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ectomoog · 4 months

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How to Get Your Friends into Doctor Who (2005) - A Guide

Ok I really like Doctor Who, and of course I like introducing people to it, but oh my god do you forget how randomly terrible and/or cringy and/or uncomfortably Moffat-esque some of the episodes are, *especially* when you're watching it with someone who has no idea what to expect.

SO I made a list of ten episodes that I think would be the best loose sequence of episodes for a causal introduction to the show...

But first, some requirements:

It has to be a one-off (NO TWO-PARTERS), low commitment, etc

It can't require watching previous OR following episodes to be enjoyable

It needs to actually be good

It needs to represent Doctor Who well

In a social setting where you're showing a group of people an episode, most of these would be fine. Watching consistently with one person however, loosely follow this order, and if your person decides at any point that they want to commit to actually watching the show, skip straight back to The End of The World and watch Series 1. Ok list time...

1. Rose (S1, E01)

I think Rose is the perfect episode of Doctor Who to start on. It's campy, it's fun and weird and it sets up almost everything you need to know for the Revival Era. You get the companion, the Doctor, regular Doctor Who tropes and themes, etc. Plus, if they can't get past the Mickey bin scene, this show probably isn't for them anyway.

2. Dalek (S1, E06)

Skipping a few episodes into Series 1, Dalek is a great way to get a feel for the format of the show, and also a great and intentional introduction to the Daleks. The Doctor and the companion turn up in a mysterious place and have to battle an alien force and really unlikeable one-off side characters, the works basically. It's a fun monster-movie of an episode.

3. Vincent and The Doctor (S5,E10)

Jumping a whole five series forward, Vincent and The Doctor is a notoriously heart-wrenching historical that I think is a classic (if a little indulgent) example of Doctor-meets-famous-historical-figure. It's nice to jump to a different Doctor and a different era of the show, to get a feel for its' diversity. Although there's a few moments relevant to the greater series plot, it's contained, very pretty, very sweet, and easy to understand.

4. Midnight (S4, E10)

Midnight just feels like an essential episode to be honest. A fantastic one-off sci-fi horror/thriller, with one of David Tennant's best performances, a great introduction to the 10th Doctor. It's a shame you don't get more Donna, but I think this one would be my go-to if someone asked for the best episode to watch stand-alone, just based on how genuinely great it is.

5. Heaven Sent (S9, E11)

Jumping to Series 9 with another critically-acclaimed episode, but also one that I think is an amazing introduction to the 12th Doctor. Heaven Sent is a little unconventional, and I'm not 100% sure it should be here, but it does give Capaldi a whole episode to just act his ass off, and he completely delivers. It's artsy, mysterious and dramatic, very much the high concept sci-fi style of Moffat's later scripts, so I think an appropriate watch.

6. The Voyage of The Damned (2007 Special)

If you're not in a festive mood, try The Lodger or Demons of the Punjab instead

The Christmas episodes are too iconic not to show, and as far as Christmassy vibes, celebrity cameos and whimsical concepts go, this one is a fun one. This is David Tennant in his prime, with Kylie Minogue, a massive budget and a romp of a script.

6. Blink (S3, E10)

I mean, duh, but genuinely I think Blink is just *too good* not to include. A tense, creepy, tightly-written piece of horror TV with twists and turns and drama, it's considered the best episode of Doctor Who for a reason, and along with Midnight is an amazing stand-alone episode. It's not super conventional, but all the timey-wimey stuff is very Doctor Who.

6. The Mummy on The Orient Express (S8, E08)

If you're a Tennant stan you could swap this out for The Planet of the Dead

This one is just a fun one really. The Mummy on The Orient Express is stylish and fun, with a cool concept and a little peek into a more complex Doctor-companion relationship. With a short explanation you can get the context pretty easily, and it's a good example of your typical episode anyway.

HOWEVER if you have time, there's a bunch of two-parters you should watch instead, like The Family of Blood, The Empty Child, Silence in the Library, even Extremis.

9. The Haunting of Villa Diodati (S12, E10)

Finally some 13th Doctor rep! This one has some of the strongest writing in the Chibnall era, and is a fun horror mystery that serves as a fun introduction to Jodie Whittaker as the 13th Doctor. It has a little bit of series-wide arc, but that's okay.

10. The Church on Ruby Road (2023 Special 4)

If your person liked all those episodes but still doesn't want to watch 13 seasons of TV, just abandon ship and watch the 2023 Christmas special in preparation for Series 14 (or Season 1) in Spring 2024. The Church on Ruby Road is the beginning of the latest soft reboot of the show and has been explicitly created as a jumping on point for new fans. Ncuti Gatwa and Millie Gibson absolutely shine in this special, it's fun and silly and in my opinion bodes very well for the next season of Doctor Who...

"in 900 years of time and space, I've never met anyone who wasn't important" - Bannakaffalatta

I hope that was a success! After all those episodes hopefully you either had a good time with whoever you were watching it with, or you've already moved onto Series 1! I'll be trying this out the best I can with my girlfriend this year, so look out, because I may be back with adjustments later...

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mdhwrites · 4 months

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Do you think the Owl House writes good romance queer or otherwise?

NO. ABSOLUTELY NOT... but also SLIGHTLY yes.

Like a lot of TOH's writing, its romance writing suffers the same problem: Great concepts and initial presentation but a lack of ideas, focus or proper follow through means that it is kneecapped once the easy, flashy parts of writing the romances is over. The problem is that this is further compounded by the fact that this is EASILY the field in which TOH is the most willing to use cheap tropes so as to allow for simplicity of storytelling which conflicts with the rest of the storytelling. All of this makes the writing of the romances in TOH a PROBLEM.

Let's start, obviously, with Lumity. They are literally a Hallmark couple. That is not exaggeration or a metaphor. One of them is a plucky, small town person who believes in emotions and the present and that all that really matters is that the joy of things is kept alive. Meanwhile, the other is a big city slicker who was raised to care about pathetic things like financial security, her future and making sure that they're still going to have a roof over their head in the future. Over the course of their journey, the city slicker will realize that everything they believed is bullshit, that having ambition is terrible and have pretty much all of their personality traits scrubbed away so they can see things the way the small town person does and then the movie ends.

But... the show didn't end with Lumity getting together and the fact that this was using Hallmark's model gets REALLY obvious. The model requires that the serious one entirely abandon their desire, personalities and commonly their friends and family even, sometimes even their romantic partners. It's an extreme way to show character development and devotion. A show of how much they care for the other lead which is usually meant to be some amount of audience surrogate. That's not good for a character though, as desires/connections often form much of a basis for a character's motivations, and so suddenly the show is scrambling to give Amity a supporting cast to interact with and desires beyond Luz. However, because Luz is her only desire, again following this model, she always abandons those characters and desires to go back to Luz. Luz is still her true core focus in Reaching Out. She doesn't mention Alador in For the Future. This devotion honestly gets so bad over time as to become DISTRESSING because it is not a sign of a healthy relationship. Your partner should not be the only thing you appear to actually care about in this world.

Even if you don't want to accuse them of being a Hallmark model, they aren't anything new and some of their tropes are simply not good. A lot of works will have the quirky, silly guy get with the serious one in the cast. It's a classic pairing but one that's usually handled pretty awkwardly since it usually includes some amount of what comes down to harassment from the quirky member of the cast. Literally sexual harassment if you got with Inuyasha's pairing of Miroku and Sango. This is often because the quirky one sees the other as a challenge or the like and wants bragging points for being able to crack their shell. But of course, TOH would never include something like that. Luz is a good girl and would never declare something like, I dunno, "Maybe I can befriend her like Azura did her rival?"

Yes. That is an actual quote from the show. From Lost in Language where eventually Amity sees Luz's quirky nature as charming rather than trouble and the two finally get cohesion due to Luz's efforts to save Amity's life, which is actually not abnormal for any couple in an adventure show to have be when their attraction starts, let alone this sort of pairing. Again: The show does nothing new here... But why should that matter? I LIKE Hallmark movies after all despite their flaws. They can be fun and charming, even as they make incredibly questionable choices.

Well, part of the problem is that the tone and ego of TOH doesn't match with storytelling that revels in cheats like Hallmark does. Understanding Willow is just one of MANY examples of the show claiming it won't use narrative shortcuts, especially in relationships between people. You know, only a couple episodes before it uses the shortcut from Hallmark of Amity throwing away connections consequence free in Winging it Like Witches. Then, four episodes after that, doing it again in Escaping Expulsion. TOH claims to be more maturely paced than that though. That these are real characters with long term arcs and that they are people, not props. But... The Hallmark model uses mostly pretty cheap props. It needs to for its life as a popcorn movie and for how simple its stories are. Just as an example: Murder might be farther than most antagonists in Hallmark movies but rampant greed and not caring about others to a cartoonish level? Yeah, that's there in those and it's there in Alador and Odalia. These two approaches are simply incompatible and I do not blame anyone, myself included, who thought the show was claiming that there would be more to Amity's character than simple obstructions that had to be moved away and biopsied out of her for the sake of being a love interest.

