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its-your-mind · 2 years

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ya know what, I just put all of this in the tags of someone else’s post, but I have More to say about it

This is a letter to 12-year-old me, who just listened Welcome to Night Vale for the first time in 2013.

Hey, 12 year old me. There are some things I know you need to hear right now.

You are 12, and you’ve just discovered podcasts for the first time. You’re in 7th grade, and you saw screenshots of tumblr posts in nerdy Facebook groups about this super weird one called “Welcome to Night Vale” where they said weird things like “Wednesday has been cancelled, due to a scheduling error.” You think that’s pretty funny, so you check it out.

It’s fun, there’s a dog park no one goes in, and Wednesday has indeed been cancelled due to scheduling errors. The people who live there are delightfully odd - they don’t believe in mountains or angels, despite the fact that the angels sometimes change lightbulbs. When the host describes a new person in town and declares himself in love with him, you (know you’re weird but aren’t sure why - why does Cecil’s comment make you feel so seen?) write it off as equally strange as a disbelief in mountains and move on.

You, 12 years old, only just poking your head out of the hole you grew up in, don’t know who you are yet, because looking too closely at yourself is scary.

You keep listening. When Cecil and Carlos finally talk to each other, beneath those lights above the Arby’s, you start crying. You don’t know why. You don’t understand yet that you are finally being told a story where someone like you was accepted and loved, not in spite of the eccentricities, but because of them.

But that’s not a revelation you’re ready to have yet, and that’s okay. In the exact same way you had glossed over Cecil and Carlos’s relationship development for those first forty episodes, you brush past your own emotions and keep on keeping on. If you keep moving, you don’t have to stop and think harder about what caused you to feel so strongly.

You keep listening. You cheer as this strange town defeats the followers of a Smiling God, you scream into your pillow at the words “he is holding a cat,” you have legitimate nightmares about a beagle puppy, and you bounce up and down as a young disabled girl leads her family in carrying out a successful heist. In the midst of it all, you hear these characters push through the challenges they face by banding together and embracing the things that made them strange.

And slowly but surely, you begin to learn to embrace the things that make you strange, too.

Let’s jump forward a few years. You’re in high school now. You’ve been made fully aware of how people in your life see people like you like Cecil and Carlos, but you also feel nothing but giddy, pure joy each time they talk to each other over the radio. You don’t know how to reconcile those two things.

So you don’t. You slot yourself into the crowd of weirdos at school, and all of you pretend you’re not all going through the same struggle. (Over half of those weirdos turned out to be queer, by the way. Funny how that works out.)

(But that’s another story.)

For now, you’re a sophomore in high school, and you’re feeling lost, and overwhelmed, and alone. And like you always do when you feel overwhelmed, you put in your earbuds and listen to someone else’s story for a bit.

This episode is called Toast. It’s just a bunch of speeches from the characters that have welcomed you into their community. At first, it’s not clear what the toast is to, and so you focus on trying to figure it out. Your mind cycles through possibilities. Is it a funeral? Commemorating a special Night Vale holiday? Someone’s birthday?

It slowly dawns on you. This is the toast at a wedding. Everyone giving the toast can’t help but talk about what a happy occasion this is. But you are still so small, and so so scared, and it doesn’t occur to you whose wedding it might be until Old Woman Josie comes up and mentions them by name.

Without understanding quite why, you start to sob. You cry through the rest of the episode, so much that you have to pause and rewind to hear the entirety of Carlos and Cecil’s speeches to each other. Carlos talks about love as a continuous series of choices, as the turning of a story about “you” and a story about “me” into a story about “us.” Cecil shares how his love for his community and his partner has gotten him through the hardest times, not because it overpowered the difficulties, but because it allowed him to keep going in spite of them.

With the benefit of hindsight, I can see why those things brought up the emotions they did. We want to be loved, but more than that, we want the chance to choose to love, and we want someone to choose to love us. What we crave, at our very core, is acceptance. We just want to be seen and welcomed, no matter who we happen to be, and no matter the person we have chosen to love.

You won’t be able to label yourself as queer for another three years. You’ll meet people who will tell you that something in you is broken, but you’ll meet even more people who build on the foundation that Night Vale began. You will learn that being different, in whatever way you are different, is something to be celebrated, not hidden.

There will come a day when you are safe, and happy, and loved, just as you are. You can let all of yourself shine - your loves, your fears, your odd fashion sense, your passion for weird radio-broadcast podcasts - and the people around you won’t just tolerate it, they’ll admire it.

The road to get there won’t be easy, but I am so excited for you to walk it. You’ve got this. And on every step on that journey, just remember: The moon is still beautiful, mysterious lights still pass overheard, and you are loved.

Sincerely, 23 year old you

#welcome to night vale #wtnv #cecil gershwin palmer #carlos the scientist #lgbtqia #queer love #if you made it all the way through that #👏#sup #thanks for reading my ramblings

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door · 2 months

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my friend asked me for murder show recs and i put together a list of a bunch of them and thought i'd also share it here in case anyone else who was not raised by the glow of mystery! on pbs might want an intro. extremely subjective commentary, obvs. enjoy.

hello. welcome to the world of finding television shows about people getting killed comforting. it's fucked up, but who isn't. here's a list of the ones i like and why and where to watch them.

midsomer murders (1997-current): this is one of those sterotypical "it ran for 25 years and did nearly 18 episodes" british shows. it was adapted from a book series, which are the early eps. they're really fucked up and great imo. the later ones lose that sharpness, but until seasons 20+ i think it's a really solid show. the theme song is performed on a theremin. pluses: every great british actor shows up at least once, incredibly great deaths, lots of hyper niche hobby groups, tom barnaby is the best. minuses: showrunner brian true-may quoted as saying that his version of "english countryside" is entirely white. he was booted from the show at that point, however. i've watched the entire series 2-3 times, except for s5e3 "Ring Out Your Dead" because there's a death in it that i found particularly tragic the first time i watched it and have no desire to revisit it (but ymmv). robyn's fave ep is s3e3 "Judgement Day," because a brass band plays the show's theme song at a village fete and also Orlando Bloom is run through with a pitchfork. (ACORN)

Poirot (1989-2013): truly the goat. David Suchet bodies this role. i don't know how familiar you are with christie, but hercule poirot was her recurring detective character, a fastidious little belgian living in 1930s England. in this show, it's the late 1930s for 20 years, and the sets and costumes are so good. not a single streamline moderne property in england is overlooked. the early episodes are short--40ish minutes each--but they transition to 90 minutes at some point. they adapt all of the poirot books, with the big ones--murder on the orient express and death on the nile--done as higher budget tv movies. (BRITBOX)

marple (2004-2013): another christie adaptation, with 2 actresses playing miss marple in sequence. they also adapted a bunch of non-marple stories to have miss marple in them. set post-WWII, mainly countryside english mysteries. (BRITBOX)

miss fisher's murder mysteries (2012-2015, film in 2020): set in 1920s melbourne, mfmm follows independently wealthy private eye phryne fisher. it's an adaptation of modern novels, so it's less conservative than the christies. phryne's best friend is a suit-wearing lesbian doctor. it's a sharp, smart show, and phryne herself (as well as her relationship with buttoned-up detective jack robinson) is very sexy. it ran three seasons and was followed by a crowd-funded film in 2020, which isn't GOOD, but it is FUN. there's another a spin-off set in the 1960s called miss fisher's modern mysteries, which follows phryne's niece. again--not good, but fun. nothing beats the og series tho. (ACORN)

lewis (2006-2015): this is technically a spin-off of the inspector morse series, which started in the 80s, but i've never watched it so you should be fine. this follows very un-academic inspector lewis and his very academic assistant DS hathaway in EXTREMELY academic oxford england. i really dig the pacing of this, as well as how profoundly weird smart people can be. the big downside is the actor who played hathaway is laurence fox, who's a real stinker of a dude. right-wing, racist, etc. so. ymmv. (BRITBOX)

vera (2011-current): vera is a nearly retired, irascible, set in her ways detective in northumberland. she heads her own department, so part of the appeal is definitely trim youngsters dashing to do her bidding with a "yes mum." she drives a huge old land rover, wears a raincoat everywhere, has no patience for class barriers, and in short i love her. in the newer seasons there is also a detective in her squad called Jaq who is a very cute butch. (BRITBOX)

dalgliesh (2021-current): adaptation of pd james novels following detective-poet adam dalgliesh. set in the 1970s, which sets it apart and which i quite enjoy. his character is really sensitive and thoughtful is a way that's unusual for cop shows. (ACORN)

annika (2021-current): i'm gonna dive into some of the weirder ones now. annika is still pretty serious, but the title character has a habit of breaking the 4th wall to loop the audience in on the meta nature of her thoughts--usually relating to a book or story. it's set in glasgow and they investigate marine crime specifically. annika is played by nicola walker, who full disclosure i find VERY attractive. she's norwegian, she's odd, and she's trying her best. she has a teenage daughter who's gay. (PBS)

queens of mystery (2019-current): this one is VERY odd. think british murders meets pushing daisies. there's a narrator, and occasional technicolor flights of fancy. it follows a very serious detective who was raised by her three aunts after her mother was killed. she comes back to work in her home town and has to navigate both sides of her life, plus still wanting to know who killed her mother. production was interrupted by covid, so the main actress changed between seasons, but the new person is also very good. (ACORN)

brokenwood mysteries (2014-current): this one is sort of...sillier than the rest? it's a new zealand show set in a small town. it's fairly queer (although not nearly queer enough), and one of the things i love the most about it is it maintains a roster of recurring characters (which i think is only possible because of the small size of the NZ film industry). pretty good maori rep, especially jared, a local who seems to know or be related in some way to everyone in town. i adore him. he's off the show now, and i miss him. (ACORN)

mcdonald & dodds (2020-current): set in bath, this is an odd couple partnership of an ambitious young cop lately from london and a shy older cop who has lived in bath all his life and hasn't seen action in a decade. their interactions are funny and lovely, and it's refreshing to see a black woman character allowed to be ambitious. (BRITBOX)

#took out the julie mentions left in the robyn mention #because their love of a tv show playing its theme song on the show is so funny and i love it #gentle murders #this is like. half the length this list could have been #and that's not even getting into the mini-series

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tossawary · 8 months

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I watched 3 seasons of "Transformers: G1" and the 1986 movie. I think it's generally very bad but I also enjoyed myself very much. Can't recommend it unless you already like Transformers and are interested in taking a look at the roots.

