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moonypears-blog · 19 days

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Hi so I had ✨️thoughts✨️ on a concept for a stf episode/scenario/etc that I remembered tangentially related to your Papa story (so good btw) (also this may end up being long I'm so sorry)

It'd most likely be something geared towards an older audience (like not kindergartners lol, something for the spinoff whenever that happens maybe? Idk what the target audience for it will be considering we dont know anything about it) and framed as either a Father's Day or Halloween episode (I don't think we got any Father's day eps other than the one episode I hate with a burning passion)

Basically, Sofia is going through her things and finds something of Birk's, whether it be some sort of sailing gear or clothing or a gift or an image of them together (idk it could be anything, we know borderline nothing about this man) and she's hit with what I'm going to call the Rose Quartz effect. Missing a parent who you barely/don't know, having unanswered questions that won't/can't be answered, having all these conflicting feelings about this one person and feeling all of them yet none of them at the same time. Losing a parent at such a young age is rough and was just the tip on the iceberg of Sofia growing up far faster than she needed to.

Where am I going with this? Well, because of all of these unanswered questions and difficult emotions, Sofia wants to talk to her deceased father. Ghosts exist canonically in the series, who's to say they can't be summoned? Maybe she gets help from Cedric, or she finds a book on her own, or maybe she even gets help from Lucinda and the witches or that one ghost from the Ghostly Gala episode who's name I can't remember but I definitely had a crush on as a kid.

The main conflict of the episode would probably be all of these internal conflicting desires for Sofia, possibly also Miranda's own feelings about her belated husband (is this how you use belated? Idk lol).

Regardless of how it happens, the episode ends/has its final act with Sofia summoning her father, Birk. He sees how much his little girl has grown up, how brave and kind and smart she is. She gets to see and say goodbye to her father a final time and get proper closure. Maybe throw in a line or two there from Birk on just how grown up Sofia is, almost (definitely) too grown up for a pre-teen/adolescent girl.

The message of the episode would probably be something about grief and the process of it all, how it's okay to be angry that someone you love is gone, how talking about it opens old wounds but helps to heal them. It's bittersweet.

But yeah definitely not something suited for what the original demographic for stf was. Of course important to talk about, but with what I'm talking about it'd probably go over such young heads.

Sorry that this is so long! I had to get all my thoughts out and it got pretty rambley lmao

This is such a good idea for an episode!

I agree that Birk would be disheartened at how grown up Sofia is, obviously he'd know she's grown since she was five, but she's too far ahead, and not in the natural way that some children just emotionally mature quicker than their peers.

I think even though it's been a long time and Sofia doesn't really have anything to miss as she hardly knows life with him, she still really misses Birk, like I said in chapter two of "Papa..." some days she just wants to be by herself and lay in bed grieving him. I wish the show brought it up, especially for the potential children watching who lost one of their parents like Sofia. This would be a really good episode for that reason alone, honestly.

Honestly it wouldn't surprise me if this spin off went a more mature route, considering how a good deal of the fans are teens and adults, and there's going to be people watching who grew up on the show and are now older just out of curiosity. If I remember rightly something similar happened with miraculous ladybug, they started making the episodes more mature after the creators realised the main audience was teens and adults, not their original target audience. I've seen Craig interact with lots of older fans so he definitely knows they're a big audience!

#Also you don't need to apologise for rambling in my asks I love it!/gen #sofia the first #sofia the fandom #stf #princess sofia #sofia balthazar #moonypears asks #asks

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spicywhumper · 3 months

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@febuwhump 2024: day 08. "why won't it stop?" + @femslash-february bingo 2024 (dark edition)* - "I didn't know who else to go" + whump bingo - comfort

series: the midnight tales / chasing the dragon | rating: teen and up audiences | word count: 1,070

content warning: blood and bruises, mentions of child abuse**, aftercare of said child abuse

* this is pre-relationship. warning for interspecies relationship even if they both look very human?

** Sienna's not aware of how bad the abuse is, she thinks Zoe's dad beats her only when they fight really bad and doesn't know it's an almost daily ordeal (even if she knows that Zoe heals too fast to be a normal human being). she also doesn't tell anyone because Zoe made her promise. they're only 16 here, so all Sienna can do is offer help and comfort when Zoe seeks her for it

since Dragons hibernate, Sienna's used to sleep very, very little. a couple of hours at most, and only when she's so exhausted that breathing seems to need lots of effort.

so she's, as usual, is wake when little, tiny rocks are thrown on her window. she sighs. not that she doesn't want to see Zoe, she's always happy to see Zoe, but it's a Wednesday night and they have a big test tomorrow, her human friend is supposed to be sleeping, since Zoe does need to sleep eight hours a day.

but she knows that Zoe only shows up at, she checks the bedside clock, 2:47 in the morning when she has a good reason. it's often one of her extremely graphic nightmares. the kind that Sienna doesn't know why she has, since Zoe's a regular old 16 year-old girl who lives a relatively comfortable life.

most of the time, at least, they don't talk about her older brother.

they don't talk about how the nightmares are about his death, the one she blames herself and always will (there's no point in attending that she doesn't. and Sienna understands, a little bit, she'd blame herself too if she was in the car with him.)

so despite the hour and the mild irritation, Sienna leaves her bed and pads towards the door. a pebble almost hits her forehead as she opens it, a "sorry" is mumbled from three or so meters below her. Sienna steps back and waits the minute or so that takes Zoe to climb up the wall and teach her window.

she looks awful.

"sorry," she says, Zoe doesn't look like she should be on her feet. "I didn't know who else to go to."

Sienna drags her to the bed before she collapses in a sad heap on her floor. then she turns on the lights to check whatever is going on. it's not the first time Zoe comes to her hurt, with bruises on her neck and a handprint on her face. with marks in her back and chest painted black and blue. and she doesn't give details, she has mumbled something about needing to protect Zacky. sensitive, small Zacky that was the perfect target for their father's rage.

so Zoe put herself between them, so Zoe misbehaved and was the problem girl.

today the bruise on her back bares the perfect handprint of her Father's hand, her left eye is almost closed and there's blood on her nose and her mouth. dried and dark, Sienna imagines she has walked around for a couple of hours before deciding that she did need some help. Sienna's her best option.

with a sigh, she tries to ignore the heartache. it's almost a physical pain, like someone is squeezing her heart and filling her chest with thick blood. it's not fair, she's not the one often hurt. often bruised and marked because her father doesn't like the way his children act. because she needs to put herself in the way, stop him from hurting her brother and her mother and Sienna hates all of this.

she hates how she can't help more than when Zoe comes crawling towards her for some ice and a couple of bandaids.

"what happened?"

"a mild fight, as always," her voice sounds raspy. "can I get some water?"

"yes. stay here."

Zoe nods, she clearly relaxes under the confirmation that Sienna will help her. there's... something warm about the way Zoe feels safe and comfortable around her, maybe because Sienna also feels safe and comfortable around her. (she ignored stories about fated mates and everything, she doesn't think a normal human being would understand that level of stupid bond that you don't quite choose to have).

Sienna's all silently as she grabs a washcloth, the first-aid kid and ice. her parents don't mind Zoe coming around, but they worry a lot and Zoe's clearly quite uncomfortable when she received attention from adults. Zoe doesn't want to think about how she looks scared of anyone who might have any power over her. and as calm as her parents are, Zoe's instincts will still tell her that those people weren't human.

it's almost funny that Sienna doesn't unnerve her.

(don't think too deeply about it, there's no way it means more than Zoe simply knows you, she told herself.)

"will you tell me what happened?" Sienna asks as she sits in front of her friend, who looks almost... deathky pale.

"another stupid fight about Zacky," she mumbles. "dad grabbed his arm too tight, he teared up and dad tried to shove him against a wall."

