Season At Netflix

We don't know all the reasons of course (we DO know that Netflix is scrambling to cut costs) - but it looks like cost could be an important factor in this case.

On Reddit, there was a discussion about it:

The sad implication is that this type of decision does affect how people watch (and will watch in the future): They will become more cautious and not watch the first season any more but wait to see if a second season is greenlit.

We haven't watched 1899 yet, but I believe it ends on a big cliffhanger, so naturally people are upset.

As I've pointed out before, Netflix is not the only service struggling with decisions over expensive series and long-term planning (we've seen equally upsetting decisions by Amazon Prime, for example). But Netflix does seem to go through these issues more frequently (which indicates there's a problem with their streaming & financing model).

So, what does that mean for the future? It means with more cautious viewing behaviour, many shows (especially smaller, more niche, more unorthodox ones) will struggle even more to make an impact and get renewed. It doesn't bode well for fostering creativity in my opinion.

==========================

OK, on to our first Big Drama series: Alice in Borderland (adapted from the manga by Haro Aso) Season 2. (Note: If you haven't watched S2 yet, there will be a few unavoidable, but minor, spoilers in my discussion)

Netflix has an article about the actors and changes for season 2:

‘Alice in Borderland’ Levels Up in Season 2

Season 2 really felt very different to us: in terms of production value, cinematography, choreography of fight scenes and much more, this was a BIG step up. It really looked and felt superb. 👍🏻

Question for those of you who have watched S2 : did you have a strong "The Last of Us" impression, too, from the way the Tokyo Borderland city scenery was portrayed, all overgrown? I just couldn't shake it. And then ... SPOILER ALERT! ==>

... there was the ... scene with the elephants! My brain just wired "Giraffe"! 😁🦒

==> END SPOILER ALERT!

Is that just me?

We thought the second season was overall better than the first (the first had various issues with strange pacing, sometimes unimpressive acting, the story veering around at times) and we were truly hooked.

The big divide for most people will be over whether they found the ending (and therefore explanation of the true events) believable and satisfying.

If you feel the need to either 'study up' more, or don't want to watch Season 2 but want a summary of what happens, then Netflix obliges with this article: Game Cleared: ‘Alice in Borderland’ Season 2 Ending Explained

I won't discuss the ending too much, since many may not yet have seen it. But while it is obviously pretty 'out there' - what else could it be with a story like this, seriously? - we didn't think it was unbelievable. In terms of bringing closure, a death game story like this with an apocalyptic setting really has its work cut out. What matters is the journey, and the final episode had enough twists and turns to satisfy, we felt.

You could call it a bit of an easy 'cop out' kind of ending. But what kind of ending can you possibly have for a story like this? I haven't read the manga, but I assume from what I've read online that the adaptation sticks pretty close to the conclusion (?).

However - BIG HOWEVER - there are enough questions that remain, unresolved or without clear explanation, to warrant some probing. 'Alice in Borderland': 11 Unanswered Questions After Season 2

The really 'teasing' issue is of course the zoom in on the Joker card right at the end. Woah - is that an indication of more Alice in Borderland coming? It could be, couldn't it? (I believe Joker is actually a character in the manga, but doesn't appear in the TV series. Maybe this is a chance to propel the story even further?)

PoodlePa and I obviously talked about AiB for a long time afterwards, and something strange happened. PP quoted - off the top of his head - some lines from a TS Eliot poem (ya know, the guy who wrote famous poetry a hundred years ago, including The Wasteland).

---------------------

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock - from "Prufrock, 1917"

Do I dare

Disturb the universe?

In a minute there is time

For decicions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

--------------------

If you remember the significance of the "one minute" in the AiB ending, then you'll see why I thought this was eerily hitting the mark!

Had enough of Death Games? 😯

Let's move on .. to more grisly deaths and murder mystery investigations!

I'll discuss The Pale Blue Eye next in Part 2!

#Netflix #Alice in Borderland #manga

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fairestar · 7 months

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the ending of your lie in april.. </3 hold on, howl's moving castle is a BOOK? WHAT? also, your name is made by makoto shinkai!!! i recommend suzume, weathering with you, 5 cm per second by him! :D dragon ball z and naruto is nostalgic, and my love story with yamada-kun at lv999 looks so cute, i just added it to my list!! to answer your question, i like 'darker' animanga :) like jjk, akira, ergo proxy, oyasumi punpun, aot, tomie… but i also love shoujo a lot! i really liked nana recently. I CANNOT CHOOSE FAVOURITES UNFORTUNATELY 😭 maybe naruto, pokémon (ahem you are definitely eevee in my head), or spirited away since those were my "firsts"? ANYWHO, sorry for the my wall of texts but i hope you enjoy my spam eheh very excited for your new post <3

YES! is a book of the same name written by diana wynne jones (one of my favourite books), it is very lovely and brings so much comfort, but it's very different from the movie. i remember i once read someone say the movie is how howl tells the story and the book is how sophie tells it, and that is just so accurate. it's the only occurrence when im happy the movie adaptation doesn't follow the book because it's so nice that we got such different tellings of the same story. and im always thankful to hayao miyazaki for making howl such a loveable character because book!howl isn't as dreamy. aaa, if your name is by makoto shinkai then im sure i will like his other work. i think of that movie often, it had such an impact.

im also more into more complex animanga, im currently watching death note and im surprised at how much i like it, even though light is so irritating. and i am loving jjk, ive just caught up with the manga (let's not talk about it...) and the anime is sooooooo good (the opening???? one of the best ive seen), im so excited for the shibuya incident arc to develop. although i must say that the first season felt like a combination of naruto and bleach (which i have yet to finish but i haven't been too motivated to do so because it is awfully repetitive, worse than naruto when it comes to the flashbacks). and about aot, ive tried watching it countless times but i just can't get into it, but i want to because i feel like im missing out on something good! although because it's so known i think i know about something that happens with eren and it's such a turn down to start watching it while knowing that (if what i know is accurate, but i dont want to make sure because that'd only make it worse).

ive only watched maybe like three pokémon chapters and all of them from different seasons, mostly because of landing on cartoon network when zapping as it was being broadcast so i can't say much about it but i just looked up eevee and it's so cute! i could see myself as it hahah.

and don't worry, i loved your texts! you are one funny individual and im glad we share this many interests!

#please read howl's moving castle i beg #🧸; yours truly #fairestar

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sevensins-stuff · 1 year

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I posted 2,030 times in 2022

195 posts created (10%)

1,835 posts reblogged (90%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@eternallydaydreaming2015

@lettheratsin

@rsmrymnt-tea

@otome-on-the-side

I tagged 684 of my posts in 2022

#ask me - 96 posts

#143 cupid - 31 posts

#obey me - 29 posts

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#romeo tag💗 - 12 posts

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#lol - 11 posts

Longest Tag: 131 characters

#my ultimate hc is that mc reminds the brothers so much of lilith because she took after the humans she had so much love for already

My Top Posts in 2022:

Just finished the event and I could give it a 5/10. The event honestly would've been fine without the keyed stories since they were incomplete. My biggest problem with the events now is that the devs are trying to force in every character they have (but no thirteen this time, surprise surprise!). And then you have Satan with his cat obsession and new to the crew, Barbatos' only other personality outside of being a butler as knife throwing. It was hot when it was confirmed, but now that's all he does if it has nothing to do with tea or baking with his adaptive son. Overall, the story was alright. Something obviously could've happened within the plot but didn't because of the sheer amount of characters they had to stuff in and introduce in a single lesson.

48 notes - Posted March 22, 2022

Hello, first time here! Can i request an MC that naturally shares food? Like regardless of what they eating they just go and "hey want some?" even if it's like, a bar of chocolate or a whole small cake (and will likely feed the other person)

The demon brothers react to an mc that naturally shares food

"Hey, want some?"

Lucifer

He doesn't really like sweet foods, but one small bite wouldn't kill him.

He obliges to the piece of cake you offer him and he takes the fork from your hand, feeding himself.

He does like that you think about sharing with him often, but he wouldn't let you feed him unless he were knocking on death's door.

He's overexagerating but he's too proud to let himself be babied by you

Mammon

As much as he wants to say no, he's a real sucker for you.

It's so hard for him to look at you while he opens his mouth so expectantly...all for a potato chip.

It's almost embarrassing to feed him since he makes it feel like something so taboo

But he's just too cute to refuse.

See the full post

53 notes - Posted February 6, 2022

Ficlets

💞=Fluff ❤️‍🔥=Smut 💔=Angst

Lucifer

"You're disgusting." ❤️‍🔥

"I quit." (Human lawyer!Lucifer au)

"It's a horrible world we live in." 💞 (au with 2 Fem!ocs)

"Don't touch me." 💔

"You make me sick." 💔

"I hate everything about you." 💔

"I am doing this for my kingdom." 💔

"Tell me what you are really like." (/F!mc) 💔

"Don’t pretend like you’re proud of me, you condescending dick." (/F!mc) 💔

"You look so sad when you think he can’t see you." (/F!mc) 💔

"Can you hate someone and love them at the same time?"/"Everyone is going to have to pick a side. Even you." 💔

Accidental touches (x F!mc) 💞

"How long have you been standing there?" 💞

Aspectabund (x F!mc) 💞

Spy!Lucifer x Intelligence!Reader ❤️‍🔥

“Red is the perfect color on your skin.” (/F!mc) 💔

Mammon

Heartache 💔

"Don't touch me." 💔

"We might as well get to know each other." (x F!mc) 💞

"Great. Really great, this is just perfect."/"Please, don’t make this worse than it already is." 💔

"How does that make it okay?" (/F!mc) 💔

"You seem to care for the human." 💔

"Don’t even think that for one second."/"Maybe you’ll stop missing me one day, but I’ll never stop loving you." 💔

See the full post

72 notes - Posted January 31, 2022

Headcanons

Slice of life

Not fully dressed

Demon bros comfort mc

Mc proposes

Solomon falls in love (F!mc)

Dirty texts

An introduction to Halloween

A guide to the demon brothers 1 (horns)

A guide to the demon brothers 2 (wings & tails)

Kissing in secret

Mc just wants to fight

Movie dates

Satan takes someone's virginity

Mc is comfortable and confident

Sharing chocolates

Team Solomon

Little shameful things

Levi getting caught

Relationship with Simeon

Chubby mc with Diavolo

Comfort with Levi, Asmo, & Simeon

Late night love songs

Relationship with Belphie

An mc that likes to share

See the full post

95 notes - Posted January 31, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

Headcanon based on this fun fact!