I watched 3 seasons of "Beast Wars" and then bailed on "Beast Machines" because I just... I couldn't take the 90s 3D animation anymore (I KNOW they were doing their BEST for the time period and it is SO IMPRESSIVE in so many ways but it's also SO UGLY) and I wasn't super vibing with the characters or their voices. I found it less enjoyable and bad in a different way, but some parts of it were neat for how they went on to influence other shows. Can't rec this one either. Even less than G1.

I tried to watch "Transformers: Armada" (2002) (I think?) which was one of the Japanese ones with the minicons. The human characters broke me within 3 episodes and I quit. The whole "I'm an ordinary high school student! This is my best friend! This is the girl I like who hates me! I was living a totally normal life unless giant robots fell from the sky and now we're friends!" cheesy shounen speech and narration routine snapped me like a twig. I couldn't do it. I can't stand that. Also, Megatron looked like Galvatron and it was weirding me out a little. Possibly gets better but I'm not strong enough to find out right now or possibly ever.

"Transformers: Animated" (2007) was very refreshing. The 2D animation is VERY dated now, but I respect a lot of the things it was trying to do. Fun shapes in the designs. The writing wasn't as good as I hoped it would be, but it had a lot of fun concepts and good moments. Lots of potential that it didn't use as well as it could have. It reminded me a lot of the original "Teen Titans", but it didn't really ever have the same emotional depth or resonance as the really good episodes of TT. I watched 3 seasons of this one. I don't know if I would rec this one to non-fans either, but I wouldn't call it bad. It was fun. I enjoyed myself a lot. The character work was pretty good at times. There are worse Transformers shows, for sure.

"Transformers: Prime" (2013) feels like a shock to the system. I'm on the first season now. I think my standards have been run over by a truck thanks to everything else, but it's... immediately pretty good? Love the quick start into an ongoing story. Love the violent fight scenes. I'm very, VERY biased because I love stylized 3D and I think the Cybertronian designs look great. The writing is generally significantly better so far. If I HAD to pick a Transformers show to rec so far, I'd pick this one, hands down, almost just for the way that it looks. Bonus points for how Igor-shaped Starscream is, and for the creepiest looking Soundwave so far. I love him.

#tossawary transformers #tf g1 #tf beast wars #tf animated #tf prime #tf armada

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talenlee · 3 months

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3e: The Love Potion

We’re all kind of on the page that ‘love potions’ in stories are probably bad, right?

Those things that you could buy in 3e as a cheap, disposable magical item?

It’s one of those tropes from history that people used pretty freely up until like, even until 2013. Gravity Falls featured an episode about a character using a love potion, and then realising it was a foolish plan and going to undo it, only to find that, y’know, maybe it was an okay idea after all. And that was Gravity Falls, a cartoon I like. Shock! Horror! And that’s a bad trope and all!

Love potions show up in stories all over the place, and that makes them an iconic trope and I feel like they go through a sort of life cycle. In their oldest appearances — as I remember and are filtered through the mind of a boy like me — the love potion is a solution to a problem. Then, as things get a little more protestant, a little more puritanical, love potions tend to be set up in the first part of the story, and then developed and dismissed in the second part. Love potions are a thing you think will solve your problems, then you find they don’t.

There are a lot of reasons they can fail. They can fail because you find out that the person you love-potioned, you don’t actually want them in love with you. They can fail because you find out that the potion doesn’t make them love you the way that you imagined. They can fail just because love potions aren’t real but now you have to consider what it meant that you tried. They can fail because they have to destroy the way the person you were interested in order to work, somehow. And of course sometimes they can fail because you mess up their application like spilling it on a bird or something.

Lots of different ways that ‘the love potion’ is a setup that gets subverted. In fact, so much so that, especially in reset-heavy pulp media like sitcoms and weekly dramas, love potions fit the mould really conveniently. The subversion means that the characters undo the love potion by the end, and that’s that. It’s a tidy little plot loop, and the form it’s poured into handles it just fine. Makes sense.

Why can ya buy ’em?

Look, 3rd edition was a hungry beast. It needed content, content, content and a lot of what it needed never made sense to me. I did not think I needed as many versions of ‘human, but ugly and weird’ as the game books provided me. I never needed the flying mount rules, or the keep rules. They were nice, ostensibly but they weren’t useful, because they weren’t focused on the game played by players and instead on a sort of systemitising the world. This is a reasonable thing for a system to do when it wants to do it, I’m not criticising them for the choice, but that the choice put the way D&D 3E was built at odds with the way I expected to play it.

You’d see this throughout supplements, in Dragon Magazines and soft cover splatbooks; sometimes there was a cool idea that the game could do and that cool idea ran headlong into the system’s design. A gladiatorial campaign? Cool idea, here are maps and opponents. Oh, the system isn’t designed to make one-on-one fights very interesting for the uninvolved parties and dying represents an immense debt? Hm, sounds like the real thing this system needs is loans and banking. Oh wait, but if you’re doing gladiatorial fighs, how do you get loot from enemies? You can’t loot the bodies, that belongs to their stable! There’s got to be a payment system!

And thus we return to the love potion. The love potion was in the Dungeon Master’s Guide (and SRD, even now!) because it’s an obvious trope, the item works in a simple, easily explained way, and it fills some inches in the book that needs so, so many inches filled. The item is built by a formula, it works to a rule and it kind of rests on a leyline of things D&D 3e doesn’t do very well.

First of all, the item gives a save. Well it has to right, because otherwise it’d be overpowered. But saving throws aren’t like, narratively coherent things. They’re there to defend you from attacks, but ostensibly, they’re there to represent how well your body resists things changing it (which was why you can resist healing spells and, in some cases, are called upon to do so, which is, yes, dumb). Don’t worry, though, the DC is really low: Only a DC 14. Which means an ordinary human with nothing heroic going on has about a 30% chance to ignore it and it lasts for 1d3 hours.

Thus we position the elixir of love perfectly badly. It’s a magic item that an adventurer can buy in bulk, that they never would care about, that represents life-deforming mind control, but not for very long and not very well. It promises what a love potion in a story is, but delivers instead a very crap charm spell, which is the closest thing it can approximate to love because the game system wants to try and systemitise love without dealing with how incredibly overpowered love is. There’s no category of ‘minor effect’ or ‘story beat’ for magical items, which need to be built to instead, operate the way adventurers expect adventurers to work.

The Elixir of Love doesn’t actually represent anything particularly heinous. Nothing out of type. It’s a love potion, but because it sucks it’s not that bad, and nobody would use it, except because it sucks, and that it sucks isn’t because of the story needs but because of the way the mechanics of the system handle items. It’s the same wonky stuff that permeates 3e. Systems aren’t immune to this. My favourite system isn’t immune to this kind of thing!

Still pretty funny way to waste a year’s wages for a normal person.

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

#DnD 3e #Dungeons &amp; Dragons #Games

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hollyoaksmusings · 3 months

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Please tell me what’s going on in Hollyoaks!! I stopped watching in like 2015 but I still love the 2007-2013 era so much. I just saw Hannah came back what!? Also where do you watch all these old episodes

hi! I think I also stopped watching around then so I’m pretty rusty and just catching up myself.

right now, the major storylines are:

- carter shepherd is the new headmaster at hollyoaks high. he is also freya’s father - she is a student who was paralyzed by john paul’s drunk driving bus crash. john paul has been struggling a lot with the guilt from that crash and reckoning with sobriety after i think about a year of being in a relationship with an abusive partner, pc george kiss. sally killed george when he was about to attack theresa who confronted him about his abusing john paul.

carter is also a religious leader, leads gay conversion therapy under the guise of self-help sessions for men, and has a following. john paul at first leaned into his therapy sessions because they were about getting control back, battling his inner demons, etc - and he was particularly moved because both carter and freya forgave him for the accident. when he clocked that it was gay conversion, he tried to disrupt the sessions and talk carter out of holding them, when carter revealed he himself struggled with his sexuality. naturally they start falling in love. john paul has been urging him to stop gay conversion practices and start accepting his sexuality, but one of his followers gareth saw carter and john paul kissing and (possibly) heard them having sex in the dog’s bathroom (i think this could be someone else though) and is blackmailing carter about it - trying to get him to go back to practicing what he preaches and leaving john paul alone.

carter is also publicly dating maxine.

- mercedes is pregnant and was getting married to a character named felix who just learned that she cheated on him with warren. they just had a car crash with all three of them. i think the storyline here is that mercy is going to have that situation where she has twins where each child has a different father.

- sally is working with carter at the school again, helping with accounting stuff.

- ste and james are in a rough place - james struggled with parenting lucas who lashed out at him, said some hurtful things, so james hit him and locked him in a shed overnight.

- leah got alcohol poisoning at a rave and called ste to pick her up - when he was driving her to the hospital he had a near-miss with mercedes/felix/warren’s car and it is insinuated he ran over and killed ella. her boot was in his front wheel and you see his car jostle while he’s driving and not paying attention to the road. warren thinks felix killed ella.