Zoe tells her with a cold, detached and empty voice. a voice that Sienna knows it means she's trying to not feel and not think whatever she's actually feeling and thinking. Zoe's the most protective person she knows, and she is and gave met Dragons...

"tell me more."

"why?"

"because you deserve someone listening to you," she sighs. "it'll sting."

Zoe doesn't flinch as Sienna cleans the cut on her eyebrow, and as she cleans the dried blood across Zoe's bruised eye. there are many things Sienna makes the deliberate choice of not thinking about, Zoe's apparent high resistance seems to be one of them.

"there's more?"

a long minutes passes before Zoe nods and takes off her shirt. it'd be easy to be distracted by her developing body (her shoulder and arms and stomach, what her parents feed her with?) if half of her torso isn't a black and blue bruises. from under her armpit to her waistband, there are bruises on her arms too, as Zoe probably shielded her head with them.

Sienna wants to throw up.

she wants to kill that bastard.

"I hate it," Sienna whispers, digging the first aid box for that ointment she bought for bruise. she has been told it's safe for any species for as long as it's not eaten. "why won't it stop?"

"I can't let him hurt them. it doesn't hurt that much."

"Zoe."

"and I heal fast."

"it doesn't matter!"

"Sienna, it'll be gone by tomorrow sunset."

"yes, you still come here for healing help."

"I don't."

"you're here right now."

Zoe sighs, her face flushing: "no, Sienna, I come here because you... you comfort me," she looks anywhere but Sienna. "I feel safe with you."

"you should stay with me."

"what about Zacky? and mom? I'll not leave them!"

"one day he'll kill you!"

"and I'll not leave my brother and mom in his hands. I don't care if it's ruining me, I can't stop it. I need them to be safe."

"yeah? I need you to be safe."

"I'm sorry, I really am."

#febuwhump #febuwhump 2024 #febuwhumpday8 #femslash feb bingo #whump #whump community #whump blog #whumpblr #lady whump #whump aftercare #the comfort of hurt/comfort

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annerbhp · 11 months

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By any chance, would you have any tips for being an adult fanfic writer for a tween/youth targeted series?

I have just started to publish my own fanfic after many years as a fanfic reader (and Changeling/Armistice are personal faves) … but I’m feeling like I’m really “other” as an adult writer within the fandom demographic.

I’m literally writing because my kids got me into a series they love… but now I’m a generation removed from the audience. It’s… strange, and I don’t know if there’s some secret to navigating it!

I suppose I have two main directions that my thoughts go to:

Audience. I think the very idea of young adult and youth designations on media (books, tv shows, whatever) is pretty strange. On the one hand, these designations might often be about reading level or signalling that certain inappropriate adult content is not present (for some measure of adult and some measure of inappropriate). But that's more about why someone who is younger might not or maybe should not engage with adult content. That isn't about adults not engaging with youth content. I guess I'm trying to say that the demographics of an audience is simply who engages with it, not who it is aimed at? You are part of the audience. You're not removed from it. It's a piece of media you engaged with and meant something to you in some way. That's real!

If you are interested in writing about teens or other youth experiences as an adult, the only thing that immediately comes up to me is that you should write from your own experiences. And I don't mean this as a trite "write what you know". When I wrote The Changeling, it wasn't about Harry Potter or the youth demographic who might be reading it, it was about my own experiences being a young girl, the questions I had, and maybe some of the things I wish I had had, some of the conversations that would have meant something to me. It was never about preaching to anyone or trying to speak to someone else's experiences, it was a dialogue with my own younger self. We've all been there, right?

I mean, let's be real a minute. Who exactly do we think the authors/writers of the original content were? Were they kids? Likely not. You're engaging in media written by adults for a younger audience.

I ultimately refuse to believe there is anything inherently cringe about any of this. Which is not to say that I never paused and thought about it or wondered. I just believe that if you enter authentically, are willing to self-reflect, the writing itself isn't really an issue.

Now, the bigger issue might be if you are interacting with other fans, in that way I would be very careful and never make any assumptions about the people you might be interacting with. Don't assume you are speaking to other adults. I'm not saying I never interact with younger fans in any spaces, but I set very clear boundaries and do my best to conduct myself in a way that is respectful not only of others, but of myself. Be authentic and lead with compassion. Those are never bad things to center around.

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avelera · 4 months

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Impressions on Jujutsu Kaisen S1-S2

(In no particular order)

(Because I felt like it)

So I got up to date on the anime Jujutsu Kaisen, mostly for lack of something to watch, and found it interesting. Partially because of its popularity (#1 on Crunchyroll in Dec. 2023). S2 is just about complete at this time and as others have remarked, there's a pretty big tone shift between S1 and S2.

As someone who spent their teen and college years enjoying Shounen series like Naruto and Bleach, who used to be much deeper into anime from about 2000-2010, it's interesting to see the way the Shounen genre has "evolved" from what I knew when I was more a part of the teen/early 20s target audience.

(Cut for spoilers beyond this point.)

First of all, it might even be a misnomer to call JJK purely shounen. The tone shift in S2 takes it to some pretty violent places. Places that seem in excess of, say, Naruto's peak violence. That said, I'm not entirely sure JJK deserves the genre of "seinin" exactly, because its plot structure is still pretty grounded in Shounen action/adventure.

Thing is, for all of the increase in violence, I'm not sure the issues the show actually deals with earn it the "seinin" or more "adult" designation just yet. JJK, so far at least, to me seems to struggle with being "about" something more than its premise. For example, the magical powers gained by the girls in Puella Magi Madoka Magica are at least a little bit about the struggles of being a young woman, about growing up, about grief and loss and love. A magical girl "becoming" a witch plays into a larger theme of loss of innocence.

At least as of the end of S2, JJK doesn't exactly have a thing that being a jujutsu sorcerer is actually "about". It's not really a coming of age parallel. It's not really about coming to terms with death (though a lot of death happens). It's still very much about the big fights that are happening. Absorbing Sukuna for Yuji Itadori isn't a metaphor or even lending to a metaphor for anything else except absorbing Sukuna.

This is totally fine by the way! Not everything needs to be "about" something bigger. But, for me at least, the "not being about something bigger" is what's keeping JJK at an A- instead of an A+.

JJK is also strangely lacking in worldbuilding. And I say strangely because it almost feels like it skips the worldbuilding because it's derivatively leaning on the worldbuilding done by other shounen anime. Like, "We don't need to explain how people can randomly jump from tree to tree or hover in the air while fighting, because Naruto already did that. You don't really want us to stop the narrative to explain how Yuji leveled up all these basic magical fighting abilities, right? So don't worry about how he can suddenly do all this stuff."

Literally, Yuji will gain an ability like Black Flash within the course of a single battle. In Bleach or Inuyasha, gaining that sort of ability would take an entire arc and lots of trial and error. So I have mixed feelings about JJK kind of just skipping him struggling to learn Black Flash for any length of time because yeah, that beat can get kind of tiresome in anime. We know they're going to learn the ability, so it's just dragging the process out to make it an entire arc.

But on the other hand, making the gaining of a new ability into an arc lends a certain gravity to the story. A sense of stakes and achievement. Yuji never really struggles to learn any new ability. He picks them up in the course of any given battle (or Sukuna drops in and bails him out).

So in a way, JJK is innovating on the Shounen genre by just skipping a lot of the base level fighting ability arcs and challenges, in order to cut straight through the biggest, most epic battles. There is no little kid level ninja school, our Naruto is fighting Orochimaru-level threats in the middle of S1.