Now, real quick tangential shout out: My favorite Hallmark style movie, even if it technically isn't one since it's not by Hallmark, is Last Christmas. Yes the one based on the song. It's not perfect but it's a lot more unique in my opinion than most and like... If I can say it still fits the Hallmark style, perfection was already left at the door. Charm and fun though? There in spades.

But, getting back on track, Lumity isn't the only romance in the show.

Raeda, like Lumity, presents a strong, classic romance pairing to begin with as well. The wild outlaw and the more rule abiding loyalist but with the neat twist that age has actually brought them to being much closer in viewpoints. As such, it's more the girl who fits in and so knows how to be a rebel and the nice person who is trying to branch out and push boundaries now. They balance each other well but their conflict is immediately understood. The care is also easy to understand, let alone once you know that the curse and the lies tore them apart.

But... Then S2B begins. Now see, with their backstory, you'd actually expect Raine to have some issues with Eda. Some potential trust problems and the like but... Nope. Their entire being is dedicated to the woman who lied to them and then ran from them rather than being honest with them. Like mentor like student I guess. However, Raine doesn't seem to care. Their relationship is 100% fully mended by the end of Eda's Requiem and everything Raine does, he does for Eda effectively despite there not actually being any reason given by them besides personal desire. Maybe they just don't want Eda possibly dying and abandoning her kids? Don't know because it's entirely left to interpretation.

Worse yet, Them's the Breaks goes even farther and makes it so that Raine is just a clone of Eda. A wild child who wants to break the rules and tell everyone to stuff it. They're just, you know, smarter about it than Eda. Not even that they need a push but just that they're better at hiding it. Neither this nor the devotion makes them interesting and like Amity for Lumity, their character vanishes and the romance at best becomes boring.

And finally Huntlow which... From a romance perspective it's nothing. It's not even to say that it doesn't exist but it's almost literally what a tacked on Romantic D PLOT would be. A couple cute looks, a handful of small exchanges and now they're soulmates. That's really it. Huntlow takes up an exceptionally small amount of time of the story and the time it takes up isn't used serving it explicitly but more to erase any memory of the fact that Hunter is a trained murderer who is VERY willing to execute people who get in his way. Stranger Tides proved that after all.

They're inoffensive but even with that said, they're not good. Hunter loses all of his edge while Willow is so forceful as to almost come across as a bully at times during Sport in a Storm (remember, she literally won't take no for an answer and kidnaps him when he won't listen to her). This does make him look weaker and smaller but it doesn't make either one interesting. In fact, it just reinforces how this isn't a romance built off mutual like and chemistry. It's there because... It's just there. I guess Willow is nice to him once but so is Luz and Amity and he never starts being attracted to them. It's Willow pretty much because she's the one available to date and nothing else.

It's weak and it's nothing I care about, built on two of the most inconsistent characters in the entire show. They're genuinely the easiest for me to imagine genuinely being happy together and being just a nice couple, instead of one being in charge over the other, but that's because they're boring. I imagine Hunter as Ned Flanders as an adult just to drive home the point.

So yeah, I'm confidant to say these aren't good romances. Meanwhile, the characters bend for the sake of the romances instead of the romance being properly based on their dynamics, critical elements to characters are discarded for the ease of them getting together and while we might get some cute moments, they have no depth or oomph to them and are only good when dealing with the wonders of a relationship and not its difficulties which are often the far more compelling parts of a relationship. If you want to know how it handles the difficulties of romance... *stares at how Luz spends the second half of the series lying to her girlfriend despite making a promise to be more open at the end of Falls and Follies* Yeah, it's really fucking shitty. If you compare the conversation Amity and Luz have at the end of Covention compared to their conversation before the Grom Tree in Reaching Out, it becomes REALLY clear just how far both of them have fallen, as well as their chemistry. I have quite literally spent multiple blogs talking about how Reaching Out is the death of Lumity for me, a SUPREME Lumity shipper if the probably close to a million words based on them between original and fan works isn't enough to prove it, and I don't feel like going hard on it here.

But hey, it wasn't ever meant to be a romance. Dana said so herself. It just, you know, takes up literally a third of the show. That's not hyberbole. Amity takes up seven episodes of S1. She takes up six of S2 while Raeda, which ends up being pointless because everything they do doesn't matter, takes up two episodes of S2, and that's if you don't include Falls and Follies as either a Raeda or Lumity episode which it could be claimed for both. Huntlow is a part of Hunter's arc at the expense of having it be TEN EPISODES since he interacted with Luz when Hollow Mind comes up and SHE is the one there for his character's big turn.

For a genre that the show supposedly wasn't about, it sure is prioritized over ANYTHING else. Amity and Luz literally have more plot lines together than Eda and Luz. You know, the two who are pitched as the twin main characters. Mentor and student. The two who will beat Belos together arguably. Yes, King is there but if you think Luz spends too little time with Eda, just imagine what that ends up looking like if you look too closely at Luz and King's time spent together.

And that is an element of romance writing. How does the romance serve the plot and theme. How can you make it important. Amity, Raine and Willow are all non-important to the story, especially when compared to their partners. None of them ever help push the plot forward minus Raine and again, their contribution ends up being pointless. Willow at least arguably enacts some character growth on Hunter but Hunter isn't actually that important to the story, just his relationship with Belos and his backstory. As for Amity? It literally was a meme that nothing important could happen with her around and she has literally no impact on Luz's character ever. If she did, Luz might not have LIED TO HER FOR HALF THE SERIES.

Their contributions to the finale highlight this all too well. They're just effectively background characters. Not even interacting with their partners but just doing what everyone else is doing. Their connections don't matter. Their lessons don't. They don't matter to this story.

Which you know what? Even in a Hallmark movie, the serious lead's turn to becoming bland usually coincides in them, having been persuaded by their love for the quirky other lead, to swoop in and save the day. The effect that love and connection and what not wins out. The relationship is at least part of why there is a happy ending.

When your romance is more pointless, and at best just as charming as, a HALLMARK ROMANCE, I think I can pretty firmly say you aren't good at romance.

======+++++======

I have a public Discord for any and all who want to join!

I also have an Amazon page for all of my original works in various forms of character focused romances from cute, teenage romance to erotica series of my past. I have an Ao3 for my fanfiction projects as well if that catches your fancy instead. If you want to hang out with me, I stream from time to time and love to chat with chat.

A Twitter you can follow too

And a Kofi if you like what I do and want to help out with the fact that disability doesn’t pay much.

#the owl house criticism #toh critical #Lumity #Raeda #Huntlow #The Owl House #TOH

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chibivesicle · 1 year

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I would love to see an in depth breakdown of Stampede’s reworkings of Trigun’s female characters and how they compare to their original counterparts. Because although I’m not normally one to cry “misogyny” but I can’t help but feel like whoever decided to turn multifaceted characters like Meryl, Luida and Elendira into cutesy waifus and reduced Rem to the classic ‘dead mother’ trope has some explaining to do. There’s also the matter of the plants in Stampede being forcefully impregnated via Knives violating Vash, complete with swollen pregnant stomachs, which to me is just straight up, well, cursed(although something similar happened in the manga).

I can’t help but feel like there’s a lot of unspoken misogyny here.

Hello!

Now that Trigun Stampede is over and the dust has settled, I can 100% say that I agree with you. The level of lazy misogynistic writing in Stampede was high. When I was doing the weekly videos, I kept thinking, "Well, it isn't that bad. Is it?" until looking at the entire show and realizing, that "Yeah. It was terrible."

I'm not even going to touch on the entire sexual/impregnation of the plants via Knives by violating Vash at all! I'm sure one could write an entire meta about it and how cringe it is but I'm not feeling that vibe.

I'll focus on the female cast and how they were shortchanged from the original work to this 're-imagining'. I will say that the Trigun manga, focuses less on the female characters. But they are all totally competent individuals who are not driven by the romantic need to marry some man. Overall, the '98 anime was even better by creating the quartet of Vash, Meryl, Milly and Wolfwood. I mentioned it from time to time in my reviews but the original anime passed the Bechdel test. Which on paper isn't a high bar for media to clear but soooo many things fail that test.

For overall female character significance and roles in the Trigun universe (multiverse?) the '98 anime is top. Meryl and Milly play a major role in how Vash and Wolfwood behave and also bear witness to their actions and support them. Yet, they are not weak but instead demonstrate how four people, will have four different ways to solve the exact same problem.

However, the manga has a greater cast of women and cannot be ignored. As you mentioned, Luida and Elendira appeared in Stampede from Trimax and both are great characters. Aaannnnddd, Stampede ruined them for me.

The best way to approach all of the key women of the series, we'll break it down by character.

