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marieanneline · 3 years

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wait wait hold up i am actually seething about the reveal

ya boi's not a dabi stan. at all. the only reason i'm remotely interested in his character is if he's actually related to shouto and how that would affect hero society in general. i remember reading the training camp arc, seeing him being one of the villains there, him saying todoroki's full name, and thinking "SIBLINGS?????" because agshdfjlk their EYES are SO SIMILAR!! i really want to give credit to horikoshi being able to portray their similarities from artstyle alone because that's talent.

(it's more apparent in the anime since you see the eye color— but appearance-wise, shouto takes after rei and dabi takes after enji the most, so this definitely isn't the best photo to prove my point...)

anyways,,,, dabi's ideals of heroics fall in line with stain's ideals and so we all already theorized how if he was the long lost big brother touya, it would be because of the fact that his father really wasn't a hero. this makes sense. and so, we're all fucking right. props to us, really, and props to horikoshi for all the foreshadowing because i had fun :)) in terms of story and plot, i think this reveal is fantastic.

alright, on to why dabi is a dick

(i'm assuming this was his choice and no one pressured him after all)

the todoroki family is on the road to recovery!!

- shouto finally visits his mother back in season 2 and visits her every chance he gets. you see the effort he makes and it's nice to see him change from season 1 to 2 (early-roki!!)

(guys he even sends her letters- look at that sparkle by his face!! he's sweet :)) and rei's smile!!!!)

- enji (whether we wanted it or not, i don't mind much personally) is trying to atone for everything he's done to his family

- natsuo, who originally wasn't fond of shouto because he had their father's attention (although he does come to the horrible realization that shouto was one of the most unfortunate) and mother's attention (because she wanted to protect shouto), has a closer relationship with his little brother now (can you believe he didn't even know shouto's favorite food was cold soba until ch. 192?? i was sobbing). he really regrets the prejudice he had against shouto and he's trying to be an actual brother to him now.

- rei's almost recovered enough to be released from the hospital!!

- fuyumi and her idyllic "happy family"– wHICH, BY THE WAY, ALMOST CAME TO FRUITION. their mother coming home, shouto connecting with his siblings, and enji being not-the-way-he-was-before is the best outcome they could have hoped for. and it was happening.

and i realize that all of that setup is for this very moment

this? this. this. this is being broadcasted. to everyone. that means the citizens know that their new #1 hero is directly related to a member of a really bad villain organization (i almost called it a terrorist group oop-).

by ruining endeavor, the citizens faith in heroes will collapse. this also affects shouto's reputation as an upcoming hero, and i am so terrified of what this could mean for him. imagine your career ending before it even started, just when you found your passion for being a hero again. all that progress he's made for himself since starting UA could be seen as pointless to him and i would hate for him to retrogress like that because it's not his fault. i would absolutely hate it if the media starts bashing shouto for being related to a villain, when he was also a victim of abuse.

seeing this look on shouto's face is making me dehydrated istg i'm fucking SOBBING— he doesn't even look angry!! in the last few chapters he was angry and worried for his friends, teachers, father maybe, other heroes... but he just looks sad. and the fact that the panel chooses to show the left side of his face is.... there's so much to unpack.

but yeah, this is being broadcasted. does fuyumi know? the cameo she had showed her working so maybe not. natsuo's cameo showed that he was at a lecture, so he also probably didn't see.

but rei did. that's like- that's the person i would want to keep this from the most.

the effects of this entire reveal genuinely scare me. how will this affect rei's mental state? she'll realize that what enji did is actually so much worse. their first child being a villain?? i'm terrified for how she'll react, she's doing much better in recent chapters after all. her kids are visiting her, shouto sends her letters to keep in touch, and enji sends her flowers and respectfully keeps his distance. i really don't want this reveal to result in a relapse. and if she does relapse, then fuyumi's ideal of a happy family is once again out of arms reach. the future of their mother finally coming back home is so far away again and it's genuinely so heart-breaking.

plus— how will fuyumi's little elementary school students react to her being related to a villain? will the school fire her because of her connection to a villain and how that might cause concerns for students and parents????

it's also hard to say exactly how this will affect shouto and natsuo. natsuo was the closest to touya when they were kids so what would his whole opinion be of what touya's become? will he have a moral crisis?

in terms of moral crisises, i guess i'm more concerned about shouto. the boy knows he wants to forgive his father, but this is just making it so much harder. and after this, will he still want to? and finding out that his own sibling is a villain... remember the stain arc? there were some parallels between midoriya's, iida's, and todoroki's positions in the last chapter and i'm worried about what that could foreshadow. from that arc alone, we know that shouto doesn't agree with stain's views at all [i forgot what he said but it was really compelling]. we know that dabi's a stain follower though, so will this disrupt shouto's sense of justice? i hope not.

but family has always been kind of a weak spot for shouto, hasn't it? i hope this doesn't affect his resolve to be a hero because i do think that there's a way to– somehow– not have a corrupt hero society and i want him to fight for that.

touya being a villain is perfectly valid though, i don't doubt that. it's just disheartening to address that while every other todoroki was working hard to become a normal family, here's their oldest brother, who's not really dead. what's going to become of that altar at their house now?

learning the extent to touya's hatred towards endeavor is truly terrifying. we know enji is or was a horrible person and his redemption arc is based on the very fact that he can't be forgiven, despite some of his family trying their best to do so or at least get over it. but the fact that touya has even thought about killing shouto? that's just. ouch. touya's definitely gone through too much abuse, and all of the todoroki family problems are because of enji's bad parenting. but this does not justify murder and especially that of his younger brother, who also got the brunt of the abuse.

needless to say, i am a fool. i don't know if anything i just said will ever be true, but the important thing to take from whatever the heck i just shat out is that all of this is/could be a result of this reveal. it's the fact that dabi seems to have no sympathy. it's the fact that he doesn't care if his blood related family crashes and burns. really, if this is solely about endeavor and what he did, there's no need to bring the rest of the family into this. rei was sent to a hospital for god's sake. shouto has a scar. it's excessive and unmoral and although questionable ethics and values are key traits of a villain, it doesn't justify how much he's hurting the todorokis.

(look at this shit eating grin he has. no remorse. he really doesn't give a shit about the others but I DO and I'M so SAD)

and assuming that the whole "endeavor's wife admitted into hospital" was swept under the rug in terms of media, will that suddenly come back to light? because it shouldn't. maybe it should be known that she's in the hospital because of marital abuse but either way rei should not be dragged back into this disaster, and neither should the rest of them. there's also a chance that the media will accuse rei of having abused her kids too, which is messed up for different reasons. they're trying so hard to have any semblance of a normal family, and if dabi's way of revealing this to the world ruins that in any way then i hATE THIS REVEAL ASDFGHJKL—

#tw: abuse #this is just a rant for myself i'm so sorry for those who have this on their dash #how the fuck do you add those ''under the cut'' things on mobile??#and this is a long ass post #i wrote too much #and i was redundant #and i wrote this at 4 in the morning #many many typos...#i needed to let this out though #bnha 290 #bnha spoilers #mha spoilers #notey

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kaizokuou-ni-naru · 3 years

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The Voyage So Far: East Blue (Part One)

east blue (1 | 2) || alabasta (1 | 2) || skypiea || water 7 || enies lobby || thriller bark || paramount war (1 | 2) || fishman island || punk hazard || dressrosa (1 | 2) || whole cake island || wano (1 | 2)

so!! hey folks. as i’ve mentioned before, to mark the upcoming chapter 1000 (holy shit!!) as well as my blog’s first anniversary this december, i decided it would be a good time to go back and put together some highlight reel posts of my favorite panels/moments/scenes from each saga and some commentary about what i think the best parts of each arc and the series as a whole are and why, as a celebration of just how far one piece has come and how many fantastic moments we've had so far!

this will be quite a series of rather long posts- they’ll all be tagged #the voyage so far, if you’d like to avoid this messy retrospective. i'll be posting one saga a day each day until chapter 1000's official release on january 3rd!

honestly, i’m opening with this panel because it has a special place in my heart: i’m pretty sure it was the first time that one piece ever made me laugh.

the entire prologue does a really good job of setting up the tone for the entire rest of the story. i think i haven’t really written much about it before, but i really love romance dawn. it hits the exact mix of humorous and serious that’s practically one piece’s trademark tone, and introduces us to some of the main themes of the series: inherited will especially, and the theme of freedom, and the idea of betting your life for what you love.

technically this isn’t the first time we see luffy as an adult- he punches out the sea king before this- but it is his formal introduction, as well as (in the chapter title) the first time he’s referred to as strawhat luffy/mugiwara no luffy.

i really like a lot of these very early panels of luffy, really. i’m a writing person, not an art person, so i can’t really explain why, but there’s something about how he’s drawn that i think is just delightful for some reason. i like the earlier one piece art a whole lot in general, even though it’s often much less intricate and more simple than the current artstyle (which is not by any means bad either!! it’s just different). i think it fits the atmosphere of the start of the story very well- a journey just starting out.

he’s going to be pirate king!!

i’ve complained before about how zoro’s backstory doesn’t really hit the way a lot of the others do, mostly because it goes so fast, and kuina’s death is unfortunately the closest the series comes to fridging, but- that said, i do really like the core of it. i really like zoro being motivated by a promise to the one friend and rival he could never beat, and i love how this moment is what he cites later on while facing mihawk: a promise to a friend.

i love all the strawhats and their dynamics, and seeing the crew grow and develop and become a family over the course of hundreds of chapters is one of the great joys of one piece, but i think i’ll always have a soft spot for luffy and zoro’s relationship. there’s never really any conflict between them after their very first meeting; there’s loyalty and dedication and understanding there that starts from this moment and never really wavers.

it makes me grin to see the two of them, here at the start of it all. they don’t have a flag or a ship or a destination, yet, but this is the start of the strawhat pirates.

this series will probably reveal that i have a great weakness for group shots, and i think oda is particularly good at them- especially in these earlier arcs, you can usually see every character’s personality and feelings coming through in how they’re placed and what they’re doing.

i had actually forgotten that usopp did this, and while i know kuro was egging him on on purpose, i feel like he doesn’t get enough credit for being a reckless idiot sometimes. there’s a reason he fits in as a strawhat, after all, even if he himself isn’t always aware of it.

this is a lovely panel just on its own, but i think it (and all the other appearances of sunrise and dawn in the story) hits different now, with all the 'coming dawn’ theming that’s been established in recent arcs.

oda often absolutely nails his use of negative space to emphasize heavy little moments like this, and i for one absolutely love it. this one in particular gets me in the heart.

i like how you can reread some of these early arcs and see nami’s affection for the crew growing in little moments like these, and it’s very sweet, but there’s also a quiet kind of sadness in knowing she’s spending the whole time knowing she’s going to have to betray and leave them eventually.

i LOVE the new crewmate toasts. they all always look so happy.

also, in my opinion, this is the first time the strawhat pirates feel like a proper crew. they have a SHIP now! and just after this, they get their jolly roger to seal the deal.

it is my opinion that sanji has one of the best character introductions i’ve ever seen. in just a few chapters we know just about everything we need to know about him: he's not to be fucked with, he has extremely high respect for food and absolutely none for morons, and the first genuine smile we see from him is when he gives a free meal to a starving man.

i think about this moment a lot, really. luffy knows almost nothing about sanji at this point. he hasn’t tasted his food- he doesn’t even know his name. but he’s seen sanji give free food to gin for no other reason than that he’s hungry and it’s right, and that’s all it takes for luffy to decide that sanji is gonna be his cook.

baratie is mostly a serious arc (and leads into the even more serious arlong park), but it has some really good funny moments towards the start and this is one of them. you know they’re friends because they all just start roasting luffy without sympathy or hesitation.

i’ve mentioned before that the zoro and mihawk fight was one of the big things that hooked me on one piece (the other being sanji’s backstory), but the way it ends, especially, is one of my favorite moments in the whole series. i love,, strawhat loyalty moments. carve “any complaints, pirate king?” on my fucking grave.

sanji has a lot of really great action panels in this arc, but this is one of my favorites mostly because his combat abilities are being revealed to the audience at the same time they’re revealed to a lot of the characters watching. i can’t remember who pointed it out but sanji’s character design (especially pre-timeskip) just really looks like he’s designed for kicking- shiny black shoes, about 70% leg- and it really shows in panels like this.

sanji and zeff’s chronic inability to communicate is kind of the emotional core of baratie, and i think sanji calling the restaurant zeff’s treasure sums up the entire conflict between them very neatly. of course zeff values sanji way more than the restaurant, but zeff will never tell that to his face and sanji has negative zero self-worth so he’s never going to figure it out on his own. so they’re basically in a stalemate.

sanji’s backstory is absolutely brutal. we spend a truly agonizing amount of time literally just watching him slowly starve to death. it’s no secret that oda is really amazing at backstories, but i think sanji’s is probably one of the most effective at driving home exactly where his very specific mindset as an adult comes from. it’s hard to even read this section and not come away with at least a little more appreciation for food.