They weren't always as close as they seem. The prince had a certain face to keep on at all times, but the sorcerer was different. Free from any and all obligations, he could notbring himself to feel threatened by the prince's status. That filled the prince with a rage later titled jealousy.

The sorcerer would make his presence greatly known within the Devildom. Just as these demons promised their unwavering loyalty to the prince, their loyalties waivered with the pacts they made to the sorcerer. To the human, it was a joke, a dance. A game. However, to the prince who grew tired of his disrespect, it was a challenge. A challenge best solved, as he thought, face to face.

And so, he called out to the sorcerer and issued him a challenge he couldn't refuse. A fight to the death, as per demon customs. Winner takes the throne. Surely a difficult offer for the sorcerer to pass up. So he heartily agreed.

The prince was the first to attack. Hoping to get a quick hit in, he moved with the inhuman speed he was born with. But the sorcerer was not phased one bit. Not with the demon's speed. Not by his challenge. And certainly not with his jealousy, which he had anticipated. Blind with rage, the prince failed to notice when the sorcerer inflicted a shrinking spell on him. Although he did manage to get the first hit, it didn't have the impact he was hoping for.

The human reached down and pinched the collar of the demon's shirt to lift high in the air. Just high enough for the prince to witness the sour smile that painted itself onto the scorcerer's face. Humiliation, a fate worse than death. The prince quickly admitted defeat.

"I will admit my defeat. The throne is yours. Now end my suffering so that I will not have to live with this taint to my bloodline."

The sorcerer chuckled. "I'm not in the business of killing you. Or taking your throne , for that matter."

"Then what do you want from me?"

"A pact from that butler of yours. He intrigues me greatly."

157 notes - Posted August 13, 2022

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#tumblr2022 #year in review #my 2022 tumblr year in review #your tumblr year in review

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smokeybrand · 5 months

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Bone of my Sword

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cinemacentral666 · 9 months

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The House That Jack Built (2018)

Movie #1,082 • Ranking Lars von Trier #10

For the sake of changing shit up, I decided to watch the Lars von Trier filmography out of order. I formulated the order somewhat randomly, keeping the trilogies intact but otherwise jumping from era to era. Having completed his most recent work, 2018's The House That Jack Built, I can definitively say that this was a terrible idea.

[Ed. Note: In fact, it was such a bad idea that I quickly reverted to a mostly chronological viewing schedule.]

For starters, similarly to Peter Greenaway's later work, the director specifically references his own earlier work in this, inserting actual clips of films I've yet to see in the middle of the chaos. This is self-indulgence in its purest form and I am here for it, but damn if I could do it over again.

That being said, just as the enigmatic UK post-punk combo The Fall were famously described by DJ John Peel, I already feel you could ascribe the saying "always different, always the same" to Mr. Sunshine Lars von Trier as well. There are seemingly no parallels to his earlier work–aside from his devotion to utterly bleak and unending human pain — until, that is, you start seeing them everywhere: the handheld camerawork, his stark and repetitive use of non-diegetic pop music, period pieces that somehow feel like they don't belong to any timeframe, and so on and so on...

The House That Jack Built is actually the third major motion picture to have that title, The House That Jack Built. The first, a short silent drama film from England in the year 1900 clocking in at 54 seconds long, and the second, an 8-minute Canadian animated movie, are both direct adaptations of the nursery rhyme "This Is the House That Jack Built." The House That Jack Built (2018), if you can believe it, is not.

This is a 2.5-hour film about a serial killer played by Matt Dylan recounting his crimes to Roman poet Virgil as he descends the layers of hell. It's absurd by design but what's even more audacious are the sheer amount of themes LVT attempts to hit on here. Art, life, gender, death, just to name a few. Every pathway isn't a winner, but damn I kind of loved this for the effort alone. For as barebones as Dogma 95 attempted to be, the bulk of his career has been full-on maximalism. I've yet to feel bored watching any of his films.

From the opening of the New York Times feature piece, "Is Lars von Trier Trolling Us?"...

Near the end of my interview with Lars von Trier, I asked if he was trolling women in his latest, “The House That Jack Built.” He said he didn’t know what trolling meant, so I explained, even as I wondered if he was feigning ignorance and actually trolling me.

As if you couldn't take a man who looks like this at face value?!

This question is certainly related to the thread in The House That Jack Built about how only men are the ones who are born guilty. And it is 100% a troll move. The troll is that he's baiting people into wanting to think that this is also, somehow, an idealization of that sentiment. But I don't know how you could watch this and actually think that men are innocent? Matt Dylan is LITERALLY a serial killer. I never felt a shred of sympathy towards him. That some ideas are offensive does not mean that you need feel offended by their existence.

On some level, I might agree with you that Trier is a master pilot… who can't land the plane. I think he excels in the ultra longform because he needs the room to try. There are so many big ideas at play and so many different styles, risks and tactics that there's nearly no chance of it all coming together. The beauty, in my eyes, is in the attempt. And if his films are filled with hate, it seems like a self-hate, for having the audience soldier on in the face of all these miserable thoughts and compulsions which he's brought to life. I can kinda relate. Life is confusing and weird and full of sadness. That checks out.

SCORE: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

I’ll be counting down all of Lars Von Trier’s movies right here at @cinemacentral666 every Thursday through September 2023

#9 #lars von trier director #matt dillon #uma thurman #2018 #bruno ganz #horror #siobhan fallon hogan #sofie gråbøl #riley keough #jeremy davies #🇩🇰

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lee-scribbles-and-doodles · 3 years

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My Top Ten Overlooked Movies With Female Leads In No Particular Order

Note: When you see this emoji (⚠️) I will be talking about things people may find triggering, which are spoilery more often then not. I mention things that I think may count as triggers so that people with them will be aware before going in to watch any of these.

Edited: 3/16/21

Hanna (2011)

So, before I get into why you should watch this movie, I just want to take a moment to say why it's near and dear to my heart. Growing up as a queer kid in the early 2000s, seeing portrayals of people like or similar to myself on anything was rare at best. It was mostly in more "adult" movies or shows that my parents would occasionally let me watch with them that I'd see any lgbtq+ rep at all. Often times they were either walking stereotypes, designed to be buried, evil, or all three.

Then here comes this PG-13 action thriller with a wonderfully written main female lead who, at the time, was close to my age, and who got to kiss another girl (her very first friend, Sophie) on screen in an extremely tender and heartwarming scene. To say the least, it was a life changing moment for me personally.

Now that I've gotten that out of the way, Hanna is a suspenseful movie about a child super-soldier named, you guessed it, Hanna (played by Saoirse Ronan) and her adoptive (?) father Erik Heller (played by Eric Bana) exiting the snowy and isolated wilderness of their home and taking on the shadowy CIA operative, Marissa Wiegler (played by Cate Blanchette) who wants Erik dead and Hanna for herself for mysterious reasons.

It also has an amazing soundtrack by the Chemical Brothers, great action scenes, and it has an over arching fairytale motif, which I'm always a sucker for.

⚠️ Mild blood effects, some painful looking strikes, various character deaths, and child endangerment all feature in this film. However, given its PG-13 rating, a majority of viewers are presumably able to handle this one. Still, be aware of these going in.

Sidenote: It's recently gotten a TV adaptation on Amazon TV, although I have not watched it, and do not know if Hanna and Sophie's romantic/semi-romantic relationship has transferred over.

A Simple Favor

A Simple Favor is a "black-comedy mystery thriller" centered entirely around the relationship between two mothers, the reclusive, rich, mysterious, and regal Emily (played by Blake Lively), and the local recently widowed but plucky mommy blogger, Stephanie (played by Anna Kendrick). When Emily suddenly goes missing, Stephanie takes it upon herself to find out what happened to her new best friend.

It's a fantastic and entertaining movie throughout, with fun, flawed and interesting characters. The relationship between the two female leads is also implied to be at least somewhat romantic in nature, and they even share a kiss.

⚠️ The only major warnings I can think of is that the movie contains an instance of incest and one of the main plotlines revolves around child abuse, although both of these potentially triggering topics are not connected to each other, so there is thankfully no csa going on.

Edit: I legitimately forgot there was drug use in this movie until now. So, yeah, if that's a trigger, be careful of that.

I Am Mother

I became mildly obsessed with this movie when it came out. I Am Mother is a sci-fi film that centers entirely around a cast of two woman, and a female-adjacent robot who is brought to life on screen with absolutely amazing practical effects.