Meryl Stryfe - insurance adjuster/reporter

Trigun manga - secondary character. Acts as human viewpoint watching Vash, reacting to the power of his angel arm, contemplating what it is like to kill someone with a firearm. Age at the start of manga 21. Age after time skip, 23. By the end of the series 24-25 ish?

Trigun '98 - main character. Acts as human viewpoint in observing Vash [again] but also feels compassion towards him as their friendship grows. Senior and experienced insurance adjuster both a friend and mentor for Milly. Competent on the job, hard worker, gets things done, leans for logic over emotions. Age not mentioned in anime, but likely similar to manga. Vocal, opinionated, and ready to take on any situation.

Stampede - main character. Newbie reporter for November news under Roberto. Older starting age of 23, yet acts like she's 16 or something. Her character is a disappointment in this version; with her being junior to Roberto there is no senior female in the cast and it shows. By no means is Meryl supposed to be a perfect person (this is Nightow after all) but he does not write cutesy female characters. No female character in his cast is like how she is in Stampede.

Milly Thompson - insurance adjuster/reporter/???TBD

Trigun manga - secondary character. Strong, emotional, a bit naive but still able to help Wolfwood out during a fight. Continues to be the junior to Meryl and follows her to their secondary career as journalists.

Trigun '98 - main character. Foil to both Meryl and Wolfwood. Besides Vash making Wolfwood change his viewpoints, she also pushes him to think about things differently. Most importantly, she doesn't judge him based on his actions and only shows that she cares. Emotionally intelligent, naive and honest to a fault.

Stampede - next season?

Enough said right there. Why was Milly replaced by lame ass old man info dump Roberto?

Rem Severem - Key team member of Project Seeds/Vash and Knives adopted mother

Trigun manga - Rem is the mother/moral guidepost for Vash in the manga. He tries to uphold her ideals and moral code to not kill anyone. She told him about the death of her significant other which left her feeling lost. However, a dream about her taking a train with a origin station but no destination created her philosophy that everyone's ticket to the future is blank.

She is an incredibly compassionate individual and even tries to stop Vash from committing suicide being injured herself in the events. It causes him to snap out of it as he put her in medical care. However, her philosophy is impossible to practice on the planet where the ships crashed. Yet for ~150 years Vash is able to not kill another person.

Trigun '98 - The exact same role as in the manga but with less backstory fleshed out. However, her quote of one's ticket to the future is blank is the same. Additionally, the anime adds in her love of a creation song which becomes a musical motif in the anime linking Vash to her and to the present day humans as they try to create a new world. Hence the creation myth song as Project Seeds was to allow for them to restart.

The anime links Rem to Meryl when Vash finds himself lost as she supports him before he heads off for his final showdown with Knives. It shows that a very similar philosophy still exists within humanity and that Vash can continue on with his personal moral compass.

Stampede - At first, we learn who Rem is, unlike the anime or manga. She shows us that she saved Vash and Nai and that she loved them. However, that was it. We never hear her personal philosophy. The flashback only focuses on how she tries to raise them as her own children but no deep moral discussions are had like in the manga or even the anime.

Again, this is a huge determent to her character in Stampede; the series very much went for tell not show. So to try to convey Rem's character through showing when the default was tell made it a disappointment. I waited, waited, waited for her to say at least some version of her quote about the ticket being blank. Nothing.

Rem barely spoke in the scheme of things. Nor did Vash have dream or one sided conversations with her in Stampede which also made it hard to understand why he wouldn't kill.

Elendira the Crimsonnail - 13th Gung-ho Gun/nail producing child-plant hybrid who doesn't age

Trigun manga - A trans woman and the strongest of the Gung-ho Guns. Truly a witty and fashionable individual with her briefcase that allows for her to pierce opponents with a rain of oversized nails. Elendira's character is quite nuanced, watching the fall of humanity on the planet while having complex conversations with Legato. The two of them are frequently at odds but both see their roles to assist Knives in his goals.

I found her character to be the most sane/rational viewpoint into Knives and his organization. She always has a witty remark or comment and seems to have chosen to work with Knives thinking that this would be the winning side.

After she's revealed to be trans, that's pretty much it. It isn't brought up time and time again, nor does it define her character - you know with the whole ending of humanity on the planet taking more precedence.

Her final battle against Livio is epic and overall, I liked her character. She was badass in the best way possible.

Stampede - Ugh, where do I even start. . . . Elendira appears to be a perma-prepubescent child being a human-plant hybrid. We see her with Grey the Ninelines when they steal a plant in episode 3 wearing a pink dress. So maybe a girl? Maybe a boy? No gender?

But then, when we get the Monev the Gale/Rollo flashback, she speaks to young Rollo calling herself an angel and appears the same age. Present events put her fight with Vash, Wolfwood, Meryl and Roberto 25 years later and she looks the same. Apparently, being a human-plant hybrid makes her inferior to Vash or Knives since she still has to plug herself into one of the glass aquariums to regulate her 'gate'. So, not a plant plant, but lacking the skills of an independent plant. Sort of a crappy outcome the more you think about it.

Despite her age being at least 35 (say she was 10 when she met Rollo) or even older than that - she acts like a child. Gets angry like a child and has not mentally matured at all. Again, didn't get the rapid aging bits of Vash so still mentally a child? Unless I am told otherwise, I'm gonna stick with she/her pronouns and based on the rest of writing for Stampede, they likely want us to see her as cis not trans.

You cannot even compare Trimax Elendira to Stampede. They are not the same character other than the name. They don't even use nails the same way! As far as I'm concerned, she's pointless in Stampede. A cutesy angry girl who will kill you with her gate manifested nails.

Luida - Leader of [un]crashed seeds ship/botanist

Trigun manga - leader of humans from the Project Seeds ship that had been in hiding with several generations of humans living on it above the barbaric planet below. As events worsen, becomes the de facto leader of all the humans resisting Knives and coordinates with the NML cavalry. Wise, straight shooting and in charge. Brad works for her after the death of the Sensei by the Leonoff the Puppet master situation.

She never really steals any scene but is critical to the success of their plan and acts as the link between the humans from Earth and the people on the planet's surface. Always framed in a strong position of leadership. A very androgynous appearance with spiked black hair, and simple clothing.

Stampede - Simplified to the second stand in mother figure for Vash. She also gets aged up with her first meeting Vash when he was a teenager and brought him into their home. Instead of being older than Brad, she is a peer with him and both of them are considerably older in the current time point. A plant biologist expert - something which is not even close to the role that she played in Trimax.

She also elicits the anti-mother anger from Knives in Stampede, meaning that Knives only wants Vash to himself. No women allowed to be mothers for them! Compared to the manga, she again like Elendira is a totally different character. We don't see a whole lot of that natural leadership and commanding presence from the manga.

Therefore, of this list of key female characters their fates are as such in Stampede:

Meryl - aged up but down in maturity and experience.

Milly - missing.

Rem - dead mother trope. Never said anything to convey why Vash is the way he is.

Elendira - infantilazation to a perma-child.

Luida - kind older lady/second mother.

Therefore, two female characters have been relegated to mother figures; Rem and Luida. Meryl was made less mature to be the junior to an old asshole. Elendira is as far as we know a perma-child.

All mature women with years of experience have been removed from the story. Yeah, I enjoyed the previous versions of Trigun for their killer girls, uwu-waifus, and doting mothers. Really connect with these sorts of characters. . . .

I'm sure you can tell I'm being sarcastic. Thus, I will rewatch the '98 anime, or reread the manga and turn my attention to Kekkai Sensen. Where there are more excellent female characters - shocking! K.K., Chain Sumeragi, Luciana Estavez, Aligura, Michella Watch (a blind woman in a wheelchair took out a Beyondian mad doctor remember?) and in the anime, White.

If Stampede wanted to do scary cute well, they only needed to look at Aligura. One of the 13 kings and a gothic lolita. It takes ovaries to liquefy your boyfriend and inject him into your crush. But hey, it works. 'Cause based on her dismissal of Leo thinking that he was important to her, she's not one to cry like a perma-child like Elendira in Stampede. When one's monster truck, car eating vehicle of destruction causes thousands of casualties, you are pretty badass.

#ask #answered ask #trigun stampede #trigun anime #trigun manga #trigun maximum #meryl stryfe #milly thompson #luida #rem severem #elendira the crimsonnail

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picnokinesis · 9 months

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could you tell me (without major plot spoilers -- details about characters and character dynamics are fine) what you loved most about 13's era? <3 I've started my first major who rewatch since I fell off the bandwagon (somewhere along season 11), and I'd love to know what I can look forward to!!