(to be continued in east blue part two!)

#the voyage so far #one piece #opmeta #arc: romance dawn #arc: syrup village #arc: baratie #not japanese #long post

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spongebob-connoisseur · 3 years

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what are your opinions on the different artstyles throughout the seasons?

I'll go through each season!

Season 1 is my favorite in everything. There's no competition. I really adore his design. Tbh his character design changes a bit every episode in this season and I'm not going to go through which storyboard artist's style was in which episode. That's a hassle. But I like the pilot. It looks like Hillenburg's concept art. Looks very gummy and squishy. I like how odd his style looks. But I also like the more consistent style we see in Reef Blower, Valentine's Day, Hooks. It has a thick outline.

There's another style from season 1 where the outline is very thin. You can generally tell because his eyelashes are drawn very thin. I've seen in some episodes like FUN and ScaredyPants. It's a weird look that I kinda like. Though his toothgap is so wide that it looks like he's missing a tooth.

Season 2 - his design is more angular. The transition from traditional to digital shows. They don't have to constantly redraw each frame. Which allows for a more homogeneous design. I miss how each frame looked different but that's okay. His style is very sharp and square. Similar to the end of season 1. But a lot more stiff. He's more narrow around his waist so he isn't actually Squarepants. More like upside down trapazoidpants. Also idk if this is about early digital animation but Spongebob looks very gray throughout the season. Still I'd rate this my second favorite style because it has the best parts from his season 1 design.

Season 3 - hes more square here. A lot more yellow. Season 3 has the best colors. Hands down. He's even more square and sharp. Surprisingly his expression doesn't change much. Mostly because of Hillenburg wanting spongebob to always be drawn on model. But the charm of his design is how off model he looks and how every frame looked so unique noooo. Jokes aside, I know this design is what most classics fans consider the best design. It's paired with his personality in this season which was more of a young adult with occasional childish tendencies. He seems the most mature in this season. Seasons 1 and 2 is a lot more kid-ish in a way. Idk why this brings up a random thought of seasons 1-2 SB are how kids think they are vs 10-12 is how adults view kids. I'm getting off topic. This design leads to what we get in season 4.

1st Movie - very square. Pretty much doesn't have that narrowness towards the bottom like seasons 2/3 has. Now he's not trapazoidpants but actually Squarepants. I've noticed some of Hillenburg's sketches of spongebob post the movie era look pretty much like the movie. That off model, really square shaped look.

Season 4/5 - this style actually reminds me of the modern style. Very square and spunky. Only difference is he occasionally has black brows. I like it a lot actually. Look at this boi!! He's adorable!! One of the better styles. I'd rank it high up there.

Season 6 - slight transitional style. Between seasons 4/5 and 7/8. I don't have a particular opinion on it tbh. I guess I don't like what would later become his design for 7/8

Season 7/8/9a - ehhh don't really like it. I have a personal bias tho. I didn't like much of these seasons when I was a kid and I think that childhood bias is clouding my view. But anyways I'm gonna talk about why I don't like it. He's so stiff in these seasons. I feel like his expression doesn't change much. His nose is drawn wider, I don't like that chubby cheeks look he does.

This one. His arms are drawn so high up. He's very rectangular. His eyes are smaller. I feel so nitpicky but he looks so dead. I feel like my love for the later seasons is kinda reactionary towards these seasons since they feel so opposite to me. So extreme blankness shifts over to extreme expressiveness.

Season 9a actually gets better but it still has remnants of this design.

2nd movie - follows the style of season 9a which was already starting to transition styles to the one we have in the modern era but I will make a pass because this is my comfort movie. Sponge out of water my beloved.

Season 10/11/12 - love it. Adore it. One of my favorite styles. He's so spunky and definitely a lot more angular. A lot of people complain about the expressiveness. I'm not really talking about it here but uhh I do like it. With digital animation, its a lot rarer to have unique frames. Everything is so on model. It's a bit boring. I understand the expressiveness can be too much for some people but it does remind me of what I found charming about the first season. No frame looks exactly the same. It's so stretchy. It only doesn't have that unique gummy squishy look, reminiscent of Hillenburg's art style in his concept art but none the less I like it. Also something worth mentioning. Sponge looks more shorter throughout the seasons. He's not really drawn shorter but him being more rectangular throughout the previous era and here he's slowly getting more and more square.

I really like this picture. I love his expression so much??

3rd movie - I heard that storyboard artists from the 1st season worked on this movie. Tbh it shows because a lot of frames looks like those photoshopped CGI version of Sponge's season 1 look. This movie was stunning visually. I like the style a lot. We can see parts of his older design like the narrower nose, more narrow towards the bottom.

Can't comment on season 13 because it just started, wait for that lateeer

#I should mention kamp koral but i dont feel like writing it #Talking about main series spongebob #The rest is for another day #Squarepantz #Hope ya enjoy!#spongebob #spongebob squarepants #sb #spongebon squarepants #the spongebob connoisseur #spongebob meme #Ask

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butchez · 3 years

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heres my thoughts on aa5

Introduction

Firstly, this post contains heavy spoilers for AA5 (and AA4 because I can’t help talking about that game JSDGHSDJ). I talk about culprits, I talk about backstories, I talk about major plot twists. If you’re planning on playing this game spoiler-free, don’t read this. If you haven’t decided whether or not you want to play this game, I would advise against it- the gameplay is insanely boring and the story is told in a way that’s about as compelling as a wiki page. In fact, just read the wiki if you’re interested! This game isn’t worth playing, and it’s definitely not worth paying for if you have no way of pirating it.

I also want to add that these are ultimately my own opinions and interpretations. If you liked something that I didn’t or vice versa, that’s like fine. I’m not really trying to call anybody wrong for their own interpretations by typing this. This also isn’t a callout post for AA5! I’m just a hater!

And fair warning, this post isn’t well-organized at all! I’d rather play through AA6 and make a better post about both the 3DS mainline games than put a lot of effort into a post about just one of them. The like Correct Grammar appearance is just to make it easier for me to read because it’s a lot sdjhgfdhksf. In this post I try to organize my complaints by the order of when they come up in the game, which is a little complicated when multiple things I wanna complain about are happening at the same time, so bear with me.

Episode 1

I’ll start with the easiest complaint: it looks bad. Not JUST in the sense that it has an ugly artstyle, but in the sense that it just doesn’t feel like a real Ace Attorney game. Whenever they try to recreate a sprite from the past games, it looks fake if not impossibly ugly, and whenever they try to do their own thing, it just looks generic and empty. Note that this applies to the music and voices just as much as it applies to the sprites! I don’t think it’s just because the sprites went from 2D to 3D, by the way. The Professor Layton crossover came out a couple months before AA5 did, and although the 3D sprites in that game aren’t perfect, they still feel more like Ace Attorney sprites than anything from this game IMO. Honestly, though, AA5’s appearance is super low on my list of problems with this game. It’s an issue that could easily be fixed without changing the content of the game itself- something you can’t say for the deeper problems.

The beginning of the actual game is very jarring. One of the first things you see is Apollo covered in bandages and wearing a weird blue jacket over his shoulders. While you’re still confused about that, he collapses in front of you. While Athena is going through the first trial, she gets stuck and starts having flashbacks of her as a little girl being scared and covered in blood. In the middle of the trial, Apollo gets ATTACKED and sent to the hospital. Most shockingly of all, a woman has a huge crush on Apollo? It’s shock after shock, question after question, and the game doesn’t give you any answers until it’s almost over. I can’t tell if this is the game’s way of trying to capture the player’s attention or if it’s the game trying to make the cases tie into each other, like many notably good games in the series do, while completely misunderstanding how connecting cases works. Either way, it makes for bad storytelling.

Aside from all the weird shock value shit going on, this trial still has a lot of issues. The player starts out as Athena, taking over the trial for Apollo because he’s too busy falling over and being edgy. Because Athena doesn’t have a co-counsel, the Judge and the prosecutor (a Payne) have to play the role of Tutorial for the player. The player’s opponent who they’re supposed to hate (and who hates the protagonist!) is helping them just because that’s what the gameplay requires at that point. It’s stupid and could’ve been easily fixed by having a more experienced lawyer be Athena’s co-counsel, like Phoenix. Just to name an example. Who knows, though, maybe the game just like forgot he exists like mistakes happen it’s- nope Athena gets stuck like 10 minutes into the trial and Phoenix has to come Save This Poor Damsel by taking over the tutorial case entirely.

On top of Athena getting booted from leading her own fucken case (that she did take from Apollo yeah but whatever it was girlboss at the time), she takes the role of Tutorial for the player (who is now Phoenix). This is marginally better than having your actual opponent be the tutorial, but not by much? Athena is literally an 18yo rookie lawyer. Not that she’s incompetent, but why exactly is she teaching Phoenix how to be a lawyer when he’s like twice her age and has years of experience?* Wouldn’t it have made more sense for Phoenix to be the co-counsel instead? The only reason I can possibly think of as to why the writers chose to write this the way they did is that they wanted to establish as quickly as possible that “hey the REAL main character is back in his normal protagonist spot we promise he’s normal now. please buy game.” This effort to appeal to trilogy fans at all costs does come back later, so keep it in mind.

*Note: I imagine some people excuse this because Phoenix had been disbarred for seven years, so it’s not crazy to imagine that he’s just rusty and needs refreshers. However. Those who played AA4 should remember that although Phoenix hasn’t been an official defense attorney for seven years, he’s perfectly able to lead several discussions during the trial in the first episode (he even takes the role of co-counsel in the second half of this trial, because AA4 is a good game). Additionally, he literally organizes a murder trial to test out an experimental trial system that HE helped design. Badge or not, he’s obviously still involved with the legal world before the events of AA5- no need for basic refreshers.

There’s one small part of this case that I believe acts as a sign of a much clearer and bigger problem with AA5. A piece of evidence for this trial is a bomb disguised as a mascot for a group of people critical of the court system. While discussing the defendant’s motive, the game asserts that because the defendant has had bad experiences with the legal system, she must be critical of it (she really isn’t, fyi) which must mean that she’s a literal bomber and murderer. The second half of that assumption is never really questioned, by the way! Literally all six of the games that came before this one were openly critical of the court system. Why is this game suddenly changing it up so quickly? I will admit that at this point I am maybe looking a little too deeply into one thing, but this does become a major theme in the game, so I think it’s worth bringing up.

Another bigger issue with this game that we can see early on- a basic piece of advice for writing stories is “show, don’t tell.” This game crumples that advice up and throws it out the window right off the bat. I could point out every single time that this game just tells you something and prays that you take it at face value instead of actually thinking about the content of the story. That would take ages though and I have other things I wanna write 6k words about, so I’ll only be mentioning the most notable examples. Onto the actual point: the game flat out tells you that Athena represses her feelings from the start. Several characters make clear remarks about it that go nowhere. These lines seem to solely exist to convince you that Athena is a super interesting character without the game having to actually write Athena as a super interesting character (I say “seem to” because these lines end up having a much more stupid purpose, but we’ll get to that in the next episode). Let’s compare and contrast this with AA4 my beloved AA4- with Trucy, in particular. Trucy, like Athena, is a female character with a troubled childhood who puts on a cheery facade so that others don’t worry about her. This character trait of Trucy’s is made clear in AA4- not by having Apollo or Phoenix nonchalantly observe and remark on it, but by dropping hints every now and then of it and ultimately only Really revealing it during the finale case. The player feels for Trucy and wants her to open up and grow for her own sake. Athena’s internal struggles, on the other hand, aren’t designed for the audience to really think about. They’re just a passing observation that later becomes an excuse for plot holes and eventually becomes a part of the game’s shitty ending. Let’s put that aside for now, though, because we still need to wrap this case up.

