#EVEN IF HE DIDN'T SAY IT IN THE EP IT DOESN'T ERASE THE FACT THAT IT WAS THERE

[beachboysnatural]

Just watched the crypt scene. So much worse so much worse that made me SO much worse

#HE SAID I LOVE YOU. AND IN THE SCRIPT THAT IS HOW CAS RESPONDED #OH MY GOD OH MY GOD DEAR LORD I AM LITERALLY GOING TO DIE. CAS LEFT AFTER HE SAID I LOVE YOU #EVEN IF HE DIDN'T SAY IT IN THE EP IT DOESN'T ERASE THE FACT THAT IT WAS THERE #spn #destiel

[tuiyla]

NATLA Ep. 4 "Into the Dark" initial thoughts

Okay wow, I think this is my fav so far in terms of changes they've made. The best ep so far is probs Warriors but this was quite bold in the changes it's made and you know what, the first episode made me fear they'd be too timid to actually lean into their changes but no. Just like Danny Pudi put his whole Pudissy into his role, this episode committed to its direction and I can respect that even in places where I don't agree with the changes. The only exception is Bumi's tests, a lot of the dialogue and other aspects lifted straight from ATLA didn't work because it felt more forced in this context than anything. And overall I think Bumi is my least favourite part of the episode and its adaptation.

I was glad to see Jet in this episode, too, even if it was brief. I'm still lacking stronger emotions and a stronger presence from Katara but I'm glad for this goodbye with Jet and how it sets up exactly what it needs to. We did lose Jet being a foil to Sokka and there was a major missed opportunity in having Jet actually interact with Sai but ah well, can't have everything.

Instead of Sokka foiling it out with Jet there's the surprise inclusion of basically Book 2 Chapter 2 which I did not expect but am pleasantly surprised by. This ep went hard on the music taken straight from ATLA between the nomads' songs and Leaves From the Vine playing over the Iroh flashback. And! And!! Oma and Shu are lesbians!!! This is not a drill, Oma and Shu are lesbians in love. If there was one thing I hoped for in terms of the live action show it was casual queer representation and I got it in the most unexpected but pleasant place. Love it.

And!! On top of the surprising but not unwelcome inclusion of The Cave of Two Lovers, the story is recentered entirely on Sokka and Katara. I'll share more thoughts on this later but suffice to say I always love me some Water Sibs appreciation and this was much needed in this version. I still take issue with essentially erasing Katara's mothering of Sokka but it's clear the impact Hakoda leaving had on them is the same and, most probably in lieu of Bato of the Water Tribe, we get this storyline with them. The fact that love being the answer was reframed as the love between these two siblings is honestly a galaxy brain change and decision and I respect the hell out of it. There's still much lacking in terms of really fleshing out our cast but I will never, ever say no to more Water Sibs content. If we were gonna spend so much time in Omashu and put so many familiar faces in there, makes sense to also do the Omashu backstory AND utilize it to shine some light on the sibling dynamic that otherwise doesn't have much room to breathe in the live action. This is the kind of bold new direction that they have to take and own to make this show work.

I also enjoyed the Zuko and Iroh stuff and that's some interesting inclusion of more Book 2 things as well. The way even their plot from the Winter Solstice part one ep was integrated here is quite clever and I enjoyed both the past and present Iroh scenes. We'll see how they handle the actual Zuko backstory and I do think this version of Iroh needs a bit more, how should I put it, softness, but there's much to like here. Especially giving Zuko the option to pursue Aang instead and having him choose to rescue Iroh. Similar to a choice he made in the above mentioned Spirit World ep but honestly, lowkey more poignant here.

That's it for me for today but I'll watch the second half of the season tomorrow. I have to say, so far it has at least provided some interesting new takes worth taking a deeper critical look at, and I don't agree with those who dismiss the show entirely. It has merit even if, halfway through the first season, it's yet to convince me it can justify its own existence.