Oh my days hello!! Welcome to my blog! :D Be careful scrolling around because there are a LOT of spoilers (one character in particular is a walking spoiler rip) but oh man hMMM this is such a good question okay because I'll be 100% honest with you, I wasn't actually the biggest fan of s11? Like, don't get me wrong, there are certain episodes that I absolutely love (The Woman Who Fell to Earth is a prime example) and I know there are a lot of people who love it a lot, but on the whole I was pretty 'meh' about that season. It's a great set up, though, for what comes next - because you know how in s11 the Doctor is very much, on the surface, all happy go lucky and everything about the universe is wonderful? Well, that's one hell of a façade, and I really love s12 and 13 because we gradually get to see that mask start to crack under pressure, and it's SO good to see how the Doctor just...steadily losing her ability to keep it up. And she's so SO terrible with vulnerability - I said it in an ask yesterday, but I'm certain that a LOT of that comes from Grace dying so fast after she met her, newly regenerated, as well as losing Bill at the end of s10, and it means that she keeps everyone else at arm's length and won't let anyone see her vulnerable, because she has to keep everyone safe and she can't let anyone else die she can't lose anyone she can't do that again. And in s12 and 13, you get to see some of the consequences of her not actually being upfront about everything with her companions.

On a similar note, I really REALLY love the key thematic threads in the last two series! There's a lot about memory, identity, trauma and grief in s12 particularly, but also in s13 too, and I absolutely LOVE stories that delve into those. For me, it's been such a treat to have storylines that really dig into these ideas and explore them. There's also a general anti-imperialist theme, especially in s12 and 13, which I really enjoyed. There is some pretty divisive additions to Gallifreyan/Doctor Who lore in s12 and 13, but I personally really REALLY love it - I think it really adds to the story and expands the sandbox, so to speak, whilst also doing this INCREDIBLE job of 1) adding new layers of angst to old episodes of Doctor Who reaching waaaaaay back into Classic, whilst preserving the episodes as they were before so you can read them either way, as well as 2) taking odd bits of canon that didn't make sense and weaving them into a coherent storyline. It's genuinely really cool, to me at least. So I would say go into that with an open mind.

There's also some WONDERFUL characters in s12 and 13 - I won't say who or what or where, but there's a lot of fun stuff. I don't know how you found my blog, so you might not know that I write a lot of fanfic, and I've had a whale of time exploring some of the side/recurring characters in s12 and 13, and they're such a joy to write :) But of course the MAIN characters are so SO fantastic - I absolutely ADORE thirteen, she's awful and a massive hypocrite but also just doing her best and trying to keep herself together (and failing), and she's so great to write. I've written over half a million words (literally) about her now, so I think that should tell you how much inspiration Thirteen and this entire era has given me. And the companions are just fabulous. ALSO!! There's a LOT of telepathy and other tropes in this era that I've reaaaaally really loved.

Also - and this is just a little thing, but whilst I love Moffat's era, he did have a tendency to overuse the TARDIS cloister bell - which, I mean, that's fine because I love it HAHA but in Chibnall's era, I think we only hear it......once? I think? I may be wrong, but I remember the one main time we hear it is pretty far into his era and I was like YOOOOOOOOO because we hadn't heard it in so long, right? And so to suddenly hear it again.......it was like 'oh frick, this is REALLY BAD then', and it just gave me chills, yknow? So I liked that a lot!

There are probably a bunch of other things too, but I reckon that gives you a sense of it. I think one thing to really remember with Chibnall's era is that the more you dig into the stories and engage with them, the more you discover and the more it rewards you. A lot of storylines that can seem really simple or sparse on the surface can end up being SO rich once you sit with them for a few minutes. I think I've particularly discovered this as I've written fanfic, but also just thinking about stuff and how it all connects - within itself as an era, but also back into previous eras too! It's such a celebration of the entire show - especially the last episode - and it's very VERY obviously been made by a team of people who had an absolute blast making it, and were all very supportive of each other. I've also really appreciated that there's been a genuine strive towards diversity, both in front of and behind the camera, and whilst there have definitely been some pretty blatant missteps, from what I've seen and heard (for example, during Gally One panels) these efforts were done with good intentions behind them, and all the time actively striving towards something better? And I personally think that a flawed end result is much better than one that plays it safe with no diversity at all. It's a step in the right direction, at least - and, post Doctor Who, Chibnall pretty much immediately went to set up a project that trained up new producers because he said that 'too many showrunners are people like me' - so I think that suggests (to me, at least) that his money is where his mouth is.

ANYWAY that ended up being long....hope this helps, though!! And I really hope that you enjoy watching this era as much as I did!! :D I've loved Doctor Who since 2005, but s12 and s13 just catapulted me into being absolutely obsessed with it again, and it's been so wonderful to get so much joy out of something that I've loved since I was a kid

VERY QUICKLY THOUGH - list of some of my favourite Thirteen episodes, in no particular order:

War of the Sontarans

Spyfall (parts 1 and 2)

Village of the Angels

The Woman Who Fell to Earth

Survivors of the Flux

Ascension of the Cybermen

Fugitive of the Judoon

Eve of the Daleks

The Power of the Doctor

#taka replies #anon #long post #doctor who #chibnall era #thirteenth doctor #thirteen #the doctor #uhhhhhhhhh idk what to tag this #but man!!!#i didn't go into my personal feelings about the doctor #and how she was the first time i really felt SEEN in another character #because that's something that's pretty open to interpretation anyhow #but yeah she means a huge amount to me augh #and this whole era is just....very close to my heart

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thewertsearch · 1 year

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Asks Compilation 11/12

I never considered that Aradia could be feeling sincere gratitude towards Equius - that's a good point, and might partially explain her flushed feelings for him. Similarly, I never thought about how difficult and impractical a relationship would be for Equius, given he has this kind of strength paired with this kind of dexterity.

Anyway, I half-agree with your thesis. I can imagine a hypothetical kismesissitude between an older, more mature Equius and Aradia, and I think that relationship could potentially be healthy, for the reasons you describe.

But the one we're getting is doomed from the start - Equius's mind-control shenanigans have pretty much torpedoed the whole thing. I don't think he can have a healthy relationship until he figures out why that was wrong.

I'll give you a freebie right now - most of the Jojo villains would fit right in with the Felt!

Yeah, it's not like romantic rivalry is a new idea. Really, the more I think about it, the more I think Hussie's riffing on real relationship tropes with all the quadrants.

Hell, I could probably list some fictional characters that work pretty well as Moirails - and I'm not just talking about The Locked Tomb!

[ sent when you posted your troll ranking! - C ]

She's the best, she's the worst, and she's destined for great terrible things.

Sorry Eridan - someone had to nab last place!

He does have a great design. The cape and scarf work well together - I can see how he'd be easy and fun to cosplay.

We have two opposing views here, and they both make good arguments. Aristocrats do tend to be egotistical by nature - but Alternia would expect him to act that way, even if it wasn't his natural tendency.

I personally don't think Eridan ever intended to exterminate the land-dwellers, but I'm not sure he ever realized that himself.

Don't forget Insane Clown Hussie, which is when your webcomic author keeps putting more harlequins in their story.

Toby, what are you doing back in my ask box? Get outta here, you scamp!

Ayy!

It's funny, I never considered that many people are reading through the liveblog/chrono/ tag. I'm almost never on my blog's page; I see it through the dashboard!

Happy belated birthdays, Jade, Dave, and, Rose!

Odd. It really looks like John's birthday should be December 2nd. Maybe something went wrong with his meteor.

The Newtonverse is a corruption of Homestuck, but Homestuck is already a parody of a million other things. It's one layer too deep, and feels 'wrong' as a result.

Unless Cool and New Webcomic is a similar style of parody, in which case, who knows? Maybe the Newtonverse is simply real, and trying to break into our reality.

Yeah, that makes sense. She certainly looks like a classic eldritch monster.

I can't see the commentary - I assume because some of it contains spoilers. For comments that don't spoil anything, feel free to send them along.

It's always very tempting to check out other livebloggers so I can compare and contrast. I won't, though - quite aside from any worries about spoilers, I just don't want to influence my own opinions!

This has always been a blind spot with me, and it always will be. Try as I might, I will never recognize the difference between Rouge and Rouge.

I knew the comic had about 8000 pages, but it's good to know it clocks in at 8128.

It annoys me more than it should that it's not 2^13, or 8192. It would have been a nice round number to finish on!

Thank you, and welcome!

Eridan's beliefs don't really make sense - but it makes sense that they don't. It's bigotry, after all.

He knows trolls like Kanaya, and can clearly see that there's nothing inferior about her - but he can't let go of what he's been taught, so he just doesn't address it, and continues on as normal.

This comic is damn long, so it's a fun reference to make.

I'd probably pick one. No special reason - I just sort of vibe with the number, and it's the closest to something kooky like zero, or a negative number.

I would have picked the cueball, but I don't think I want Scratch as a rival...

Ok, that's fair, actually.

I love how she's trying to 'cull' them.

It's a good bit. I wonder if this means Hussie's trollsona is a green-blood, like Kanaya?

Read it!

It's not intended to! The others all link to the post where the work was recommended to me, but Con Air wasn't recommended - it's just a movie slightly relevant to Homestuck. I have it up there for completeness, and it's underlined for consistency.