The case ends with a cutscene where Apollo suddenly takes a leave of absence, and Athena later internally literally asks “Why is Apollo shutting us out? :(“ This exemplifies TWO points that I already brought up. Firstly, this game is presenting something shocking out of nowhere and without explanation. Secondly, this game is TELLING the player what they should be wondering, instead of just writing a story that makes them wonder that question on their own. Also, Trucy literally doesn’t say anything as Apollo leaves in front of her but it’s not like she has any attachment to Apollo or any already established abandonment issues or like any personality at all /s /s /s /attack /kill

Episode 2

The culprit isn’t actually introduced until a lot later in the episode, but he’s in the opening cutscene and comes with a glaring issue so I’m bringing it up first: this character is written with a lot of offensive undertones? To summarize, the killer is a big man obsessed with wearing makeup and perfume, and he constantly gets called a freak for this by the main characters. I don’t remember him ever being referred to as a woman by himself or others, so I’m reluctant to call it transmisogyny (I’m TME, so it’s not my place to say anyways). I’m not really sure what else to call it, though, other than like disgustingly bigoted. Unlike the other stuff I talk about in this post, this issue does come up in previous games, specifically AA3 with Jean Armstrong. So this isn’t really an issue that AA5 created so much as it revived. It’s still shitty!- I’m just not trying to argue that the other games are better on this front. Lastly, transphobic undertones do come into play again in Episode 3, and I think the writing in this case should definitely be considered while analyzing the next one.

I want to introduce this next complaint by bringing up something I actually enjoyed! Jinxie Tenma is one of 2.1 characters from this game that I found myself liking despite everything. Although she does fall into the dead parent(s) trope that the series is addicted to, the trope actually serves a purpose for her character beyond just making the player feel sad- it’s used to further develop Jinxie’s relationship with her surviving parent. Jinxie definitely isn’t one of the more well-written characters in the series, but for a one-off character in a game as bad as this? Jinxie is surprisingly decent! Congrats 👏👏👏👏👏 I still have my complaints to get to, though. Jinxie is introduced in Apollo’s one (1) actual conversation with Trucy throughout the entire game. Trucy introduces Jinxie as a close friend of hers, but they hardly interact at all. This character’s introduction itself exposes multiple major flaws of AA5 (that have already come up!): Trucy’s character is ignored in favor of using her as a plot device, and this game only tells the player about the characters instead of actually writing them. This game tells the player that Trucy and Jinxie are best friends, and the player is left with a choice: take the game’s word and have a fun time imagining how good these things (that aren’t actually in the game) are, or refuse the game’s word until you see actual content supporting it and have an awful time thinking about how good these things that aren’t actually in the game could’ve been.

Let’s talk about another character introduced in this episode: Simon Blackquill! Athena and Simon have a dynamic that’s clearly meant to parallel the dynamic between Phoenix and Edgeworth. Athena’s entire motivation to become a defense attorney is to ~save Simon~ from a false conviction for murder. This motivation isn’t fully revealed until the last episode of the game, much like Phoenix’s motivations. Unlike Phoenix’s motivations, though, it makes no sense for the game to keep this motivation from the player’s knowledge for such a long time. In AA1, Phoenix is largely motivated by Edgeworth, but he doesn’t actually know what’s wrong with Edgeworth or why he changed so drastically. All Phoenix knows is that Edgeworth has changed, and that’s enough for him to want to seek Edgeworth out- if not to save him, at least to find some answers. Phoenix is left just about as in the dark as the player; the only information he withholds is about the class trial from ages ago. Athena, on the other hand, literally knows exactly what happened to Simon. Athena’s motivations couldn’t be clearer to herself- but the game doesn’t want them to be clear to the player yet! So the game takes Athena’s “repression” (you know, the thing the game conveniently told you about in the last episode) and uses it as a way to cover the story’s plot holes. Athena doesn’t mention or even think about her strongest motivations even when she’s in front of the person she wants to save because “she’s just THAT repressed!” This game constantly withholds important information from the player for no reason other than that it’s just what their narrative happens to need at the time. It’s just lazy writing.

My last remark about this case is something that’s been an issue for the entire game so far: it’s hardly a game at all. The gameplay of Ace Attorney largely revolves around having the player use logic and their own thoughts to point out contradictions, uncover new testimony, and investigate crime scenes. When players would rather focus on the story and avoid the gameplay, they usually use a walkthrough that gives them directions in a straightforward way- no racking your brain trying to find any faults in some testimony, no wandering around crime scenes praying that new dialogue appears, just a good story. This way of playing the game is perfectly fine! The story is honestly the stronger part of most of the games, and people not bothering with the gameplay is their own choice. They’re still able to enjoy the game through the story, and isn’t that the purpose of games? To be enjoyed?

I’ll get to my point: this game is extremely hard to actually play. It’s easy to read, it’s easy to press the right buttons, but to actually use your own logic and thoughts? Borderline impossible. When the game doesn’t give away the answer right after asking, it’s because it gave the answer away before asking. The “hints” the game gives you are so obvious and numerous that the only way you could have a chance of figuring anything out for yourself is if you never pay attention to the dialogue. I will say- this was nearly an improvement. You can tell the people who made this game wanted it to be more accessible to people who didn’t care as much about the gameplay. A mechanic of sorts is introduced in this game that acts as a to-do list for investigations, so that the player doesn’t end up wandering around for an hour because they forgot to present a piece of evidence or talk to a certain witness or whatever. Additionally, if a player is struggling to find holes in a testimony, the game offers a helpful nudge to the player that drastically narrows down their possible moves without giving away any answers. Both of these mechanics are entirely optional, too! While the game does let you know that these mechanics exist in fairly natural ways, it never actually makes the player look at them more than once. These mechanics allow for players to focus more on the story if they want, while theoretically still providing them with a challenging mystery to solve. As we already know, though, these mechanics are completely useless because the game forcibly gives you the answers anyways. The protagonist you play as almost always announces where to go next in the investigations and what evidence to use in the trials. While I was still at this point in the game, I kind of just passed it off as the earlier cases going easier on the player to warm them up. The game never stops giving you the answers, though. This is a problem that persists throughout the whole game. When I started this game, I already knew I wasn’t going to enjoy the story, but I figured that at the very least I would be able to enjoy playing new cases and solving new mysteries! So, in a way, this boring gameplay was almost more disappointing than the dogshit story itself.

Episode 3

This episode contains a lot of firsts for the game. For one, this is the first full case that Athena leads! It’s also the last episode where the player even plays as Athena! This is also the first case that doesn’t show you the culprit in the opening cutscene. What the game does instead is immediately introduce a Big Scary Man with an unreasonably creepy smile and Corrupt Ways. Side note: literally every culprit in this game is a big/rude/otherwise intimidating man. This is the first game in the series to not have a single female culprit! I don’t think it’s actually that big of an issue, but it’s still overly predictable and underwhelming.

I might as well talk about the culprit’s ~corrupt ways~ now, even though it only gets worse. The culprit is a professor at a legal academy whose main philosophy is “the ends justify the means.” The player knows that this is his main philosophy because he repeats this exact phrase fucking 50 times in every scene he appears in, and the player knows that this is a Corrupt philosophy because every single time he mentions it a main character says something like “wow... this is truly the Dark Age of the Law...” (which, by the way, is another phrase that gets grossly overused in the game despite meaning virtually nothing). The closest the game gets to forming any actual political commentary is when this professor says he encourages his students to use false evidence to “win” trials (as opposed to the other professor in the case who discourages this), and the game tells you that this (among exactly two other things) is the source of the “dark age of the law.” The source isn’t corruption or a broken system, it’s one teacher’s bad grade policy. The game never really challenges the player’s beliefs or teaches them anything- it just flat out tells you the moral it’s trying to get across and expects you to already agree. And this problem with the writing only gets way worse in the next case!

I mentioned early in the Episode 2 section that this episode contains some transphobic undertones. To Summarize: Robin Newman is a character introduced as a guy obsessed with masculinity who later gets proven in court to be a girl because she likes wearing “girly clothes.” While everybody is still under the impression that Robin is a guy that just “screams testosterone” (actual fucking line in the game btw), they treat the fact that he wore feminine clothes as embarrassing and weird. Robin ultimately proves that she’s a girl by taking off a bracer that was flattening her chest (yes, this game does the thing where a character’s “true gender” is revealed by awkwardly emphasizing specific body parts, it’s uncomfortable as hell) and revealing that she was raised as a boy by her parents despite really being a girl.

I’ve seen some people try to argue that the writers intended for Robin to be trans, but as much as I want to believe it I just don’t think it’s the case. Robin doesn’t identify as a man at all- she expresses nothing but relief upon being proven to be a woman and says that she hated having to act like a man- so she’s definitely not a trans man. Although there isn’t exactly textual evidence against Robin being a trans woman, the game (and series) has already established what it thinks of trans women and AMAB people who don’t perform masculinity correctly, and it’s not good! Robin is treated with nothing but respect after her reveal, and (unfortunately!) I just don’t believe that this game would afford her that respect if they intended for her to be a trans woman. I want to add that it’s really not unheard of for cis authors to write stories where a cis character is forcibly raised as the opposite gender (YTTD does this, for example) so it’s not hard to believe that this is what the authors were doing for Robin. Lastly, I want to make it clear that I’m not trying to argue against trans headcanons for Robin. If I cared about Robin, I’d headcanon her as trans myself- it’s hard not to. All I’m trying to argue is that we shouldn’t give the writers any credit for writing a trans character because they don’t deserve that credit after writing such a cisnormative gender-role-addicted shit game.

Anyways, this case ends with Athena getting stuck at the end and needing somebody to come Save This Poor Damsel AGAIN. It’s definitely less shoehorned in than the first time it happened, but it’s still just annoying that it keeps happening.

Episode 4 & 5

You might be wondering why I put Episode 4 and 5 together. I did this because they’re the same fucking story split into two parts because ????? I don’t KNOW. There’s so many baffling writing decisions in this game like . this might as well be happening. who care. By the way, if my frustration seems to show more in this part of the post, it’s because this part of the game is just. such a mess.

The case opens right before the trial (that’s right, no investigation) with Apollo and the most forgettable defendant in the game being sad about Clay’s death. Do we know who Clay is? Do we know anything about the defendant? Or the case at all? Nope! The entire set-up for this episode is in one conversation where Apollo and some guy tell the player that Clay was a good guy and that it’s sad that he was killed. Once again, this game is telling you things instead of showing you, and it’s even doing that incredibly poorly! This game makes it borderline impossible to care about Clay, while also making it borderline impossible to care about the episode if the player doesn’t care about Clay. Scenes that are meant to be depressing are boring, scenes that are meant to be uplifting are confusing, and scenes that are meant to be deep are just frustrating. The fact that this episode opens right into the trial without any preceding investigation is fucking insane to me. Not only is it completely unprecedented for a multi-day trial, but a pre-murder investigation could’ve done wonders for developing Clay and the defendant! I can’t wrap my head around this shit! It’s not even lazy writing at this point- there’s no writing at all!!

Remember earlier when I said that I liked 2.1 characters in this game? Clay is .1 of those characters- no thanks to anything in the game! Despite being such a focal point in these episodes, Clay is hardly a character at all. He has like three lines total in a short flashback, and his only “character” traits are 1) Good Guy and 2) Dead Mom. Remember how the dead mom trope actually managed to serve a reasonable purpose in Jinxie’s character? All the dead mom trope does for Clay is give a reason for him and Apollo to be friends, because apparently there’s just nothing else that could’ve connected them together. It’s just sad backstory for sad backstory’s sake. I really can’t even point out anything well-written with Clay, embarrassingly enough! The only reasons I like him are because he has a nice design and a connection to a character I liked in a previous game. This game SUCKS

Speaking of sad backstory, by the way, they literally give Apollo’s CATCHPHRASE a sad backstory. Apollo apparently says his “I’m fine” thing because he and his now dead bestie used to say it together to cope with like not having parents. It’s stupid and unnecessary and I hate it basically.