The plot is such, after an extinction-level event, a lone robot known only as Mother tasks herself with replenishing the human race via artifical means. She begins with the film's main protagonist, Daughter. Years go by as Mother raises her human child and the two prepare for Daughter's first sibling (a brother) to be born. However, on Daughter's 16th birthday, the arrival of an outsider known only as Woman shakes Daughter's entire world view. She begins to question Mother's very nature, as well as what's really going on outside the bunker she and her caretaker call home.

⚠️ This movie features child endangerment and reference to child death.

Lilo and Stitch

When I decided to add a single Disney film to this list I initially thought it was going to be hard but almost immediately my brain went to Lilo and Stitch, and specifically about the relationship between Lilo and Nani.

On the surface, this film is about a lonely little girl accidentally adopting a fugitive alien creature as a "dog," but underneath that the story is also about two orphaned sisters and the older sister's attempts to not let social services tear them apart by stepping up as the younger sister's primary guardian. Despite its seemingly goofy premise, Lilo and Stitch has a very emotional and thoughtful center. It's little wonder how this movie managed to spawn an entire franchise.

Despite the franchise it spawned (or possibly because of it), I often find that Lilo and Stitch is overlooked and many people only remember it for the "little girl adopts an alien as a pet" portion of its plot, and I very rarely see it on people's top 10 Disney lists.

⚠️ This movie could be potentially triggering to people who were separated from their siblings or other family members due to social service intervention. There's also a bit of child endangerment, including a scene where Lilo and Stitch both almost drown.

Nausicaä and the Valley of the Wind

Unlike the above entry, I did struggle a little bit with picking a single Studio Ghibli film. Most media of the Ghibli catalogue have strong, well-written, unique, and interesting female leads so selecting just one seemed like quite the task.

However, I eventually settled on this particular film. In recent months, Princess Nausicaä has become my absolute favorite Ghibli protagonist and I'm absolutely enchanted by the world she lives in.

Set in a post-apocalyptic world overun by giant insects and under threat of a toxic forest and its poisoness spores, Nausicaä must try to protect the Valley of the Wind from invaders as she also tries to understand the science behind the toxic forest and attempts to bridge the gap between the insects and the humans.

For those who have never seen the film, I think Nausicaä's personality can best be described as being similar to OT Luke Skywalker. Both are caring, compassionate, and gentle souls who are able to see the best in nearly anyone or anything. She's an absolutely enthralling protagonist and after rewatching the film again for the first time in well over a decade she has easily become one of my all time favorite protagonists.

Whenever I see people talk about Ghibli films, they rarely mention this one, and when they do mention it, it's often in passing. In my opinion it's a must watch.

⚠️ This movie contains some blood, and the folks who either don't like insects or who have entomophobia may not appreciate the giant bugs running about throughout the movie. (Although most insects do not directly relate to real life bugs, and are fantasy creatures).

A Silent Voice

A Silent Voice is an animated movie adaptation of a manga of the same name. While I've never had the pleasure to read the manga, the movie is phenomenal. It covers topics such a bullying, living in the world with a disability, the desire for atonement, social anxiety, and depression in a well thought out manner that ties itself together through the progression of the relationship between its two leads, Shoya and Shouko. It's also beautifully animated. Although very popular among anime viewers, I've noticed that it's often overlooked by people who watch little to no anime. So I suppose this is me urging non-anime viewers to give this film a chance.

⚠️ As mentioned above, the movie deals with bullying, anxiety, and depression (with this last one including suicidal thoughts and behaviour). If discussion of those topics are triggering to you, than you may want to proceed with caution or skip this movie all together.

In This Corner of The World

Another manga adaptation, this one taking place during WWII-era Japan. In This Corner of The World follows the life of a civilian Japanese woman, Suzu Urano, as she navigates simply living and her new marriage as the wartime invades nearly all aspects of everyday life. I think this movie is a good representation of what it must be like to be living as civilian in a country at war where the fight is sometimes fought on one's own soil. It was also an interesting look into pre-50s Japanese culture in my opinion. It's also beautifully animated featuring an art style I don't see often.

Despite it being well known among anime fans, I never really see it be brought up, even among said anime fans themselves.

Side note: I've seen many WWII dramas centering around civilians but they've almost always been about American or UK civilians. This was the first movie I'd seen that features the perspective of a Japanese civilain.

⚠️ Features the death of a child and limb loss. There's also a disturbing scene featuring a victim of one of the atomic bombs near the end.

Wolf Children: Ame and Yuki

This film follows Hana, a Japan-native woman who fell in love with a magical shape-shifting wolf-man, and her trials with raising their children, who can also magically shape-shift into wolves, on her own. It's a very heartfelt movie about a mother's love and the struggles of doing right by your children when you have limited resources to actively guide and care for them. All the characters feel unique and alive in my opinion. Also, the animation is so good that my sister and I initially mistook it for a Ghibli film.

Again, like the previous two anime entries, I don't see it ever brought up outside of anime circles.

⚠️ There's some child endangerment present in the film, although none of it is the fault of Hana as far as I can remember.

Roman Holiday

Roman Holiday is about the fictional Princess Ann (played by Audrey Hepburn), who while on a whirlwind tour of Europe, finally reaches her breaking point over having her entire life be one big schedule and all her words and actions being rehearsed. In the spur of the moment, she runs away in hopes of experiencing what life is like for other women. Unfortunately, she was previously given a sedative, meaning she doesn't get too far before it takes effect. Fortunately, she is found by the kind reporter Joe Bradley (played by Gregory Peck). Believing her to be drunk and unable to get an address from her (because she has none) he ends up taking her home for safety's sake and allows her to sleep off her suppose drunken stupor. The next day, he realizes who she is, and decides to take her on a fun sight seeing trip across Rome in hopes of getting the big scoop. Along the way, they begin to fall for each other.

This is my favorite black and white, old romance film. I think the relationship between the main characters is absolutely beautiful and I have a lot of fun watching it.

⚠️ I'm not entirely sure what kind of warning this film would need. However, it was released in 1953, so values dissonance will probably be at play for many viewers to at least some extent. For example, early in the film Ann is given sedation drugs by her doctor for her behavior, something that is very unlikely to happen today. Also, Mr Bradley deciding to take Ann home to keep her safe rather than call the police or an ambulance is a very pre-90s decision in my opinion.

#hanna 2011 #a simple favor #i am mother #lilo and stitch #nausicaä of the valley of the wind #a silent voice #in this corner of the world #wolf chilren ame and yuki #wolf children #roman holiday #black and white film #anime #disney #studio ghibli #movie recs #top 10

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thosch3i · 3 years

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The finale of Ultimate Note airs 12/9 (tonight in China) for VIP. Thank you to this drama for bringing me my favorite Iron Triangle ❤ Longer discussion of why I love it so much, and why I strongly recommend it to book fans (especially those upset with certain previous adaptations) below the cut, apologies if it’s not fully coherent at times because I haven’t slept enough and also it’s almost 1am. But your TLDR is basically: characterization, plot, pacing, relationships are the best of any DMBJ drama. Iron Triangle especially.

First, the pacing of this show is excellent. Pretty much all cdramas I’ve seen or heard of have been inundated with filler, and the previous DMBJ dramas fall victim to this as well. Ultimate Note took 36 episodes to cover 4 book arcs, whereas previous adaptations have taken more episodes to cover far fewer. There’s really not any content you’d be wanting to skip, as almost all of it is plot-relevant or character-relevant.

Second, the plot is the most cohesive out of any DMBJ adaptation. Frankly, this isn’t saying too much, given the novel plot can also be confusing as all hell sometimes, but Ultimate Note goes above and beyond in pulling in information from later books and, if I heard correctly, common fan theories, doing their best to fill in the plot holes left by the author to create a more complete story.

Third, the female characters are actually done well. (As well as they can be, given the source material’s unfortunate habit of fridging its women.) For example, A-Ning’s decision to go the Tamutuo wasn’t because she was ~in love~ with some man. She is a determined individual who has made her choice about her path a long time ago, and she is willing to risk death to achieve her goals. Even her death was done about as well as it could have been--it wasn’t drawn out to the point of it being sickeningly cheesy, and Wu Xie tried his best to honor her goals and bring her to the Palace of the Queen Mother of the West (even emphasizing to Pangzi, “if you died, I would carry you too”). In addition, Chen Wenjin wasn’t stuck in some ridiculous love triangle. She loved Wu Sanxing, of course, but her loving a man isn’t made out to be her entire personality. Her goodbye to Xie Lianhuan is poignant but not mushy. She’s steady and sure in her goals, and she knows what she has to do in order to save herself. Yuncai’s character, as well, I think was handled about as well as it could’ve been given the source material. Her relationship with Pangzi wasn’t overexaggerated and nauseating, and I think their relationship was more tolerable in the drama than it was in the novel overall. (In addition, I prefer how they handled her death in the drama versus the novel--instead of just killing her offscreen, they give her a redemption, and show how she’d grown attached to her new friends, Pangzi especially, resulting in her hesitation to deal the final blow.)

Related to the above point: no added forced romances that destroyed the female characters’ personalities and reduced them to just love interests for men, thank god. Pangzi and Yuncai’s relationship was already there in the novel, but nothing about their relationship was distorted in the drama to the point of being annoying, and Yuncai is shown to have her own goals for cozying up to Pangzi (at first, at least). If you want to get technical about “added romances”, you could honestly argue that it’s Pingxie. (And Hei///hua, but I’ll be honest and say they’re not my cup of tea, so I won’t really be discussing them. However, I do think their characters, while also exaggerated for humor at points, were also done well, and their relationship--while AFAIK was not a really a thing in the books at all?--was written in a way that the development made sense, and their personalities compatible.)