#this sounds very positive and to note i do have major issues with the bumi stuff lol #but i really do respect the bold changes made in these two eps #feels way more cleve than just. having Kyoshi scold aang #natla #natla initial thoughts #oma and shu are lesbians 😭😭😭 #netflix avatar #the worst thing this show could have been is bland and it's not that

[girljpg]

i warched good omens season 2

i have a lot to say that doesn't really amount to anything so i'm gonna start typing at random

i liked the romantic vibe of the season and all the cute flashbacks. the dialogue between the leads was appropriately trusting and sweet. they really leaned into showing how they rely on each other. i also like that the conflict was pretty small in scale compared to season 1. it's not armageddon, but there were still some stakes if you include all the humans that almost died. although.... heaven and hell seem to know exactly where crowley and aziraphale are... yes, they fooled them at the end of s1, but wouldn't they idk. try other means? why didn't they get their names erased from the book of life earlier if that was something higher up angels could do? whatever

i like that there were real actual gay characters (lesbians even! who looked like real people!) even though I was worried they were getting together too fast, the reveal towards the end that they were going to move slow felt realistic. but them having to talk crowley into confessing his feelings felt ripped straight from a fanfiction. the lesbians comparing themselves to aziraphale and crowley was a bit on the nose. many moments did in fact feel like fanfiction. the dancing together, the "I need you!", the "We can just be us." all of that was cute and probably something i would've written idk could you do any better??? i am not immune to fluff. but also, that's a grown man. does it not take agency away from the character to have his relationship explained to him? and then they had the gall to not even show us this conversation. ideally he would've come to a conclusion about his feelings on his own-- perhaps after seeing gabe and beez fuck off to alpha centauri and going huh. i guess you can just do that. or even just through way of flashback-- oh no wait. all of the flashbacks were from aziraphale's point of view for some reason. why didn't azi get any realizations? you know michael sheen would've ate

the "i was wrong dance" well here's the thing i did clap

I thought the set of the street in london with all the little shops looked nice although there were always so so many extras walking around. is london really that crowded?

i thought they kind of wasted muriel's character. she seems to disappear for a long time before the plot calls for her to conveniently be there. i know she's meant to be a bit dim but surely she noticed 70 demons walking down the street.... ALSO i thought the book crowley handed her was going to be good omens but it. was not

looooved shax loved new beelzebub. who else. idk everyone was really giving it their all. megatron showed up for all of two episodes i think but was pivotal for the ending. what are you doing neil. gabriel is also doing. things. they wasted jon hamm as well by making him a frustrating himbo. one of the only scenes i liked with him was crowley yelling at him for trying to kill aziraphale in s1 and then trying to jump out a window and then calling crowley nice. but that whole bit felt more like a crowley scene than a gabe scene. he does get a mug with his name on it tho and hypocritically falls in love with the fly lady so all is forgiven.

i'm gonna be real with you all.. the way they filmed the kiss felt awkward. the way the camera swings around and crowley grabs him felt very....... rehearsed? a little unnatural, i think. the way crowley LUNGES. idk i need to rewatch the last ten minutes again. and it went on so long. we got like three of four angles on it like whoah. but the reaction face we got out of michael sheen. mamma mia

"I forgive you." asdejgkasdgahdgdfs when i say i paused the ep for extended laughter lmfaoooooo. clutching a wine bottle to my chest and cheering. this fucken guy. babygirl is distraught for all of about ten seconds before it's time to start the new job. i did start yelling at my screen after that point. he had no right to look crowley dead in the eye across the street and not run back to him. COWARRD. i understand why he did it but COWARD. why, after sooo long, would you think crowley would jump for joy to be an angel again... i watched all eight minutes of the credits certain that there was going to be more but nope. catch ya next time for the second coming (of jesus?? <- does not know things about the bible)

so i was pretty satisfied with that watch. i wish the season was longer than 6 episodes but tbh they had to make this story from nothing and it shows in the romcom hijinks and threadbare mystery. but it was fun and went by quickly. then i check on the fandom and they're, get this, upset for some reason about this ending. there's no pleasing some fans i guess. good job neil you've pissed off the people who wanted them to kiss AND the people who didn't want them to kiss, bravo! hopefully in a month or so everyone will cool down about it. and if not well. plenty of fanfic fodder until season 3. not that i read good omens fanfic, but it'll be there. just be happy there was a kiss alright!!!!!!?!!!1

(i just know we're going to get a flood of people calling aziraphale a big meanie and crowley a poor little scrimbly blimbo meow meow who got rejected. booooo stop that right now)

#go2 spoilers #go2 #feel free to come into my inbox if you felt the same or hate my guts forever it's up to you

[danko420]

Fallout TV thoughts

Under a cut because I rambled... SPOILERS AHEAD BE WARNED

So seeing people complain about morality of certain writing choices in the fallout show- like Cooper saying there will always be factions fighting each other etc (there's been other examples that's just one I've seen most recently)

and its like... yeah, but he's wrong? Everyone in this world is wrong? Everyone is a product of their traumatizing experiences and upbringing... Even the vaulties, even Moldaver, and the BoS etc...