#asks #full liveblog #act 5

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ecargmura · 10 months

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My Happy Marriage Episode 1 Review: Taisho Era Cinderella Story

Ah yes, the classic Cinderella story. We get a girl being mistreated by her family after her father gets remarried and then she meets the rich man who will save her from her hell. As cliche as the trope gets, I actually like the trope. I like seeing the lead character be super withdrawn and having that one special person come into their life and make them open up and change them for the better.

However, there are some interesting things that differs My Happy Marriage from the usual Cinderella story. First off, Miyo, our main character, has her father who got remarried. After the birth of her half-sister Kaya, both her biological father and her stepmother mistreat her and her younger sister looks down on her.

The entire first episode is just making Miyo be in the worst situation possible. Miyo’s daily life is just cleaning. Her childhood sweetheart gets engaged to her younger sister and she gets sent off to be married into another family. You just can’t help but feel bad for Miyo.

Miyo is just a miserable character for now. I feel bad for her. She’s been so emotionally abused that all her personality got sucked out and she’s only a shell for now. I just hope that Kiyoka can bring in some personality into her.

Oh boy, Miyo’s family sucks balls. I did mention that her BIOLOGICAL father neglected her after his remarriage. Her stepmother is also terrible. It sucks that the two only care about Kaya and not Miyo. The only “good” thing her father did for her was buying her a nice kimono for the marriage interview. If you look at the things she had packed, she only had two pairs of clothes. That means her father has never bought her clothes until now. On top of that, he makes Miyo go to her arranged partner’s house ON HER OWN! WITHOUT AN ESCORT! He’s certainly not winning any Father of the Year awards ever. Her stepmother is just awful. She doesn’t care about her stepdaughter at all and it shows. She belittles her whenever she can. Kaya is also a bitch. She just looks down on her and sneers at her whenever she can. Like, the way she looked at Miyo as she was getting engaged to Koji made me want to punch her so bad. She just seems like an entitled bitch. Don’t tell me she’s going to go after Kiyoka when she learns that he’s a better catch?

Miyo’s childhood friend Koji seems like the only one who’s genuinely nice to her, but not even he can stand up to his family. It sucks that the only light in Miyo’s life has to be taken away. It seems that his family is quite powerful because he cannot choose who to marry and such. It sucks that society back then was like this. It just feels heartbreaking to know how many bonds have been broken due to arranged marriages and the powerlessness to prevent them.

I’m also curious to why they arranged her to meet Kiyoka. Did they request her? I don’t think this was ever explained. Her father was like “Here, go to this man’s house. Get married. Bye,” and refuses to elaborate. Who set this up?

My opinion on Kiyoka is nothing right now; he just appeared towards the end of the episode. How am I supposed to make an opinion about that? I just hope he’s a nice guy. Miyo needs some good people in her life.

The anime is super pretty, though! I love the background details like the cherry blossom tree, the water and the trains. Given that Western clothes existed and there are trains, I’m assuming this show takes place during the Taisho era? Because I get reminded of Demon Slayer since that show’s setting takes place in the Taisho era too.

The voice acting is great! Reina Ueda voices Miyo and she does a great job with the soft-spoken tone. Ayane Sakura voicing Kaya was good too. Sakura is a versatile voice actress. She can be the sweetest thing ever or she can dish out the haughty bitch voice with relative ease. Kana Ueda voices Miyo’s stepmom and I’m not used to her voicing an adult since I’m always more familiar with her cutesy roles. I think that the biggest mindblowing role is Kaito Ishikawa in his 5 minute screen time. I’m usually familiar with Ishikawa playing loud, brash and hot-blooded characters so for him to voice a stoic, stern man like Kiyoka is going to take some time for me to get used to.

Overall, Miyo deserves a happy life. I do wonder when the supernatural elements will be implemented into the story since the first episode is just showcasing how bad Miyo’s life is and that she gets sent off to marriage. This is an adaptation of a rather popular light novel series. Maybe I should give it a read when I get the chance.

#my happy marriage #review #anime #anime review #Miyo saimori #Kiyoka kudou #kaya saimori #koji tatsuishi #supernatural #romance #ecargmura #arum journal

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darkacademiacathedral · 1 month

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Today I want to talk about one of my favorite stories by James Joyce. It's a short story from his collection Dubliners, which, I am of the opinion, is a better book (and obviously a better entry point) than his A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Titled "A Painful Case", it follows the account (in free indirect speech, but in third person) of one James Duffy, resident of the village of Chapelizod, Dublin. In many ways this man may seem to be of the "mean old grouch" trope, kind of like Ebenezer Scrooge from Dickens' classic short story "A Christmas Carol". But he's far from that simple, as we learn from the following pages.

The character here is painstakingly handcrafted, it could be argued of Joyce that he designs his prose and deals with his characterization with as much labor and attention to detail as, for the sake of analogy, today Hayao Miyazaki would draw a panel in one of his great films. There is great depth to each character, each sentence, each phrase employed in each piece of dialogue in the text. And this is true of Joyce's other work too.

Consider the arresting opening line of the story:

Mr James Duffy lived in Chapelizod because he wished to live as far as possible from the city of which he was a citizen and because he found all the other suburbs of Dublin mean, modern and pretentious.

Here we are immediately made aware of the looming sense of paralysis, of the decay and dreariness that the disparate stories in the collection all come together to hold as an organic whole. In a single sentence we are given information about the character's attitude and worldview, the condition of the unnamed city he hails from (and therefore, by proxy, much of the modern Irish urban landscape), the tolerable (Chapelizod) within the mostly intolerable (Dublin). Two discrete ideas about Mr Duffy's attitude, one that the character loathes his own city, and two that he finds all other suburbs of Dublin to be 'mean', 'modern', and 'pretentious' open a world of possibilities for interpretation of the character.

The fact that this character wants to live as far away from his home implies a lot about his past, but also about his more or less consistently rigid attitude in the present, of which more would be learnt from the rest of the story (please note we are only on the first sentence). Maybe he has some terrible trauma attached to his home city, or maybe he has done something shady that he doesn't want to associate with or be reminded of anymore. It is true however, that he has been shaped by the city of which he is a citizen, whether consciously or subconsciously, willingly or unwillingly.

The second clause of the sentence is even more revealing of the character's inner self; he finds the other Dublin suburbs to be 'mean', primarily a negative adjective, coupled alliteratively with 'modern': a neutral adjective which sheds light on Mr Duffy's opinion on architecture, as well as fashion, and 'pretentious' another usually negative adjective that implies that he abhors the attitude that these mean as well as modern people of Dublin suburbs carry. In a nutshell, he despises Dublin's modern climate, and whether it be because of the brutalist architecture of the city, the behaviour of the people, or the tastes of modernity that govern either, is left ambiguous. In not explicitly mentioning the devillish details, Joyce pulls a masterstroke, and evokes a lot more than a direct account would be able to. It is precisely in saying less that the portals of limitless discovery are opened through the reader's imagination.

This is no mean feat: in just one sentence, Joyce has achieved what many writers of his age and beyond would not in several paragraphs of dull prose. He breathes life successfully into a character we might not necessarily like or relate to, but would absolutely love to know more about. I think that's marvellous.

#james joyce #vintage #reading #darkacademia #light academia #literature #classic lit #books #booker prize #academia #modernist #art #architecture #writing

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eirichele · 1 year

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i tried out engage here's my thoughts. (really mild spoilers)

• honestly alear is like... corrin on steroids. its insane how much they get praised for pretty much being just...mid. i played fates cq and still found this ridiculously distracting because there are parts where the characters say something like "oh, divine dragon, you're (kind/wonderful)" every two or three lines. please sir this is a wendy's

• the worst part by far in this game are the visuals. the character design is kind of all over the place. they look jarringly modern, you can't guess ages, sometimes you can't guess their class. i feel terrible for mika pikazo because they didn't work closely with her, gave her little to no direction and now she's left to get the backlash. that's no way to treat an artist.

• her art is just unfortunately not translated well to 3d, which is a shame because her celebratory art that she posted on twit was very pretty even if its personally not to my taste for a fe game. the models themselves are technically superior to houses, theres very little pixelation. but all the shots and cgs are just....... so badly compositioned. very much 3h vibes with the "characters spinning in a microwave". at some point they split the screen in half to show two characters in different places and it looks so awkward dkjkgfjkk

• the environments are MUCH better, and you now get to explore them after each battle to talk to the characters in them which is something i criticized of houses a lot so that's cool to see. unfortunately they're kinda stiff in cutscenes for some reason? like i said in-game cutscenes look pretty atrocious i just wish we'd go back to 2d illustrated portraits, especially when you have an artist who shines in that medium.

• sexualization is... pretty bad. def not fates level but it's there. your mom is introduced in a direct shot of her chest and she dies in an angle where you can see her boobs. i am not joking. there's an aversa expy so evil sexy woc is unfortunately a trope they still haven't let go of, and there's f!alear's whole chest situation too even though she's a minor..... mess.