But anyway, while Ultimate Note does make Pingxie seem closer to each other than they were in the novel, we do have to remember that the novel is from Wu Xie’s point of view, and he’s a little bit of a blockhead when it comes to noticing how much Xiaoge cares about him. (IIRC, he wonders if Xiaoge even considers him a friend in Zang Hai Hua...after Xiaoge’s literally called him his “only connection” to this world in book 8.) However, from an outsider POV, it’d be natural for us to see Xiaoge worrying more over Wu Xie. Because from Wu Xie’s perspective, what did he actually see? Xiaoge dropping in to save him a few times and often vanishing or turning away right after, leaving Wu Xie with mixed feelings and confusion about his value to Xiaoge. Xiaoge being aloof before they set off to Tamutuo, claiming that he is a person with no past and future, and that no one would remember him if he disappeared. (Xiaoge smiles before telling Wu Xie that he’s on Wu Xie’s side--that’s a smile that the viewers see, but that Wu Xie doesn’t.) Most of Xiaoge’s visible worry for Wu Xie in the desert was also when Wu Xie himself was not there to see it. During the scene where the fungus was growing in Wu Xie’s stomach, he was entirely out of it while Xiaoge visibly panicked about hurting him, and after the fungus was dealt with, Xiaoge only stood off to the side--only to smile faintly to himself, relieved, after Wu Xie wakes up. (Again a smile that the viewers see, but that Wu Xie doesn’t.) But because from an outsider POV we can see all this, while Wu Xie remains partly ignorant, lines like “thankfully, I didn’t bring death upon you” and Xiaoge calling Wu Xie is only connection to the world seem that much more logical, now that we can see some of the depth and development of how much Xiaoge does care about Wu Xie.

That brings me to the primary reason why I love Ultimate Note, because the main selling point for me on any franchise is not actually world-building or plot, but rather the characters and the relationships between those characters. And for DMBJ, the relationship I’m always looking for--and the relationship that the entire franchise ultimately centers around--is the Iron Triangle. And the mutual trust and the strength of the bond between this Iron Triangle is unmistakable; no one is treated as expendable.

As much as we have joked about Xiaoge's double standards with Wu Xie versus Pangzi, the end of the Banai arc especially and the last five episodes have cemented the importance of Xiaoge and Pangzi's friendship. Their relationship is often the weakest leg of the Iron Triangle in DMBJ adaptations, but Ultimate Note has nailed it. Pangzi helps carry Xiaoge out of Tamutuo, and Pangzi's the one who primarily takes care of Xiaoge after he loses his memories. There's also Xiaoge's clear worry over Pangzi after Yuncai's death, and his assurance that Pangzi won't die as long as he is here in the later episodes when the two of them are separated from Wu Xie--showing that the Iron Triangle is a triangle; Wu Xie isn't the single connection that Xiaoge and Pangzi's relationship hinges upon.

Pangzi and Wu Xie's friendship doesn't need much explaining: the two of them bicker like they're brothers, and they could probably star in their own buddy-cop comedy together. Both Pangzi and Xiaoge are shown to be clearly worried for Wu Xie after the Xie Lianhuan reveal, and even though neither of them quite know how to handle it, they are there for Wu Xie. And of course, there's the scene where Pangzi pours out the water while they're waiting for Xiaoge to leave the meteorite. Wu Xie cries for Pangzi when they're in the Miluotuo cave and he chooses to carry out Xiaoge first, and once again, his worry for Pangzi after Yuncai's death is palpable. Even when Wu Xie has to leave Pangzi in Banai, he instructs Xiaoge to look after him (not that Xiaoge really needed the instruction, anyway--that’s his best friend, too).

Wu Xie and Xiaoge's relationship needs even less explaining: anyone who's watched the show can attest to how much they care about each other. From Wu Xie's frantic scrambling to grab the tapes upon hearing they were from "Zhang Qiling" and Xiaoge's introduction in the show being him stopping outside Wushanju to stare up (longingly?) at the sign, we see their relationship unfold in all of its quiet pining and lingering looks. When Xiaoge claims no one would know if he disappeared from this world, Wu Xie doesn't hesitate in promising that he, at least, will. Xiaoge smiles before telling Wu Xie that he's on his side, and Wu Xie vows to walk with Xiaoge until the very end. During the entire Tamutuo trip, Xiaoge is visibly worried for Wu Xie--when the parasitic fungus grew in his stomach, that worry was the most clear. But Wu Xie worries for Xiaoge too: insisting on going to save Xiaoge from the snakes that night when they all went blind; swearing that even if he faces death, he would wait for Xiaoge to leave the meteorite; telling Xiaoge that he will take him home. (Related: the soft, almost vulnerable way Xiaoge tells Wu Xie “take me home” in episode 31.) Not to mention--even when Xiaoge loses his memories, he still remembers Wu Xie. (And Pangzi smiles knowingly right after that scene.)

There are too many character/relationship moments I could write about, but one that stuck out in particular was when they were facing the spiders, and Wu Xie stopped Xiaoge from cutting his hand and using his blood to make the spiders retreat. At this point, Wu Xie and Pangzi don't know the extent of how Xiaoge was (mis)treated as a child (and used as a blood bag, apparently), but they know about how "A-Kun" was captured used as bait. Wu Xie and Pangzi would never ask Xiaoge to bleed for them, no matter what. Not now, let alone 10+ years later. (I won't name names, but if you know what I'm talking about, then you know.)

Which brings me to my main point: the characters in Ultimate Note are the closest to their novel selves I have ever seen in a DMBJ adaptation, and this is objectively the best adaptation of the DMBJ novel. (Whether you prefer another adaption or not is your opinion--I absolutely love the Time Raiders movie, even though that plot is literally all over the place, and Xiaoge is decently OOC--but Ultimate Note is the best adaptation of the novel, and the characters are the most true to what they actually should be.)

You can see the innocent and naïve Wu Xie, but you can also see the developing confusion, frustration, and anger he feels because he's been lead around by his nose his entire life. And he is angry in the novel; he is a bit of a hot-headed bastard; he's not just a naïve child. I remember seeing some complaints that Wu Xie felt "OOC" in the first episode for being so furious with his San-shu, but I think his reactions were spot-on with how he felt, and how he wanted to react. A similar point is the scene where Wu Xie slammed Xiaoge against the car--aside from just being some fun fanservice, in the novel Wu Xie really was furious at Xiaoge for vanishing on him and never contacting him after leaving the Heavenly Palace in the Clouds. A lot of the novel is Wu Xie's inner thoughts, which are difficult to portray in a live action adaptation, but he really did pretty much want to pick a fight with Xiaoge about disappearing, and Ultimate Note decided on how to express this frustration in a way that suits a drama adaptation. In addition, you can see how Wu Xie’s past experiences like the trip to Tamutuo has changed him in how he manipulates Panma into bringing him to the lake; and you can see how almost losing Xiaoge and Pangzi to the Miluotuo changed him as well, when he thinks he’s lost them for real in episode 36 (leading up to his decision to put on his San-shu’s mask by the end, despite the fact that “some masks, when worn too long, can no longer be taken off”).

As for Pangzi: even though he has scenes that were clearly exaggerated for comic relief, he has plenty of moments that build his character and the Iron Triangle’s bond. These include him pouring out the water while he and Wu Xie are waiting for Xiaoge, his grief over Yuncai’s death, his standing by Wu Xie during the hotel auction scene, and his almost mother-hen-like worry about Xiaoge while they’re entering the Zhang Family Mansion in the last five episodes. Not to mention, he’s really quite a smart and perceptive character, despite his goofiness: he sees through Xiaoge’s worry about Wu Xie, and he knows when to step in and liven the atmosphere (see: Wu Xie being all awkward about his gift to Xiaoge in episode 31, and Pangzi being there practically just for emotional support). Also in episode 31: Pangzi telling Xiaoge that he’s getting more and more humane (the implications about Wu Xie here are pretty obvious). All in all, Pangzi is a funny person; he is often comic relief, but he’s also a steadfastly loyal friend and someone who loves deeply and without regret. Initially we saw more of his humor, but we definitely got the depths to his character by the end of Ultimate Note.

Finally Xiaoge, who I’m discussing last because he’s my favorite character: for once, I can see the humanity behind the title “Zhang Qiling”, and in a way that isn’t OOC. Xiaoge isn’t treated as a free source of bug-repelling blood; he isn’t treated as some overpowered, untouchable idol; he isn’t treated as a rescue machine for whenever another character needs it. He is a human, not a god. For the rest, I think his actor’s words speak for themselves. (And now I really don’t trust anyone else except him with Xiaoge's character.)

Ultimate Note succeeded in capturing the nuances of its main characters: Wu Xie’s loss of his “tianzhen” and slow maturation to the man he will eventually become by Sha Hai; Pangzi’s outwardly humorous pseudo-caricature but inwardly deeply loyal and loving spirit; Xiaoge’s vulnerabilities, painful humanity, and the “heart” given to him by his mother, hidden beneath a seemingly impenetrable armor. This is an Iron Triangle that feels like the Iron Triangle, without needing say so much in words. This is an Iron Triangle with mutual respect and a friendship I can see and believe in.

In conclusion: Ultimate Note does the story justice; it does the characters justice; it does the relationships justice; and it did all this with a low budget and almost no promotion. You can tell the crew definitely cares about the source material.