Like for example I didn't expect to like Thaddeus when he showed up (after like... his initial intro in ep 1), but then he starts talking about HIS traumatic experiences and they give him more characterization and its like yeah, he's just another fucked up little guy in a fucked up world. The people in power when he was growing up didn't protect him from the pecking order (in fact probably encouraged it) so he was bullied and then in turn bullied Max...

I guess that's my takeaway from the show, everyone has a horribly skewed perspective, they're working with ONLY the info they were taught (except Coop I guess, but he's ALSO only working with the info he was given as a pre-war American citizen)

Like they're all cults, the vault is a cult, the BoS is a cult, hell even the pre-war american attitudes were cultish. None of their opinions are true or valid, they shouldn't need to spell that out, you should be able to tell their opinions are wrong just with like... your own logic and critical thinking skills...

ALSO, I saw someone complain about how we should never know who dropped the bombs and the fact is we still don't? We just know who's intention it was to drop the bombs... doesn't mean they got to it first. I guess we'll see what unfolds?

idk all in all I liked it? I think it's a good starting point anyway, and if they're allowed to get more political they should but I also know studios may not let them... I feel like that's the issue with every big piece of media lately (movies, shows, games, etc), they can't be truly controversial (in any way that makes a real difference) because the people funding it won't let them.

Still they had plenty of jabs against capitalism/corporate monopolies so like, I don't think they were pulling as many punches as people seem to suggest? They just had to be more coy with it- or have the person delivering those lines say it in a heroic way (because from their perspective they're the heroes- that doesn't mean they're right)

ALSO ALSO (Last thought) Seasons used to be 24 eps long... then they got cut down to 12 and now 8... that's not enough time to meaningfully flesh out a story with this many moving pieces? They have to squeeze in as much as they can in every moment and sometimes that means they can't spell things out as explicitly as they may have wanted to.

I wish shows could be 24 eps again I feel like we'd be really able to get into the nitty gritty of the world and characters with that kind of time...

OH OH FINAL LAST THOUGHT

Someone was complaining about it erasing pre-war racism (which like yeah huge issue) but they were also acting like the bombs dropped in the actual 60s and that's not how the fallout timeline works... the bombs dropped in 2077, in the FUTURE from our perspective, because the timeline split IN the 60s and their world went hard on developing Nuclear tech whereas we did not. Their culture didn't change over those 100+ years, which is weird to me but they wanted the 60s aesthetic so I'll let it slide as a like... everyone got so passionate about developing tech they stopped investing energy in fashion or culture? (Yeah doesn't make sense to me either) but yeah the point is that's another 100 years for race relations to change, and although there's def canonical anti-Asian racism in the games (because the communists they were fighting were Chinese instead of Russian) but idk it's possible the world changed enough for a black woman to be in a position like Barb.

THAT'S ALL FOR NOW

(also also also I liked Maximus, I saw people saying he was boring or they hated him because hes BoS but that isn't his fault, he was basically stolen as a child and BoS is A BAD ORGANIZATION. THEY DO BAD THINGS. They're not as cartoonishly evil as the Enclave (literally tossing puppies in a furnace- again cartoonish but a very fast and efficient way of showing THESE PEOPLE ARE VERY EVIL when introducing them) but yeah Max is a victim of the people who raised him but they weren't able to totally break the gentleness in him. His inherent goodness and desire to help or save people the way he was saved remains intact. It's a cult, he's been brainwashed by a cult, but he's still soft spoken and he likes popcorn and hot showers as soon as he gets a chance to experience them. He's an interesting character and I can't wait to see how he handles things in the next season!!!

#fallout spoilers #fallout tv

[shunsellon]

you know i had to send shundan so we can get started on a funny note lmao

HKGJHDFSKJGHFDG PLEASEEEE you are so funny always. anyway.

am ngl i shipped this like four years ago and even drew fanart for it. i think part of it was peer pressure - a lot of people, at least those i was surrounded by at the time, shipped them. even now shundan is considerably more popular than it was back in the early fandom, accounting for the relative fandom size in both. so i shipped it and thought it was fun up until some point last year when i started to rewatch the show again.

i can see why people ship shundan. there's the general appeal of the childhood best friends trope, them working together to make the bakugan game, ep 20, shun attempting to save dan on his own mid-s1, shun catching dan in ep 51, the hilarious "divorce" in ms1. that being said, i dislike how a lot of the shippers ship it.