Anyways Episode 4 ends with Athena being accused of killing Clay and becoming the defendant. Because this game was in need of more Damsel in Distress Athena. This accusation comes about because the detective in this game, Bobby Fulbright (who I haven’t mentioned up until now because he’s so fucken unremarkable), finds a piece of evidence with Athena’s fingerprints in the victim’s blood. For the majority of the rest of the game, this is the only piece of evidence that the player is given against Athena. However, multiple convincing pieces of evidence against Athena already exist in the story at this point. Athena and Apollo are even fully aware of this evidence before Episode 4 even starts, but the game withholds these from the player until much later. The game does this because it doesn’t want you to actually suspect Athena- not for even a moment! They want it to seem like it would be completely insane to even think about doubting Athena, and they do this by depicting Apollo as ~blinded by grief~ and irrational for daring to suspect his co-worker. Apollo, of all characters! Apollo, the character that had to prove his literal boss guilty of murder. TWICE. This game wants you to think it would be crazy for Apollo to do something that he literally justifiably did in the game that came directly before this one!

This brings us to the final character in this game that I liked: Aura Blackquill. Basically, her thing is that she’s mean and evil but she does it out of love for her brother. If there was any nuance in this game, Aura could’ve been like, a really good character. Sadly, though, she’s just not given much depth, and this game stumbles over its own themes too much for Aura to really challenge any of it. Also, fun fact! Aura was initially conceptualized as a character that would “seduce” Apollo to the Dark Side. This didn’t quite make it into the game, but it’s official information that exists and it makes me want to eat glass.

Aura is still used to show how ~warped~ Apollo is becoming when they’re both shown bonding (platonically, thank god) over their dead besties and investigating Clay’s murder without the Wright gang. It’s been made obvious to the player at this point in the game that Aura has an irrational hatred of Athena, too. By associating Apollo with this character, the game is further depicting Apollo’s doubts as comparable to irrational hatred. It’s frustrating to me because it could’ve been really interesting for the game to set up legitimate tension between two protagonists and take both sides seriously, forcing the player to question their own beliefs and the characters that they themselves played as! Instead, the game refuses to let the player take Apollo seriously and just assumes the player couldn’t possibly want an actual reason to believe in Athena’s innocence beyond “only Scary Rude Men are murderers and Athena’s just a sensitive innocent damsel <3” Not only is this writing throwing away a lot of potential, it’s shooting itself in the foot by not letting the game make any fucking sense!

The rest of this episode is honestly so bad that there’s really no way to neatly summarize its issues in a few paragraphs, so I’m going to walk you through the story beat by beat for a bit. In Episode 5 (which starts after Athena becomes the defendant), Phoenix is the protagonist. Athena is too busy being accused of murder, and Apollo is too busy being edgy, so who’s left for co-counsel? Trucy is the only character left at the Wright Anything Agency, so the game is forced to include her in the story. Finally. She joins Phoenix right before the scene with Apollo and Aura, and then . she leaves . right after that scene. So Phoenix is once again left without a co-counsel, and it doesn’t seem like there’s any characters left to fill that role... But Wait! Who Is That At The Door! Why, It’s Pearl! From The Ace Attorney Trilogy! Thank the fucken stars /s

Pearl is my favorite trilogy character. I really could go on and on about how badly AA5 fucked up with this (they didn’t change a thing about Pearl’s appearance or character despite her being twice as old as before) but at the end of the day it’s just more of this game doing a bad job at sucking the trilogy’s dick.

So, Phoenix and Pearl head back to where Trucy disappeared only to find out that she’s been kidnapped. Remember in AA4 when the game pretended that Trucy got kidnapped, only to reveal about a minute later that it was just a trick Trucy pulled to buy Apollo some time. Because the AA4 writers knew it would be fucking ridiculous for the series to pull that plot twist again out of nowhere. Look at how far we’ve come since then. Anyways. The kidnapper’s one demand is that Phoenix reinvestigates and holds a trial for a past case that Just So Happens to be connected to the current case. Pretty much every finale case in the series involves taking a look at an unsolved past case, but they usually give the player an actual reason to be interested in or care about said case. The only reason that this game can think of to get you to focus on this past case is Trucy’s life being in danger. The motivations and plot twists are so shoehorned in that it’s hard to give a shit about it.

So the kidnapper wants a trial, but who’s prosecuting? The main prosecutor, Simon, is the one that the past case declared guilty, and nobody gives a shit about Klavier, so it doesn’t seem like there’s any characters left that could fill that role... But Wait! Who Is That At The Door! Why, It’s Edgeworth! From The Ace Attorney Trilogy! I’m So Mad! Unlike Pearl, the game does change Edgeworth up quite a bit. He’s even wearing glasses now, to show that time has passed :~) His character changed too! Remember how, after the events of Turnabout Goodbyes, Edgeworth was all about investigating the truth and protecting innocent people from false accusations and struggling against his role as a prosecutor, literally getting his badge taken away at one point because he couldn’t bring himself to let an amnesiac teenager get taken advantage of and be accused of a murder she clearly didn’t do? Well. He’s changed . :~)

On top of removing any struggle Edgeworth had with his job, AA5 actually makes Edgeworth the chief prosecutor. I would be more upset with this writing decision if it wasn’t obviously just there to cover up plot holes. For example, why is Simon, a convicted murderer, being allowed to prosecute so many cases? Don’t worry about it, Edgeworth gave him Special Permission 👍 Also, why did Phoenix get his badge back so quickly? Don’t worry about it, Edgeworth used his Influences to get it back easily 👍

So, once the trial starts, Edgeworth takes advantage of a teenager’s amnesia to accuse her of a murder she clearly didn’t do. :~)

(Brief aside, this trial takes place in a courtroom that was bombed and is crumbling to pieces. The game literally has a character tell you “This courtroom is symbolic of The Dark Age Of The Law” like fucking VERBATIM. I couldn’t make this shit up if I wanted to.)

Obviously, Phoenix is eventually able to prove Athena’s innocence of the past murder. At this point in the case, Edgeworth tells the player about the meaning of a trial. The defense attorney is meant to do whatever they can to defend their client, while the prosecution is meant to do whatever they can to prove the defendant guilty. It’s through this adversarial system that the truth is most efficiently uncovered. I cannot stress this enough: the game is trying to argue that this is the way trials should work. It’s completely antithetical to all the games that came before it! Edgeworth and Klavier were both considered to be two of the few good people that were prosecutors because they were both bad at being prosecutors. They’re good people because they don’t let the goal of their job (to get the defendant declared guilty) get in the way of their personal goals (to uncover the truth even if it involves directly helping the defense). AA5 completely stumbles over the series’ past themes and characterizations to reach the conclusion that “Bad Trial Systems Don’t Result In False Convictions, Bad People Do!” AA5 tries to convince the player that the status quo is just fine. They don’t even keep what little reforms they made to the court system in AA4- that jurist system isn’t even mentioned in this game.

You might be wondering, though. If the game never really questions its own court system, then what was all the fuss about the “Dark Age of the Law”? Well. The game outright tells you that the “dark age of the law” started with Phoenix’s disbarment and Simon’s conviction. Before that the law was Just Fine 👍 and now that Phoenix has his badge back and Simon’s been proven innocent, the law is Just Fine once again 👍 . I don’t feel the need to explain why the court system was clearly not fine in the trilogy, or why corruption and imbalance of power didn’t explode in the courtrooms over two (2) fucking cases. This game’s attempts at political themes are a fucking joke at best.

Back to the trial- we’ve been able to prove that Athena and Simon are innocent of the past murder, but who WAS the culprit? And what about the current case with Clay? It’s only at this point in the story that the player FINALLY learns about all the evidence against Athena in the trial for Clay’s murder- far too late for the player to be able to take it seriously. It’s also at this point where Apollo reveals that he doesn’t really suspect Athena, he was just doubting her because he trusts her so much :) isn’t that so sweet. Seriously, Apollo is the character with the BIGGEST justification to doubt someone he works with and the game not only treats it like a completely irrational idea but tells you that it was fake the entire time! What the fuck!

After a really long battle in court, it’s revealed that Bobby Fulbright (remember him?) was behind the current case AND the past case, AND that he’s an international shapeshifting superspy with literally (like literally literally) no actual character. This is never foreshadowed or hinted at through the entire game! It’s pulled out of fucking nowhere because this game just needed one more Shocking plot twist. It’s stupid and meaningless and he gets caught because he sucks at blowing up rocks and Athena has a cool earring.

One remark about the ending: when Trucy gets released from being kidnapped, about two characters go “wow Trucy I’m glad you’re safe :)” and Trucy goes “I’m just fine ^_^ I even did magic tricks for the other hostages” because magic tricks are the only character trait that Trucy is allowed to have in this game. The kidnapping is completely brushed off like it wasn’t important in the first place because guess what? It WASN’T important. It was just a stupid plot device to get the story going where it needed to in a shocking way, like everything else in this stupid game.

Final Thoughts

My review of the game is that it suck left nut. Like I said earlier, just read the wiki if you’re interested in it, because the game won’t offer you a better experience. Its gameplay is boring, the characters are disappointingly flat, the story is empty, the plot twists are just there to shock the player and cover up plot holes, and it completely tramples on what makes the past games so good. A lot of people say to play this game for Athena and Simon, but IMO all they really do for the majority of the game is serve as an example of just how bad this game is. AA5 isn’t worth playing!

I rate this game 7.2/7.5 Imagine Party Babyz.

#jude talks #aa lb #long post #<- jic the readmore doesnt work #lmk if theres any weird formatting btw i had to like redo everything from google docs #ALSO tw for transphobia bc this game has that

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thewebcomicsreview · 4 years

Photo

Homestuck 2 has updated. It’s a Christmas Miracle! As always, this liveblog is tagged “Homestuck 2 Liveblog” is you want to filter it out. Today, we’re still in Candlyland, and it’s time to meet the Vriskas!

For those who blocked out the epilogues, the one in the stripes is Vriska Maryam-Lalonde, who was adopted by Rose and Kanaya, and the shadowed Vriska is Vriska Serket, the post-retcon version who went to defeat Lord English. She definitely just fucked and killed Gamzee, despite the fact that she is 16 and he is middle-aged. Since having two characters named “Vriska” is confusing, Vriska Serket is getting referred to as (Vriska), in parenthesis, but just to make sure we don’t get any less confused, the pre-retcon Vriska Serket was also called (Vriska) and is presumably out in space somewhere with pre-Retcon Terezi since those two were last seen cuddling in the Furthest Ring watching the universe collapse from a safe distance in what is arguably the “end” of Homestuck’s alpha timeline, but could very plausibly also have gotten sucked into the Black Hole and landed on Candyland Earth.

Okay, everyone understand what’s going on? No? Fuck you, it’s Homestuck.

Minutes in the past, but not many, (Vriska) pockets John’s phone before she can worry too much about waiting for a reply from Terezi.

Oh, right, Vriska has John’s phone and thus can communicate with the alive Terezi on Dirk’s ship, the one remaining connection between Candyland and Meatspace.

Oh man, if Homestuck was still popular you’d see this cosplay at anime conventions a lot, wouldn’t you?

VRISKA: That’s the Right Call. VRISKA: So, Nickname me, 8itch. And make it Cute.

Okay, disregard my entire opening Paragraph. Vriska Serket is now back to being Vriska with no parenthesis, and Vriska Maryan-Lalonde is now nicknamed “Vrissy” so that everyone gets a unique-ish name. Hooray, we’re all caught up. Also there’s like an 80% chance these two are going to get together at some point. Also also, what’s up with Vriska’s eyepatch?

She didn’t have that in Act 7, and she didn’t get it in the epilogues, I just checked, and there’s no space in-between Act 7 and the epilogues or the epilogues or now for her to have gotten it off-screen. These panels are going out of their way to hide her eyes, but since the epilogues explicitly confirmed she has normal eyes (and thus is still alive), I don’t know what they’re hiding.