Now, the way the story also innovates on throwing endgame level threats at the hero right away, instead of a bunch of trash to slowly build them up, is by having the bad guys not die in the fight. Bad guys often escape the battle to fight another day. Yes, trash battles happen, but endgame level villains are taking part with surprising regularity for the genre. Aizen from Bleach wasn't showing up for every side character battle that Ichigo fought against him in the lead up to their confrontations. And characters who were defeated didn't really show up again as antagonists, at least not in the Soul Society or Hueco Mondo arcs. They either became allies or they died. So JJK is different in this regard, in a way that's rather refreshing actually.

Now, to go back to worldbuilding, JJK was interesting to me because it started out very authoritative about its genre. It was very paint by numbers standard shounen but so confidently executed that it didn't feel boring. We had lots of shounen genre cliches, like the plucky protagonist with tons of power potential, his dark haired team member who is brooding, the secretly powerful goofy teacher, etc.

But how the JJK universe fits into our world is strangely lacking. Part of it feels purposeful. It's very laser focused on moving the story along. It doesn't really care to answer questions like, "How are these people getting paid?" and "Why is a school tasked with saving the world?" Like, it's basically X-Men rules, so it's fine.

But by contrast, Naruto's ninja villages were an entire ecosystem, we knew how ninjas fit into society and why everyone was doing what they did. We know how Bleach's Soul Society fits into the fabric of the universe. We know how My Hero Academia's world views heroes, a ton of My Hero time is poured into explaining how this world works. JJK... doesn't really bother to say how the world works outside of how it impacts the characters in this moment. It's the thing I find most curiously lacking of all it, and I'm just not quite sure what to make of it.

A few other random thoughts: JJK is fairly refreshing in that it's not totally reductive anime nonsense with regards to women, like having tons of panty shots or whatever. Men still tend to be the most powerful, and it's still a pretty shounen-standard ratio of 2 plot-relevant guys for every 1 woman. But it does view women as people for the most part, so I appreciate that.

But JJK does have some anime nonsense in the sense of people just randomly going "over 9000" with their ability or pulling abilities that no one knew about before that moment out of their ass. I think the show is at its best when it plants its foreshadowing a liiittle further in advance, like when Mahito accidently "touched" Sukuna in that first fight. Everything we needed to know to realize what was going to happen was seeded in advance, and it was a crowning moment of awesome as a result. But besides moments like that, there's a LOT of "Well that didn't work, because I have this secret ability that I'm going to reveal and explain right now!" It's a bit like watching little kids play with action figures in that respect of just randomly having the right tool at the right time.

That said, that sort of "little did you know, I had this secret weapon that easily defeats you that I'm just revealing now!" seems in general more accepted in Japanese storytelling, whereas in Western storytelling the "rule" is more that you need to seed Checkov's gun a lot sooner before you can use it. You can't pull the gun off the mantlepiece to use at the same time you reveal it, it feels cheap. But, since there is a cultural divide between me and the writer, I'm just going to note it as something that pinged me, rather than saying it's good or bad as such. I like foreshadowing that's done further in advance, but that could be a culturally-based preference on my part.

I'm curious where JJK will go next. The violence escalation makes me think either it's going to continue to escalate, or there will be an endgame option to undo all the damage by some magical means at a later date. I'm more than 70/30 thinking it's just going to continue to escalate, but we'll see!

#jjk #jjk meta #jjk spoilers #jujutsu kaisen

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musemythix · 7 months

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Clearing up confusion: World of Winx

In my recent years of being in the Winx fandom, I’ve seen many people struggle to make sense of World of Winx and it’s relation to the main show.

I thought I’d help out a bit by answering some of the main questions about WoW.

1. In season 4 of Winx Club, the Winx revealed the existence of fairies to all the humans on Earth, so why do they need to hide it now?

World of Winx is a spin-off. That means it is not canon to the main series, nor is the main series canon to WoW. It is all happening in seperate universes.

In the WoW universe, humans still don’t know fairies exist, and the Winx don’t want to risk blowing their cover due to potential danger.

2. What happened to the Magic dimension?

So, there’s no sign of the MD’s existence in WoW. In fact, it is never mentioned where the girls come from. It could be argued that it’s a bit of a plothole, but unlike in the main show, the girls’ origins don’t play a role in the storyline.

It is however implied that the girls at the very least are not from Earth. As Flora says in the first episode, I quote: “We need to get used to passing as normal girls”. This implies that the girls are obviously not used to living the lives of humans.

Also, they’re fairies. So, yeah.

3. Why is Roxy there? And why aren’t the specialists?

These were just choices made by the producers. Roxy is there to occasionally help the Winx out with their missions. As shown in season 1 especially, she sort of acts as a seventh pair of eyes to the Winx, keeping her eye on anything suspicious and notifying the Winx of such.

As for the specialists, they just weren’t relevant enough to become part of WoW. I personally don’t mind it, as it shows just how capable the Winx are without men. This show also focuses on showing each Winx’ strength and potential in a way I wished the main show did. (I’ll do another post on this)

6. But the comics say the two shows are connected. Why?

The Winx Club comics are not canon to the main show nor World of Winx. I get that it’s confusing, since most of the events that happen in the shows are actually canon to the comics. The comics are just further promotion and expansion of the Winx franchise.

Don’t look too much into it.

5. Why did World of Winx get cancelled?

Let me know when you get answers. The way they left us on a cliffhanger is a crime in my book.

There have been some rumors about a third season in the works, but take it with a grain of salt. Don’t believe anything but an official confirmation by Rainbow or Netflix.

6. Why does WoW even exist?

The main series started off targeted towards older kids and teens, however, it changed after Rainbow signed a deal with Nickelodeon. Due to misunderstandings and miscommunication, the show’s target demographic lowered to suit the likes of smaller children, which threw a lot of people off.

Many fans speculate that Rainbow realized this, and worked with Netflix to create World of Winx to give something to reattract the original target audience of the first 3-4 seasons of the main show.

This is just a theory! There is no official confirmation.

Hope this helped!

#winx musa #winx club #winx #world of winx #winx flora #winx bloom #winx stella #winx tecna #winx aisha #winx layla #magic winx

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shiroikabocha · 1 year

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IT WORKED IT WORKED IT WORKED

my brother is reading TLT! He’s about 3/4ths of the way through Gideon the Ninth!

His observations so far:

he has enjoyed and repeated the line “you want to fight it. Because the arms look… a little like swords.”

“I don’t think it’s fair to call the Fourth kids ‘horrible teens’ when the protagonists are only 17 and 19”

“SOMETHING is going on with the Seventh, I don’t trust them—that whole ‘you usually fight with a two handed weapon, don’t you?’ She’s hiding something” [he is Too Straight to be fooled by Dulcinea’s sapphic charms, unlike me, who was Dumb and Gay and very surprised that the sweet sick girl was secretly evil]

[last thing he read: Gideon finds Pro’s head] “So I’m thinking the bodies they found in the incinerator, one of them has to be the Seventh cav, hell maybe both bodies are the Seventh—they’re both dead, or maybe they’re both puppets? All I know is neither of them is what they say they are” [smart man!]

“I’m not really sure what a lyctor even… is? Yet? Seems like it’s an exceptionally powerful necromancer, who probably serves the Emperor in a much closer capacity than the rest of the military, it’s important for sure” [well he’s not wrong]

“I’m very upset at the name pronunciation guide because I looked up how to say Issac Tettares and then Tamsyn adds a note about how his death (!) foreshadows Gideon’s death (!??!???!!) and well now I guess I’m just gonna read the rest of this book mispronouncing Proteselaus because WHO PUTS SPOILERS IN A PRONUNCIATION GUIDE?” [a fair criticism, I should have warned him]

overall I am excited to have someone else to talk to about the series (my partner tolerates my yammering about it, but it’s not exactly her cup of tea, book-wise) (it’s definitely my brother’s cup of tea though) and it’ll be interesting to get the perspective of someone who’s outside the target audience in some ways (a heterosexual man) and inside the target audience in other ways (an ex-catholic homestuck fan)

yaaaaay book tea partiesssssss

#My Brother Reads TLT #the locked tomb #gideon the ninth #gideon the ninth spoilers

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jajanvm-imbi · 2 years

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CW: light swearing

Since I've started watching Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and learning why it got off to a slow start and canceled prematurely, there's something I need to get off my chest.