- cleo is back and wants to reunite with joel who is seeing leela right now. she has a boyfriend though and he seems like he might be like a controlling stalker.

- lucas is struggling with his sexuality - he’s falling for a classmate named dillon but lucas doesn’t want to be like ste, or affiliates ste’s hardships with being gay so he is pushing back. there were also a few weird scenes where they were super heavy handed of ste being like LUCAS AT LEAST YOU’RE NOT GAY BECAUSE IT’S NOT EASY LET ME TELL YOU lol.

- peri, romeo, hunter, prince and their friend group are all embroiled in a whodunnit murder of romeo’s abusive ex.

- nancy is back, working at hollyoaks high again. hannah is staying with her and darren with the kids.

- hannah… brought darren and suzanne’s twins to hollyoaks to “meet” darren. this is all very silly because i was just rewatching 2013/2014 clips and they literally talk about darren visiting the twins so idk why they think we’d buy he doesn’t recognize them or they don’t know who he is. emma rigby is signed onto the show for at least a year. she reunited with john paul, overheard carter and gareth talking. she also seems to have something fishy going on as she’s nervously screening calls.

- yaz and tom are together. yaz works at the school and is struggling with early menopause.

- oh sienna was going to marry this wealthy guy named rafe who was faking terminal illness, but he was conspiring with a character named dilly (who he said was his sister, but is actually his wife) who has some affiliation with patrick that we don’t fully know. anyway in true blake fashion dilly tied rafe to a radiator in a basement on the night of his and sienna’s wedding and he died.

I think that’s most of it - sorry to the families i’m missing. I think it’s mostly just fallout from the car crashes rn.

I’m American so the past year of episodes is on Hulu. For super old clips, like earlier John Paul storylines, I look for uploaders on YouTube or Dailymotion. Sometimes searching the full date of episodes helps.

#help this is so long lol #hollyoaks #asks #anon

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tellthemeerkatsitsfine · 1 month

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Oh look, it's that thing I was talking about yesterday, the way John Robins does his Alan Partridge voice, sometimes in an intentional and ironic way, but sometimes, I think, just out of habit. And it sometimes works and sometimes does not. It reminds me of that bit in Kitson's show from 2013, where he says he was confidently telling a friend about his opinion, and she pointed out some facts that made it clear he was wrong, and he replied in a very silly voice that this was a good point. She asked him why he was doing it, and he replied because he no longer backed himself and so did not wish to speak in his normal voice. There's a sort of pattern of John Robins doing the Partridge voice when he seems to be self-conscious about trying too hard to sound too much like a stereotypical broadcaster. So he pulls out of that and talks like a parody of it instead. Or if he ever gets too near talking about politics. The Partridge voice always comes out when he grazes the subject of politics.

I was just discussing this last night, and now in the episode I'm listening to today, he's telling a story of going up to Edinburgh to give his award to Rose Matafeo (That's how it works, right? They just pass the Perrier Award from one person to the next every year like the Stanley Cup? Because I know that's now what happened but that's what I pictured when he talked about going up for the awards event), and he met Steve Coogan, and, as I've thought before, seems weirdly fine with admitting how much of his style he's cribbed off Alan Partridge. I kind of had the same reaction as Elis to this, when Elis said... maybe you should try not to talk so much like Alan Partridge when you meet the actual Alan Partridge, wouldn't that be weird? But apparently it was fine - or at least, John Robins thinks it was fine. It still sounds weird but I'm glad he had a good time. I've seen The Trip (x4), it's not like Steve Coogan has grounds to complain about people doing impressions of famous actors.

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unofficialadamtaurus · 2 years

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Why Is Everyone So Weird About Adam?

If you’re asking this question, you’re probably new to the fandom and/or the show. In that case, welcome! There’s a lot of fun to be had with RWBY, both Ice Queendom and the original show.

If you’re not new, consider this a chance to get up to speed. If there’s something you feel I missed, feel free to add it in a reblog or reply.

To answer the main question in brief: the tension around Adam is tied to his controversial* portrayal in the 3D source material.

We’ll go through the context of original show bit by bit so you can understand why people get so weird about Adam in ways they don’t for other villain characters. Keep an open mind, take in the facts, form your own opinion, and then engage with Adam however you see fit.

And, of course, Adam-related-stuff spoiler alert for the main show and the first episode of Ice Queendom. Additionally, content warning for high-level discussions of misogyny, grooming, pedophilia, abuse, and homophobia.

The Trailer

If you weren’t aware, RWBY began with four separate trailers, one for each main girl and letter in the acronym. These trailers started coming out in Winter of 2012 and the last was released on June 1, 2013 - just over a month before the first episode premiered. Within these trailers, Adam had the noteworthy role of being the first male character seen on screen and the first character to speak in the whole show.

In the Black trailer, Adam finds Blake in a clearing and tells her “It’s time.” They run through the forest and jump onto a massive train passing through. Once inside, Adam quips, “Looks like we’re going to be doing this the hard way,” to which Blake replies, “Don’t be so dramatic” with a little smile. As they fight a lot of robots, they leave opportunities for the other to finish off certain enemies. Their teamwork is tight and they clearly trust that the other will have their back.

At the midpoint, Adam checks a crate and tells Blake to move up to the next car while he sets the charges. Blake asks him about the crew members and Adam, with a very sinister edge to his voice, says, “What about them?”

There’s another big fight before Blake can answer, during which Adam gets a now iconic glory shot:

The trailer ends with Blake cutting apart the coupling between hers and Adam’s train cars; she fades into the distance, out of Adam’s reach.

So, the aspects of Adam that hooked people immediately: his design (black and red is a very good aesthetic), his superpower (disintegrating a massive robot with a single swing), and his weapons (gun sheath that can fire the sword it holds).

Adam’s fighting style in the Black trailer is cool. It’s entertaining. It’s fun to watch. People makes gifs of it for a reason.

How much mileage a person gets out of these aspects varies, of course, but on the face of it Adam has a very solid design and is entertaining on the screen. Combined with his obvious history with Blake, people were invested. Theories about his future role in the story, a confrontation with Blake, and so on circulated as the show entered its first season.

Many of those theories found traction by using the trailer’s background music - “From Shadows.” The lyrics are not subtle:

Born with, no life Into subjugation Treated like a, worthless animal Stripped of all rights Just a lesser being Crushed by cruel, ruthless human rule

We can infer right off the bat that Blake and Adam are fighting against oppression. Moreover, they are not themselves human. The fight aspect comes across clearly in the chorus:

From shadows we'll descend upon the world Take back what you stole From shadows we'll reclaim our destiny Set our future free

Rather than a straight evil villain that Blake had to run away from to save herself, Adam comes off as a morally ambiguous counterpart to Blake with the way he was doing the right thing (resisting oppression) the wrong way (murdering innocent crewmembers). Working only with what’s in the trailer, Blake left because she no longer agreed with his methodology.

Also, for context: here’s a link to an official video explaining what a faunus (what Blake and Adam are) is. Tl;dr they’re humans with one animal trait, like cat ears, added on.

The Show

So we have him featured as a deuteragonist to Blake in the trailer...and then Adam isn’t mentioned again in the show until he’s mentioned by Blake in episode 10 of Volume 2, "Mountain Glenn."

Side note number one: there’s actually a point earlier at which Blake explains the history of the White Fang to Sun (another Faunus), and she notes that a new, more violent leader took charge after the old pacifist one steps down. She doesn’t name names, but we learn later that the pacifist leader is actually Blake’s father, Ghira Belladonna, and the new leader is Sienna Khan, both of whom won’t show up until later volumes.

Back to episode 10: Blake describes Adam as a partner and then clarifies that he was “more of a mentor, actually.” At this point, roughly a year and a half has passed since we last heard anything about Adam. This brief mentor description fits with what we went over in the trailer section and confirmed a lot of theories at the time. Hype grew for what people saw as the inevitable confrontation between Blake and Adam, especially now that Blake was actively fighting against the White Fang and was on a team with the Schnee Dust Company heiress.

Adam does physically appear in Breach, the twelfth and final episode of Volume 2, to reassure Cinder’s faction that the White Fang will continue to listen to their faction despite heavy losses. With full confidence in his influence over his men, Adam says, “they’ll listen to me.”

Cue a wild storm of speculation trying to figure out how Adam fits into the White Fang alliance with Cinder. It started with the White Fang allying with Torchwick (a human) earlier in the show, but having Adam show that their alliance was apparently a willing one changed things. This scene cemented Adam’s role as an outright villain, though some still held out hope that he had a better reason for allying with Cinder than the joy of murdering humans.

It should be noted at this point that Tauradonna (Blake x Adam) was a very popular ship at this time.

The Show: Volume 3

The next time we see Adam is Volume 3 Episode 7, "Beginning of the End." In this episode, we are shown a scene of Cinder approaching Adam in his camp in Forever Fall presumably for the first time. She asks for his help attacking Vale; Adam rejects her, saying, "The White Fang is not an organization for hire! We're a force of revolution!"

When Cinder tries again to appeal to him, he shuts her down by explaining, "You're asking my men to die for your cause. A human cause. That is not an idea I am willing to entertain." He finishes this statement by lifting his weapon in an implied threat. Cinder gets the message and leaves. Shortly after, Blake approaches Adam and asks who Cinder was, but Adam tells her not to worry about it.

Later in the same episode and after the events of the Black trailer have occurred, Adam and his lieutenant are having a discussion in a camp tent. The lieutenant swears he will find Blake; Adam tells him to let her go. Cinder then returns to the camp with some of the maiden powers and wreaks havoc. When the chaos pulls Adam and his lieutenant from his tent, Cinder again asks for Adam's help, this time with the threat of violence somewhat softened by the same cases of money and Dust she brought the first time.

Note the smoke and bodies in the background.