VRISSY: Yeah, but Vrissy is a Thing now. Roll with it. TAVROS: Okay, uh,, Vrissy, VRISSY: We kinda Need a Ride

Speaking of mysteries, why does Tavros Crocker have a troll typing quirk if he’s the son of two humans, and thus presumably a human himself, with no relation whatsoever to the original Tavros? I can’t help but notice Tavros is typing in Gamzee purple instead of Tavros’s original bronze color, so I have a terrifying feeling that Tavros is going to be the biological son of Jane and Gamzee somehow and the epilogues just danced around that. Maybe I’m being too pessimistic.

Oh thank Christ. Also there is absolutely nothing interesting on Vriska’s face, so I’m not sure why there were hiding it. Maybe they figured some people would forget Vriska’s alive and wanted to milk a little drama from the casual readers? I dunno. Maybe I’m over-thinking this as well as pessimistic. Still wondering where that eyepatch came from, though.

Aww, he’s cute. I like his snazzy suit jacket. Also: This is the first named character in the entirety of Homestuck to have come out of a vagina like a normal person instead of being a an ecto-clone.

I don’t think white pants are a great idea in an artstyle where the humans aren’t colored in, though. He looks like he’s Donald Ducking it.

There’s a Pulp Fiction joke to be made here but I’m not gonna say it

This is very obviously Harry Anderson Egbert. He is a bit less cute. It is very weird to see unimportant background humans in Homestuck. None of the kids in the original comic ever interacted with another human, or mourned the deaths of a single person when the earth was destroyed. Which, conservation of detail and all that, but it still makes it weird to see just Bob Fedorafreak or whoever walking by.

HARRY ANDERSON: yo. VRISSY: Hey HARRY ANDERSON: hey babe, what’s up?

Hm, Harry Anderson (Never just Harry?) refers to Vriska as “babe”, which is rather friendly (Edit from the future: Harry and Vrissy are dating, Vrissy and Tavros are kismesis). Gives me the vibe of like a Hollywood agent, and I suppose his always being “Harry Anderson” backs that up.

I do like this character, or what little we’ve seen of him so far in literally two pages. As the child of the two main families, he’s got the Strilonde “Must be cool at all times” thing mixed in with the Harleybert “Kind of heart, dumb of ass” thing. I also can’t help but notice that Homestuck 2 has almost immediately set up a team of four teenagers, two boys and two girls, two humans and two trolls. If John/Jade/Rose/Dave are the Beta Kids, and Jane/Jake/Roxy/Dirk are the alpha kids, these are, what, the pre-release kids? The Delta Kids? I like the Delta Kids.

VRISKA: You said this was a schoolhive, yeah? VRISKA: We can just dump it in the inciner8or. That’s pro8a8ly what his plan was to 8egin with. VRISSY: The what???????? VRISKA: The inciner8or. Like, for 8odies?? VRISSY: At SCHOOL???????? VRISKA: Yes?

Okay,this got a laugh out of me. A big complaint of Homestuck was that we never got the original four kids all in a room interacting with each other, and now we have a new quartet and they’re immediately in a car together. I’m digging this dynamic of them all being wildly incompetent but in different ways, and if Homestuck 2 is going to have a lot of this kind of thing I’m down for it.

Vriska and Tavros have, through some tortured logic and misunderstanding, decided that the best way to hide Gamzee’s corpse is to carry it into school with them to meet Harry Anderson because they think he has a plan and don’t know he thinks they were joking and has no plan at all. This is legitimately great. Look how confident Vriska is! She thinks this is an amazing plan! And why wouldn’t she? She’s the Thief of Light and she literally has Superpowers that make her super-lucky.

This is, and I say this in complete sincerity, the most fun Homestuck’s been in years.

I’m fucking sold on this comic. This is exactly what Homestuck needed.

It’s a Christmas miracle, everyone. Homestuck is good again. (At least for now)

#Homestuck #Homestuck 2 #Homestuck 2 Liveblog

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themoonstarwarrior · 3 years

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PLAYLIST SHUFFLE TAG!

Okay, so @viterbofangirl tagged me in this and I need to start learning to post my own shit, so what the hell, why not?

Rules: you can usually tell a lot about a person by the type of music they listen to! put your favorite playlist on shuffle and list the first 10 15 songs, then tag 10 people. no skipping!

(I couldn’t stop at 10 so I added 5 more, sue me)

I have very random music taste and I listen to my music on shuffle alot, so I made a playlist of the ones I like the most (that way I don’t hafta skip 150 songs to get to the one I feel like) so I’m gonna use that one.

1) History of Violence - Theory of a Deadman

Hoo boy starting off light huh?.... Yeah so, I was in the drive thru at Sonic when I first heard this on the radio and was immediately like “holy shit”. Instead of like metaphors and poetic subtlety, it’s just straight up like “here’s a poor abused woman who resorted to murdering her shitty boyfriend/husband cuz she couldn’t take it dum dum dum”. Even though the actual situation is not the same, this song is perfect for getting across the internal issues and turmoil of my character Mikey. Its so perfect I’m even planning to animate something for it...... if I ever get around to learning animation that is.....

2) The Vengeful One - Disturbed

Two songs in and I look kinda emo.... But hey this song is soooooo cathartic! I love me a good heavy rock song, and the drums and electric guitar are perfect for my ears to absorb. This song gives off a feeling of overwhelming power mixed with a coldness and disdain for the bad in the world. Obviously, thats not my usual temperment, but its an interesting one to explore! Especially when I’m trying to get into the head of characters that exude that like my OCs Spark or Ryu. Plus its fun to sing in the car X)

3) Enter Sandman - Metallica

Okay this one is just a classic! Same thing with the drums and guitar they both slap SOOOOO GOOD. I don’t really associate this song with any of my characters or fandom favorites, but it DOES give me a super strong urge to learn the drums. EXXXXXXXXIT LIIIIIIIIIIIIGHT! OFF TO NEVER NEVERLAND!!

4) We Are Giants - Lindsey Stirling ft. Dia Frampton

I don’t really to listen to music by band or artist, but I LOVE Lindsey Stirling!!! She’s probably my favorite musician! This is such a good song, especially for someone like me. Its a positive song that talks about feeling alone in a crowd and unimportant to the world, but how you really do matter and shouldn’t be afraid to dream big and shoot for the stars. It really speaks to me and the vocalization is so good (especially for singing), not to mention the official music video is animated and AMAZING!

5) Cetus - Lensko NCS

I dunno if anyone knows this song, but damn its good. Its one of those Royalty-Free songs that people look up for their channels, which is how I found it in the first place, but I loved it immediately. Its a peppy 8-bit electronic bop that turns a little Irish jig at the end and honestly I think if I ever start an animation channel I’m totally gonna use it! (Also go support Lensko he make good beats!)

6) Sanctuary - Utada Hikaru

I did not grow up with Kingdom Hearts, and only played KH2 within the past year n’ a half. But good God, the moment that Cinematic Opening came on and this song started playing I swear I astral projected into a daze of feelings without names. I know that “Simple and Clean” is the quintessential Kingdom Heart song that gives everyone feelings, but IMHO Sanctuary blows it out of the water. As beautiful as the animation was, or how curious the occasional backwards lyrics are, or how weird it is having high-res Goofy and Donald in what is essentially an anime opening, I really can’t be distracted from this song when I play.

7) Chemical Plant Zone (Rock Remix) - Zerobadniks

Chemical Plant Song is like, one of the TOP Sonic songs by popular vote (and we know how awesome the Sonic series is musically so thats saying something!), but I could never quite vibe with the normal 8-bit version. I think I first heard this as someone’s ringtone and was immediately like “THATS PERFECT THATS EXACTLY HOW I NEED IT!”. The rock makes the song soooo much better and honestly gives the song the perfect vibe. Unfortunately, it took FOREVER to find cuz none of the Rock Covers of this song were the right one. In fact, tbh, I’m not even sure whether Zerobadniks is the correct artist..... that’s just who everybody was crediting when I found it.

(imma include the link i found since its a little hard to find: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqJiZEM6aPI )

8) The Wolf - SIAMES

YOU WANNA TALK ABOUT ANIMATED MUSIC VIDEOS???? THIS IS A GOD-TIER ANIMATED MUSIC VIDEO. I found the video first, and seriously, if you haven’t seen it YOU NEED TO!!! The beat works perfectly with the images on screen and the story being portrayed is really intriguing, with the lyrics adding to atmosphere without necessarily describing the visuals shown. Even without the animation, the song itself is a banger. It bring to mind the feeling of intense motion forward, but unable to decide whether its movement TOWARD something or AWAY from something. I love listening to this on a nighttime drive.

9) Burn the House Down - AJR

If you ask me, the best way to make a pop song better is to add either violins or trumpets. For this song, it was definitely the trumpets that first caught my attention, and the rest of the song kept me listening. I don’t really know how to describe the vibe of this song, and I don’t have a specific character or story in mind when I listen to it, so its a little hard for me to talk about it. I think the best way I can describe this song and what draws me to it is a feeling of nonchalant go-with-the-flow attitude to shenaniganry. Almost an undertone of “We’re hooligans in a situation that we probably should get out of, but hey we’ve got life and each other so why worry?” At least that’s the closest I can get to a verbal description heh...

10) Slim Pickens Does the Right Thing and Rides the Bomb to Hell - The Offspring

DANCE, FUCKER, DANCE, LET THE MOTHERFUCKER BURN!!!

So this also has a KICKASS animated music video, but its technically combined with the song “Dividing by Zero”. Now the video works SO well with both, and the shifting artstyles reflect the differing tones of the songs PERFECTLY. However, I have a preference for both the animation and the song on the Slim Pickens half. Its fun to listen to and sing at the top of your lungs and its SO CATHARTIC. Again I cant really describe what my head does when I hear it, but I think you can probably feel a similar vibe if you watch the music video.

11) No Heaven - DJ Champion

The first time I finished the original Borderlands, I had been playing for days on end, had just finished a long battle with the Destroyer, and sitting back relieved to have beaten it and reflecting on how much I had enjoyed the adventure. Then this song started playing. For what I believe was forty minutes this song looped on my TV while the credits rolled. By the time the credits finished I was pulling up the song to listen to again! What an absolutely PERFECT cherry to add to this experience. This song perfectly encapsulated the chaotic, trigger-happy, morally ambiguous craziness that I had enjoyed and absorbed in this game. Every time I hear it now, I imagine myself in the wastelands of Pandora, driving haphazardly across the sandy dunes as my companions and I shoot and blow up everything in sight. You know, living the dream.......

12) Hit & Run (Wolfgang Lohr Remix) - The Electric Swing Circus

I fucking LOVE electro-swing! The electronic beats and rhythm blend so well with the wild and energetic freedom of swing. A lot of electro-swing gives me a vibe of wild movement, reckless abandon, and freedom from constraint. I think this song melds all of these feelings the best! As the last song might have indicated, despite my general nice and sweet temperament, there is a part of me deep down that is an absolute gremlin secretly enamored with chaos, insanity, and a general disdain for law and authority X). But whereas anything Borderlands related has a more “morality is an illusion blowing shit up is real” air about it, this song is far more peppy. More of a “good-hearted but insane” type of chaos, like an 100mph car chase where you end up sailing over the train tracks JUST as the train passes.

.... I may have gotten a bit off track lol

13) Kickstart my Heart - Motley Crue

I love this song, but I have to be VERY careful when and where I listen to this. I love songs that make me feel like I’m going a million miles per hour, like I’m gotdam Sonic the Hedgehog. Unfortunately, I may or may not have had multiple instances of listening to this song in the car and abruptly realizing that I’m going like 15mph above the speed limit...... So yeah, regardless of absolutely perfect it feels to play this song while speeding down a nearly empty highway, please be careful and drive responsibly!!!

14) I’m Born to Run - American Authors

Imma just up and say it. This song is a Sonic song; like not like actually from the series but a song for the character. This song encapsulates Sonic as a character better than some of his ACTUAL THEMES (and remember Sonic music are bangers!). Its a song about freedom, living life as it comes, and not letting anything slow you down. Frankly I’m surprised they didn’t make this song FOR the Sonic series, or even the movie! Speaking of which, ironically I heard this song right after watching the Sonic movie in theaters, so yeah there’s no way I can associate it with anything else.