Now I didn't watch any previous versions of the tmnt as a kid, so I don't have any attachment to them, but I love Rise as a stand alone series. But as I engage with the fanbase, I learned that the reason why Rise wasn't well received was because older tmnt fans didn't like how different it was from the other versions, calling it the "Teen Titans GO!" of the tmnt universe???? What the hell???

If you're one of the people who shit on Rise because you didn't like how different it was from your childhood version of tmnt, all I have to say is:

Congratulations! You're the reason why an incredibly talented creative team got their passion project canceled!!

Now this next part isn't just for older shitty tmnt fans, it goes to any adult who engages in any type of children's media:

As much as you are very much allowed to watch and engage with children's shows/movies/books/etc.... you need to remember that

You are

NOT

The target audience

Why does this even need to be explained? How is this such a difficult concept to understand? If you are 18+ years and you are watching something meant for literal CHILDREN, you need to understand that the humor/art style/plot/character arcs/tropes/etc... are meant for CHILDREN.

Don't like how immature this character can be at times? Don't like how there's a fart joke every now and then? Don't like how the plot isn't as dark and edgy as you would prefer? That's great! Guess what!

It's not for YOU!!

The characters in children's media are most likely, also children!!! I remember how people shit on Mabel Pines in Gravity Falls for the whole "Grunkle Stan, I trust you" situation because she was "naive" and "reckless" or something, and when she got upset when Dipper suggested him staying in GF while she went back to California, people called her "childish" and "selfish", forgetting that she was 12 YEARS OLD??? I personally was 12 years old while Gravity Falls was being released (I'm 19 now) and I was enjoying every second of Gravity Falls, despite the characters having flaws. You wanna know why I was enjoying the show more than some of the older, more critical members of the active Gravity Falls fandom? Because I was the target audience. Gravity Falls was (and still is) a CHILDREN'S SHOW, targeted towards CHILDREN, and the main characters were also CHILDREN. As a 12 year old girl, I could absolutely relate to Mabel! Sure there were some darker moments that gave it the edge that attracted older viewers, but at the end of the of the day, it was a show for younger, more immature audiences.

(Back to TTMNT) As far as I am aware, there are 4 main versions of TTMNT (not including any of the live action versions or the comics): 1987, 2003, 2012, and 2018. The first 3 series generally followed the same format in terms of character tropes/arcs and plot (again I haven't watched any of the other versions this is based off of my ""research""), while Rise decided to go in a different direction. Rise decided to be drastically different than the previous 3 versions of TTMNT in terms of character personalities, humor, story arcs, etc....to appeal to the next generation of cartoon loving kids, and that upset older tmnt fans.

What's confusing to me is just that: OLDER fans of the tmnt didn't enjoy this NEW version of a beloved franchise. OLDER fans of the franchise were shitting on the art style, the humor, the drastic changes in the characters' personalities because it wasn't like the tmnt THEY grew up with. News flash! It ISNT going to be like the verison you grew up with because, its NOT for YOU. There are literal 30 year olds from the 90s hating on a show meant for CHILDREN of 2022. Can someone please explain to me how that makes any sort of sense????

(Generally speaking once again) How can you, as a GROWN ASS ADULT, sit there, and with a straight face, talk shit about a show that ISNT EVEN MEANT FOR YOU???

How are you gonna be mad that you, as an ADULT, can't relate to characters who are CHILDREN?? These characters are not you for YOU specifically to relate to????

Can you? Of course you can. Again, this is not to say that adults shouldn't or are not allowed engage with children's media at all, or that adults can't relate to certain characters in said children's media. But if you don't, then remember that THEY WERENT FOR YOU TO RELATE TO IN THE FIRST PLACE.

"Wow this child character is behaving like a child in this children's series? Its obviously lazy writing and there is no one in the world who could possibly relate to or enjoy this therefore, it's a bad series"

That's how some of yall sound when "criticing" children's media meant for children.

It's so bizarre that this needs to be explained?? If you are going to engage with CHILDRENS MEDIA, you need to remember that YOU ARE NOT THE TARGET AUDIENCE. You are very much allowed to watch and enjoy children's media, but at the end of the day, you need to remember that all the jokes/arcs/tropes/etc... are meant for YOUNGER audiences to enjoy.

If you can't get behind the idea of characters who are children, behaving like children, in a piece of media meant for children:

You don't like the type of humor, story telling, tone, etc... used in a children's piece of media that's meant to be entertaining to children:

Then you should stop interacting with children's media all together until you can.

Thank you for your time

#its absolutely infuriating how this needs to be said #how are some of yall so DENSE?#i love cartoons like The Owl House and Ducktales and stuff #but even then I'm not the target audience #either understand what youre interacting with or stop interacting with it #rottmnt #save rise of the teenage mutant ninja turtles #save rottmnt #gravity falls #gravity falls mabel #mabel pines #cartoons #cartoon shows #children's cartoons

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tangledbea · 2 years

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I got into the series later then some other fans and I have heard it said that ratings for the show went down after season 1and continued to decline. Is this true? I guess this surprises me because I greatly enjoyed this series. Is there a reason as to why the ratings dropped in later seasons?

I think I got psychic damage from reliving this and writing this replay. XD

It is true, and, as far as I know, it was a self-perpetuating problem on Disney's part.

Now, I'm no expert in ratings. I don't know where to go to look for them, nor do I know how to interpret what I'm seeing when I am shown ratings (last time I saw a ratings number for TTS, my only thought was, 'Okay, but that looks like a lot of people are watching it?'). But here is how it appeared to me, a layman, as I was watching the series air.

"Tangled: Before Ever After" was a Disney Channel Original Movie (DCOM for short), and was given a lot of fanfare by Disney Channel. It was aired in a prime time slot, on a Friday night, and ran multiple times over its premier weekend. The series started in earnest two weeks later, also on Friday evening. Disney aired reruns, made merch, promoted it, genuinely tried to get people to watch it. There were promotional posters up at the theme parks to drum up interest. There was a doll set and a Christmas ornament made to promote Queen For a Day, and after the episode aired, it was released on DVD. Tangled got its own panel at D23 Expo in 2017.

But from what I understand from what people who worked on the series told me, DTVA has a tendency to promote the newest, shiniest thing for a season, then turn its attention to the next big thing. In Tangled's case, the next big thing was DuckTales, which aired almost exactly five months after Tangled did. I guess numbers weren't quite where Disney wanted them to be, because despite pre-approving three seasons, they slowed on making merch after S1. I mean, a few things still came through for S2. There's the LEGO set of the caravan, for example. It seemed to me that they didn't catch the audience they were aiming for (girls from 6 - 12) and they didn't know what to do with the audience they grabbed (teens and young adults).

So, they stopped promoting it, stopped making merch of it (and what little merch was made wasn't aimed at the viewing demographic, but the target one), and what shot itself the most in the foot, they started changing the day and time they were airing it, pushing it more and more into time slots aimed at the target demographic instead of leaning into the curve and switching their focus to the demographic actually watching. New episodes aired on a moving target. If you weren't already keyed in to when they were coming out, it was difficult to figure out when it would be, because it kept changing. I had crew members tell me that they only way they knew when the episodes were airing was because of my blog. Sometimes they ran reruns, most of the time they did not. And when they did run reruns, it was in the middle of the day, when the only kids home were kindergarten-age. And when the series was on hiatus, reruns didn't air at all. This was no way to grab new viewers who might just happen to stumble upon it. At this point, the only way to watch it was to do so deliberately, either getting your butt up at 7 am on a Sunday or turning on DisneyNOW or your cable provider to watch it as soon as it dropped at midnight. The fandom had viewing parties, for goodness sake.