My only complaint is that they couldn’t film the finale.

Rambling over! All my love to the Ultimate Note cast and crew <3

#dmbj #zjbj #ultimate note #pingxie #iron triangle #盗墓笔记 #终极笔记 #瓶邪 #the lost tomb 3 #shouting into the void #i was supposed to be writing my essay for grad school LMAO #got 2.5k words of whatever the hell this is instead #basically iron triangle superior is what im saying #this is the longer and slightly more grammatical version of what i posted on twitter a couple days ago #FUCK I FORGOT TO TALK ABOUT PAN ZI #you know what its 1am im not editing this now lol

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paradife-loft · 3 years

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Hi! I absolutely love the meta about NMJ's Empathy memories being unreliable, and it's got me wondering about how his qi deviation and death actually went. Since LXC says he saw the qi deviation (and Fatal Journey says it was in public), what's your take on how JGY got NMJ into his secret room so he and Xue Yang could use the Tiger Seal (and eventually kill him)? Fatal Journey has the Nie sect holding a funeral for him, so presumably NHS had /soneone's/ body to bury, but then in The Untamed LXC later says something like he 'hasn't heard from' NMJ in years and had feared the worst, so things... don't seem to add up? What do you think?

Aaah, okay, so: first off, I’m incredibly sorry it’s taken me so long to answer this, and I nonetheless very much appreciate your interest in my opinions here <3 If you’re still hanging around/following me/reading my blog, anon, idk how obvious it’s been that I’ve… not been having the best few months brain-wise, but that’s basically all I can offer as an excuse for why this reply is coming so late. Thank you for your patience!

So, okay, I think I’m going to try and tackle this question from a couple different angles. First of all, I think it’s worth looking at the material provided in the contained story of the 50 episodes of The Untamed on its own, to see what that suggests, before bringing in outside or supplemental sources, which is what for this purpose I’d consider spin-off movies, details in other versions of the broader MDZS story material, etc. to be. Also, I want to note upfront that while I do tend to incorporate different details and versions of events from both CQL and MDZS into my personal headcanon, what I write in my fic, etc. because I think they tend to provide interesting possibilities, elaborations, and what-ifs for a broader composite MDZS-adaptation-universe – for the purposes of this post, I’m going to stick to material from The Untamed and Fatal Journey only. Mostly, my reason for that is that there’s a few logistically distinct details of how the qi deviation happens in MDZS compared to CQL – one being, it happens at Qinghe rather than Lanling – that I believe affect the timeline of what Jin Guangyao is doing with Nie Mingjue’s corpse in the first place.

Alright so, in The Untamed alone, the evidence such as we have includes: the Empathy sequence involving the qi deviation in episode 41, and Lan Xichen’s statement in episode 39 recounting that he saw it happen himself at Jinlintai, and that after hearing nothing from/about Nie Mingjue since, he’s been “mentally prepared” - presumably, for the news that he’s dead. What I’m inclined to take from those two pieces of information, is essentially a story like this: NMJ qi deviates, very publically, and at some point while this is happening, he makes a break for it and leaves Jinlintai, and whatever presumably messy trail he leaves in the process ends up going cold for anyone trying to follow, with no NMJ around to be seen. With various factors at Jinlintai invested in retrieving him for attempting to turn him into a controllable fierce corpse, it’s pretty easy to imagine that, besides whatever above-board search party tried to follow him, there would also have been another party closely watching his movements for an opportune moment to slip in and scoop him up to bring him back to the secret treasure room for fierce corpse experimentation – hence why the trail would’ve gone cold.

Now, the actual scene showing the qi deviation itself doesn’t include multiple elements I’m positing or including here – specifically, the presence of a bunch of third parties actually witnessing it, LXC included, and then also the idea that NMJ ever left that one landing at the top of the stairs during the qi deviation at all. But, since we see in other parts of the Empathy sequence that the events shown can be… a bit more impressionistic than accurate; and furthermore since it seems reasonable to posit that the memories of the time when he has a literal break with reality might be even less literally reliable than the rest of them – I think those aspects can be reasonably explained away as that scene portraying more of what the qi deviation felt like from the inside, than what an outside observer would’ve seen. Nie Mingjue’s focus is Jin Guangyao, so Jin Guangyao is all he sees – up until Nie Huaisang breaks through that monomaniacal focus and is seen, finally, as himself.

(If you particularly want to pull out some feelings, I might even suggest the idea that finally seeing a distraught NHS was the thing that pulled NMJ sufficiently out of his rage to be lucid enough to flee – and that he booked it in part because he was terrified and ashamed to possibly hurt his younger brother, whether physically or emotionally by letting him see NMJ in such an awful state.

So then, aside from that: the question of what we see in Fatal Journey. I’ve actually been trying to find an answer about what kinds of mourning customs would be followed or even possible if a family didn’t actually have their loved one’s body on hand to bury, but thusfar my internet searching hasn’t really gotten me any useful information one way or another – if anyone reading has an idea or some good sources to point me to, I’d love to hear them! Everything I’ve read so far seems to very tightly marry the performance of appropriate rites and the presence of a body together.

That said, looking back through the actual funeral scene in Fatal Journey, I also wasn’t able to notice the presence of a coffin anywhere in the set, either? We see a memorial tablet, set up in the front of the throne room at Qinghe, and what looks like a brief shot of some offerings, and NHS stoking the fire, but in the couple brief scenes of the inside of the hall, I don’t think there was a coffin set up there? (Or, for that matter, out in the courtyard which we get a longer look at, either.) Compared to what I at least assume is a coffin with Jin Zixuan’s body inside during the mourning scene in episode 32, I feel like it’s reasonable to guess that, even with Fatal Journey included, whatever mourning rites took place at Qinghe after NMJ’s death, they may simply have not involved a body or a burial at all.

- And actually, now that I’m thinking about it, taking Fatal Journey into consideration overall suggests that it might ultimately be the norm at Qinghe to hold mourning rites without a body present – because per the lore additions in the movie, the Nie sect leaders go down to die on their own at the bottom of the saber tomb, and it sure doesn’t look like anybody had been going down there to retrieve them once they did? So, I don’t know, maybe there’s some sort of symbolic burial of something associated with the sect leader as a Nie custom, to keep things looking a bit more normal and less “we build a tomb for these resentment-filled blade spirits that eat our sect leader’s sanity”, and that’s also what ended up being done for Nie Mingjue? But, yeah, there’s no real confirmation happening even in the movie that NHS was able to come back with a body to bury, so I don’t think that necessarily contradicts the idea that NMJ could have gone missing during his qi deviation and never been properly recovered for a 100% confirmed death.

(That said, I personally don’t tend to incorporate, oh, most of the specific events or points of lore from Fatal Journey into my own readings on various elements of the story? Like, quite frankly, I don’t really like the movie that much, and I think it opens up a lot more unnecessary character and worldbuilding questions without doing a good job of integrating them back into the rest of The Untamed’s continuity (er, such as it exists XD). So I don’t necessarily have an opinion on whether “the Nie sect generally doesn’t do bodily burials of is clan leaders” is an idea anyone should pick up for The Untamed canon; merely that if you do take the events of Fatal Journey as canon, it certainly seems like it could be a possibility.)

(And again, big, big big disclaimer here that, e.g. if holding any kind of mourning rites without a body present is actually super Not Done, then what I’m saying with this part might be totally moot, and then well…. who knows, there’s plenty of speculation that could be used to cover that gap up – maybe “they never found the body” wasn’t actually widespread knowledge, but rather just information LXC had special access to due to the relationships he had with the people involved? – and some set of people depending on your preferences conspired to get another body to stand in for NMJ’s to allow them to hold a funeral? ….Which honestly sounds incredibly sketchy to me on its own, but considering all the other professionally Yikes-style desecrations of bodies that happen in this story…. who knows? I’m really just tossing out ideas here at this point, not saying I necessarily endorse any of them outside of “I think this could potentially work in some way without being out of character for anybody”.)

Anyway… I hope that answers your question, anon, and is otherwise interesting for everyone else reading? Thank you for the ask, and apologies again for taking so long to respond! <3

#ask a James #meta #no good things for the poor sad cultivators #The Untamed #Nie Mingjue #rambling #op #Anonymous

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alittlefrenchtree · 3 years

Text

Hiii, it's me again! I actually want to quickly move forward in my reading and not fall behind with notes. Because it makes less sense to write them if I already know what's going on 7 chapters ahead. So let's get started.

SPOILERS DUNE BOOK II : MUAD'DIB (Chapters 5-9)

Chapter 5:

*happy sigh 😌😌😌*

(learn silence, people. It's important.)

You already know how much I love this litany and if there's more in it, I'd be delighted.

Ok, I actually have a nerdy not really funny story about moving dunes. When the worm pops a bit later, Paul describes it at mound-in-motion and there's actually some truth about that. I've recently read an article (and I want to read more about it) about dunes and some scientist thinking that dunes are moving and communicating with each other (in their own mineral, sandy way of course). It sounds fascinating so I let you know if I learn more stuff more or less related to Dune.

This both hurt and feels relatable somehow, even if I don't know how exactly. I like the idea of things approaching from a different angle, of Paul being the only motionless point in a world that keeps spinning around him. The key then wouldn't be to change the world or even to do anything but only to adjust his own position in the universe so he ends up what he meant to be. And the sentence is pretty. The vision appeared to have shifted and approached him from a different angle while he remained motionless.