15) Opa Opa - Antique

Oh, what a PERFECT way to end this list! This may be one of my absolute favorite songs of all time! I don’t remember exactly how I found this song... I think I had just relistened to Dalar Mehndi’s “Tunak Tunak Tun” and was looking for other catchy non-english songs and BOY HOWDY I found one! I know nothing about the band or what the song’s about (its in greek and i dont speak it), but this song is just a masterpiece of retro, pop, and dance sounds. This song feels like the musical and lyrical manifestation of dance and movement. I really REALLY wish I could dance JUST so I can express how happy and free this song makes me feel! This is the BEST song for me to end this list with!

***********************************************************************************

JESUS, this got long..... Sorry about that XD. It was fun though, and hopefully somebody was vaguely interested in my ramblings.

Guess I need to tag people now? How about @tharkflark1, @rockmilkshake, @neonbuck, @drawingsdrawingseverywhere, @birthgiverofbirds, @puccafangirl, @kalcat, @biblestudybussybopsbabey, @monstrous-milktea, and @memecage! I think there are a couple of people here I haven’t talked to though soooooo..... hi, I hope you don’t mind the tag X)

Anyway hope you enjoyed and/or want to do this too! This took for-fucking-EVER to type, so imma go fuck off and watch youtube or something now...

#music and remixes #viterbo i was gonna add you to the bottom list and then i was like SHIT SHE TAGGED ME XD so oh well #i may or may not have cheated just a bit but shut up these are the songs i had something to say about #moonstar wont shut up

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soyouareandrewdobson · 4 years

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Digging through the archives 1: The ReBoot drama

Hello and welcome to one of the first “subsections” of posts I am going to make on this tumblr for the sake of an easier overview. This one is titlted “Digging through the archives”, because it will always relate to something I will find by literally looking for some of the oldest “opinion” or personal related stuff about Dobson that there is. So think of this here less as me tackling his comics and more of my own version of what the Hypocrisy of Andrew Dobson does.

With that explanation out of the way, lets just briefly talk about Dobson and his idea of fan entitlement; If you have followed Dobson throughout the last year or so, you know he has a very low opinion on fans of the original She-Ra and He-Man, 80s cartoons in general and Star Wars, to the point he thinks the people behind it are all potential alt righters (link red flag comic) or basically man children.

To anyone who knows Dobson however, it would be no surprise now to learn that he has a tendency to be the same kind of way to other people and creators. Like when he whined to an actual writer on a Frozen related property about the necessity of giving Elsa a girlfriend, which even resulted in Aaron Sparrow being involved at one point, a professional animator and comic writer on the Boom Comics related Darkwing Duck issues. A prime example on how Dobson will literally make himself also unsympathetic to the people he wants to work for/with.

But then there is what I found in relation to a little animated series by the name of ReBoot and that is really where both his entitlement and egotism kinda shine.

For those unaware: ReBoot was a computer animated adventure show produced by Mainframe Entertainment and ran from 1994 to 2001. It is actually listed as the first fully computer animated cartoon out there and is fondly remembered by a lot of people. Unfortunately, I myself have never watched it so I can’t give a “valid” opinion on it. All I have seen so far are clips on youtube but I will admit that what I have seen in them looks fun and intriguing, even if the animation at parts (especially in season 1 related content) has not aged that well. But hey, early computer animation, that is forgivable. And any media that manages to make an episode that is also in a way a huge tribute to Evil Dead of all things in a children cartoon is a big win for me.

youtube

Now, how is ReBoot connected to Dobson? Dobson has been a fan of ReBoot, a fact he made publicly known when in 2007 rumors of a continuation of ReBoot emerged. Something Dobson, again, the man who is pissed about the entitlement of She-Ra fans, has not been very happy about.

But Dobson, what is so wrong about being “different” from the past? After all, let the past die! The original show had terrible artwork! And not everything back in the day was good, right?

Yeah, it is pretty obvious how his complaining and stands against “modern” fans ring pretty hollow when he himself acted as the entitled brat he thinks critics of new She-Ra and Thundercats Roar are, back in 2007 already. Also I honestly feel that at the very least the creators of that idea gave their fans still more “control” than Rian Johnson did. And we all know how much Star Wars suffered in terms of reputation because of it.

BTW, this webcomic continuation mentioned? It is actually not just a rumor that went nowhere, but one of the most fascinating aspects I found when reading up on ReBoot via Wikipedia. The idea was that of the five potential pitches (so again, there was variety given that even could have been expanded on) people could choose one that would be further adapted. Additionally the people behind the idea were looking for more active input by fans, giving people the chance to apply as artists working on it if they decided to submit samples people could vote on. Something Dobson jumped actually on. And tried to manipulate in his own favor

The thing that catches my attention at first is how hyperbole Dobson is. Claiming the fate of the show is in their hands and treating voting on this thing like it’s a live or die situation, with pointlessly writing stuff in caps as if we are reading the headline of some trashy newspaper article. It just comes off less as someone who is a fan and more of a fanatic of the show. Second, I just find it hilarious that of all the plattforms online Dobson decided to post that “VERY IMPORTANT” information people should act immediately on, was deviantart. Did he genuinely expect people would flock to what he wrote in order to immediately do something about the vote? Deviantart even back then was mostly for posting fanart, few people read journals and even less people cared for ReBoot. I don’t know if the /co/ board of 4chan existed back in 2007 already, but he would have had more success posting on there and get the information out, than on dA.

Lastly, the shameless self promotion. Stating he does not care which pitch wins, when only three day prior he whined how they all suck and he wishes the show would be done justice by someone. That someone obviously being him, the person who is so hardcore as a fan, because he already waited 8 years just to watch season 3. Damned be any other artists or pitches that may be better or more popular than him, HE is the true messiah and that is his chance to shine. So don’t be “neutral” and judge fairly based on actual competence, talent and effort, just vote for him blindly or else Trump wins the second term and your beautiful nation turns into the fourth rei- I mean, Dobson will be a very sad guy who has come to terms with the fact he is not talented enough to work on a reboot/continuation of his favorite children show.

Well, it seemed to have had some impact though, as four day later he posted this

And obviously Dobson is pissed his favorite pitch did not win and instead of being grateful for the good ratings some of his artwork got he focuses instead on the fact that his Enzo and Megabyte pic had the lowest rating. Which in my opinion it kinda deserved. I mean, look at those artpieces:

Enzo is okayish looking but the rest? That is not Megabyte and a genuine background, it is a cola light version of the entire Ripley disaster with the Samus Artwork commission. Also, Enzo’s hands just look weird. His fingers more alien than they need to be and the position of his legs not really adjusting to how the hip is supposed to move. The comic sample page that Dobson drew being okay overall, aside of the fact that Enzo in one panel HAS FOUR INSTEAD OF FIVE FINGERS ON ONE HAND DESPITE HAVING FIVE FINGERS IN A PREVIOUS PANEL. I am also not really a fan of how Dobson puts emphasize on the word “FAN” and “PAGES” in the post, indicating he thinks he is a better and bigger fan than any of the people who submitted their entries too, off handedly praising them but also making it obvious he thinks he is the most fit for the job, because he can also “copy any artstyle” and adjust to the needs of his superiors. Yeah, sure. That’s why you are nowadays and with even more time and effort put into your work so “good” at imitating Ladybug, your comics look exactly like in the show…

Now considering that Dobson does not have ReBoot under his resume and likely tried his best to bury any enthusiasm for it, you can imagine how this chance at being an official artist ended up.

Not even much of a follow up or introspective in why he may have not won. His enthusiasm died within two days.

And honestly, I am surprised that as a result he did not fake depression and rage quit doing comics for a month or so as he did here and there.

And that is pretty much the end of the ReBoot drama, at least as far as I know.

If you are interested what happened with the comic project, here is what I managed to gather:

The project did actually not die in development, but “ReBoot: Arrival” would be reimagined under the name “Code of Honour” and be published online in three “issues” over the course of the next few months. The comic’s status as “canon” continuation of the show is however very much in the air, as quite a lot of people think it is something of a fanfiction, others think it is a good enough continuation that unfortunately still does not deliver on an “ultimate” ending of the franchise. That said, with additional plans like a movie trilogy never been realized and the “reboot” known as “ReBoot: The Guardian Code” having been perceived as an insult by fans and a disappointment by most audiences (which Dobson was surprisingly silent about) this comic seems to be the best thing fans can still hope for and read.

youtube

Yeah, I am not even kidding. The comic is still up. Here, have two links to independent pages if you want to either read it for the first time or revisit it for the sake of nostalgia.

As for Dobson, if he reads this, I just have one thing to say to you: Don’t you ever again try to whine about how entitled fanboys are, if you felt entitled enough yourself you tried to manipulate a competition in your own favor in the hope to become a writer and then exploit ReBoot for your own agenda and benefit.

#andrew dobson #syac #tom preston #she-ra #reboot #reboot:the guardian code #western animation #computer animation #bob #megabyte #enzo #hypocrisy

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courage-a-word-of-justice · 4 years

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I’m trying a seasonal challenge this time...so that means I have to leave some Crunchyroll anime to the side. That’s why I’m putting in the tags now.

Higurashi New 2

Apparently, now this Higurashi is called “Gou”…I dunno what that means in the context of this series, but *Saitama face* OK.

Is this girl…Rika? Or this Hanyuu girl I heard of on ANN? Update: Wait a bit from that point. You’ll get your answer.

Do they ever examine why the girls in Higurashi are what they are? Rika seems to have something supernatural going on, but Rena…is just a psycho girl right now, so it’s hard to care.

LOL, I was wondering where this “nipah” Rika meme came from, but it is present in the dialogue.

I predicted that Gilligan cu-er, transition far too easily…

Why is that kid’s face so tanned (?) in comparison to the rest of him???

How did these girls get up the building so fast??? (LOL?)

Wow, the cicada noise was pretty loud there, so…props to the sound guys for making that sound stifling.

Can we really trust what Mion is saying about Tomitake…?

I thought we were going to see Watanagashi in ep 3, but…okay.

Satoko speaks rather formally. She says kochira de gozaimasuyo! instead of kocchi! or kochiradesuyo!.

Who’s that blonde lady? Someone from Umineko?

The bright colours really help to sell the ominous nature of this ED and anime. I don’t think I understand everything that’s happening in said ED, though…

Gonna pause it here because I heard you need to watch the OG and Rei to understand this, now that the new Higurashi is operating under its “proper” name.

Wandering Witch 2

…Elaina’s a bit full of herself still…

…what the heck was that instrument playing over the titlecard? Bagpipes…?

LOL, it’s the Attack on Titan world!

Did Elaina lose her hat when she fell? That must be a very stable hat indeed.

Ooh, particle effects! However…there’s CGI here, although it’s only kinda noticeable.

Have you never heard of money…?

Wait, witches get discounts???

It seems Saya comes from Japan.

LOL, this is basically Quidditch without a snitch!

I like mushrooms, so I don’t get why people kick up such a fuss about them.

Saya seems to act like this is yuri bait…*sigh*

Saya’s crying like her sister died…c’mon, it’s not that bad!

I’m hitting pause. If this is actually how the series is, then it’s primed for a drop, but I can’t help but keep it on for the spectacular visuals and the fact it’s basically anime Harry Potter.

Taiso Samurai 1

I keep swearing I’ll finish my old simulcasts…but then new ones pop up like daisies…(I guess it’s better than having no anime to finish, right?)

I just realised how pretty Jotaro’s eyes are…! The fact he just sort of splats and then doesn’t get up shows how weary he is, unlike Sakura from Moon Land, who would’ve probably gotten up and never tried doing gymnastics again if he were in the same position.

Just by glancing over the results when I google for this Montreal gold, it seems it was done by a Kouhei Uchimura, but I might be wrong on that front…oh wait, there are 3 golds, so it’s not necessarily just that one…

You can tell this is 2002 because of that flip phone.

Intai Zamurai…it’s constructed the same way as the anime’s title. Two characters and then “samurai”.

BB (Big Bird) on the side there is so goofy, he’s…kind of distracting. <- Note the official website refers to Big Bird as BB, hence my use of it.