And then, Disney decided to blitz through the last part of S2 (after a six-month hiatus) and the first part of S3 in bomb format. The last part of S2 aired two episodes back to back, once a week. The first part of S3 aired them one right after another on consecutive week days before hitting us with a three month hiatus. Disney seemed to be done with it, and just running out the clock until the series was over. As a fan, it was an exhausting schedule to keep up. Even when it returned to its one episode a week format, it still aired first thing in the morning on Sundays.

It can't have helped that this aired when it did, societally-speaking. Things were rapidly moving from being aired on TV to being launched exclusively online. They were really trying to promote the use of DisneyNOW, and in the middle of Tangled's run, Disney+ launched.

Anyway, TL;DR, Disney didn't like the numbers it was showing by the end of S1, and so they stopped promoting it and started changing what day and time the episodes aired, which can't have helped those numbers. Instead of trying to make it better, they gave it up as a lost cause and made it worse.

#Tangled #Tangled the Series #TTS #TV Schedule #Answered

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zerotoqueero · 2 years

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ok I'm cackling like on the DCSHG fandom page of batman some people are complaining bc "this batman is an insult to the one from the comics" and other shit and like,,,,, y'all,,,, (first don't fucking use the r-slur bc imma fucking punch you in the face)(second...)

y'all still don't get that it's a show for teenage girls??? all of the characters are out of character not only because their age is changed and they're displayed as a younger version of the heroes we know but also because it gives the point of view of teenage. girls. which are the target audience (also you can hardly slap actual guns and blood and else in a kid show, especially one that aired during the pandemic and based in the US)

superman wouldn't act like a selfish and egotistical jerk like that, but also most of the time we see him is in connection to Kara, who has beef with the guy

Bruce is a playboy and maybe even to the point of making a TV-reality show about himself even, but not only it's a link to like,,,, the Kardashian and other rich celebrities, because he is a rich celebrity,,,, it's also a great way to hide the fact that he's batman because frankly who would think that jock idiot rich dude Wayne is the batman??? Even if Bruce wouldn't be like that (or at least not totally), it's still a great characterisation Also please the whole Batman thing???? clear wink to the original series and costume like damn

the guys at the head of the lantern corp don't give a damn during their trials, WW's mother clearly is shown as a mother and mostly queen and imposing figure, Kara's parents are way too 'haha why would we say something bad about anyone?', Alfred being a little shit to Dick telling him 'batman is with is other sidekick'? (like please Alfred can be a dick if necessary but to a 10 y/o?, with whom he's alone when he said that? clearly the 10 y/o pov) Every adult figures have certain aspects that are pushed further than they normally are like, because it's a show for teens with a goal to show a teen's world and pov bc target audience

Heck, even the boys are so overtly and annoyingly boyish and childish ('we're the invici-bros!') like teenage boys are, especially when seen from outside (like seriously they did that and boom, direct war flashback to high school. That's how good they nailed the characterisation, and I live in France)

So like,,,, whatever people (especially adults) might complain about the characterisation of the different characters? This show is 100% nailing what they set themselves up for, which are:

target audience being teenage girls (most of the episodes are for everyone, but a bunch here and there clearly shows it's for teenage girls)

emphasis on the girls because we only rarely see any boys in action and when they are they're clearly not the focus at all

there's diversity enough in temper/nature of the protagonists to allow all kids to see themselves in at least one of the heroes

the characterisations of the other characters are clearly from a teenager's point of view, which is awesome

(also sorry but the Up Past 8 band? that's like,,,, Justin Bieber or One Direction of even The Jonas Brothers)(where's Hannah Montanna?)

#also I find it hilarious that the same guy voiced Alfred. Dick AND Bruce #the range of this guy #also maybe for budget reasons but DAMN is he good at the range of voices #anyway I really like this show because it's so very interesting and different than the other ones where it's or way too childish in a #cringe way because adults thinking kids would like it without actually trying to think like kids #and it's not other stuffs like 'astonishing heroes with unreachable goals for mere mortals' and I think it's nice for kids to see even the #supers to be struggling with teen stuff because they need to see that they can be amazing while being teens and struggling at it #this is a DCSHG love zone #if anyone has complains they better come with a fucking essay #DCSHG #DC Super Hero Girls

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popculturebuffet · 2 years

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Austin and Ally: Bloggers and Butterflies Episode Reviewcap: Oh Bother (Patreon Review for Emma Fici)

Hello all you happy people and welcome to popculturebuffet where I review some of my faviorite media... and... this thing. Yeah it’s time for a patreon review as 5 dollar or more patrons get one guaranteed slot a month... and this one is me being impaled on my own sword. See during my review of Muppets Most Wanted earlier this month, I talked about how much I hated the series Austin and Ally, as Ross Lynch from the show appeared in the movie and I felt he stuck out like a sore thumb among the rest of the cameos. It was a throaway joke but we got to talkiing about it more after I sent Emma the review (She had comissioned it)... and well you can see where this ended up. And this isn’t the first time i’ve hinted at something I dislike in a review that I might review down the road.. but it’s the first time someone’s had me review one of these things.

I should make some things clear. I”m 30. When I saw some scattered episodes of Austin and Ally in it’s first season, I was 20. I was NEVER in this show’s target demo at the time I watched it. I have no nostaglia for it nor mercy and never did. So if you have some soft spot for it because of nostlagia or you like what some of the actors did later.. your good. You do not have to like what I like or hate what I hate. These reviews are my honest opinons and while I try to make my case and crack some jokes, I am not trying to shame you if you like this show, nor am I shaming the actors for being in it. Hollywood is rough, and especially as a teen and as we’ve seen with other disney stars, being put into the disney star machine can be rough. No tonly that they’ve all gone on to work on other stuff: Ross Lynch had steady success with 4 seasons of chilling adventures of sabrina, both he and Laura Mareno have kept singing after this, Calum Worthy went on to the critically acllaimed american vandal and Rani Rodregeuz has gone on to do voice work and more disney work. I’m never going to shame a young actor for shooting their shot. So there is nothing against the young actors or young fans who liked this show.

That being said.. this show is hot, flaming , toasty garbage. It is not good. I am not saying that to be hyperbolic: While I am trying to cut down on the salt, this work is geninely bad. And while I do get it’s aimed for kids.. kids deserve better than this. I’ve seen decent Disney Channel Sitcoms: I watched Girl Meets World not long after this, Even Stevens holds up okay from what I can remember, and even in recent times i’ve seen episodes of Syndey to the Max. It’s pretty good and has a creative dual time periods premise. So then, before this, and after this there were D-Sitcoms that geninely tried. I just don’t like ones like this that really do’nt. That don’t care and are just trying to sell kids music instead of an actual show. That replace actual effort with “wacky bullshit”. And I love wacky bullshit. I geninely do. I’ve been rereading zits lately and despite all the crap it gets and how steretoypcial it can be with hit’s main family.. it can still be utterly great at times.