Important fandom split here: at the time this episode aired, it appears that there was a general consensus that Adam was genuinely threatened into doing what he did. After character revelations to be discussed in a bit, that consensus fractured with a notable subset of people interpreting this scene as Adam willingly submitting to Cinder in a 4D chess move to gain powerful allies and that he never cared about the lives of his men at all. That line of thinking also postulates that his initial rejection was nothing but an act to maintain his reputation with his men.

Moving on: Beacon, the huntsman training academy Blake is attending, comes under siege by hacked robots and hordes of Grimm. White Fang piloting ships are delivering Grimm where they otherwise could not reach, presumably with Adam's blessing. The man himself doesn't appear until Volume 3 episode 10, "Battle of Beacon." Adam has a defenseless student at his mercy when Blake sees him. Before she can run, he notices her and says, "Hello, my darling."

We get into the meat of their confrontation in episode 11, "Heroes and Monsters." Blake rushes Adam to save the aforementioned student, who promptly vanishes from the scene, but Adam is unimpressed. In response to her claiming that she's not running, he pushes her weapon down one-handed and says, "You will."

Adam dominates Blake in a one-sided fight. Yang shows up looking for Blake as Adam is promising to destroy everything Blake loves. Adam stabs Blake through her abdomen to get her to cry out, grabbing Yang’s attention. Yang launches herself at Adam in a protective rage; Adam cuts off her arm.

Blake throws herself in front of a now unconscious Yang and Adam, after a brief irritated pause, cuts off Blake’s head - only he doesn’t, because that was just a shadow clone Blake left behind so she could grab Yang and escape. Adam doesn’t give chase, just walks menacingly in that direction while casually killing a Grimm that lunges at him...and then he is gone for the rest of the volume.

So, during this confrontation, Adam kicks Blake in the stomach, backhands her across the face, and stabs her through the abdomen. Given that the entire encounter is soaked in Adam's "my love" and "darling" forms of address to Blake, many fans interpreted this violence as abuse, and specifically romantic partner abuse. Other fans interpreted it as violence against Blake as a combatant standing in Adam's way to whom he wants to prove a point.

To be blunt, this encounter shattered expectations, and not necessarily in a good way. To see Adam so vindictively pleased to attack Beacon, see Blake, and wear her down went against the buildup earlier in the volume with the Cinder scenes and particularly the scene in which Adam tells his lieutenant not to go after Blake.

After this episode aired, Tauradonna shippers vanished in droves as they were hit with accusations of supporting an abusive ship despite there being no indication that this physical violence was present before this point; Adam fans likewise retreated.

Although some of the dialogue - mostly Blake's - still made overtures at the revolution and justice angles to her and Adam's theorized philosophies, the romantic dialogue and violence from Adam distracted from those grander themes with petty revenge against Blake for her "betrayal" of him in the Black trailer.

Side note number two: one person found the jilted ex boyfriend characterization to be so egregious that they made an edit of the scene to remove it entirely. I recommend giving it a look after watching the original version.

Beyond the abuse angle, this episode also surfaced two other accusations now often leveled at Adam: pedophilia/grooming and misogyny. I can't speak to their frequency at the time the episode aired, but they are plenty common now.

On the pedophilia and grooming front, these headcanons mainly derive from Barbara and Arryn, the voices of Yang and Blake, respectively, stating during an interview their personal headcanon of Adam's age. They viewed him as in his twenties. Based on other vaguely established pseudo-canon not depicted in the show surrounding Blake and Adam's first meeting, this would mean that Adam met Blake when he was well into his teens and she was around 12 or 13.

Adam's age was never confirmed in the show. Grooming or pedophilia was also never depicted. These accusations are extrapolations from cast members' headcanons coupled with pseudo-canon material.

The misogyny accusations stem from Adam's attacks against Blake. Physical abuse against Blake, a woman, was grounds enough for the claim. There’s no delicate way to say this, but put bluntly, abuse against a woman is not inherently misogynistic. Abuse against a woman because she is a woman is inherently misogynistic.

Although the claim that misogyny doesn’t exist on Remnant has been floating around for years, I wasn’t able to track down a source for it.

Because of this misogynist label on Adam, fans of his were swiftly condemned as misogynists as well. This has led to many fans of his being interpreted as “dude bros” getting overly hyped about a "nothing” character just because they like how “cool” he is while they misogynistically ignore the main protagonists. If you want an example of this dismissive attitude, check out this video from Twiins iink. Also note that the title has been changed since posting from “Get Over Adam” to what you see now after there was significant backlash from parts of the fandom for a variety of reasons, many of which are beyond the scope of this post.

Despite all of the troublesome implications and interpretations of Blake and Adam's confrontation at Beacon, there were some positives that Adam fans latched onto: Adam's intimidation factor as a villain (effortlessly besting Blake in a fight, taking down Yang in one shot), his indisputable personal connection to Blake, and his role in the central conflict of the story. He also, at this point, still could fulfill the role of the foil to Blake's more pacifist views going forward.

Side note number three: there are conflicting opinions on Adam's actual power level. I did a breakdown in this post.

So here we have another split in the fandom in addition to the ones before it: those who enjoyed his character now for the cool factor of how powerful he seemed - given that he took down Blake and Yang without apparent difficulty - and others who viewed that first group as endorsing the things Adam did and ostensibly stood for.

There is also another group of people existing even now who are genuinely supportive of more of less everything that Adam did and is accused of doing, but I honestly don’t know much about them. There are only a couple that I’ve seen and interacted with, but it’s not at all a common position these days. However, nearly all Adam fans are at some point lumped into this group.

I want to emphasize that Volume 3, and particularly the Adam and Blake confrontation, is the linchpin moment for Adam fans. I’ll run through the rest of the show just so you have context, but by the time one particular detail about Adam’s past came to light in Volume 6, most fans of his had already jumped ship.

Volumes 4 and 5

In these volumes we get an abrupt reframing of the White Fang's structure with the introduction of the cult-like Menagerie branch and, in the Mistral-based headquarters, high leader Sienna Khan. Although the show communicated that there was more to the organization than Adam in earlier volumes, those other branches and power structures had never been explored.

Sienna's introduction complicated people's relationship with Adam because she occupied the same niche he had originally been interpreted as filling: that of a violent activist.

For an in depth comparison of Sienna, Adam, and Ghira's methods, look at this post.

We are also introduced to Ilia Amitola, another White Fang member who subscribes to Adam and Sienna's view. Here's a post comparing and contrasting Ilia and Adam, since another common point brought up with Adam fans is how Ilia is Adam but "better."

Anyway, Adam features in one of Yang's PTSD nightmares in Volume 4. He then kicks off Volume 5 by giving a speech in support of reverse racism to Sienna, whom he promptly murders. His actual words: "[T]he Faunus are the dominant species of this planet. We're better than humans. We have everything humans have and more. Humans shouldn't just fear the Faunus, they should serve the Faunus."

Suffice to say he was hemorrhaging fans at this point. At the same time, critique of the entire White Fang plot, which had been present since its inception, lit up with Adam's latest characterization as the catalyst.

Adam succeeds in his coup and becomes the high leader of the White Fang. He's bad at it, he fails to bring down Haven, and is generally just pathetic. He ends the volume in disgrace, having narrowly escaped capture.

The Adam Character Short

Before Volume 6 aired, the show put out an Adam character short - think of it as a mini-episode dedicated to Adam.

The short showed that Adam was influenced and encouraged by Sienna, was the first to introduce Grimm masks to the White Fang, and emotionally manipulated Blake into staying with the White Fang when she no longer agreed with his methods. It also - years later - put in a scene of Adam apparently desiring Sienna's position of high leader despite his characterization in the first three volumes not hinting at that desire. This inclusion led to new analyses of early content with confirmation bias in full effect to show how Adam was actually terrible and one-dimensional all along.

I can't say for sure, but I suspect the 4D chess go-along-with-Cinder headcanon gained traction around this time.

Volume 6

In the first episode, "Argus Limited," we see Adam on his throne in the Mistral headquarters looking over the bodies of faunus he killed while soundbytes of those men questioning his competency play. Adam mutters, "the Belladonna girl" in reference to an accusation by one of the soldiers and then cuts the chair in half while yelling at the ceiling.

Later in the episode, we see Adam, wearing a new hooded outfit and blindfolded instead of masked, watching Blake from a separated train car. Yang also hallucinates him in his old outfit while the protagonists take shelter from a storm in an abandoned farm. He doesn't appear again until episode 10, "Stealing from the Elderly," cornering Blake alone at the Argus radio tower after killing all of the employees.

Adam's characterization in the volume's final episodes doesn't change much from his characterization in v4 onward. He's still obsessed with Blake and blames her for his problems. Unlike their confrontations at Beacon and at Haven, however, Blake is now terrified of Adam. She tries to run and talk him out of the fight on multiple occasions to no avail.

What we do finally get, though, is a face reveal fans had been curious about for years.

Adam removes his blindfold to reveal the letters SDC branded over his bloodied left eye. The Schnee Dust Company is a company known for “controversial labor forces” (as said by Blake in Volume 1), a description usually interpreted in fandom as either outright slavery or dangerously exploitative working conditions.

There are a lot of reasons why this reveal made things so much worse in the fandom. For more on why it was a very bad writing choice, check out this post. There��s also this Reddit post in the same vein as what you’re reading now that goes into even more detail on why Adam is so controversial.

In terms of the story, this reveal occurred because Adam was in the process of manipulating Blake again - showing his scar while he talked about Blake leaving him when he’s been hurt by “all sorts of people in all sorts of ways.” This scene further divided people because it emphasized his known manipulative and abusive relationship with Blake (unsympathetic) over the new fact that he was branded over one eye with the logo of a racist company (extremely sympathetic).