I still wonder how it works though. The visions and their changes. Do they significantly shift every time he comes close to death? Or say the litany of fear and survive? Or is it more realistic, the smallest details and decisions becoming the biggest changes? I wish Duncan would have been there with them and yet I like this journey through sand and survival just between Paul and Jessica. He probably would have been killed soon after anyway. Unless he's not really dead. Ok, moving on.

Remember when I said that Paul could have/find a way to control sand worms? And now he's saying this:

There are a lot of cues in these few chapters about worms, about riding (or whatever it's called) them with the hooks, about how they're in all likelihood the ones creating the Spice? That's why they're called makers? And that's what the Fremen who died with Hawat was about to called them? I kind of hope there is more to it though, other than only being respected because they're making the spice. There is another quote at the end of the chapter that intrigued me about the relation between Paul and the worms:

He looked at his hand. How inadequate it appeared when measured against such creatures as that worm.

I really like this chapter a lot. Firstly because I love scenes with only two characters so this is delicious for me. Secondly, I love reading about walks through endless lands with nothing but nature, so double yummy. Thirdly, there is a lot of informations. About the worms, and about how Paul is evolving in the desert. There is the rescue of his Mom but, even more importantly, how he rescues the pack. I think it's a very important scene both literally and metaphorically. It doesn't seem like an important scene but it really is in the building of the Paul's character. I hope to see it address in some way in the movie. Because not only he uses the Spice for another purpose than money and getting stronger or smarter or higher, but he uses it to take back what's necessary for his survival in the desert. If that's not adapting to Dune, I don't know what it is.

Chapter 6:

This is going to cause some trouble at some point, isn't it? Halleck and his people teaming up with smugglers, thinking the Atreides are dead. He's going to end up fighting against them without knowing it, right? 😔

Chapter 7:

Moooom, I love him so much 😭😭😭

But, I hate not knowing what's going on exactly and I hate it even more when it's about Paul and Paul's power so we're all going to sit here together, read this again and again util we've rambled enough to come up with AT LEAST five theories about something.

Like why. Why does he cross a time barrier at this precise moment? How does it work? He came close to death again so has he defeated another timeline where he was supposed to die? Hence the unknown territory, the darkness? Or are there defined blindspots? Around the worms maybe? Because of their spice maker job? Or is he just exploring and developing his new abilities? Learning to not rely only on his inner eye but on all of his powers and abilities? I need answers. I need to finish reading this book (books) and reading the theories of someone who's been thinking about every detail of them for the past 50 years.

I really liked this couple of chapters about Paul and Jessica's journey through the desert. You can really see Paul coming to terms with it. Fighting it, using it, accepting it, welcoming it. Seeing its beauty and his future in it. I'm looking forward this symbiosis. It looks beautiful.

Chapitre 8:

Ok, that was painful. Firstly, because I wasn't expecting to see Kynes die at this moment and secondly, because it was a very slow agony to witness. To be honest, I'm getting a bit tired to see characters die? It denies so much of the potential for characters development and for relationships development. The lack of it is going to become a bit sad for the whole story.

And it's heartbreaking to understand that Liet gave up his only chance of survival to save Paul and Jessica. I don't know how much he knew before, if he already knew he was going to die or if he thought he had a real chance but it's going to give so much power to Paul with the Fremen? If it becomes known that Liet died to save him and his mother, believing in them.

I supposed there is some kind of parallel to see here, between the previous chapter and this one, with Paul practically arising from the desert and Liet dying in it at the same time/shortly after? Like how Paul is supposed to take Liet's position of influence with the Fremen?

The chapter is also heavy on... social/political/ecological talks. Or one-sided conversation since the other side is dying. Not saying they shouldn't be there since they are the actual themes of the book but maybe it could have been made in a more natural way? Or not all at once?

But it made me think of Caladan. Which I could have done earlier, I agree. But Caladan is the planet of water, right? Water. The very thing Arrakis is lacking of and wants/needs. I would have like to see a bit more of Caladan, actually. How it was. How Paul was on it, actually. If he was as adapted as Caladan's environment than he seems to be to Arrakis'.

Chapter 9:

There it is. Paul as an outcast Duke finally facing Fremen forces for the first time.

This is a good chapter but I think the key point here is this:

I scrolled past a post the other day (without reading it entirely because of fear of spoilers), that was saying how people thinking Dune was about religion hadn't understand it because it was a story about propaganda. But, at the risk of sounding blasphemous and as a non-religious person... Isn't it kind of the same? Religion, propaganda, fandom,... At some point, there was someone with high powers of influence who comes to make people believe in something (whatever it's true, partially true, partially false or entirely false) to make them adopt a specific behavior, most likely a form of submissiveness? (@ tumblr porn bots, i'm not talking about you). What people make of that belief, it's what really matters.

What interested me more here is to consider this in relation to the opening chapter quote.

It's the eternal question with prophecies. Would a prophecy become true even if nobody knew about it or believe in it? Or do people, by acting according to it because they heard and believed it, make it real and effective? Did the Missionaria Protectiva create its own Kwisatz Haderach or would Paul would have been born with the same abilities and the destiny if they hadn't existed?

We see the future isn't set in stone in Paul's visions, but does his actions and decisions influence the shape of the future or is he just bumped from one predefined timeline to another? And are there really that much differences between the two? How many metaphysical questions can you write in one post?

Quick word about Chani before wrapping this one up. I think I'm going to like her? She seems cool at least. I'm not sure about Paul's reaction to her though. Yes, he supposed to be 15 but he's also something like half of a divinity so. *snorts*. Or maybe I'm just every day more tired of seeing romance being put everywhere and romanticized to the point of 99% people still thinking it's the ultimate form of love and relationship and the ultimate thing to achieve in life. OR maybe it's because everybody engaged in a classic couple-relationship immediately lost 12 points of esteem in my eyes. Don't know. Will see. I imagine I have to brace myself for Paul x Chani babies at some point, since it's 1964? If they survive that long. Very not looking forward to it. The babies, not the survival.

Anyway gotta go before I start wishing bad things to hypothetical fictional babies. Tschüss! 🌔💛

#DUNE FIRST READ

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thejestersjack · 4 years

Text

Japanese Drama/Movie Recommendation

Heyo this is my first time doing a recommendation on anything actually :,) anyways the dramas/movies am recommending are a mix of genres and thus there will be romance, mystery,family, psychology etc well let's get started.

1. Unnatural

Boi this drama is just perfection the overall concept is circled around a group of specialists that investigate the cause of the deaths of people which are mostly ruled as cold cases.

The main lead has a really headstrong personality about her that serves as an advantage as well as disadvantage to her in situations occurring in the plot.

The other side characters really play out their role well and boost the overall atmosphere of the drama.

2. 12 suicidal teens/children

Thisss this right here has got to be the most unexpected Japanese movie i have watched so far (based on my own opinion) it follows 12 suicidal teens coming together in an abandon hospital to find an unexpected dead body situated there and so they try to solve this unforseen mystery.

And please don't judge it by its title i can gurantee its not what you actually are thinking . I seee youuu~~

Please watch it~

You gotta watch it

Like seriously watch it.

3. Jimi ni Sugoi! Kōetsu Girl: Kouno Etsuko

[Ok first of all to clear things up the main lead that is Etsuko is played by Ishihara satomi and am quite a fan so yeah y'all are gonna see her like in atleast three of these recommendations]

Anyways~

This drama is like a ball of sunshine, comedic relief, romance and lots and lots of proof reading . It brings out a unique concept of proofreading honestly before watching this drama i did not even know the existence of proof readers (i apologize to all the proof readerss out there) but after watching this drama it really opened up my eyes to see the actual people who work in the shadows (not only in regards to books but to all the people who do not get the actual credit they deserve for their hard work) so yeah it reallly gives off a new feel to all the dramas out there and is like in a way a fresh lemonade on a hot summers day.

P.S { There is a sequel movie on this drama so if you are interested you can check it out also}

4. Dear Sister

Dear sister is revolves around the lives of 2 sisters in which the older sister is a mature, career women whereas her younger sister is more like a vagabond. The plot follows the rigid relationship between the 2 sisters and how its slowly reveals the jealous nature harboring them whenever they are near each other.

Satomi Ishihara again hehe ......... moving on.

This drama is really warm hearted and centers around family relations and the growth of 2 young women in society ( Note : The drama is not slow pased and does have some mysteries that really hook the audiences in later episodes)

5. A tale of Samurai Cooking - A true love story

Yup that's right this movie will suit all you food lovers out there not to metion it will not only fill you tummy but also your heart ( cringe) the romance is well played out and does not try to push itself in the plot.

As the title suggests its about a young women living in the Edo period who is a very skilled cook and is able to bring out the best of any ingredients presented to her it follows her second marriage life in which she somehow ends up with quite a selfish young man who only cares for what he thinks of what he defines as "right" or "correct". So the dynamics between them is quite off but that makes it all the more interesting.

The show not only brings out romance and family theme but also gives some history lesson on the food culture back in the Edo period and the political tension that occured.

6. Pure! (2019)

This drama has got to be the best drama i have ever stumbled upon by accident.

I was just bored one day ( as usual) and then BAM!! this was there ( not to mention i really love the actress Minami Hamabe and admire her acting skills and presence) moving on~

The plot revolves around an unknown and nameless J - idol who is elected to be a commissioner for a day in a parade thats when she accidentally discovers a dead body and is suddenly involved in a serial murder case with a whimsical detective.

I really love the dynamics between the idol and the detective they have a sort of sarcastic, passive-aggressive nature towards each other that makes it really entertaining to see.