This show.. has no real creativity. It’s clearly trying to cash in on the fact Disney had a market in making their actors also signers, by casting two talented singers, making the show about music and a central couple, throwing in wacky sidekicks and stirring. It’s pandering on a scale not ever seen. And yet current day disney cancels shows for being actually good and wanting ot be representivie. You might see why I like taking pot shots at them. It’s because even a decade ago they pulled shit like this, making something gentically engineered to be profitable.. and it WORKED. Four full seasons of this happened. Four seasons of a show that was stale, and made clearly just to make a profit and make more signers to cash out on before they decided they wanted you know.. creative contorl and a wider audience. But I can give it two things: 1 the two leads really can sing even if the songs their often given, esepcially the intro aren’t good, and two.. this episode gave me a LOT of material to riff on. A lot. While the structure, setup and everything is typical this episode makes some .... choices... some ones that are bafflign in the best way possible.

Case in point, I went into the episode not really happy to review this, but willing to concede I might of overblown what I thought of it. The episode opens with Austin, an up and coming teen singer, alone in the music shop of his friend, love intrest, songwriter and co-lead Ally, Sonic Boom. It’s where the teens congregate the most and is located in an outdoor shopping plaza, with the plaza itself the second main area. He’s eating an ice cream cone alone in there.

He then drops it on his pants. Now a normal person would just say scoop the ice cream off their crotch back onto the cone or write it off as an oopsy daisy. Austin... carefully takes off his pants in a way that dosen’t drop the ice cream, puts the pants on the counter... and then procedes to pull out all the fixins for a sundae

But he does not and instaed makes a “pants sundae”.... and just typing that makes me worry i’m going to be put on a watchlist just for doing my job. Case in point someone video taped austin doing this and put it on the internet while Ally tries to explain she shoudln’t have to put up a sign saying no eating off pants, as she’s watching the video with austin the next day. Turns out a blogger has been dedicating her life to destroying austin and his career, which is oddly forward thinking for a show that fully approved a pantsless teenager eating a sundae off his jeans for script, then after blockign then didn’t cut it out of the how entirely. I mean nowadays she’d use twitter, but still, it predates cancel culture and deepfakes as she later also fakes a story about him saving a kid , a local one named Nelson who shows up a lot and is adorable, into “him dunking him in a fountain”.

Also Trish, Ally’s best friend, comes in announcing “Guess who just got hired at something something pirate themed fish restraunt”. That’s her catchphrase though she stole her gimmick of getting a new job and fired every episode from Jonsey of 6teen. Seriously it’s just.. the same exact gag: lazy teen gets fired at every job in some wacky way and has a new one each episode.

She’s only upset about it because she has to work with Dez, not for the pirate outfits which I wish i’d remembered ahead of time as it’s pirate month next month. Dez is Austin’s best friend. Dez also sucks, being annoying, goofy in the “way a 40 year old writer who dosen’t know how a teenager ever acted “ way, and repedadtely screwing the team over in this very episode. The only reason they don’t replace him with a trained chimp is that Disney saw what happened with Gordy’s Home back in the TGIF era and decided not to repeat past mistakes.. once twitter caught wind they were repeating past mistakes.

Oh and the blog’s name.. is hater girl.

You might see what I mean about the show being creatively bankrupt. Also just going to get Dez and Trish’s subplot out of the way now as while they wear pirate costumes all episode, it dosen’t really impact the plot.. at all. Trish slacks off while Dez depfries everything like this was a Bellville Family Thanksgiving, which while not really funny persay for the most part two bits did have me chuckle: him depfrying trish’s cellphone and her using it afterwords, and when the two need to get fired to end this subplot get to the performance at the end of the main plot, Dez DEEPFRIES EVERYTHING THAT’S NOT NAILED DOWN IN THE RESTRAUNT. The effect is passable but I wo’nt lie that it’s kind of awesome.

So the main plot has Hater girl frame Austin for child drowning, leading to his performance being canceled..a fter he planned to hide out in a tent till said performance. and also implicilty takes a dump in the broom closet thinking it was a bathroom.

Disney wanted this character to be a teen heartthrob. They instead somehow made him Beavis with better hair. So that night Beavis, Butthead, Ally and Trish camp out to catch her, only to fall alseep

Dez contacted HaterGirl with pictures.... and she sneaks away as the recycling bin that’s the drop for said pictures. Gotta give her points for that. Oh and Dez actually gave her pictures. Though let’s be real: he ate a sundae off his trousers and people think he tried drowning a child. I don’t think a few school photos are going to make him extra canceled or anything.

Luckily our heroes catch a break as HaterGirl has been spying on them as a catfish, so Dez reels her in with a fishing rod and they unmask her scooby doo style. And Austin’s reactoin..

Turns out HaterGirl is Tilly, and she has nothing against Austin. She’s been stalking him for the past few days including as a baby and loudly asks him to change her.

So thanks for reading and... dammit i’m not getting out of this am I?

Yeah so turns out Tilly is highly unstable and is mad at ally for upstaging her in kindergarten... even though all Ally did was peform a better song. OUr heroes tread carefully knowing this could go from disney channel sitcom to slasher film in an instant.

Dez once again fucks up, pointing out why she didn’t just go after Ally and making note of Ally’s stage fright.

So Tilly gives her an ultimatium: sing her song on stage and die by embarassment, or she ruins austin’s career. They try a test practice with Ally singing from some stuffed animals, including a dolphin Austin tries to take for himself in the only naturla moment in 25 minutes, but it fails. Oh also Trish wanted to see the performance to see Ally barf because both characters need better friends. The song is also important to ally as it’s what made her decide to be a songwriter. As for what gave her stage fright.. she’s not ready to explain that. And look most of the acting on this show is very stitled: Ross Lynch as austin tries to go over the top but can’t quite reach it so he comes off as hammy yet subdued and Laura Maurno as Ally just.. can’t quite act and can’t emote to save her life. I don’t blame either of them as again not only have they gotten more work, but it’s the directo’rs job to help especially when the actors are this young. But the two DO have a natural chemistry and the moments the two share do feel genine. I can see why this dog turd of a show had fans. Also rani Rodregueiz does turn in a good performance and dez’ actor tries, so I can’t fault them, they just had more natural charisma. Thankfully we do get a decent climax as Ally is clearly about to explode with embarassment.. only for Austin to step in. His career isn’t worth his friend’s humilation and he’s going to sing instead. THis also ends up netting him and Tilly the right kinds of Karama as tilly errupts that if he dosen’s sing she’ll keep going on stage.. into the mic, wtih Austin making it clear to the audeince seconds later, and her tantrum after. Also Trish escorts her off... I thought she was taking her to jail for you know, stalking, harassment and wanting to wear allys skin but no she’s free at the end of the episode. I also really don’t like how Disney has a bad tendency of having “crazy” characters. Mental illness.. really is’nt a joke, but they had this girl and also creepy connie on Jesse, and I don’t think their the only “crazy” stalker characters. It’s okay to have a character be mentally unstable or a villian, but ot have the only mentally unstable characters be weird, creepy or stalkers is.. not right. Not at all. And I say that as someone with a mental illness. So austin sings, he gets a dolphin and i’m thankfully free of this mummys curse unless someone pays me to revisit it or emma uses her patreon review for it again. Austin and Ally is a stilted, messy sitcom that tries to use wackiness over jokes, with actors who clearly weren’t made comfortable in their rolls or given time to be and with a stock premise. THank you for reading, and to the actors involved i’m sorry I had to dredge up your pasts. You guys deserve better.

#disney channel #austin and ally #ross lynch #laura marano #rani rodrigeuz #calum worthy #austin moon #ally dawson

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alphinias · 2 years

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I watched TSITP in one sitting and immediately devoured the first book (about to start the second one).

I can totally see now why people were saying the show was even better than the book which took me by surprise 'cause that's a bold statement I had never heard in my life before.

They fixed a lot of things in the series that were probably ok in 2009 when the books first came out but wouldn't stand a chance today, especially if the target audience is young women in 2022.