I was wondering if Rei was the daughter or the wife…so it’s the former.

Kinugawa Ropeway…it rings a bell, somehow. Maybe the Boueibu crew went there as DVD/BD extras.

…does everyone know that a ryokan is like a mini hotel with a traditional set-up?

*snorts* LOL, Keanu (Reeves, obviously).

That montage was a bit worrying…maybe the CGI took out part of the budget? I was a bit worried when I could tell there was CGI in that one starting segment.

…LOL, wut. Agent Smith (from the Matrix)?

Yamakasi seems to be a parkour thing which has its own movie.

…I’m sort of wondering: was that ninja a woman? If Jotaro gets another wife…I dunno if I’ll like the anime as much. Things could become far too dramatic if he did. Update: You do find out later in this episode.

I think – from lip reading – the ninja used -de gozaimasu. I remember getting it drilled into me that people don’t use that these days, but in the time of ninja and samurai, they did.

…another anime set in Ikebukuro. I knew from the station, but…’bukuro must be a nice place if people are reppin’ it all of a sudden.

Was Tomoyo an actress…?

“Kinugawa, as in the river where ogres get mad?” – See, that’s the pun I made about Boueibu’s Atsushi years ago…

This Takizawa guy’s so expressive, LOL.

Gotta love a man in a suit, yes…

…they keep building up to this retirement, only for him to not retire??? Which is it?! (LOL) That declaration works better in Japanese because the -shimasen goes at the end of the sentence so the weird sentence structure in the English translation actually makes Jotaro look like he really messed up due to nervousness speaking in front of crowds. Update: He just sounds like he stopped in the middle of a sentence in Japanese, which he obviously did.

There’s no time travel for sure, but there are ninjas! Plus dudes in jumpsuits!...plus, of course, gymnastics! It could still work, but I keep swearing there’s something supernatural coming around the corner for this…Also, this “gymnast trying to retire” thing seems to be drawing me in because of my whole current lack of direction in basically everything, much like Rikuo of Sing Yesterday for Me.

Kamisama 1

Hmm…Kamisama ni Natta Hi…it doesn’t say the subject stating this became a god, so the pronoun could be “she” or “you” rather than “I”, which seems to be the current standard for it. Update: It says on the title card “I”, so it should have an I then…I guess(?)

There’s a fish on the logo.

…this girl, I already know her name is Hina. That’s the 2nd Odin this season (the first is in Sigdrifa…or however it’s spelt)…she’s gonna be annoying, isn’t she…?

What’s this about a date…?

There are two Izanamis this season, too. The second is Hifumi from HypMic.

Looks like there was an accident, according to one of the signs.

…This feels exactly like a visual novel. I’m surprised it’s an original.

I was wondering why “Key Ramen” (Kagi Ramen) sounded weird…then it hit me. Key! You motherf**kers!!! *shakes fist* You were hiding right under my nose all along!

Hey, Potato-kun! (I know his name is Youta, but…eh, aside from having a possible girlfriend candidate and being a Nice Guy, he’s still a Potato-kun.) Stop staring in disbelief and do something!

…Why Potato-kun, anyway? Is it because his name means “become god”???

…This Izanami is so emotionless…it’s hard to imagine her cheering, Youta was right on that front.

…that style in Hina’s background…I’m pretty sure I’ve seen it for Sailor Moon Crystal, but I’ve forgotten what the artist’s name is (the one that inspired that artstyle)…

I almost expected Hina to interrupt the confession, like Leo from Taiso Samurai.

I kinda just shrugged near the end of the episode and finished it just to see if the confession would be interrupted, so…big fat drop there. I must not like much Key beyond Angel Beats (and even then, it’s only okay because it’s the relic of a time gone by).

Moriarty 1

I’ve been picking up Sherlock-related things left and right ever since I was a fan of Detective Conan…not Sherlock, Elementary or that Robert Downey Jr. movie, but the stuff Conan Doyle had his hands in. (I’d also like to keep an eye out for that Miyazaki movie, but I don’t know if I can/should go out of my way for it.) Therefore, I was a pretty easy mark for a bishonen Moriarty.

Who’s this “El” guy anyway?

…That OP is basically Black Butler all over again. I admit I went, “Oh, stuff this” for a second when I saw Rasmus Faber’s name on credits – when I went to entire series for him, they always ended badly for me – but I couldn’t stop watching the episode (since I skipped forward to the actual episode due to background noise), so this might be the anime to change everything.

I’ll be real with you – aside from Japan, America and China (the former two of which I’ve gone to and the latter I’ve technically gone to Hong Kong, which I have stronger ties to anyway), I honestly don’t have anywhere on my bucket list. That said, anime (obviously, the London arc from DC was a big factor) and this one movie called What a Girl Wants have been pretty instrumental in making Great Britain…almost make the list of places I want to go to. Key word: almost.

…I want a dub. With accents like Princess Principal.

Also, I forgot Soma Saito was our Moriarty…LOL.

“…for Man of Standing” (sic).

Turn the other cheek, Mr. Tailor.

The eyes really tell you everything about a person in this anime.

Ooh, this has absolutely no holes in its logic. It’s a strong contender!

Yashahime 2

Holy s***, is that Kagome’s brother?(!) He kinda reminds me of Takagi from Detective Conan for some reason…

Come to think of it…writers like Takahashi don’t normally have androgynous leads like Towa, do they?

That was…not the best fight scene, man.

Ooh, naginata. I’ve read a bit about them, but I’ve never really seen one used in an anime before…not to my memory. Not even the naginata in Touken Ranbu (plural) can help with that.

…this Rainbow Pearl business reminds me of Sailor Moon’s…uh, whatever they’re called…Rainbow Crystals, that’s right.

There’s something oddly comfy about predicting the “it won’t be my crying face, it’s yours you’ll get!” line, as bad as that sign may be for predictability on the whole.

I’ve felt in the years leading up to now, the progressive nations are slowly causing the entire gender binary to unravel. The more I think about my own relationship with my concept of gender – I accept gender-neutral third-person pronouns because initially I wanted to be anonymous on the internet, but now I’m just generally fine with it, for instance – the more I can agree and yet also disagree because of the progress the LGBTIQ+ community has made in recent years.

Munou na Nana 2

Ah-hah! People were calling it that the enemies of humanity were actually the superpowered kids and this proves it.

Ah, I think this Shibusawa is Masuda. I was here for him, so here he is.

Nana just says konnichiwa, which is the most basic of Japanese greetings. I don’t think it was phrased as a question, so…why did the subbers go with that?

Nana keeps breaking her chopsticks by leaving a bit at the end.

Lemme guess…Shibusawa’s talent is actually reversing time, not stopping it.

Is…that Shibusawa Nana’s giving flowers to…?

Golden Kamuy 3 1 (25)

If this is episode 25, was this always planned as a split-cour with season 2? I wonder…

Lingonberries! Oh, lingonberries! They’re those berries Ikea puts into their jam, right? (I’ve never tasted a lingonberry, but…yeah. That’s how I know of them.)

The sign says “Hurep Honpo” (backwards, as some older Japanese/Chinese things do), so it really just says “hurep” (since “honpo” = main shop). Update: Hurep actually means “lingonberry” and not the berry wine like I thought it did here, so it says “hurep wine” after all.

Thank goodness for 2D bears! (LOL)

Ratel?...uh, honey badger! That’s what they’re called in English!

…uh, and then it turns out to be a wolverine. I don’t know my Mustelidae, it seems.

There’s nothing like someone throwing a wolverine to know this is Golden Kamuy…(as weird as that sounds.)

…what was that random line about boobs about…? (Maybe it was just said to be random…?)

…ohhhhhhhh. These yellow eyes work much better than the standard red eyes you see in Munou na Nana or Moriarty. They’re so sinister.

Why did it suddenly change to an interview style…? Weren’t we waiting for a fight? Update: Seems the answer is “padding”. Not that I mind, I think it was interesting actually. Do more of that if you can.

#simulcast commentary #Golden Kamuy #Higurashi: When They Cry - New #Higurashi: When They Cry - Gou #Kamisama ni Natta Hi #The Day I Became a God #Taiso Samurai #Gymnastics Samurai #Moriarty the Patriot #Yuukoku no Moriarty #Wandering Witch: The Journey of Elaina #Majo no Tabitabi #Chesarka watches Taiso Samurai #Chesarka watches Yuukoku no Moriarty #Munou na Nana #Talentless Nana #hanyo no yashahime #Chesarka watches Yashahime

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laurasauras · 5 years

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What do you think Homestuck believes in?

g, i love you, your interest in me infodumping is honestly such a delight. i can sometimes feel like i’m talking way too much, but you always make me feel special, it’s lovely!

this is long, so i’m going to use a cut. i’m so sorry, mobile users. blame tumblr. tl;dr? i think homestuck believes in love, hope, and fighting even when the stakes seem insurmountable.

so there’s a lot of like “core themes” in homestuck, but “what homestuck believes in” is such a lovely and specific way to phrase it, so i’m gonna go with what i think the most important ones are.

firstly: love. and more specifically, all love.

look, there are romantic parts of homestuck. and they’re often show-stopping.

(also homestuck does visual callbacks very well, there’s a reason that these two scenes are composed the same way.)

but the core of the story is these four kids, all of them starting from a state of isolation. they don't have "real friends", they feel disconnected from their guardians, they feel disconnected from everyone in the world they walk around in, but they go online and they have each other. and they're constantly joking and making fun of each other, but they're also checking in almost every time they achieve something, as if grounding their friends in their real life.

the story keeps progressing and getting more and more complicated, but it can never quite overshadow the beauty of the pesterlog conversations between friends.

i think that's a large part of what the audience of homestuck connects with—that feeling of connection online and the support that the characters give each other.

i also think that a lot of the time, the friendships and familial relationships in homestuck were given the same—if not more—importance as the romantic relationships, which is fucking uncommon to see in media! almost every character has to come to terms with how their upbringing shaped them, and you know what? that's the same of almost every person.

the conversation between dirk and dave before the final battle is one of the most important and touching moments of the whole story! two of the characters most concerned with their adherence to masculinity and appearing Too Cool For Emotions talk about their feelings and trauma before hugging it out. and it doesn't further the plot, it isn't part of the hero's romantic arc, but it's vital.

the second big thing i think homestuck believes in is the importance of doing what is right. in being a hero.

homestuck positions john and his friends as the main characters selected by the universe to play sburb and literally ascends them to god status.

they're empowered by destiny! they're going to beat the game, conquer the worst villain ever and bring humanity and trollkind back from extinction AND their new world isn't going to be under the tyranny of a genocidal fish alien!

but that empowerment is also a disempowerment.

look at how frequently dave falls into the reluctant hero trope. fate fucking kicks them around. when they are so destined to do all that stuff, can they really be said to have free will? and when they do seem to make a wrong choice in relation to their destiny, it's either something that furthers the plot OR it creates a doomed timeline and they're usually killed horribly.

and it's a story that is constantly reminding us that it's a story! you can definitely lose yourself in homestuck, you can zone into it and accept the rules and just read it as if it's a reasonable reality, but i don't think it was ever written that way, or when it is, i think that that's a result of hussie accidentally getting into the story as well!

like okay, we start off with this:

that's fucking bonkers. he's 13 and he doesn't have a name? but of course it's bullshit, it’s just a cool homestuck thing. because we never get a conversation that goes:

TG: so the big 13

TG: you get a name yet

EB: yup! let me formally introduce myself as john!