• the dialogue is terribleeee. i think the vas did a GREAT job for what they were given but this is unfortunately an anakin skywalker situation where they're going to blame them for how bland and stilted the script is. it's just disjointed at times and so the deliveries can feel weird but how the fuck are you going to deliver "oh divine dragon, you're so shiny when you sweat!" (ACTUAL LINE BTW) they were set up!!!

• story-wise they don't really do much with the emblems. the lords are kind of just there. this mechanic is tbh a little disturbing to me because these spirits are just trapped in these rings and are... very happy about it. they go on and on about how they're gonna save this world and how they're gonna support their respective characters but there's zero mention of their own emotional situation. no missing their friends or reflecting about their lives or wondering what's next or anything, they're just kind of vassals to their characters. the one exception was sigurd who just kinda drops the bomb that he died as a young father and everyone is like "haha anyway moving on...." DUDE. very weirdly implemented imo but i guess they couldn't character assassinate this way so. double edged sword i suppose

• the gameplay kinda reminds me of awakening the first few chapters because the maps are ridiculously simple and a lot of focus is placed on the engage gimmick but it thankfully got better once you reach the somniel. then there's actual maps. which seem pretty fine to me tbh? unfortunately this game is just easy. you get really really good units early on and the emblems are BUSTED. i breezed through like 5 chapters in hard classic and when i saw my friend play they turtled relatively unopposed so its like. i'm not feeling the gameplay. it's just ok. maybe if i do actually decide to play this game one day i could do maddening but i honestly dont want to keep going lmfao

overall its like. exactly what i expected from the previews and i'm really glad i didn't even consider getting it lmfao. like always it just makes me kinda sad to see the potential in these games and all the inklings of ideas that were just kinda forgotten in favor of pandering to the player because that sells.

#t #trying to be fair rather than funny on this one but dw i will probably bully this game later

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balkanradfem · 10 months

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I stumbled on your post on Harry Potter. And I want to say thank you, bc you are first person to explain to me why I do not like Hermione and Ron pairing. Well, I read books when young and I mostly was swayed by other works I had atm. But Hermione and Ron story always made me sad for reasons I could not explain, but it just had this bitter 'this is life and you accept that it's not like you wanted' feel to it. I could it explain it as the common trope of smart and great girl getting average guy who likes her and being happy bc he treats her nice. Which is trope I dislike too. I am not into fandom enough to go back and read the books again, I just vaguely remember what I read, and you explained it well by saying that both Ron and Harry actually did not care for her for a long time. I at that time could not relate to her exactly bc her struggle was not shown. So I took her as a bit of ideal Mary Sue character, but when reading it as quite a kid then, I remember thinking all kinds of things like: Hermione is one of a king, I can't be that smart, I can't study that much bc I can't focus, my teeth are crooked and I can't fix them like her, so I will stay uggling forever, I will cry and wipe and be upset and have trauma and insomnia, I will never be as confident.. and so on. What I mean is, it seemed like she just had inborn talent, and while it's great, my self esteem was terrible (greatly bc I am 'ugly' type, not pretty type, even if I don't agree with those qualifications, it's what other people would qualify me). I remember often feeling the same about other books with main female characters, I just felt like I can't never aspire to be like them, first bc about my looks and I don't know how to fix them. And also in personality and strength, bc in story it was often that they were kinda cool and strong, and just could do things. And I never was that resourceful. Even with romance, heroine either needed to be pretty to be saved by prince, or very good at being social and healing people with their warmth, and I was bad at both. Can't really be warm and healing when you are traumatized potato. Well, that ended up really long, but I relate to your post a lot as also a kid who mostly was learning of word via reading. I used to like sci-fi, but I read both classics as well as modern, and a lot of those books were so degrading to their female characters, and I remember how I was sometimes devastated, but accepted it as some real world truth.

Thank you for writing this message to me! It means a lot for me to know that I helped something to click, and you're right about Hermione, and about how books shape our views that we're either 'pretty' in conventional sense, or we just don't get to be heroines, regardless of talents.

I can relate so much to wanting to be like Hermione! She was incredibly smart and brilliant and she was allowed to have bushy hair and crooked teeth and she was still so important and vital to the story. It's a bit sad that her features change with time and she too changes them for a special occasion. We could have done with a heroine that looks a bit messy but it doesn't matter because nothing would ever get done without her!

And it's true that for the rest of the trio, she was just a nuisance except when they needed her to fix their homework or just as someone to lash out on. Sadly I believe for Ron she was just turned into romantic interest because he felt kind of an ownership of her, he bullied her relentlessly and was a complete nightmare before figuring out how to manipulate her into a relationship. I believe if we had grown Hermione more, and she found out about feminism, she would have dumped him.

The books do damage our view of ourselves if we're not conventionally pretty, warm and healing, helpful and brilliant, and if we instead need attention and help to overcome our own struggles. But this is why we're real people, we're not made to tell a story with our life, we're here and we're alive, and I don't believe appearance directs the course of our life, or our value. I don't believe any bit of my life would be different if I looked prettier, there are circumstances in reality like class, environment, patriarchy, financial resources, upbringing, trauma, and they often set our life path more than appearance ever could. Media sells us the story that we too can become problem-free, and ImportantTM if we're pretty, and all our circumstances would change then, but they wouldn't. Pretty doesn't work to our benefit more than getting us certain kinds of attention and maybe a pass at few non-important issues (tho m*n get extremely jealous so they blow these issues up like it's the pinnacle of life to get a free pass sometimes, losers).

But I agree with your point. Our heroines should get to be messy and 'ugly' with all their features crooked and weird, and they should get to be traumatized and help no one else, but be helped, be important, be vital, get attention, and get love.

#harry potter #hermione granger #books messing up with our view of ourselves #feeling second to fictional characters for their fictional beauty #i'm sorry if my own ideas about appearance fall flat #i'm a person who cares about appearance very little and i struggle to see the other side sometimes #but i feel like other problems are always more important and appearance is not something i have any attention or energy for #there are chores to be done who cares how i look doing them

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sketching-shark · 1 year

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What do you think of the show's portrayal of Wukong and Macaque's relationship now? I know before you've brought up the possibility that Wukong simply doesn't care about Macaque. But now we know that isn't true. Those two were basically living on FFM as one big happy monkey family. And now we know that abandoning Macaque is one Wukong's regrets. Not to mention all that stuff about Wukong promising to live forever on FFM together with Macaque, and Wukong imprisoning his brothers in the memory scroll. With this new context, I wanted to know what your viewpoint is on all this.

Spoilers for Monkie Kid & general kvetching below sdfewaf

I have to be honest anon their relationship as it currently stands is somewhat giving me whiplash on account of the fact that we've got Sun Wukong not caring like at all about Macaque exploding in season 1 (and not seeming to realize that him literally killing his past BFF would have influenced Macaque's hostility in any of their previous encounters) to him betraying the shadow simian apparently being one of the great regrets of his life, but I guess Macaque has with this new context been proven to be a little more consistent in that him being BFFs with the Monkey King before Sun Wukong betrayed him does explain his desire to tell anyone who will listen what a terrible person Sun Wukong is, and I guess it does provide a slight explanation for Macaque going out of his way to repeatedly beat the tar out of Qi Xiaotian for the crime of Associated With Sun Wukong. And this does confirm that the lego show decided that their versions of Sun Wukong and the Six-Eared Macaque would deviate completely from the og classic in favor of the currently popular trope of "wah we were besties but then we weren't because it turns out the 'hero' suuuuuuucks & also the 'villain' ends up warping his/her entire life around hating/getting back at the 'hero' but for some reason this is considered a good foundation for rekindling a relationship." Fully aware I'm an outlier here, but needless to say I'm not a fan aweageraw.

I guess at the end of the day I'm not really liking this change not simply because of my love for the og classic (and the really interesting implications about morality and identity that underlay the True & False Monkey King arc) but because I feel like this turn to a currently popular story type is really limiting these characters' potentials. It's like now their relationship is just another example of how Sun Wukong hurts literally everyone around him, while Macaque is once again confirmed to have basically nothing going for him outside of Sun Wukong's influence.

And yes, OF COURSE any retelling of an old story is going to deviate sometimes significantly from the work it's based on, even if and sometimes especially if it's a sequel, as with Monkie Kid. And when you're working with something like Journey to the West, while I still think some of the best adaptations are those that stick closer to the source material, such changes can be a good thing. I mean, I've joked enough how what with this being a children's show you wouldn't want to stick to a Sun Wukong who smashes people into meat patties! But at this point it almost feels like with fanon & increasingly canon insisting on these two being the Most Important Person to each other & also for Macaque to be the completely wronged party that their conflict just makes for one monkey that has 0 identity outside of the other while the other is little more than a selfish ass. I mean hell, it's even got to the point where the current writer of Monkie Kid felt compelled to go on twitter to drop the big spoiler that Sun Wukong is NOT Qi Xiaotian's bio dad, and while we can speculate why he did this it seems at least part of the reason was because a not insignificant amount of people were saying that on top of all his other screw-ups Sun Wukong is a deadbeat dad. But then again, why wouldn't they? Monkie Kid has been hammering it in time after time again that basically there isn't a single person, least of all the Six-Eared Macaque (the definite show/fandom meow-meow), that Sun Wukong hasn't hurt horribly from being impulsive and thoughtless and selfish, so why would anyone think differently in regard to his relationship to Qi Xiaotian? Add all of that to the uber-violent betrayal of all his brothers that he apparently didn't do anything about even millennia after the fact, and you can see why parts of this fandom have been primed to believe the worst about Sun Wukong. Really does make the popularity of scenarios of him rekindling his apparently deep past relationship with Macaque kind of baffling.