no, dan is not the most important person in shun's life, and is not his most important dynamic with in the show. that's phoenix. no, dan is not particularly empathetic or super caring of shun. he let their friends think shun was egregious cunt for skipping their zoom meetings instead of simply telling them he lost his mom. he did not care when phoenix left shun in s2 and was visibly upset, he shrugged and laughed. he was the first to get physical with shun in ms1 when shun made the very valid point of dan stepping away from bakugan to ensure other people's safety. shun did not care when dan went missing thrice in new vestroia - it was always either marucho or mira (telling ace and marucho to not fall for shadow impersonating mira and dan, agreeing with ace telling mira that dan doesn't need to be looked for mid-nv, disagreeing with ace saying they have to look for mira and dan first and splitting off from the group with baron to look for the BT System). their whole "childhood besties" part is also all tell no show for me. sometimes it doesn't even feel like they're friends at all.

a lot of the shundan portrayals i've seen are actually how shun and phoenix, runoalice, maruren, or dan and marucho are in canon. which is fine, go have fun, but it's annoying when i've seen people insist that these portrayals are canon. no shun did not give a fuck when dan first disappeared in new vestroia, he took a nap. who gives a fuck about dan when phoenix is missing/in danger? not shun, that's for sure. erasing phoenix's importance to shun to put dan of all characters in her place is cringe, sorry not sorry.

also, i'm pretty sure a big part of why shundan is popular rn is the fact that they're both twinks. like if marucho didn't look the way he did he'd be shipped around way more, especially with dan. but nah, marucho doesn't look like shun and it's shun who looks like shun, so danshun is the one that gains popularity. annoying as hell.

anyway tl;dr i hate this ship and think its overrated and some shippers are delusional and annoying and cringe with how they think this is the bakugan version of narusasu or whatever "it's so misogynistic it's gay" m/m shonen anime ship. they are shipping the bakugan version of kl*nce. the ship they're looking for is either runoalice or maruren. ship those.

send me a ship and i'll give you my (brutally) honest opinion on it

#bakugan #anti shundan #LMAO #marukrawler #answered

[blaintism]

Not to like cause controversy but I always find it weird when Blaine antis single out prom queen (aside from the obvious) because I think Kurt does some not great stuff to Blaine in this episode.

He outs Blaine's trauma to Burt and Finn, and Blaine honestly looks so uncomfortable in that moment that it's hard to watch.

And after telling Blaine they don't have to go to prom if it makes him uncomfy, essentially then guilt trips Blaine because he's not thrilled about an outfit that will get them attention.

Noticing these things doesn't make me anti Kurt (love him in fact) because there's context outside of what I've said right there, not least of which he's literally like a human teenager, but a bunch of other stuff.

Blaine antis can see the nuance in Kurt's reactions to stuff even when he does not great things but can't give Blaine the same grace. Especially in this specific ep when Blaine's whole mini arc is about learning to face his own demons by offering the courage to Kurt that he didn't have for himself (in his eyes)

Anyway I guess tldr it's the hypocrisy that gets me more than anything.

Also I think a lot of Kurt stans erase Kurt's harder edges when discussing him but that's a rant for another day.

i agree with basically everything you said!!!

i think the truth of the (very, very small) conflict in prom queen is that they’re both right. or at least both are coming from extremely valid places. kurt may be disappointed at blaine’s lack of enthusiasm, and blaine may feel uncomfortable about the entire situation, but if you allow yourself to look at both of their perspectives without incredible bias neither is being unreasonable. blaine had the crap beat out of him. it’s a sad truth that this kids first thought in this situation is the danger going to prom with his boyfriend would put him in. on the flip side, kurt doesn’t want to change himself for bullies and really wants this thing to be okay.

but i do think he’s not thinking about blaine’s feelings as well as he could. which is why i hate that they leave it off on ‘i’m wearing this and you can come if you want.’ maybe seeing them talk that out would be nice. plus the fact that when blaine tells him about the whole thing the first thing he says is ‘this is perfect now we can stand up to the bullies at my school.’ what a weird line lol

but it’s the truth at the end of the day that a lot of these people give way more consideration to kurt’s (or sebastian’s???) nuances than they blaine’s. which is sinister to me. i think a flaw that makes kurt compelling is that he DOES have a tendency to be a little manipulative when something has upset him. i think it’s a very real and relatable thing especially for a character at that age!!

#ask #anonymous

[gillianthecat]

The Devil Judge: Episode 10

I just finished The Devil Judge and something about this show compelled me to take copious notes - it had emotional intensity and layers of mystery. These are long and rambling, so they're likely not of interest to anyone else, but since I spent all that time writing it I decided, why not post it. Perhaps someone will find it interesting.