Later, well after the episode aired and people had come up with theories for the brand’s existence, the showrunners declared outside of the show that the racist company’s brand appearing on an oppressed minority character’s face wasn’t due to the racism in the setting but rather Adam getting into an argument with someone at an SDC site and that person “let[ting] him have it.”

This revelation created further division among people who heard and accepted that belated explanation, people who heard it and didn’t accept it, and people who didn’t hear it.

With this finale also comes the final big accusation thrown at Adam: homophobia. In broad strokes, this is sourced from the (to date) unconfirmed ship bumbleby (Blake x Yang). At Beacon, Yang leapt to Blake's defense and Adam cut off her arm. At Argus, Yang again comes to Blake's defense and, working together, they overpower Adam after holding hands and declaring that they're protecting each other rather than one of them protecting the other.

The confrontation plays out and Adam dies to the broken pieces of his ex's weapon, stabbed in the front by his former partner and in the back by a human he saw once before for about thirty seconds. Blake breaks down crying and Yang comforts her. Shippers interpret this scene (in addition to this one leading up to it) as a key moment in their relationship. Yang also hits Adam with her bike called Bumblebee when she enters the scene. Because Blake and Yang were fighting Adam in the lead up to this bonding moment, some view Adam as a representation of homophobia standing in the way of the wlw couple.

Many also frequently make jokes about Adam being homophobic even though, in the show, it's seeing his former partner hold hands with someone else that sends Adam over the edge - arguably because he sees that relationship as viable, not because he doesn't believe women can love each other. He even yells at Yang, "What does [Blake] even see in you?"

Now that Adam is dead, let’s get into the genuinely thorny part. Neither the homophobia and misogyny accusations nor the canonical abuse or even the pedophilia/grooming angle can be considered the most controversial part of his character.

The Faunus Controversy

It is, fortunately or unfortunately, disingenuous to bring up Adam without bringing up RWBY’s entire faunus plot. Adam was a leader of the White Fang faunus group, for a time the leader, and his prominent role in the Black trailer and Volume 3, as well as the way Blake talked about and reacted to him, made him a significant face for the group.

With that in mind, the crew explicitly compared (clip download link) the faunus to the American civil rights movement. Adam as a horned faunus is allegorical to a black person in America - he’s a discriminated-against minority fighting back against an oppressive majority. Not only that, but he’s a minority whose face was branded with the logo of a company he worked for.

If you want more detail about the White Fang controversy, I recommend watching these videos on it.

So, to recap: Adam is an oppressed, traumatized, and branded individual leading an extremist faction of a minority group fighting for a revolution against racism...and he’s a violent murderer who doesn’t care about his kin or cause and stalks the ex he abused across continents only to die at her hand.

A bit complicated, yeah? Depending on which aspects of his character resonate and which you can overlook, as well as which parts of his contradictory characterization you want to believe are the true core of his character, he can either be very sympathetic or the scum of the earth.

Framed another way, Adam arguably falls into the archetype of “oppressed character becomes a villain to lash out against the society that oppressed them but is stopped by the protagonists without the circumstances that led to their villainy being addressed.” Basically, this.

Side note number four: if you want to look into how Adam’s characterization ties into (and hurts) Blake’s arc, check out this video.

Let’s also briefly look at how CRWBY talk about Adam. The cast and crew often interact with the community and their attitudes towards events and characters often impacts how the fandom treats those characters. Adam is a prime example. We already covered the creators headcanoning Adam's age off the cuff and creating controversy that way.

More examples: Volume 6's sound designer tweeted about how the sound of the river Adam falls into after being fatally stabbed included a recording of a flushing toilet. Adam's English voice actor tweeted that Adam's only allergy was to Blake and Yang's love for each other (of note: that tweet was made in 2019. Blake and Yang's relationship is not canon as of 2022).

Those points, combined with the Word of God explanation of how Adam got his scar, point towards a dismissive attitude on the part of the creators towards Adam. This attitude bled into the fandom; if the creators don't care about this character or treat him with nuance, why should the fans?

So there you have it: the most complete in-one-spot picture of Adam in the original show and why people are weird about him. Which brings us to...

Ice Queendom

Before we even get into the show, let’s get into the promotional material from the official Ice Queendom website. Specifically, Adam’s character description:

“Adam was Blake’s companion during her White Fang era as well as her combat mentor. He expanded his faction with immense ruthlessness to achieve his goals, and replaces the old leader of the organization.” [source]

The romance aspects from the original are absent and it seems more in line with the Volume 2 mentor characterization than what came later. Also absent are indications of his faunus supremacist mindset that debuted in Volume 5.

Two important changes were made in IQ’s spin on the Black trailer:

As opposed to the “What about them?” line, we get Adam stating clearly that he doesn’t care about the crew members because they’re human. This bolsters his characterization of prioritizing Faunus over humans to the point that he sees innocent human lives as not even worth considering when making plans. It’s similar to the original, yes, but that sliver of nuance matters when establishing a character.

We hear immediately after Blake leaves that Adam chooses not to pursue Blake when he could if he wanted. In the original show, this detail was not revealed until the third season. Moreover, we hear from IQ!Adam that he is choosing not to give chase specifically because he believes the world is so hostile to Faunus that Blake will see things his way soon enough.

Nothing in Adam and Blake's interactions in Ice Queendom indicate abuse, misogyny, pedophilia/grooming, or homophobia - just like the original trailer. However, the biggest point in IQ!Adam's favor is simply that he is not the main show's Adam. His character has been tweaked just like many other RWBY characters to better fit IQ's story. Not only that, but for all that the original Adam did in his RWBY run, he has done none of that in IQ. To judge a character based on things that have not happened in their story is to do a disservice to that character, and to judge people for liking the new iteration of that character is to be needlessly weird about it.

It is at this point that this post finally comes to a close. As I said at the start: use this information to engage with Adam however you see fit.

While you're ruminating on that, enjoy this picture of my cat as a reward for enduring this post.

#adam taurus #rwby #rwby: ice queendom #ice queendom #ice queendom spoilers #unofficial adam analysis #*if you don't think it's controversial then you are still on one side of the controversy #4.5 thousand words and several hours of drafting and research that i will never get back 🫡#there's a typo in here somewhere but damned if i'll find it before posting rip

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sexiestpodcastcharacter · 7 months

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If the WTNV characters are getting their own bracket, shouldn't there by a separate FATT bracket too? They make up 1/3 of the unscripted bracket right now.

I already answered this but the less flippant answer isn't that I was nervous of Welcome to Night Vale's current fandom size — I've been up to date for years I am very well aware that it's currently a small fandom — or that I think Welcome to Night Vale has 32 incredibly sexy characters but every other audio story only has 4 (if that was the case I would not still be asking for Night Vale submissions).

Rather, I have been on Tumblr since 2010. I found out about Night Vale during the summer of 2013, during a time when I usually did not have internet connection and so missed a lot of what was going on with Tumblr. And yet I used my occasional internet connection to download episodes of a podcast to my iPod Touch, when I had never listened to a podcast before.

And then I was here on Tumblr in January 2023, long after the posts that said "I really need to catch up on Night Vale" had faded away and there was only the intermittent "Hey remember Night Vale? That shit was good. Remember waiting for the bus in the rain?" post would float across my dash, while me and ten other people were busy yelling about Khoshekh being a misogynist.

And yet.

Cecil beat out Sans Undertale in the Tumblr Sexyman Tournament (Tumblr Edition) when Sans was the champion and Cecil was eliminated in the first round of the Twitter Edition of that same tournament four months earlier.

When someone tried to do this poll last winter, it looked like it was going to be a Cecil vs Carlos final, and that was with a 3 character limit per podcast. The only person who could beat Kevin the voice of Desert Bluffs and Desert Bluffs Too was Carlos the Scientist himself.

Admittedly, I thought Sans Undertale from Interstitial Authority would have a very easy time beating the bug guy from the weird west horror season of Friends at the Table. I was wrong. It has taken an unprecedented* level of campaigning and the poll being blazed for Sans to get a lead on Duvall. And I did not expect Miss Pickman from that same horror season to get 17 submissions.

*I haven't seen any other podcasters in any other tumblr bracket record propaganda specifically for a poll and set it to a video.

So maybe the Unscripted Bracket Finals will be Pickman vs Millie. But I think there's a decent chance it will be Lup vs Kravitz. I personally hope that the finals will have characters from different podcasts facing off. And maybe I'm underestimating the F@tT fandom and overestimating the residual/lurking TAZ Balance fandom, but I think both these fandoms (and The Magnus Archives fandom while we're at it) pale in comparison to the number of people on Tumblr who have a piece of Welcome to Night Vale tucked away somewhere in their core.

#Not A Poll #Ask #Anonymous #Mod Update #I guess?

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sapphic-agent · 10 days

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I'm curious about your thoughts about the Glee subreddit and morality. When I was active on that sub, I left some time back because of the insane Rachel glazing and Santana slander, I noticed a lot of the arguments or discussions were coming from a moral standpoint for me. Santana's my favorite character and often how she was criticized on there seemed to come from sort of moral high ground. She's a terrible character because she did this wrong (biphobia, racism, homophobia, bullying etc) and that isn't okay without people remembering the time period that Glee aired in or that Glee thrived off of dodgy/satirical jokes or humor. They hold Santana and her actions accountable as if she was created in 2024 and not 2009.

Was this something you also noticed when you were there? This weird morality stance when it comes to controversial characters like Santana? It honestly felt like she was being judged to 2024 standards. Sorry if this sounds a bit disjointed but I'm interested to know your viewpoint.

No, this is a really good question.

It's common knowledge for people who have left the Glee sub that it's on some self-righteous moral high ground. And I wouldn't care about their morality stance... if they were as harsh on Finn and Rachel as they are on Santana, Quinn, Mercedes, etc.