Of course, it does need to be acknowledged that even now we don't have the full story, and that Sun Wukong's failure to defeat the Jade Emperor (despite the Azure Lion K.O.ing him in one hit) was compounded by him being literally tortured into becoming heaven's lapdog and betraying his brothers. And who knows! The Monkey King's eyes glowing gold in all of the past scenes after he gets the headband could be a hint that it wasn't just torture through a massive headache but also some version of mind control, kind of like how his eyes glowed blue when he was being possessed by the Lady Bone Demon. But either way we still have no idea what Sun Wukong's perspective is about any of this. We only know that his brothers saw him surrendering to heaven and AGREEING to serve the Jade Emperor to save his own hide, and that even after the headband was taken off he did nothing to try to save them from the scroll. This isn't the full story, but that's what we have to work with.

ANYWAY, even with this context I still think that the best thing that could happen with lego Sun Wukong & Six-Eared Macaque is for Sun Wukong to find a way to fully embrace the fact that *lego Batman voice* just because you lose people doesn't mean you stop letting them in even though a lot of people won't ever forgive you and that's okay, and for the Six-Eared Macaque to find a way to start carving his own identity outside from being the guy violently obsessed with Sun Wukong.

#monkie kid #monkie kid spoilers #anon answered

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aelaer · 1 year

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A/B/O for the ask game? 😭 Personally i wouldn't touch the stuff with a ten foot pole (not that im judging anyone who might like it dgkkgfd)

D-

I don't seek it out and rarely, rarely click it. The original a/b/o universe of heats and what basically constitutes as non-con being "natural" and "normal" squicks the fuck outta me. I'm squicked in the same way for "slavery is natural and a normal part of society" fics. I know that the authors (very very very very likely) don't agree with the protagonists in these stories, but I cannot empathize with the characters living peacefully in such societies and so I just can't get into the story. And because it's a huge societal issue rather than the one character being messed up, there's no backdrop of decency and morality to fall back onto, leaving the whole world as an icky squicky no-no that I don't want to read.

Also, I really hated how women were usually written as non-existent in these stories and how this was not pointed out by the writing community in the past. :|

However, in the decade plus that the trope's existed, a lot of folks have made a lot of their own interpretations of it and deconstructing of it and making it more interesting (and less women-erasing), which is why it's a D- rather than an F. Some fics squeak through my filter. It's never going to be a favorite, but I'll click on the link if it's:

Starring my favorite character, obviously.

A fish out of water type story where the protagonist finds the classic (or close enough to the classic) a/b/o world just as horrifying as the majority of folks would find it in reality, or

A heavily modified a/b/o world where sex isn't the main driver of the story. Part of my exasperation with a/b/o is the focus on sex, mating, and breeding, so if the focus is on, say, improving civil rights, or it's just another aspect of modern Western society where terrible people may judge you for your gender (like those may do about sex, gender, or race in the real world), but it isn't the *main focus* of the story, I'll give it a go. Just like I give long, plot-focused narratives that happen to have romance as a side-plot a go.

I have two fics in the MCU that I can recall that were A/B/O that I enjoyed, one for each reason listed above.

Most of the sex scenes in fics are a big "whatever" to me already and I have exactly one (1) author out of the thousands of authors (I've read a lot) I've read over the years where the sex scenes were engaging because that author was basically a poet who remains still one of the most technically apt writers I've ever encountered in fan fiction. I don't remember her because the fic's plot was my favorite plot ever, or because the pairing appealed to me; I remember her because she is fucking masterful at the technical aspects of writing with one of the strongest vocabularies I've ever read in fan fiction. I aspire to be at her level of writing one day. It was difficult reading, it was like poetry, and that seems to be the only way to get me to be interested in a sex scene. If you make me pull out a dictionary in a sex scene, you win my interest. I want SAT level vocabulary about emotions and feelings ahahaha.

So yeah, a/b/o's focus on sex makes it generally unappealing from the get-go.

But wait Laer, you say, you can't just mention a handful of fics and not link them! So yeah, I dug them up. They're not personal favorites--a/b/o never will be for me--but they're well crafted stories written by talented writers.

The "Stephen gets trapped in an A/B/O world and you bet he hates the fuck out of it" one, with the rare pair of *Sam Wilson* and also Christine, which was just fantastic, and it's a whodunnit on top of it with a mix of magic: Children of the Old Moon by old_blue. Take a look at the tags before reading; it's a doozy, but again, very well-crafted.

The "A/B/O is just a passing mention and it's barely been mentioned which is super great (at least to my memory)" is actually not finished; it's a short story with super long chapters. Going In Circles by cryptonomicon features two rarepairs in Stephen/Steve Rogers and Stephen/Bucky, and it's actually a sequel so you should read the first part first, perhaps. It was last updated about 21 months ago, so if you decide to read and review, be encouraging rather than demanding, haha! I don't remember a major cliff-hanger or anything, but if you're looking for different, this is definitely different. Again, good writer.

As for the "only author who made me admire the craft of writing in a sex scene", that would be Francesca_Wayland, a BBC Sherlock writer, specifically with the first fic on her account. I don't often have to pull up a dictionary when I read anymore and it was one thing that I really enjoyed doing in the mid 2000s (because I'm a nerd), so encountering her back in 2017 or 2018 was a delight. Why yes, I am absolutely not the target audience for 99.9% of mature romance stories :P

The ask meme: Ask me about a trope and I'll grade it.

#anonymous #ask #answered #tropes #fanfic #about me #fic recs #stephen strange

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actuallylorelaigilmore · 7 months

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2023 Movie Journey #2: M3GAN

m3gan. absolutely nothing about this movie was what i expected, and i mean that in the best possible way. the trailer made it look bonkers and horrible, and i went to see it in an effort to challenge my horror wimpitude, figuring that if it was bad maybe i’d at least be amused by how bad it was. also, the starring actress was great in get out, and the fact that she was also producing this made me want to like it.

it was so good though! so good that they’re already planning on making a sequel! which i was both surprised by and genuinely excited about--i’ll definitely see it. but back to my expectations: the trailer made me think i was about to watch a movie in which a tech whiz makes a fancy AI doll for her daughter and then murder ensues. (many spoilers behind the cut.)

and i mean, murder does ensue, but the girl who also stars in m3gan isn’t her daughter, and the movie’s slow initial build up includes a tragic orphaning, a sudden (and terrible at it) new guardianship, a jerk boss and literal work meltdowns, a social worker therapist lady who manages to be the most rational person in the early story and simultaneously the first unsettling threat we feel to the movie’s central duo.

basically, what i love about this movie is that it stayed with me after i watched it. i just kept thinking about it, and remembering parts of it, and turning over its themes in my head and being really happy it exists. honestly because it’s a horror movie, and i can’t say i generally like a ton of horror movies, but this one isn’t the ‘evil robot kill kill kill’ i was expecting.

it’s exploring the dangers of extreme technology, sure, but while making it clear how central human error is to that eventuality. and digging into what makes a family, and what we need to feel loved and connected and deal with loss, and what value we get from that connection coming from other people even when it’s hard.

one of things that fascinated me was that this also wasn’t a story about an innately evil villain--this is a story about a villain literally created by those she’s eventually out to destroy. and it’s the WAY they created her that makes her a villain. gosh there’s so much there. as she evolves throughout the movie and becomes more dangerous, we also get to see her not only become self-aware, but kind of more human, in that she knows she’s not what she was meant to be but she doesn’t know what that makes her instead.

and while the two main characters are the above-mentioned white woman and girl, the rest of the cast was fun and diverse. i recognized the actor playing her jerk boss and he brought a really great ‘obnoxious but i’m still enjoying him’ energy to his screentime...otherwise i don’t think i knew any of the actors.

i made good use of my ‘i’m allowed to look away when i need to’ horror movie policy with this one, because literally the first two murders are bad areas for me: animal and elder abuse. i didn’t have trouble when she kills a kid later, despite how bad that sounds, because he was framed sooooo creepily as a predator in the making that i was like ‘yeah. makes sense.’

mostly though, i just loved how much this movie was centered on emotions and actual plot and relationships (and relatable work-life balance issues) rather than the gore i was anticipating. it was full of classic horror tropes, but in a way that i liked as a very basic horror viewer--it felt comfy and familiar; idk if bigger horror fans found it unimpressive instead. when the movie’s very last shot was the most predictable thing ever, i realized i was openly grinning at the screen, because instead of being like an eyeroll moment, it felt perfect and earned and like, yeah, this is a horror movie and this is what they do.

the soundtrack doesn’t distract too much from the movie so i remember it less than i do most things i’ve watched, but the songs they picked for m3gan were terrifying and fantastic. it took me almost 24 hours after seeing the film to make the connection that ‘titanium’ wasn’t just one of the songs she sings because it’s a pop song the kid likes, but she’s literally made of titanium and that’s why she’s so hard to kill later.

two other final notes: the trailer made m3gan look very ‘pretty little liars but make it silly’ and in reality it was a surprisingly serious movie. why are trailers lying to me so much lately? and also, i really enjoyed the role the child played in the conclusion. we got two final girls for the price of one and as m3gan was making it clear that she had unlimited ways to take out our heroine no matter how hard she fought back, it was great that her own earlier skills and her niece’s final choice were really what saved them all.