13 years isn't THAT much but sure things have moved and progressed fast in the last decade, so many nuances of the story would have been slaughtered if they sticked to the book step by step. I'm glad they smoothed Conrad's character and watered down some of the possessive ways he acted and same for Belly being 10 times more "I act for myself first" and less obsessed over him. Watching the show I'm 100% team Conrad but I'm not gonna lie a lot of moments reading the book I was like "mmmmh boy, no" (for example when he kept grabbing her by the arm at the bonfire dragging her away from Cam or how forbidding some of his statements sounded) and they sure fixed it in the script, show Conrad is definitely jealous but not possessive. Same thing goes for a lot of the female characters like Taylor and Nicole, in the books it's almost like Belly projects her insecurities despising other girls, none of her relationships with other girls her age seemed to matter or to be real and I'm glad in the show they actually said "no, this isn't happening 'cause in real life girls don't go around catfighting 24\7. They maybe won't be the best of pals but they'll be cool and respectful with each other" which added A LOT to Belly as character. I love how they also toned down a little the bitterness between Jeremiah and Conrad, it is definitely there on screen but it isn't as snappish as in the book (like Jeremiah showing off is new body to Belly and Conrad calling him out at the dinner table).

Overall they tried to make everything a little more healthy and easy for the people following the story to like the characters and empathize with them, I feel like in the show you can easily struggle with "it's so hard to pick a side 'cause I love them all, they're all great" while with the books you can easily think "it's so hard to pick a side 'cause they're all messy" (not gonna lie borderline toxic, ALL of them). With the show you pick your favorite, with the book you pick who you despise less.

This makes me hopeful about the next seasons, I yet have to read the next two books but I roughly know what's gonna happen in the story since it's been impossible to avoid spoilers and I have this belief they won't go there with the marriage proposal, it's too much and it probably would divert the audience from the empathy towards both ships and they'll probably scratch that replacing it with another big deal but not as drastic (maybe moving in together) 'cause considering how much of a big deal the ball was in the show and her already having to choose between one of the two brothers but not at all in the book I have the feeling they kind of used it as symbolism for the wedding storyline (I picked Jeremiah, I'm there in the white dress with him but SYKE it's Conrad in the end always been him) and letting it happen now while they're all teen and it's not so serious, I don't know maybe that's just my wishful thinking but I can see them fixing this as well and making it more acceptable.

Never thought I'd be saying these words in my life but so far season 1 vs. book 1? The score is Book 0 - TV show 1.

Like I’ve said, it’s been years and years since I read the books, but yeah. Definitely thought a lot of it would have aged poorly from what I do remember. It’s definitely a product of its time.

Hats off to Jenny Han and everyone who worked on the show, truly. They improved all the areas that needed it and made the good things as good or even better.

I am also hopeful than they will translate some of what’s coming better after what they changed in S1.

#the summer i turned pretty #ask

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dixbolik-lovers · 2 years

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Recently I was minding my own business and I suddenly had the horrible realization that Diabolik Lovers is a dating sim for TEENAGERS.

Like, yeah I knew that, I discovered and watched anime in my teens (14 or 15 yo maybe?), but the realization that an anime/game like this has teens as a target audience let me like

And now I'm worried because I remember that in my adolescence there were a lot of people (especially girls) who said they wanted to marry the Diaboys, that they were perfect etc???

At the time I thought that when someone said they were in love and wanted to marry a character (or a celebrity) they were joking, I thought it meant they were fans of the character and liked them a lot ;-; (I'm aromantic but didn't know that at the time 😅😂)

....not really, though?? If I remember correctly, most of the games are rated 15+ in Japan (with More Blood being 17+), so that's late teens at best. I also got into it when I was 14, though. XD

Teens like that generally don't have the maturity/context to understand just how awful DL and its characters are, but that doesn't always matter, either. If they're having fun with the series, it doesn't hurt anyone for them to interpret the boys as caring boyfriends or whatever. They have plenty of time to grow up and realize wait, nope, they're all rotten little shits, actually.

As for the marrying thing, well, isn't it a joke? Young teenagers don't have a full concept of marriage yet, so even if they claim they want to "marry" an anime boy, they're thinking more along the lines of "he's handsome and makes me happy, so I want to be with him" than the real-life, adult concept of marriage where you have to navigate an imperfect, difficult, and often stressful lifetime partnership with another human being, through all the unpleasant challenges life brings. They're not thinking about that stuff yet.

And honestly, it's not just a teen thing! It may be a non-joking statement, but I don't think anyone can say they'd marry a fictional character and have it be 100% serious. When you're obsessed with an anime boy, you're in love with a two-dimensional person on a screen who you'll only ever see certain sides of, not a real person with a complete personality and desires of their own.

I'm also aromantic, but I am technically married (just not legally because American disability stuff is a bitch), soooo... yeah. >3> Real-life relationships have their benefits, but safe fantasies about fictional characters also have their place in people's lives~

#Ask

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greatwyrmgold · 2 years

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Started watching Parallel World Pharmacy, and I have some thoughts.

It’s not bad, exactly, but it’s not as interesting as it should be. The big problem I have with isekai is that so many of them are so similar. You’ve got your nerdy teen who dies, ends up in a fantasy world with super-awesome magic powers that let him beat up monsters real good and attract 2-5 hot girls that want to befriend him (or more, depending on the target audience), who uses those powers to beat up some monsters real good.

PWP should be different, and to an extent it is. So far, no monsters have been beaten up. But he still has super-awesome magic powers, some of which would let him beat up monsters real good if he ran into them, some of which are restricted to only trivializing everything within a two-field radius of pharmacology. There’s still the hot girls being set up as our hero’s technically-not-a-harem, still a bunch of exposition about lore that doesn’t really matter, the story still centers around all the awesome stuff the hero can breeze through.

I’m disappointed.

If you want a more detailed but stream-of-consciousness series of thoughts, keep reading.

Why is it that fictional hard-working scientists need to have some dramatic reason for wanting to develop life-saving medicines or whatever? Maybe it’s just me, but “I want to invent better medicines so nobody has to suffer like my sister did!” feels like a weaker motivation than “I want to invent better medicines because it’s good when people can be healed.” Like, yeah, the first is more personal, but it’s also more superficial, if that makes sense. Makes it seem like he’s not trying to save people because he knows it’s the right thing to do, so much as because he feels bad.

Dr. Kanji musing on how long it’s been since he directly interacted with a patient and wanting to be a small-town pharmacist some day feels like a way to blunt the impact of a researcher motivated by wanting to find a cure/treatment for a fairly specific kind of tragedy being sent to a world where he can’t actually research that. It’s also a nice touch of characterization.

The name of the dude Kanji got isekai’d into is Farma de Médicis. Farma de Médicis, the medical pharmacist. He makes a joke about how his name sounds like a pharmaceutical company, but still.

Having Kanji/Farma and his maid walk by some paintings of his family while she was expositing about them was a good way to add a bit of visual interest to the exposition scene, without needing to budget too many animation frames. It’s not that interesting, but as exposition-dump scenes go, it’s…above-average.

Speaking of which, I’ve seen and read plenty of isekai and isekai-adjacent stories, and I’m kinda sick of them hovering in this area where the hero is treated more or less like normal despite asking questions that would be really weird for someone from this world to ask. Amnesiac or no, it’s weird to ask if “that kind of thing exists here.” Some characters remark that Farma seems different after the lightning strike, but in more of a “comedy beat” way than a “foreshadowing” way.

The maid worried about the possibility that Farma might not ever remember how to do Divine Arts (magic). I think that it would be pretty neat if Farma had to make do with modern medicine instead of healing magic. Farma casts a water spell ~30 seconds after the scene with the worried maid ends. His biggest problem is that he casts too much magic and can’t make it stop. About a minute later, he starts conjuring everything from gold to sugar. Apparently he can conjure any kind of pure material, and “eliminate” (vanish) it too.