I can give you a lot of examples of their double standards.

When anyone tries to bring up Rachel slapping Santana, they'll cry about the times Santana slapped Quinn and Finn... But nothing about Finn trying to yank Quinn out of her wheelchair, beating down on Puck, attacking Jesse, etc. Hell, they'll fucking praise him for assaulting Brody. In all of these situations, Finn always gets an excuse: oh Puck betrayed him, oh Quinn manipulated him, oh Jesse and Brody HURT poor Rachel!! But then they'll make excuses for demonizing Santana... despite the fact that Quinn revealed her private medical info to get her demoted and Finn literally outed and doxed her to the entire state.

Ergo, they're fine when Finn resorts to violence because it's SO UNDERSTANDABLE, but Santana's a bitch who deserves what she gets so she isn't allowed to be upset in any way.

Do you know how many times someone brings up Mercedes quitting? Do you know how many times they condemn her for being childish, disrespectful, and leaving the way she did? But... Rachel did the same thing for years. Why is it only condemnable when Mercedes does it? Why is Rachel allowed to complain and get angry, but the minute Mercedes does it she has an attitude problem?

Rachel playing Maria in WSS was fine, but for some reason she has the right to condemn Santana for auditioning for Fanny? And the Glee sub thinks that's perfectly okay.

It's funny you mention satire, because apparently that only applies to Rachel, not Santana. Rachel can make whatever comments she wants about Black people and Chinese people and anyone who isn't American and it's so cute and funny and endearing, but when Santana did it, it was racist and she's terrible.

(Honestly, I know Santana is Mexican in canon, but Naya was Black irl, so it really feels like this is misogynoir (especially when Mercedes is only liked as long as she's being perfectly unproblematic). If Santana was a white Hispanic and not an Afro-Latina, I feel like people in the Glee sub (and everywhere else tbh) wouldn't be nearly as harsh on her)

Also, you pointing out people judging her by 2024 terms is hilarious, because that's the exact thing the Glee sub accuses Finn haters like myself of doing to him. Except... condemning most of the shit Finn does was perfectly the norm in 2009. The Office (THE FUCKING OFFICE) took the time to explain why outing was bad. A ton of sitcoms pointed out that abusing your size to beat people up when you get mad is wrong.

IT WAS 2009, NOT 1989. The last episode of Glee aired in 2013, when progressive shows like Steven Universe were coming out (hell, Adventure Time is even older than Glee and it did things so much better; Finn Mertens>Finn Hudson) Glee isn't the aged relic people make it out to be. And firmly holding Finn to "2009" standards- while not doing the same for Santana (or Quinn or anyone else)- and them attacking anyone who dares to say "Hey, Finn's kind of a dick," is a double standard that screams misogyny and racism

#anti glee subreddit #anti finn hudson #anti finn hudson stans #anti rachel berry stans #rachel berry critical #anon ask

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paramorearchived · 26 days

Text

March 24, 2013

Transcript:

perspective

This will be the last of the lyric posts until the album comes! There's going to be a lot of exciting stuff happening this week so I promise that the time will fly by! Thanks for coming here to read the tiniest preview of some of the songs off our album. The guys and I are all but bursting at the seams with pride and excitement for this record to come out. Thank God.

It's hard to believe that almost a year ago, exactly, we moved out to LA to finish writing/start recording our Self Titled album. The few months before that were a weird time for me, personally. I was battling the present and just constantly trying to figure out how to get to whatever was going to be next. It's funny how life goes cause then you start to look back at a time that felt really difficult and realize it was one of the most beautiful times in your whole life. The last two years were strange and hard and I learned a lot... but it was easily one of the most amazing, most peaceful times of my life. When I talk to people about it, I refer to last Spring/Summer as a "golden moment" that sparked so much growth and necessary healing. Funny I didn't recognize how perfect it actually was when I was living it. We all need a little perspective sometimes. To stand back and really get what we're right in the middle of.

Last January, I sat up in bed one morning and sang out the chorus to a song that, for pretty obvious reasons, we called "Daydreaming". I've never been the kind of writer to do that. There are like a billion episodes of Behind The Music where the artist talks about writing a song in their sleep... waking up and putting it down on paper before they go back to bed... or some of them just get right up and get to work finishing it. That's just never been me, though I always wished it was. This particular morning, however, I woke up and from somewhere deep in my head or heart or wherever songs come from... it just came out like word vomit. Later that day I went to Taylor's and showed him. Eventually the song kind of finished itself.

Looking back on the months before we moved to California, I was having the worst time just getting through my daily life. I didn't want to see anyone I knew in Nashville. I felt lonely and sad and a little hurt. For whatever reason I just felt like there was more out there for me but it wasn't wherever I was. Not "more" as in success, or any type of worldly gain... but I just felt like my heart should be happier. I was constantly dreaming up a brighter life in my head. Trying to figure out what to do to get there. When we moved to LA, even the physical act of getting away wasn't really helping. At that point, I felt completely lost. If I was this far away from my problems and I still felt alone and down... then where could I go to feel any less alone? It took a few weeks. It took getting up every morning and just deciding I was right where I needed to be. It took singing "Daydreaming" out loud in front of a mic in the studio and turning it into a reality. Now I look back at that season of my life with such a deep nostalgia. Growing pains sometimes hurt like heartache. In the moments that you feel change happening and you feel your heart, mind, body and soul resisting it with all your might, try not resisting for only a moment. Go with it, even! It's like that quote I've always loved by Anias Nin... "And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom". Don't miss a chance to move forward. Daydream a little. Don't be scared to embrace the way that it hurts just to grow. You'll look back and your heart will thank you for not standing still when what you needed the most was to move forward.

"Living in a city of sleepless people Who all know the limits and won't go too far outside the lines Cause they're' out of their minds. I wanna get out and build my own home On a street where reality is not much different from dreams I've had A dream is all I have...

Daydreaming Daydreaming all the time Daydreaming Daydreaming into the night And I'm alright

Creep past the hours like the shorter hand on the clock hanging on a wall of a schoolhouse somewhere We wait for the bell And we dream of somewhere else

Daydreaming Daydreaming all the time Daydreaming Daydreaming into the night And I'm alright

Not that I won't remember where I'm from Just don't wanna be here no more It's not enough (We're only half alive) I'm gonna go (We're only half alive) Where the rest of the dreamers go

Where the dreamers go

Daydreaming Daydreaming all the time Daydreaming Daydreaming into the night And I'm alright

Daydreaming Daydreaming all the time Daydreamer We used to be half alive Now I'm alright"

Surprise! There's the whole song's worth...

-hayley

#paramore #hayley williams #self titled #2013 #livejournal #daydreaming

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positivelybeastly · 4 months

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Dear avengers beast: what would you do if hypothetically you woke up let’s say ~10 years in the future and everyone hated you for somewhat valid reasons (don’t worry Simon doesn’t hate you I don’t think)

Hank looks up from re-ordering his Star Trek DVDs (Wanda wanted to borrow his complete collection of Voyager and he didn't have the heart to tell her no) and quirks an eyebrow.

"Y'know, fella, it strikes me that these are some awfully specific questions to be posing to an awfully specific blue Beastie. Do you know something I don't?"

He shakes his head and slides Enterprise season 3 back into place. Good season, lil' rough, don't much care for the Beauty and the Beast redux episode in the middle of it.

"Honestly, it'd scare the living daylights out of me. You ever think about how much things can change in ten years? It's 2013 now, and you gotta ask yourself, what's gonna happen next? Are Blu-Rays gonna be the next dominant storage media, or is something gonna replace it? Is the world gonna buckle down and work on climate change or nah? Is same-sex marriage gonna become de rigeur, or are people still gonna be weird about it? You never know, ya know?"

Enterprise season 4. God, what a great season. That show got cancelled way before its time. He's still on message boards to this day thinking about what season 5 coulda been like.

"As for me, though . . . Iunno, boychik, what could I really have done to make everybody hate me? I know I get on people's nerves all the time, on account'a my not taking things all that seriously most of the time, but hate's a strong word. Hate's reserved for the real bad stuff in the world, like sub-par macaroni cheese, Count Nefaria and - "

He picks up The Next Generation season 1. Makes a face. He's really tempted to just chuck it.

But he puts it back in order nonetheless.

". . . Anywho. Awright, so let's say I've done something real bad. Fallen into the flowerbed that the big dumb satellite god in the sky says is the death flowerbed for the day, right? Everyone hates me ('cept Wondy, 'cause he can't)."

He touches at the spine of Next Generation season 1 a little, then he shakes his head and smiles a touch. He slides it back out, pops it open, shows off the six discs.

"Real stinker of a season, this one."

"Justice, Naked Now, We'll Always Have Paris, Angel One, Lonely Among Us - there's a lot of real dreck in here. Enough to make you hate it. And oh, I mean hate - Code of Honor alone is enough to make you think the entire thing's worth throwing out. But if you give it a sec, and you just give it a little time, give it a few chances, you find the good stuff. The Big Goodbye's pretty darn good. 11001001 is great, actually! Coming of Age, Heart of Glory - yeah, they aren't All Good Things, but what is?"

He pops it all back together and slides it back into place with a touch more reverence this time.

"You give it a chance, and it builds up to something great if you just give it time. Season 2's got some really great stuff in it! Peak Performance, Measure of a Man, The Emissary, A Matter of Honor - it's really starting to find its feet. At first, it betrayed your trust, made you think it was all a mistake, made you doubt whether it was any good to begin with, made you think, jeez, Shatner, Kelley and Nimoy, were they the only things keeping that original show afloat? Was it all just one big mistake? But nah. It just had a little stumble."

Season 2 goes into the wall with an affectionate pat to the spine.