#m3gan #2023 movie journey

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enigmaticxbee · 2 years

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✖️✖️✖️ 11x03 Plus One

The one where... there’s only one room at the motel and Scully can’t sleep... and murderous doppelgängers, whatever.

Tagline: The Truth Is Out There - The Truth Is Out There

Best: What is happening, are my fanfic daydreams somehow coming to life on my screen? Scully coming to Mulder in the middle of the night and asking him to hold her? Mulder getting up from their bed and grinning at himself in the bathroom mirror? Scully sleepily whispering for him to come back to bed? Mulder hurriedly dressing while telling a naked Scully in his bed to put a dimmer on that afterglow because they have to rush off to solve a case? Scully sauntering towards their adjoining motel room door to find Mulder leaning there giving her that look? GA’s ATTHS. Twice. 😏 tweet - what a time to be alive!

Worst: Don’t even get me started on their conversation about having more kids. They’ve had 16 years to have this conversation! Scully’s in her mid-50s!! This might have made sense 10 years earlier in the IWTB era - it feels like a classic tv revival case of an idea a writer had years earlier that makes its way into a revival like no time has passed and these characters haven’t been living their lives - together! - for years. We all know they’re terrible at communicating but give me a fucking break. And the fact that they only have this conversation and sleep together - at the St Rachel motel 🙄 - to set up the finale pregnancy twist 😑

❌ Flashlights

❌ Woods/Desert

❌ Slideshow

❌ Autopsy

❌ Evidence Disappears

❌ Scully Misses It

❌ Mulder Ditch

❌ Sunflower Seeds

❌ Voiceover

❌ Catch Phrase

❌ Scully is a Medical Doctor

❌ Mulder is Spooky

❌ Scuuullllaaaaayy! Muullllderrrr!

❌ Fox/Dana

✔️ Inappropriate Touching (that I am here for)

❌ Casual Scully

✔️ Casual Mulder

❌ Trench Coats

❌ Bad Tie Watch

✔️ Glasses Watch 😎

✔️ Taking! It! Personally!: Scully

50 States: Virginia x21 (44/50)

Investigate: Together & Apart

Solve Rate: 67%

✔️ Bechdel Test

MSR: 🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝

Goriness: 👽👽👽

Creepiness: 👽👽👽

Humor: 👽👽👽

Rewatch Thoughts:

William check-in: They somehow have a whole conversation about having more kids without mentioning him directly… Isn’t the issue less that William was a miracle and more that they had to give him up for his own protection and what would make another kid any safer?? Although with Mulder around it would be different than in season 9. More to say, I don’t think Scully’s issue with having another kid was who to have it with.

Break-up check-in: All their maybe you’ll find someone else stuff just feels ridiculous to me... Mulder’s face when Scully says that she can’t imagine that she’ll need him 🥺 - but also he knows her, that she’ll protest and try to deny herself what she really wants, but that she wants him, and he’ll be there waiting when she opens the door.

The opening scene is very unpleasant - not my type of music and crowded mosh pits are my nightmare

The site of the bear bts video!

Scully’s little smile says she thinks he’s handsome too

Only one room huh? My favorite trope brought to life?? Never mind, there’s a pullout sofa. They could have just been in adjoining rooms (like every fanfic ever).

Karin Konoval (the memorable Mrs. Peacock) plays both Judy and Chucky - I don’t think I realized that the first time I saw this episode because I am very unobservant

Wtf is Dookie?

CC trying to write about a middle aged woman’s insecurities about being past her child-bearing years is so cringey - all dried up?? Would Scully have complicated feelings about aging and motherhood? Of course! But letting Judy get to her like that just does not feel authentic.

Mulder and Scully could argue about ghosts in their sleep - and probably have.

Mulder: You still got some scoot in your boot. Is that a saying? 😂

Scully’s hair looks great this episode - especially in the parking lot scene.

They are very blasé about the death of a man who came to them for help hours earlier and they sent home, telling him it was all in his head…

Things I do like about their bedtime chat:

- Scully asking to be held 🥺

- Mulder: I’ll come push your wheelchair with my wheelchair.

- Mulder’s arm around her

- Scully: Sometimes I think the world is going to hell and that we’re the only two people who can save it. This is why it took them 7 years to get together the first time.

- Scully: We’ll think of something. That smirk!

Chuck and Judy being unable to kill Mulder and Scully because they’re fighting over who’s more in love with them, relatable.

Scully rationalizing her evil doppelgänger away - after she’s eaten magic bread pills.

That final scene!! I may have watched the gif of this a few (hundred) times.

#xf rewatch #xf fanart #msr #plus one #the x files #the xfiles #thexfiles #xf #txf #xf motw #i want to believe #truth is out there #xf review #11x03 #revival

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theflagscene · 1 year

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Getting to know your BL mutuals - 2022 Edition

What has been the BL(s) that took you by surprise this year?

Takara-kun to Amagi-kun - I honestly wasn’t expecting much from this and tbh, it didn’t offer much but damn if it wasn’t the sweetest simplest little series ever. The story was simple, it was a very classic high school Yaoi plot but it was so damn sweet. The characters were a joy to watch and I did not expect to love them as much as a did.

Eternal Yesterday - Another BL out of Japan which I honestly don’t usually enjoy very much, but this just grabbed my attention and crushed my heart. I adored it, the story was amazingly bittersweet and the chemistry between the characters was so great.

Ghost Host Ghost House - I honestly wasn’t expecting much from this one and was so pleasantly surprised by not only the amazing acting and chemistry and the plot was so damn heartfelt.

What has been the BL(s) that you felt a disappointed with this year?

Check Out - After episode zero I was super interested in what was going to come from the show, but when it actually started to air it was one massive disappointment. They were all terrible people, like there was barely a single character in the series that is likeable. Honestly had they kept them vacationing, maybe going for a ‘finding ourselves’ road trip kind of feeling that episode zero had, it would’ve been way better.

Love In The Air - I don’t know why I was expecting better from MAME, after these past few years I was hoping she would’ve matured and her writing would’ve gotten better, but I was just disappointed as per usual. I don’t know why I keep giving her series the benefit of the doubt, it’s like I’m in an emotionally ab*sive relationship with her series. Which lets be honest, MAME would love, that type of shit is part of her MO after all.

Oh! My Sunshine Night - What… How… Where… Who… WHY!? Just I cannot fathom someone getting this script, reading it and saying: yeah, totally makes sense, let’s do this! I just cannot even.

What has been your favourite BL this year?

Not Me (is started in 2021 but ended in 2022 so it counts) and The Eclipse, hands down my favourites. I’m not kidding when I say both of these series got so far under my skin that I feel fundamentally changed as a human, I fully admit it.

Favourite BL couple(s) of 2022

AkkAyan, SeanWhite, WinTeam, CakeEiw and Jaeyoung x Sangwoo.

If you had to suggest a BL for someone what would it be?

For something kind of light and simple, with really classic Yaoi tropes, I’d say Cherry Blossoms After Winter. It’s sweet, it’s short, it’s colourful and it has a HEA.

For something heavier, Until We Meet Again. I really feel like UWMA is like top tier one percentile level BL content, it’s plot is engaging, the acting is fantastic, the characters draw you into their emotional world so easily. Everyone plays an important part in the story, it’s just something that will make you laugh and cry and think, especially if you’re a queer person. Korn and Intouch’s tragic love is something that can resonate with so many people in the LGBTQ+ community, especially older queer folks who lived in the era those two characters did. That type of prejudice and the toll it takes and how terrible it can end, yeah, it’s something that a lot of queer people can understand.

What's your non-BL favorite for this year?

I don’t watch a lot of series/shows that aren’t BLs, I’m actually more of a movie person than a series person. So BLs are really the only series I tend to watch, I like that they tend to be short. I don’t have a great attention span, hence why I like movies better. But I did watch Wednesday on Netflix and it was great, really enjoyed it.

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