Below are my moment-to-moment reactions, predictions and analysis as I watched episode 10.

eps 1&2  ep3  ep4  ep5  ep6  ep7  ep8  ep9   ep10  ep11  ep12  ep13  ep14  ep15  ep16

I wrote about my initial impressions, up to episode 5, here and here.

This is cleaned up only slightly. I followed the spelling given in the Viki subtitles. I mostly don't explain what I'm reacting to, so this will probably only make sense if you've seen the episode recently. Occasionally I give timestamps. 

either i didn’t take notes in the first half or they got erased

(29:00) i love this family <3

this doesn't seem like smart way to ambush someone, but what do i know

this whole ambush makes no sense but yahon is fucking hot, and ga on and su hyeon are good movers

(35:23) now Minister Cha is in red too

(38 ish). Kang is so fucking fond.  He likes Ga-On so much. heart eyes. that smile

attorney Go!

(40:24) green.  I'm inclined toward my plants represent Ga-On's natal family theory

'i am also strange'  'he is not rich when you get know him'   baby boy you are in loooove

poor Su-Hyeon.  I think she knows Ga-On is falling for Yo-Han.  even if she doesn't realize it's romantic, but i think she does.  and then he says "and i have you, Su-Hyeon" after she leaves (sad face)

Have I mentioned how much I love Seon-Ah’'s theme music?  red dress, red necklace (drops of blood around the neck that Y choked)

I feel like it's not just Cha and Seon-ah's clothes? there is more and more red being sprinkled in everywhere?  that bamboo spear guy's shirt, these chairs in the president's office. or maybe i just didn't notice it before

Ga-On planned this whole tactic,  I wonder what it's going to be?  I assume he's the one who decided to isolate the bamboo spear guy from his followers, from anyone he can whip up. and calling him by the name he hates. seems like a good strategy with a wannabe demagogue 

I mean, the thing about this sort of fascist in real life, is they're never talking to the court, they're talking to their followers, they’re painting themselves as persecuted as part of a conspiracy.  and this dude is in fact being persecuted as part of a conspiracy. I think in real life this would be the worst mistake - give him a national platform.  because to everyone else he sounds ridiculous and evil, but to his followers and those that could be radicalized, they're going to be whipped up.

oh well actually... both Ga-On and the show may be cleverer than i expected... Yes! fucking defang the fasicist! 

Attorney Go has such a good poker face

I don't know if this solves the facist nationalist problem though.  but kang doesn't really care about that, he just wants his enemies taken down.  

1:02:00 and yet again, Ga-On asks the question on my mind.  I'm starting to trust this show on the political issues?  At least a little?  maybe i've been stockholmed*  Or maybe now that they're not trying to keep judge kang so mysterious, they're freer to be more coherent about the politics.  

Kang: "A monster is not created.  A monster that was already there opens its eyes on its own volition."

Also, Yo-Han is always seductively stretching across furniture when he's near Ga-Onn.  Ga-On is usually contained, standing or sitting.

right after that “monster”  line, we cut to Seon-Ah doing yoga in her glass house

She's framed so vulnerably here, exposed to the outside.

oh! Minister Cha is here. oh! It was a surprise to Seon-Ah too.

Neither of them are in red here.

She's actually a good actress, I think.  I mean, I'm not surprised, but it was hard to tell for sure since she almost always has on her mask.  she didn't even really have to take time to adjust her performance of self when Cha arrived.  

but her face when Cha threatens her with her past (1:04:56) and her real fear and anger she lets show after cha leaves

cha getting a hit in by humiliating her by referencing her past as a maid? that would have parallels to bamboo guy.  but perhaps she's just scared that cha has dug so deeply, or that kang has revealed.

oh fuck.  no, she's so angry because she feels humiliated.  her past as a not powerful person is deeply humiliating and shameful to her

Is she actually going to try to kill Yo-Han?  we have 6 episodes left, we're at the 63% mark

eps 1&2  ep3  ep4  ep5  ep6  ep7  ep8  ep9   ep10  ep11  ep12  ep13  ep14  ep15  ep16

#the devil judge episode 10 #kind of like liveblogging #the devil judge reaction #the devil judge #the devil judge spoilers #reaction by gillianthecat

[neversetyoufree]

I have seen people complain about the VnC anime removing the bi material, but the scene with Domi and the maid was just for laughs and they never interact after that. And the anime still makes kinda obvious Vani wanted that blood drinking due to Noé drinking from Domi, just made it subtler. Personally, I would only complain if they removed Vani's jealous face when hearing Dominoe and his comment at the staircase. The OP, ED and ep 6 show the anime is all for Vanoé. Your thoughts?