"It's real easy to give up on something when it turns around and disappoints you. But if you're patient, and you give it a real shot, if you give it time and you're there for it, it comes back to itself, you know? Iunno what these 'somewhat valid reasons' are, that's a little too vague for me to give you a proper answer, but I'd hope my friends and my family and everyone I care about can tell when something's me and when something's not me. Mixing my metaphors, I know, but you get what I mean, right?"

Season 3 of The Next Generation gets a loving touch. Maybe the best single Trek season of all time? Maybe!

"All I can do is be me, in the end. If that's enough, then great. If that's not enough, then I'll do my best to be better. I'd hope that counts for something. I guess I'd do my best to make amends, fix what I broke, and if that doesn't work, I guess I'd not inflict my presence on them a moment longer. I'm - pretty good at telling when I'm not wanted."

"Seriously, though, how bad can it be? You make it sound like I've killed someone, and we all know I don't have that in me."

#anonymous #verse: earth's mightiest!

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lovesongbracket · 1 year

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Reminder: Vote based on the song, not the artist or specific recording! The tracks referenced are the original artist, aside from a few rare cases where a cover is the most widely known.

Lyrics, videos, info, and notable covers under the cut. (Spotify playlist available in pinned post)

Love, Me Normally

Written By: Will Wood

Artist: Will Wood

Released: 2020

A smooth and jazzy ballad about feeling like an outlier. Posted in 2016, Will Wood was a guest on WPTV-6, performing this song for the episode. The studio recording of this single was created in 2018, but unreleased until May of 2020.

[Verse 1] In lipstick on the mirror are the lyrics to my obituary In iambic pentameter, followed parameter, cross my eyes, dot my T's I was delivered holding scissors, I live deliberately, I’m a quitter And a winner anyway, cause I never agreed to participate in this game Won't follow my dreams, 'cause they all got me waking up screaming I can’t let them go for me, after all, there is no “I” in team [Chorus] And I'd rather be normal, yes, so normal I suggest that we keep this informal 'Cause a normal human being wouldn't need To pretend to be normal, to be normal Well I guess that's the least that I owe ya To be normal in a way I couldn’t be C’mon, c’mon, and love me normally [Verse 2] If I could live in third person, well, I don’t think life would be much worse than it is In the current tense, presently, this sentence ending in question marks or dot, dot, dot Is it courageous or escapist to leave the quarantine when you’re contagious? It may just be a cold, and besides I don’t wanna get old, yeah I drank myself to death to be the afterlife of the party When the afterparty came, I was rolling in my grave [Chorus] And I'd rather be normal, yes, so normal I suggest that we keep this informal 'Cause a normal human being wouldn't need To pretend to be normal, to be normal Well I guess that's the least that I owe ya To be normal in a way I couldn’t be C’mon, c’mon, and love me normally [Bridge 1, spoken] Now this is the part of the song where I like to talk to my audience I like to tell 'em there's something I want from you hep cats tonight I want you to look to your left, look to your right, your 12 o'clock, three o'clock, six o'clock, nine o'clock, rock around the clock tonight And I want you to find those points of no return, those singularities, those burning rings of fire in the beautiful pupils and the beautiful eyes of the beautiful boy, girl, neither, both, or in-between that you brought with you tonight, and I want you to tell 'em how you really feel I want you to love the way they so seamlessly, like-a-dream-fully, so beautifully, oh-so-dutifully jam that square peg in the round hole in their hearts I want you to tell 'em that you love the way that they don't stick out like sore middle fingers That they crawl their way up the side of the bell curve, stick their flag in the peak, and slide their way back down I want you to tell them that you love the way that they're not maladaptive, not malcontent, not malignant or maleficent, but rather that you love them exactly the way that everybody else is [Bridge 2] I was nothing before, so I couldn’t have asked to be born I'll be nothing again, so what am I between now and then? Is there nothing to fear? Cause shit's getting weird So to God who made this man, you better have one hell of a plan [Chorus] And I'd rather be normal, yes, so normal I suggest that we keep this informal 'Cause a normal human being wouldn't need, no To pretend to be normal, to be normal Well, I guess that's the least that I owe ya To be normal in a way I could never be C’mon, c’mon, yeah, I said c’mon, yeah C’mon, c’mon, yeah, I said c’mon, yeah C’mon, c’mon, and love me normally C'mon, c'mon and love me normally

youtube

Do I Wanna Know?

Written By: Alex Turner

Artist: Arctic Monkeys

Released: 2013

Cover included: Hozier, 2014

“Do I Wanna Know” is the second single from AM, premiered live at the Ventura Theatre, CA on May 22, 2013. In it, Alex portrays himself as an obsessive lover that is paranoid about the state of his relationship.

[Verse 1] Have you got colour in your cheeks? Do you ever get that fear that you can't shift the tide That sticks around like summat in your teeth? Are there some aces up your sleeve? Have you no idea that you're in deep? I've dreamt about you nearly every night this week How many secrets can you keep? 'Cause there's this tune I found That makes me think of you somehow an' I play it on repeat Until I fall asleep, spillin' drinks on my settee [Pre-Chorus] (Do I wanna know?) If this feelin' flows both ways? (Sad to see you go) Was sorta hopin' that you'd stay (Baby, we both know) That the nights were mainly made For sayin' things that you can't say tomorrow day [Chorus] Crawlin' back to you Ever thought of callin' when You've had a few? 'Cause I always do Maybe I'm too Busy bein' yours To fall for somebody new Now, I've thought it through Crawlin' back to you [Verse 2] So have you got the guts? Been wonderin' if your heart's still open And if so, I wanna know what time it shuts Simmer down an' pucker up, I'm sorry to interrupt It's just I'm constantly on the cusp of tryin' to kiss you But I don't know if you feel the same as I do But we could be together if you wanted to [Pre-Chorus] (Do I wanna know?) If this feelin' flows both ways? (Sad to see you go) Was sorta hopin' that you'd stay (Baby, we both know) That the nights were mainly made For sayin' things that you can't say tomorrow day [Chorus] Crawlin' back to you (Crawlin' back to you) Ever thought of callin' when You've had a few? (Had a few) 'Cause I always do ('Cause I always do) Maybe I'm too (Maybe I'm too busy) Busy bein' yours (Bein' yours) To fall for somebody new Now, I've thought it through Crawlin' back to you [Outro] (Do I wanna know?) If this feelin' flows both ways? (Sad to see you go) Was sorta hopin' that you'd stay (Baby, we both know) That the nights were mainly made For sayin' things that you can't say tomorrow day (Do I wanna know?) Too busy bein' yours to fall (Sad to see you go) Ever thought of callin', darlin'? (Do I wanna know?) Do you want me crawlin' back to you?

youtube

#will wood #love me normally #do i wanna know?#arctic monkeys #hozier #polls #poll tournament #poll bracket #tournament #bracket #lovesongbracket #round2 #Youtube

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idrilka · 1 year

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watchlist tag game!

tagged by @phneltwrites!

here's what i am currently watching/have just watched/am planning to watch (spoilers: it's all kdramas):

just finished:

hospital playlist: 10/10, ultimate comfort watch, i love everyone in this bar. it took us a while to finish the second season but it was so, so worth it. i laughed, i cried, i'm going to miss them so much.

weak hero class 1 (immediate rewatch): 11/10, never expected to get clotheslined by another stellar drama in the span of less than six months bad enough that it made me immediately want to go write fic, but here we are. i'm going to write a separate rec post for this one, but for all the school 2013/heungsoon enjoyers out there, this is required watching. it has everything: amazing acting, stellar storytelling, so, so much incredibly well-executed tension, unhinged, violent high schoolers, revenge, useless adults, failing institutions and social commentary on the cycles of abuse. also some of the best chemistry between the leads i've seen in a long while. (what i mean is: since my country: the new age.)

currently watching:

duty after school: since we're apparently on a school setting kick, we went straight from weak hero to this one, and it's been also really good so far. the premise sounds delightfully weird at first (aliens come to earth in the shape of strange spheres hanging in the sky, and in anticipation of the possible attack, third-year high school students get enrolled into an afterschool military training program in exchange for additional points on their university entrance exam, since early admissions have been cancelled), but things go to hell pretty quickly.

hometown cha-cha-cha: aka the drama we started last summer, but we are continuing our tradition of watching an episode or two, then taking a break for two months before watching another episode or two, so everything is going according to plan here. good for when you want a low-stakes, chill drama with some pretty views.

save me: we watched the first episode and we'll definitely continue. so far it's intriguing and creepy, and it has woo dohwan in it, so i'm guaranteed some aesthetic crying if nothing else.

racket boys: for when you're missing haikyuu. we also watched the first episode and we'll definitely continue at some point, because sometimes all you want is to watch a bunch of kids enthusiastic about a sport overcome the odds through hard work and the power of friendship.

joseon attorney: lmao, let me tell you, this was not love at first sight. i hated the first ~40 minutes of the first episode and barely managed to finish. fortunately, it improved a bit in the last 20 minutes or so, and i'm intrigued enough to give it another try, but oh boy, that was a struggle.

kingdom: watched the first two episodes, it looks amazing, and we will definitely continue.

to-watch list:

the eighth sense: i want to watch this so bad, but all the reactions of those of my friends who are watching it only confirm that i should wait so i can binge it.

school 2013 (rewatch): i've been meaning to rewatch this for ages, especially since i want to write another fic this year, and weak hero just made me want to rewatch it right this second, so.

dr romantic 3: the third season is so close and i need it in my eyeballs like yesterday. i miss all of them so much!

misc: aka everything mentioned above (apart from hometown cha-cha-cha, which we'll continue to watch well into the fall at this pace)

my to-watch list is a lot, lot longer (and includes more of woo dohwan and yang sejong's dramas, as well as other stuff like the uncanny counter or d.p., or things that won't air for a while, like bloodhounds or doona), but listing all of them would take ages, so this is just the stuff i'm intending to watch in the immediate future.

oh, and i'm tagging @dulosis and @grimdarkfandango!