Not to metion their intense narcissism

Amazing~~

7. Kaitou Tantei Yamaneko

Another mystery/detective drama to save your boring days.

And no it does not involve an actual cat detective.

The drama has an anti-hero so to say as the protagonist with his so called partner ("so called" cuz he's actually a police officer) and a high school student who is a genius hacker, quite an odd mix huh.

The protagonist has a really playful character to him and never actually shows his serious side that makes him all the more scary and mysterious ( reminds me of Dazai in a way)

There are lots of mysteries that slowly upon up and reveal themselves as the episodes go on and ola la the twist is just chef's kiss. ;)

8. Drowning love/Oboreru knife

[ Disclaimer: If you are the type who cannot comprehend slow paced as well as shifting scenarios that take time to actually understand the real meaning behind each scenes and are easily triggered with the themes of rape please proceed with caution]

Well now its time to reveal the masterpiece this movie is adapted from a manga of the same name and involves psychological themes that can make it hard to understand but gives a sort of fresh aspects compared to the previous recommendations. But let me tell you this the actor and actress did a really good job in portraying the emotions of the characters and am saying this as someone who has already read the manga.

The story starts with a beautiful and mature sixth grade (yes sixth grade) girl moving away from the busy streets of tokyo to a small town in the countryside where she meets a mysterious boy named Kou and soon starts to get entangled into a series of events ever since that fateful encounter.

And that wraps up my recommendation for now. I actually wanted to add 2 more but the capacity for the amount of images that can be added were limited.

Anyways if y'all want a part 2 i would be glad to do so.

Have a great day/night/evening/morning ahead

Peace ;>

#japanese #j drama #movie recommendation #drama recommendation #tumblr newbie #japanese drama #japanese movie #explorepage #asianteen

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sineala · 6 years

Note

I'm a different anon but I want those paragraphs of why you don't ship Steve/Bucky. I got into Stony by way of MCU!Stucky, so something I struggle with Stony fics (of any fandom) is feeling the Stony chemistry when Bucky is present as a character. With my very selective gay-ified memory of a very small slice of Marvel canon, I just feel like Steve probably wouldn't go for Tony if Bucky is an option? But I recognize I have very little evidence for this opinion other than shared 1940s life exp.

Okay. For the five of you who, I guess, sincerely want to know why I don't ship 616 Steve/Bucky. Here goes.

I get why people ship MCU Steve/Bucky. They had a lot of comics material to draw on when deciding how to present Captain America in the MCU, and they intentionally chose and shaped a story that would make Bucky incredibly important to Steve; the combination of factors they arranged is such that no one else in the MCU is going to be able to be what Bucky is to Steve, although certainly other characters can be meaningful to Steve in different ways.

The MCU started off by borrowing from Ults, as they did for much of the MCU, and making Bucky Steve's childhood best friend as well as WWII teammate. They structured the plots of the Cap movies so as to make Bucky very important to Steve in all of them. In CATFA, rescuing Bucky was Steve's motivation to finally become Captain America, in the sense of actually going off and using his newfound abilities to fight evil. And then Bucky dies, which they arrange so that we can actually see Steve grieving for him (rather than a scenario closer to 616 in which they both go down at the same time). They also had the advantage of knowing that they next wanted to adapt The Winter Soldier arc, a storyline in which Bucky comes back -- so, since they knew that, they were able to take the "man out of time" quality of Steve and refine it and aim it, narratively, so that Steve is adrift in this strange future, and even though he connects with Sam and Natasha in CATWS (as well as the other Avengers in the team movies) they really set it up so that for him Bucky is the person who represents his past, who knows the "real" Steve who isn't Captain America, who has all this shared life experience that no one else can match. After Peggy dies in CACW, there is no one but Bucky who knows Steve from before the ice.

Recently I saw while checking fannish news sites that Chris Evans described Bucky as Steve's home. And, man, if that's what they're going for, I can see it. I mean, they've done three movies where one of the major things that drives the plot, in each of these movies, is the fact that Steve has some intense feelings for Bucky -- the rescue in CATFA, the, uh, entire plot of CATWS, and Steve trying to find Bucky and keep him safe in CACW. Bucky clearly means a hell of a lot to him, and Steve's plots have centered on having Bucky as his friend and ally. Why shouldn't you ship Steve with this guy who is his home? I get the impulse.

And I feel like I should start out by saying all this because I see all these things that people like about MCU Steve/Bucky. This is my understanding of what people like about MCU Steve/Bucky. What MCU Steve and Bucky have are all extremely romantic things for your OTP to have; if this is what you see in them, I see why you ship it in the MCU. But I don't think any of what people like about MCU Steve/Bucky is there for them in 616. At all.

I'm not saying this because I don't like 616 Bucky, because I do. I like him a lot! He's great! But... I don't ship him with 616 Steve. I don't really see it, not when there are other choices I see a lot better. (Like Tony.)

Where I am coming from in terms of my familiarity with comics: I've read some but not all of Golden Age Cap and none of the fifties Commie Smasher stuff. I've read a fair amount of Silver Age and Modern Cap comics, including the 1970s Invaders run, which is my primary point of reference for pre-retcon WWII Steve & Bucky. After v1, I've read Waid's v1/v3, most of the parts of Brubaker's run that Steve was alive for (including WWII-set work like The Marvels Project), and, God help me, most of Remender and all of everything after. So I acknowledge that I haven't read everything with Steve & Bucky and it's possible that there's something with 616 Steve/Bucky content that I haven't read that would really sway me, but if there is, I haven't heard about it.

Right. So, first off, one of the big differences is that Steve and Bucky aren't childhood friends, did not grow up together, and in fact did not meet until Steve was already Captain America. Steve's best friend as a child, in a retcon from the early 80s, was a kid named Arnie Roth. Not Bucky. So right there, if one of the things you like about Steve/Bucky in the MCU is the intimacy of the fact that Bucky knows who Steve was before the serum -- well, he doesn't in the comics. They don't have that.

I don't know if Bucky's age in WWII was ever explicitly given, pre-retcon -- Brubaker has put his age at sixteen -- but he was very definitely depicted as a kid sidekick, pubescent if not pre-pubescent (to me, he looks like he's about twelve), in the vein of Golden Age kid sidekicks everywhere, until Brubaker's run in 2005. MCU was working with the age retcons already in (actually, more like the ages from Ults), so if you're a MCU fan, Steve and Bucky have always been close to the same age, and their relationship has been one of equal or near-equal teammates and close friends. The retcons have pushed 616 Steve/Bucky closer to the same age -- when they met, now Steve would have been 20 and Bucky 16 -- but this really hasn't been the case for the majority of the years Marvel Comics has been going. Bucky has spent the majority of his fictional 616 life being Steve's (dead) kid sidekick, and if you're going to slash them in 616 you have to either accept that this does not bother you and you're going to use evidence of their friendship from that kid-sidekick time period to lend credence to your shipping, or you're going to restrict yourself to only material published after 2005, of which there... isn't much. (More on this later.)

This is personal preference on my part, I am aware, but the mentor/kid sidekick dynamic is not one that does a lot for me in terms of a romantic pairing; I think I'd have a hard time seeing pre-retcon 616 Steve/Bucky in a way that wouldn't paint it as, uh, kind of a fucked-up thing for Captain America to do with his kid sidekick, on account of the age/experience gap. It is a squick for me. And, yeah, I know that Bucky's not a kid now, and that the retcon evens out the age gap, but I think the fact that there's so much canon (even recent canon ignoring the retcon!) in which Bucky is a kid makes it hard for me to... just ignore it. That's a me problem. I know. And even when he's not an actual kid he's still a sidekick, which is that same dynamic, just less extreme. It's just hard for me to get over that in 616; in MCU, the Steve/Bucky fans have never had to get over that.

And, okay, yes, Steve does have some intense feelings about Bucky in 616 -- but they're essentially a one-sided relationship, because Steve's intense feelings are basically "being sad that Bucky is dead." He feels personally responsible for Bucky's death; MCU Steve mourns Bucky, certainly, as a lost friend, but 616 Steve's power differential over Bucky is a lot greater. He was a kid, Steve was supposed to protect him, and he let him down. It's different. Anyway, we see a lot more dead Bucky than we do live Bucky. One of Steve's major characterization points, especially in early Silver Age canon, is that he regrets that he couldn't save Bucky. Bucky is basically a narrative trope, a source of pain for Steve, not a living character with motivations and agency and so on and so forth who Steve is regularly interacting with. Prior to Brubaker, Bucky was dead. Dead dead dead. Not coming back, never going to come back. So the comics weren't really structured like the MCU films are, where this hanging thread of Bucky's death in CATFA is neatly resolved by his return to life in the next movie -- in the comics, he died, he was dead, and he was gonna stay dead forever. MCU viewers didn't have to wait nearly forty years, real-time, to see Bucky come back after his death was retconned into Avengers #4. Comics readers did. This has some pacing consequences for the comics.