Okay, so I realize that you sent this ask all the way back when episode 6 aired, and I'm just now answering it after the whole anime has finished, but bear with me. I actually think I'm better equipped to answer this question now that the anime in its entirety has aired, and we know bones doesn't have any surprises up their sleeve.

Overall, I think this issue could go either way. I don't think that the anime purposefully singled out bi/queer content for removal, but at the same time, I totally get why people have been mad, because a lot of queer content has in fact been removed or handled oddly. Not all of it! But enough to notice. Enough to make it pretty clear that, even if Bones wasn't trying to censor anything, they don't care about conveying VnC's queerness either.

Personally, I wasn't that mad about the removal of Domi flirting with Nox, because I get that it's an unimportant scene that was cut for time, but at the same time, that's kind of the whole issue. Dominique feels pretty undeniably queer when you read the VnC manga, but a lot of that just. got cut for time, and so it no longer feels that way in the anime. She's no longer introduced by flirting with a woman, and we don't hear her talk about how she's "only popular with girls." They do keep in her commentary about Jeanne being cute and rather dazzling, and they leave in the dance, but it still lands differently. The dance has a built-in explanation of her trying to torment Noé a bit, since she thinks he has a crush on Jeanne, and could be argued away as straight if you really wanted to.

So in Dominique's case, I don't think they set out to erase her bisexuality. I think they cut a few small bits about her early on, not realizing how important those moments were for establishing her queerness in fans' eyes, and as a result her anime incarnation feels a bit less definitively bi.

And though it's not an issue of bisexuality, the same thing also happens in the last few episodes with Luna. Because (I assume) it didn't smoothly into the fight without the chapter break, and because they didn't have time, Bones cut the flashback to Luna discussing that they're neither a man nor a woman. I believe we still hear Vanitas call them a woman and Misha call them father, so anime-only fans can at least draw the conclusion that something interesting is happening with Luna and gender, but an unexplained, mildly confusing implication is a very different thing from having a character explicitly say "I am nonbinary," which manga Luna more or less does.

Again, I'm inclined to pin that on Bones simply cutting the scene for time without consideration for queerness, rather than explicit censorship, but still, you can see why people might be frustrated/feel as though it was censored.

Finally, where Vanitas and Noé are concerned, things get complicated, since even in the manga everything is subtext. However, I do think their relationship comes across rather differently in the anime than it does in the manga, and that includes a loss of some of the queer-coding.

I have a whole lot to say about this topic, and it'll get its own post someday, but to summarize, VnC the manga is centered on Vanitas and Noé's relationship, and the anime is much less so. Through a long list of tiny tweaks and small omissions, most of them justifiable in isolation, the anime loses a lot of what makes Vanitas and Noé's manga relationship feel so well-developed and so close. We do get lots of moments preserved (or even occasionally expanded upon) for VaNoé, with your mention of jealous Vani in ep 4 being one of them, but the greater whole they add up to is still different.

I can't exactly call this erasure, since again, the queerness in the original isn't explicit either, but it is something. If anything, I'd say it's just a case of bones translating the original manga to the screen poorly (in this respect), and thus losing some of the original meaning. Not homo/biphobia, but a mediocre adaptation.

So on a whole, I don't think bones has been censoring VnC's queer moments on purpose, but they also didn't do the best job of bringing them into the anime. The openings and endings might be "all for VaNoé," but including a bit of subtext between two attractive, marketable male leads and including explicitly, inarguably queer characters are two very different things. The manga, with the exception of Luna, hasn't gotten to what I'd call explicit, inarguable representation yet either, but Mochijun has certainly gotten closer than bones has.

And as always, I do have to finish with the caveat that I am not Japanese, and at the end of the day, I cannot really speak that much to good representation in Japanese media. The above is how all of this reads to me as an american, but I am coming at all of this from a very different cultural context than actual Japanese queer people, so like. grain of salt. I'm not exactly an authority here.

#another post from the very depths of my drafts folder whoops #someday I'll answer all my unaddressed asks I promise #even if it does take months #vnc #vanitas no carte #vnc spoilers #meta #anime #Noé Arqueueviste #the gay agenda #dominique my beloved #ask #anon