Kanji’s also able to recall Farma’s old memories of how the fantasy world’s medicines work, though I’m not sure whether they’re magical/alchemical elixers or just mundane folk remedies.

Did we need a maid-exposits-about-Farma scene and a tutor-exposits-about-magic scene in the first episode? Also, one of the five magical elements in this world is “none of the above”. (They’re technically called “attributes” and the fifth attribute’s name is just “none,” but still.)

Apparently it’s supposed to be impossible for people to conjure more than one type of substance (ie, both water and earth, like Kanji/Farma did), and that conjuration like the water trick he did practically by accident normally requires a divine wand and an incantation, and Farma using just the wand lets him conjure a “water spear” the size of a small waterfall. And he breaks the magic-potential-meter thingy his tutor grabs to make sure he didn’t waste his whole life’s magical reserves in one shot, and apparently breaking the Divinometer (its actual name, at least in the subtitles) is completely unheard of.

Kanji insisting that his divine mark is a perfectly normal burn while it’s glowing with divine light is pretty funny. I wish it was a consistent funny character trait instead of one funny moment, though. This show could use more moments where Kanji is wrong.

Apparently this world is so primitive that they don’t realize that blurry vision can be improved by looking through a small gap in your fingers. Which is basically just squinting with extra steps, but it also activates Farma’s divine diagnosis-vision, which is another power he has. Ugh. Boundless reserves of not-mana, power over all four elements and “none,” a Divine Eye, knowledge of cutting-edge modern medicine in a world rubbing bat wing lotions on wounds—pick one cheat power and stick to it!

Anyways, Farma’s tutor sees all of these weird inhuman powers, realizes Farma has no shadow (by the way Farma has no shadow), and assumes he must be some kind of monster. He shows up later to bring her medicine, and she answers the door in full plate armor. I mention it because I found her paranoia funny. Also, she apparently did this (and assumed he poisoned the medicine) because she thinks Farma is the incarnation of Panactheos, the god of medicine, which makes me wonder what kind of dude that god is. What kind of medical god tries to murder people for freaking out over the god being weird?

Also, nobody else notices that Farma doesn’t have a shadow. He doesn’t hide from people once he realizes he’s deshadowed, the inside of the manor isn’t dimly- or evenly-lit enough for shadows to not be a thing that happens (as in, the artists drew some shadows in there), and Farma even goes outside just for the heck of it, in the middle of the day, where his shadowlessness would be obvious.

“I need you in my life,” Farma says to the tutor. And a moment later, he gives her flowers. I’ve mentioned that the tutor is a pretty girl, just a bit older than Farma, who shows up in the OP as what looks like an employee at his pharmacy, right? So, um, we’re up to two not-so-subtle love interest characters, because this is a much more conventional isekai power fantasy than I’d been lead to believe.

Farma’s Divine Eye means there’s no House-ish tension around him trying to diagnose people—he just looks at the parts that hurt, guesses a diagnosis, and prescribes something when his diagnost-o-vision glows. Synthesizing the medicine is practically handwaved, since Farma can just conjure all component chemicals, so there’s no early-Ascendance-of-a-Bookworm struggle. There isn’t even a Dr. Stone appeal to learning how various medicines get made or work, because the anime rushes through the synthesis process and doesn’t discuss the biochemistry involved. Is the source material better about this? This feels like something that a light novel would be able to handle better, but also like something a typical author wouldn‘t bother with.

I am really getting tired of this thing where Kanji does un-Farma-like things or casually hands out medicine that shouldn’t exist, someone points this out, and then nothing comes of it. Either have Kanji/Farma be good at hiding this stuff, or have the people around him realize something’s wrong, or just don’t have there be this Big Secret! The tutor figured things out, so it’s not as bad as it could be, but still.

Apparently Kanji has the knowledge, skill, and tools to build a handheld microscope that can look at bacteria. Not, like, “he spends a whole episode scraping the necessary materials together,” or even “there’s a montage of him assembling the microscope”. The first we hear of this project is when he’s putting the finishing touches on it. Because he wasn’t gifted enough already.

Lots of isekai anime have this same round orangish city surrounded by off-white walls in the middle of a green field with a river running through it. Parallel World Pharmacy’s version of that city is hexagonal!

#anime #parallel world pharmacy #isekai #random thoughts

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mars-misc · 1 month

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Review: Partials Series by Dan Wells

Hello, everyone! (Salwa, aerkhastisnau!) - Target Audience: Teens & YA - Genre: Science Fiction - One-Sentence Summary: A girl named Kira wants to save humans from a disease and goes on an adventure enlisting the help of Partials (bio-engineered machines) along the way. The Partials series was a series I read when I was young, but have enjoyed it even now. I go back and reread it every once in a while when I feel like delving into that interesting world again where humans and partials are struggling in a post-apocalyptic world. However, as I have gotten older, I do see the strangeness of a 16-17 year old doing all that she has done. I will not spoil it but certain dialogue and the fact that she does things throughout the 3 books that none of the adults and smartest people in the surviving world have managed to do, does stick out to me as silly. But! It is easy to forget that she is her age and just think of her as an adult. So, I found that I can still enjoy it even now and here are some reasons why.

Character development is good. She changed throughout the books and doesn't remain static. Same with the other secondary characters.

Interesting concept of super-soldiers. This is probably the reason why I like it so much. The Partials, being what they are, are pretty cool! They look human but are grown in vats, have a link-system that connects them through breathing, command and rank is built in which can lead to problems because they are literally made not to be able to disobey orders from superiors, and they have the typical super strength, speed, senses; and highly intelligent. They are also built in batches of different models, making each model have a different specialty. From infantry, officers, generals, espionage, drivers, pilots, and etc. They are loosely a hive-mind concept and were treated before the fall like property of the US. Pretty awesome! I found myself wishing that we could delve into them more, see what its like in their "society" during the apocalypse. Just any bit more of information! However, the author did what was good for the books as if we went and dragged it out by showing all the bits about the Partials then it would mess with the flow of the story, probably. But, I want another novella that is set during the present time of the series, Wells!!

The story seems simple, girl finds cure. Incorrect. The 3 books are nicely put together and the cure thing is just a means to get to the real goal, coexistence. The books have ups and downs and inner plots and big plots. Overall, I enjoyed the flow of the story. The first book, I do warn is kind of slow during the first half, but after that the books keep up a good pace and add in little things that you don't see coming. I have a couple smalls mysteries though that I need answers to, Wells! Was it Skinny or Scruffy??? And what was up with the Partial that ran over to them and said something while they were high-tailing it to the bridge???? If I remember correctly, he didn't get to finish what he said or explain why he seemed to be almost friendly to the group.

Con, I did notice that some other reviews mentioned that the last book felt rushed near the end and I do have to agree with them. It has been a bit since I read it, honestly, but I do recall feeling like something was amiss. Like he was trying to wrap it all up and get it all finished and out. He might've been tired of the series and writing it or so. However, it wasn't horrible and totally fine for an ending. Do I wish there was more to read? You bet I wish!! What reader that enjoys a book's world wants to see it end? Anyone that said "yes", are you crazy?! Just kidding, just kidding!.....There better not be anyone that said "Yes". :P

Lastly, this book is pretty friendly towards young people and those who don't want crudeness and a lot of cussing.

As always, if this piqued your interest.... Go try the book out and come back and let me know what you thought! If anyone found something interesting or figured something out in the story, I'd love to read what you found.

Fahl!

#books #book review #book recommendations #dan wells #Partials #Partials Sequence #Book series #science fiction #scifi #dystopia #post apocalypse

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