TG: i give that name 4/5 hats

no, dave just immediately calls john by his name. and likewise, until we're introduced to the other characters and learn their names, they're referred to by their handle abbreviations, but the second they're introduced it's first name basis time. because it's a story and our perception is what matters most.

then we have the ridiculous intermission, that starts out as what dave sees when he goes to mspa.com and which resembles problem sleuth enough that i almost thought it was just that, but then seemed to be an entirely new adventure, and then became a pretty vital subplot!

and then we have the author literally climbing into the story and we watch him type it. Don't Forget This Is All Written By Me!

the website changes format, there are the meta jokes, there's the way that caliborn raises the same complaints to hussie about the story being too long and confusing that some members of the fandom were. there's the way that pantskat happened! or they drastic changes in artstyle, often because someone else was drawing a panel!

so like, we've got these characters who seem to have goals that they've developed of their own volition and who seem to have their own ways of going about achieving them, who at times even act contrarily to how hussie says he wants them to act (remember how he attempted to propose to/revive vriska and how both she and caliborn at different times type into the narrative prompt "instead of" hussie) but of course ultimately! he wrote every word!

they don't have free will, they don't even exist! but on a different level, which any writer can understand, once you as an author have established a character, you trap yourself into writing them consistently, which can mean that while something might be best for the plot, the character metaphorically crosses their arms in your head and goes "i would literally never do that."

some characters of homestuck become aware that they are and we know they are, but most of them don't think that, they think that they're just living the life they have.

how the fuck are his characters supposed to go about their days when their author finds it funny to block their path with a giant bust of snoop dogg? and when they work for pages and pages and pages to get around whatever asinine thing andrew fucking hussie (or worse! his fans!) has come up with, there's another obstacle and maybe there's not even a point anyway!

how do you not just dismiss it as something like "hes just being weird/an asshole/etc”?

yeah, look, he might just be having a laugh. but so to might god.

sometimes you're walking along and something really stupid happens and it makes you for a second want to believe in god so that you can stare at the sky and say "really." :|

think about why detective stories are so popular. they give the illusion that if you're clever enough, if you collect the right data and link it together, you can trace back exactly what happened and solve impossible riddles and make sense of the world. you meet a man who has dust on his knees and you can deduce that he's been sneaking down to the basement of the shop he works at to tunnel into the bank next door. there's nothing magic about it, watson, it's just good detective work.

and we neeeeed that lie! but you know how it works in the real world? in the real world, police are baffled at a crime scene until a decade later someone discovers the fingerprints belonged to a fucking KOALA! that's more ridiculous than a snoop dogg bust in a hallway, or most of the other things hussie has written.

i think like that's a huge message behind the epilogues too, because john figures out he's in a story in candy and everything feels pointless.

but if that's the world he lives in, that's the world he fucking lives in. there's nothing pointless about living.

and i think that clicks for him towards the end when he talks to roxy and then rose. rose actually thanks him for choosing a path that allowed her to have the life she had, because she loves her wife and daughter. like it's insane, but she's happy, that's the life she lived and she doesn't want a more sensible one.

so what happens to us when we get that feeling like the world is pointless?

(which is A Major Fucking Side Effect Of Depression BTW and i still stand by my interpretation that ALL of john's shit can be put down to his depression, which is what makes it interesting)

for a generation with fucking terrifying levels of mental illness, when we start feeling like the world is too crazy and the odds are too high, and there's fucking war happening and our friends aren't even guaranteed to be on our side?

we just fucking fight anyway.

because we live in the world we live in and we just have to be grateful that we are who we are because of that.

every character in homestuck chooses this, again and again, so i have to read that as hopeful. alpha dave and rose knowing who hic is and that their kids are so far away? still gonna fucking fight and fight LOUDLY even though they know it won't change things. (on top of the fucking white house, in case the political allegory was too subtle lmao.)

there are so many messages in homestuck and honestly i feel like i’ve barely scraped the surface of them. but what does homestuck believe in? i feel that in my heart. homestuck believes in love and in doing what is right, even when it’s hard to figure out what right is, even when you might not make a difference.

homestuck is good, actually.

#long post #homestuck #my post

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bloojayoolie · 5 years

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A Dream, Bad, and Bruh: ACTUALLY, IT'S A HEY, LOOK, GREG HAS A PURSE! E. EMBROIDERED BOOKBAG. Hehehehe, Frank Griffin here! I am here to explain this funny may-may I found while browsing through the site "r/Loded Diper", place where fellow may-may experts like me share their best funny jokes about Diary of a by Wimpy Kid, a cartoon novel written hohe other than Jeff Kinney. Now, what do have here? If youre familiar with the book, youll recognize that there is Greg Heffley the middle, the protagonist of Diary of a Wimpy Kid. In the original image, Greg stitched a purse, but called it an embroidered handbag" so he won't lose his dignity. However, it doesn't work and he gets called a girl for it. this image Now that the background has been cleared up, let's look It has been posted by u/ThatSippyChicken the 18th 2019 oh may (by UTC time). This means it's very recent, compared to the even funnier Minion memes I share with my grandkids. Greg is surrounded by two unknown teenagers. The short-haired kid the left is pointinga finger having a speech bubble over him (This implies he's saying something.). to the right (probably at Greg) and The text on the speech bubble says "HEY, LOOK, GREG HAS A", and then "EMBROIDERED BOOKBAG" below, but distorted. Greg reacts with saying "ACTUALLY, ITS ONLY A PURSE!" followed by blank space ow. The last kid with acne has a nearly empty speech bubble, only saying "E". Diary of a Wimpy Kid artstyle. Oh, Greg is holding the purse I talked about previously in the image!If you look closely, you at the end. Everything is drawn in the typical thing I forgot to mention: ohe can even see that the word "Grea" is stitched on it- IS Okay, the description of the image is over. Now, let's get the analysing part. I examined every part of the image and compared it with other maymays from around the same time and site. But then, I couldn't believe what I found out! This maymay on r/LodedDiper falls under the category of modern internet memes. You may have heard of the word from your kids, maybe grandkids, and that's because it's a Millennial (yes, the Avocado eveh toast generation. / Generation Z movement. The concept of Memes itself is too complex, Ill explain it on a seperate page, but, to be short, Memes are funny internet maymays that require Some sort of insider knowdlege to be understandable. Memes are very special of humour, because, unlike other funny maymays, the humour of Memes ih terms always based on either relatability or absurdity. This can be shown is this image too: The incosistency of logic and font size makes the oh absurdity of this maymay visible. The "E" has a very complex background, but it can be said that it's referencing another modern Meme. This absurd humour combined with what used to be a page from a normal cartoon hovel is what makes this maymay funny. When I realized this, I had to LOLWHMWADCC (Laughing Out Loud While Hitting Manny With A Diet Coke Condom)! explain why I chose exactly this maymay symbolizes the change in youth humour. At last, I need to for explanation. That's because it new generation doesn't laugh though they based on either relatability or absurdity. While this change The at Minioh maymays anymore (even very funny., they laugh at modern memes that are dre to more complex humour can be considered a cultural step forwards, it can also be unhealthy for the kids. For example, Memes about depression and suicide, which are very popular, can make someone relating to it even depressed (The argument of these being a coping technique falls Alat here, that has been disproven). But, good or not, it's definetily more an important change in Internet, even the entirety of western culture. This Meme symbolizes the new age of humour, Meme humour. Besthany. And now, I finally explained to you what Memes are, Frank Griffin PS: If read this on r/LodedDiper, go check out the subreddit you r/ExplainItPeter! And the other way around, of course. PPS: is br ald Hehehehehehe, someone's here! No, it's not Frank Griffin (Right now he's busy explaining a Minion meme), it's not Sans Undertale (Off fighting Lugi), it's me: Peter Heffley! Who am I, you may ask? Well, I am the colleague and best buddy of the world famous Frank Griffin. Ah, now that I'm mentioning him, all the memories are flooding back. Whenever there was a cringe nae nae meme, a darn millennial or even a bruh moment, we stuck together. And after decades of friendship he eventually offered me a dream come true: A job in the Meme Explaining Laboratory! So, now I'm here explaining a few memes here and there (Frank does the over- whelming majority of them, though) and, more importantly, critically analysing his very own explanations, because nothing is perfect! (Except for stepping on a crunchy leaf.) Unlike him, I will use Arial instead of the official Wimpy Kid font, simply because this is more readable. Otherwise, my critique is pretty much the same. So, get ready for some high IQ text reading, because we're going to enter the Meme world once again! Alright, we finally got through the long introduction I now have several ways to begin the main part, but I'm honestly not sure where to. I could start with citing his first line, analysing his formatting or referenzing the pipe strip video. But I will do none of these things. Instead, I will dig straight to the core of his explanations, and praise or critique anything in the process. Ergo, I'll start with the nature of his text itself. It's, compared to the usual Internet posts, very text-heavy. However this isn't a big surprise since both of us know how much Frank can dive into a subject. He puts a photo of himself in the top left corner below the image he's analyzing, and his text is written solely in the "WimpyKid" font, which already is my first problem. It may have been suitable if it was used in a short paragraph or two, but using it in an entire explanation is a major design flaw. However, this is not the only problem I have with Frank's text, (Don't take it personally, bucko) which brings me to analyzing the content of his explanation, and his ultimate message near the bottom end. Okay, I'll be honest. I don't like the message. His main part of the analysis may have been on the better side, in comparision to his other posts, but this time Frank really shot himself in his cock and balls this time. Saying that "Meme humour is overtaking regular humour" is overly dramatizising and simply putting in a wrong light what is really going on inside the meme creation scene. Frank, I'm sorry to tell it to ya, but a near-sudden cultural shift in humour is not going to happen, pal. What is really happening is that younger kids like to distance themselves from older generations as much as possible, may it be via clothing, music politics or, in this case, humour. Most teenagers eventually just grow out of their phase of shutting themselves off of older people. That eventually happens either when they marry, or when they enter their 30's. I am not saying that a and progressing culture is bad, however it's a lie to say those teens will keep their culture with them as they grow old. Just take hippies, as am example Some of you may remember them promoting peace and other values, and generally having a very liberal mindset. Now, who were those hippies? This answer may be a suprise to you, but those hippies were (mostly) boomers. Yup, the same generation that is nowadays known for being notoriously authoritarian and close-minded. People can change. And those who laugh about their memes now will probably change too, once they reach a certain age. The only thing in favor of Frank's argument is the existence of the Internet. Although that argument isn't that much of a punch when considering the very likely possibility that another game changing form of media will probably pop up within the next few decades. Memes will simply not prevail, or they will be warped beyond recognition (Not as in becoming more abstract and surreal (which is also a very widely spread belief about Memes)), by having different unwritten rules for Memes. If a time traveler from 2011 saw a changing modern meme page from today, they wouldn't think those memes would be funny or should even be called memes. What we call memes now, will be forgotten in the future. To cut it short, memes will not have a major effect on culture, nor will they even be remembered in 20+ years. One more thing. Frank stated that Greg Heffley was saying "Actually, it's only a purse!" in the Meme he explained. That is incorrect, though. Greg says "Actually, it's a purse!" without the "only". I think it's highly unprofessional that he tries to deeply analyze a meme and then doesn't even quote the text correctly. It makes me feel like Frank is just doing this for the fame and money by focussing on dramaticising viewpoints instead of being scientifically accurate. This is probably the true reason Bethany left him and took the kids. Not because she "loved Chad more instead of a nice man like me", as Frank said, but because she can't stand him becoming increasingly narcissistic and delusional about his fame anymore. It's actually sickening me how he is cutting of more and more of his friends and family and doesn't even care for fans either. I know I will probably be fired by Frank for publishing this, but the problem is only turning bigger and bigger with no sight of him changing his ways. Frank should honestly take a break from his job and go visit his kids again. After all, he never bothered to see them once Bethany "took them away" from him. He can visit his children anytime he wants to, but he rather likes to work on another money milking machine again (which is ironically the reason the kids chose Bethany.) Alright, it's time to end this text. Looking back at it, it seems like it's 1/3 explanation, 1/3 critique and 1/3 open letter. I planned this to just be an extension of Frank's analysis and another lie about how we are getting along just fine, but now it turned into a half-agressive rant about him. But I just had to vent my frustations about my buddy. I know he hasa heart somewhere down below his thick skull, but for now it's simply how I and everyone else close to him perceive Frank. Hopefully he'll try to change. Peter Heffley PS: Frank, if you are reading this, please don't fire me for writing this. Try to reflect instead. PPS: Haha PP lol PPPS: I just went to r/Expla memes made me LOLWHMWADCCAEFP nltPeter, and all of the (Laughing Out Loud While Hitting Manny With A Diet Coke Condom And Eating Frank's Penis) out loud! Go visit that subreddit! Thanks for the explanation, Peter Heffley!

#funny #lol #humor #memes #meme #memehumor #dank memes #funny pics #rolf #lmao #A Dream #Bad #and Bru

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