So, yeah, sure, 616 Steve grieved Bucky's death. He made Rick Jones dress up as Bucky and be his new teen sidekick (side note: what the fuck, Steve?). There are a bunch of plots where he thinks Bucky is alive again but it isn't really Bucky and he's sad all over again. Or plots where he's a man out of time and he misses the past and misses Bucky. I'm not saying those don't exist, or that they're not evidence that Steve cares, because Steve certainly cares. But the thing about the pacing of all this is that eventually they stop doing those plots. Over time he connects with new people, modern people, civilians and superheroes, his fellow Avengers and his new sidekicks. Eventually Steve settles in and lives in the present and his life is no longer about missing the past and he's finally accepted who he is and when he is. (I feel like this is something MCU Steve hasn't really had the chance to do.) And it's long after he's accepted this that Bucky finally comes back into his life. If they’d brought Bucky back to life in, say, 1965, it might have been different, but as it is Steve definitely has a place in the modern world by the time he meets Bucky again, and he doesn't have to cling to Bucky as the sole focus of the past he desperately wants to return to -- because that's not who he is anymore. So if one of the things you like about MCU Steve/Bucky is Bucky being particularly special to Steve in this way, as a continued focus of intense feeling, you're not going to find the exact same thing in 616. There's grief, but then there's acceptance, and then there's... a whole lot of time Steve doesn't spend thinking about Bucky. There is a lot of Cap canon and it's not all about Bucky. Or even mostly about Bucky.

Building on that, the idea of Bucky as the best possible romantic partner for Steve specifically in terms of shared life experience is one of the big draws of MCU Steve/Bucky, as I understand it -- the idea that no one else has this shared life experience. And this is also another one of the things that is absolutely not true of 616. When Steve came back to life in 616, it was 1964. World War II had ended less than twenty years ago. If Steve hadn't gone into the ice he would have been in his early 40s. There were a whole lot of people walking around with shared life experience, and the comics knew that and used it. Pretty much everyone he served with other than Bucky was still alive! His childhood friend Arnie was still alive in the 1980s! Over the years, Steve builds various friendships with a bunch of people he served with or otherwise knew in the war: Fury, Fury's Howling Commandos, Logan, Natasha, Namor, the rest of the Invaders! Granted, some of this has gotten more and more improbable as we get farther out from World War II time-wise but that doesn't make it canonically untrue. Bucky definitely isn't the only person hanging around Earth-616 who has served in World War II. If that's Steve's criterion, he has options, is what I'm saying. There are other people out there who understand where he's coming from. He's not alone if he doesn't have Bucky.

While I'm at it, the commonality of Steve and Bucky being super-soldiers together also isn't a thing that exists in 616 in exactly the same way. Bucky was never experimented on in captivity; he did get the metal arm and was naturally an excellent sniper. In Fear Itself he is, IIRC, boosted to peak-human when Fury saves him with the Infinity Formula, but this isn't a thing that makes him and Steve unique, because there are plenty of super-powered people running around Earth-616. I mean, if you're going to say that Steve should date someone who's a super-soldier because only a fellow super-soldier can understand that aspect of Steve, then that's a lot of people in 616, up to and including Tony at certain points in his life. (Because, yes, Extremis was a super-soldier program.)

There's also the fact that, well, if you want to ship Steve and Bucky in 616, they don't exactly have a lot of canon together. If you ship 616 Steve/Tony, they have a lot of canon. The Cap-IM Slashy Moments List has about 200 moments, and those are just the bits people think are the absolute slashiest -- Steve and Tony have been in, at this point, close to two thousand comics together. This is not the case for Steve and Bucky. If you're willing to consider pre-retcon Steve/Bucky, you have the Golden Age Cap comics, and you have the 70s Invaders comics, as well as a few flashback issues of Cap here and there. I really enjoy the Invaders comics -- they're a whole lot of fun -- and they do portray Steve and Bucky as great teammates who get along well, but not, I think, in a particularly slashy way. If you want to look only at post-retcon Steve/Bucky, you are limited to comics after 2005. Steve unfortunately died pretty soon after Bucky came back to life -- so they don't really interact -- and then Steve stays dead until 2010, and after that they... still don't really interact much. They never serve on an Avengers team together. Bucky appears only infrequently in Steve's book. I never finished reading Brubaker's run so there may be some canon I am missing but no one has told me about it being particularly slashy for Steve/Bucky; I am told they do interact some in Brubaker's Winter Soldier run, if you want to read them in a book together, but I have not heard anything particularly slashy about it or, indeed, most of their other interactions. As far as I can tell, Brubaker goes straight for the Bucky/Nat in terms of romance, when Bucky comes back, right from the very beginning.

It's clear when Steve and Bucky do interact that they're good friends and that they have fond memories of serving together, and Bucky is closer to Steve than the rest of the Invaders are, probably, but you're not going to find a deep relationship where Bucky is everything to Steve. To the best of my recollection, the last time I saw them together on page in a non-WWII setting having any kind of prolonged conversation was in Avengers Standoff and then Secret Empire, and for most of their interaction, Steve was Hydra. I guess there was that scene at the beginning of Standoff where Bucky cooked him eggs in that diner. That was Real Steve. And that was two entire years ago.

(Okay, the bit after Fear Itself where Steve punches Fury in the face because he's mad Fury lied and didn't tell him Bucky was alive again is pretty great. I will give you that.)

I know that there are two 616 miniseries that MCU Steve/Bucky fans enjoy. One is Captain America: White, and the other is Captain America: Man Out of Time. Cap White is a WWII-set miniseries but it is also one in which the creators have definitely gone hard for kid-sidekick Bucky, so I feel like it's hard to really get a lot of slashiness there. And then there's Man Out of Time, which as we all know tackles Steve's origin story, and it shows how important Bucky is to Steve and how poorly Steve initially fits into the modern world by making him determined to go back in time to the forties. And he does, in fact, go back in time, albeit to a time after Bucky's death. But the thing about Man Out of Time, for me, is that ultimately, Steve chooses the future. When he has to pick between the past and the future, he picks the future. He picks the Avengers. And at the end we see Steve at the Grand Canyon, where Bucky always wanted to go, and, yes, he's obviously thinking of Bucky... but he has, in the end, made a choice to stay with the Avengers, and that's one of the things I actually love the most about Man Out of Time. Steve gets an opportunity to stay in the forties and he instead makes a conscious choice to go be an Avenger.

(There is also the recent Cap annual if you want to see them interacting in WWII in recent canon, which is very good but... it's not, like, super-slashy.)

And then there's the question of how long Steve and Bucky have known each other. Being childhood friends in the MCU gives them a long, long time to know each other, longer than anyone else in the MCU could. At this point in the MCU, Steve has only known the Avengers for, what, six years? He's known Bucky for way longer than that. By the time he meets Bucky again in the MCU he's only been an Avenger for a couple years, right? The Avengers are the new guys. The situation is reversed in 616. Steve meets Bucky in 1940 and they serve together until 1945. That's five years. Depending on what you believe about Marvel's sliding timescale, by the time Steve and Bucky meet again, Steve has been an Avenger for somewhere between ten and fifteen years. If you think about the other founding Avengers (Tony, Thor, Hank, Jan) or the rest of the Kooky Quartet (Clint, Wanda, Pietro), Steve has known them two to three times as long as he's known Bucky -- and the lower bound here is an entire decade. He's known Sam for at least as long as he's known Bucky, and probably longer, since he met Sam in 1969 and that is way closer to the beginning of modern Marvel than it is to the current day. There are all these people whom Steve has had years and years to form deep and enduring friendships and relationships with, before Bucky ever came back into the picture.

So as you can see, the situation in 616 for Steve/Bucky is really, really not the same as it is for MCU, and as far as I can tell, everything that MCU fans like about Steve/Bucky just doesn't play out the same way in 616 for a variety of reasons. If you want a 616 Steve ship with the goddamn single-minded intensity of MCU Steve/Bucky, honestly, 616 Steve/Tony is going to be your best bet, because I can point to multiple major comics events that basically revolve around Steve and Tony and their epic feelings for each other, with the proviso that sometimes these feelings involve them trying to murder each other. But I figure if you like CATWS you are probably okay with that. Also, hey, if you enjoy extremely intense fight scenes in which one character, beaten badly, is lying there, unresisting, staring into the eyes of his former friend while his friend readies the final blow, begging his friend to finish it -- well, let me introduce you to 616 Steve/Tony in Civil War:

So, you know, there's that.

You might ask at this point, okay, well, what would 616 Steve/Bucky look like on its own merits? If it doesn't look like MCU Steve/Bucky, what would it look like? Honestly, post-retcon, I think it would look a hell of a lot like shipping Steve with, say, another one of his fellow Invaders or other WWII teammates. Something like Steve/Namor. (Although probably with less "I resent all the times you tried to murder my friends" than Steve/Namor would have. So maybe Steve/Logan is a better comparison, except I don't remember how much of WWII Logan remembers.) Buddies from World War II, a lot of camaraderie and positive feelings and shared memories to bond over, and it would be sweet, but there wouldn't be any kind of unique dynamic that Steve only shares with Bucky, and I don't think there'd be the intensity that Steve and Bucky have in the MCU. It would be fun. It would be nice. It would be the kind of rarepair you'd request in exchanges. But it probably wouldn't be a juggernaut ship.

Until they start pulling all of MCU back into 616, you're just not going to get a dynamic in 616 where Bucky is Steve's home. You're really not.

Also, uh, if you want to talk about 616 Steve's feelings about home, and who he associates with home, I think we all know that there is a canonical statement about this:

In 616 Steve chooses the future, and I'm going to keep on shipping him with the futurist, the guy whose voice was the first voice he heard, coming out of the ice. The one who's been there for him since he woke up. The one who gave him a home.

So that’s why I don’t ship 616 Steve/Bucky. It’s really, really not the same dynamic as the MCU, and if you’re looking for 616 characters that Steve has repeatedly demonstrated deep and intense affection for, as well as a lasting friendship and partnership... well, there’s Tony, right there.

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