#tag meme #kdramas

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duhragonball · 1 year

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Jaco the Galactic Patrolman Ch.1-5

After the premiere of Battle of Gods, and the crossover appearance of DBZ characters in Toriko and One Piece, Akira Toriyama published a new manga, entitled Jaco the Galactic Patrolman. The series ran in Weekly Shonen Jump from July to October 2013.

It’s weird, because 2013 wasn’t even that long ago, but it feels like a different era to me, at least in terms of how I consumed anime and manga. At the time, I was interested in the new Jaco series, but I was also resigned to the fact that it would be years before I could read it. As it was, I managed to snag a fansub of the Battle of Gods movie around that time, as the DVD was released in Japan in late ‘13, but the movie wouldn’t reach the U.S. until the following year.

Since then, new Dragon Ball movies have premiered in the U.S. within months of the Japanese release, and the delay seems to get shorter each time. A lot of new anime, including Dragon Ball Super, has been simulcast on Japanese television and Crunchyroll.

Also, scanlations for new manga seem to be a lot easier to find than they used to be. I read all of Jojolion through a website dedicated to providing translations of current manga titles, and the only reason I’m not reading JoJoLands right now is because I wanted to wait a while and let a few chapters build up before I start.

The idea that I would have to wait for a proper English language version of a new release had become so alien to me that it seemed genuinely frustrating that Stone Ocean was exclusive to Netflix, and we all had to wait for episodes to be debuted in batches across 2022. But back in the early 2000′s, that’s how it was for everything.

Anyway, I wasn’t too concerned with Jaco as a character, but then he showed up in Resurrection F, and like, a bunch of episode of Dragon Ball Super, so I kind of felt like I had missed out on something. But I never felt too motivated to sit down and read this thing, even after it became available in English. But that’s what the 2023 Dragon Ball Apocrypha Liveblog is for, folks. I made a list of all the stuff I hadn’t gotten around to checking out, and now I’m finally getting to it.

Chapter 1. Jaco is on his way to Earth for a mission, when he accidentally collides with the moon and damages his ship. He crashes in the ocean, and has to carry his ship ashore onto an island. There, he meets the island’s sole inhabitant, Professor Tokunoshin Omori, who gives him food and shelter while he tries to repair Jaco’s ship.

Over the course of the story, Jaco tosses out tidbits of outer space lore. For example, he knows all about Earth because the Galactic Patrol has sent robots disguised as insects to gather information. Jaco learned all Earth languages thanks to a technology that uploads the information into his brain. Why doesn’t he possess the knowledge to fix his own spaceship? Because he skipped that lesson.

Omori is a scientist, and back in the day the island was a government research facility working on developing a time machine. Then one day there was a terrible accident which killed Omori’s wife. After the government pulled up stakes, he stayed behind, living in isolation near his wife’s grave. He asks Jaco if they have time machines in space, and Jaco says there’s no such thing, because it’s extremely dangerous to manipulate time, and so it’s expressly forbidden in intergalactic law.

Omori mostly wants Jaco out of his hair, because he’s a misanthrope who prefers living alone. He still cares, though, and the only reason he didn’t take his boat out to rescue Jaco was because of a monstrous shark that terrorizes the surrounding waters after sunset. But the shark gave Jaco no trouble at all when he splashed down, and later he goes back out to kill it to repay Omori’s hospitality.

Throughout this chapter, there’s news coverage of an Earthling rocket launch called Twinkle 8, and there’s going to be a pop idol on board. Omori finds the entire thing to be crass and absurd, just like everything else about humanity.

Omori’s attitude leads Jaco to question the purpose of his mission. He was sent to Earth to intercept an alien invader, but since Omori has such a low opinion of his own kind, then maybe the Earth isn’t worth saving after all.

Fortunately, Jaco has a device which will eradicate all intelligent life from the planet. When activated, it will release a deadly virus. I like how Omori’s bitterness turns to dread here. It was easy for him to complain about the world around him, because he never dreamed he would meet someone capable of destroying it without a second thought.

Each chapter ends with a character profile. I won’t show them all, but I’m mostly interested in this one because it has Jaco’s full name.

Chapter 2. Omori takes a look at Jaco’s ship, and they continue to talk. He’s surprised by Jaco’s strength, considering his small size, and Jaco defensively says he’s the third tallest of the 38 Galactic Patrollers. How can they maintain peace in the galaxy with only 38 Patrollers? Jaco says there aren’t a lot of planets with intelligent life.

Then a ship arrives on the island. Jaco spot it from very far away, and he moves out of sight when its passengers disembark to speak with Omori, but he still hears their entire conversation, because Jaco has super-hearing too.

Basically, they’re from the government, and they want Omori to leave the island, so they can turn it into a resort or something. Omori is just squatting here, so he has no legal claim to the place. He pleads with them to reconsider, reminding him that his wife’s grave is here, but they won’t listen. Jaco waits for the ship to leave before coming out of hiding. He extends his sympathies...

But he also tells Omori that he spotted an experimental time machine in a secluded spot on the island. Omori admits that he’s been working on it ever since the accident. His goal is to use the machine to save his wife and assistants from the accident that killed them. But he says it doesn’t work. The best it can do is slow the passage of time to a near-standstill, and it only works for one person. Jaco decides he can let that slide.

He also throws a rock at the departing ship, and the chapter ends with the people on board using a life raft, since Jaco’s throw was powerful enough to sink the ship.

Chapter 3. Jaco continues to insist that he is a Super Elite, because the Galactic Patrol is a small organization under the direct supervision of the Galactic King. Jaco was one of nine people to apply for a spot on the team, and he was also one of the five people chosen. Omori isn’t very impressed.

I guess that sums up the flavor of humor with Jaco. He’s got all these super powers and advanced technology, and Omori is sort of impressed, but not as much as you would expect. Jaco’s got all the resources of an advanced civilization, but he still flew his ship into the moon and he blew off the lesson on spaceship repair. It’s impossible to tell if the Galactic Patrol should be taken seriously or not.

Omori has now studied Jaco’s ship long enough that he thinks he understands the general principle of its operation, and it all depends upon this unknown substance in the engine. A laser is supposed to hit it, which produces enough power to fly the ship, but it was damaged in the crash, and it will have to be replaced. So Omori first has to identify the material and then find out if there’s any of it on Earth. So while Jaco waits, he watches more media coverage of the upcoming Twinkle 8 launch. This feels kind of important, although it’s unclear how this could possibly matter to anything.

Finally, Omori discovers that the unknown material in Jaco’s ship is available on Earth. The problem is that it’s called “Sky Gold,” a precious metal that costs 76 million yen for the amount needed to resupply Jaco’s ship.

I like how Jaco’s first reaction to this news is that he’ll have to do part-time jobs to earn the money, like that’s going to be the setup for the true premise of this comic. I mean, it could have been. I could see that being a hit. But Omori’s like “What the hell are you talking about?”

Anyway, the good news is that Jaco only needs about 19 million yen’s worth of Sky Gold to make it back to his headquarters. Oh, right, I should point out that his communications systems were also damaged in the crash, so he can’t send out a distress signal.

Chapter 4. Jaco and Omori don’t know what to do about the Sky Gold problem, but in the meantime, Omori needs to sail to the mainland to buy more food. Jaco can only eat milk and cheese, and he just drank the last of the milk, so he’ll need more. Jaco expresses an interest in the city, so Omori reluctantly agrees to bring him along.

The problem is that Jaco keeps making a spectacle of himself whenever he sees a crime in the city.

Omori buys some peanuts and Jaco remarks that in his culture, “peanut” is a word they use for a woman’s left buttock. Omori is intrigued that Jaco’s species has women, and asks if Jaco has a love interest. Jaco does not, because he’s a colossal dork.

Chapter 5: While Omori is buying dairy products for Jaco, Jaco wanders off and notices another crime in progress. This time he sees a bunch of jerks pushing around a teenage girl. I don’t know if they’re a gang or what, but I like the whole theme of them being dressed up like different soldiers. The one guy’s got Roman soldier gear, and there’s a Medieval knight with a gun and some sort of samurai, I guess.

A lot of folks in East City are dressed in weird costumes like this. It seems to be part of the local culture, and I guess that might explain why Tights looks like some sort of hippie.

So Jaco sees this happening and he leaps to the rescue.

Seriously, I just really dig all these costumes. See, this is what sets Toriyama apart from all the wannabes. You or I could go “Uhhh, how about a Super Saiyan 5! Or maybe Frieza and Cooler fuse and become Coolza!” Meanwhile, Toriyama actually comes up with genuinely new ideas.

I mean, the action in this story is pretty similar to that of his other works, but it’s a completely fresh direction. Jaco is super-strong like Arale and Goku, but he’s an alien who needs to keep a low profile, and his commitment to justice overrides his better judgement.

So now Omori is horrified, because this time Jaco’s attracted more attention than they can possibly avoid, and they have to hide from the authorities. But just as they worry about what to do next, Tights offers to help...

So this is off to a promising start. The stakes are a lot lower than what we see in Dragon Ball, but it’s nice to read a smaller, slower story. The first three chapters are kind of dull, but a nice, relaxing dull that you don’t mind at all.

So far, Professor Omori is what makes this for me. I like his bitter attitude, and how he uses it to mask his obvious grief. And I think I’d like Tights too, but we really haven’t gotten to know her yet, so I’ll reserve judgement until next time.

#jaco the galactic patrolman #2023dbapocryphaliveblog #jaco teirimentenpibosshi #tokunoshin omori #tights #an azuki

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