#i literally like that series and play it a lot but its not an unfair thing

[idlerin]

nonsense — bonus: you said you liked the way i spoke

note: this is set before they confessed and everything :> jus a short lil drabble

“and you know what he said?” oikawa grasps your shoulders, eyes wide and serious as if he was about to tell you the juiciest tea to ever exist in the whole wide world.

you had just finished tutoring takeru when oikawa stopped you on your way out the door and trapped you to sit with him on the couch.

“no i don’t, oikawa-san," you say monotonously.

“he had the audacity to tell the teacher it’s unfair that i get high grades even though i’m excused a lot because of my shoots and volleyball," oikawa lets go of your shoulders to dramatically lean back on the couch.

“don’t you get almost perfect test scores?” you raise your brows, remembering that oikawa was a top student at your previous school, you could only assume that he's still the same in high school.

“exactly!” he says exasperatedly.

“that’s annoying," you agree.

“i know.”

“well, you know you’re better than that guy, so it’s alright," you shrug.

“you think i’m great?” oikawa smirks.

“that’s not what i said," you fiddle with your fingers, starting to get nervous. you do not still have a crush on him.

“it’s what you’re practically saying," oikawa’s annoying smirk is still in place

“don’t twist my words!" you whine.

“haha you really are adorable [name]-chan~” he raises an arm and ruffles your head.

“get away from me!” you push his hand away.

“you know you enjoy my attention~” oikawa teases more, to show your extra annoyance, you pinch his hand.

you narrow your eyes at him before standing up, “don’t talk to me.”

“oh come on don’t be like that [name]-chan, you know you secretly like that we have these conversations," oikawa tales a hold of your wrist to pull you back down.

you scowl down at him while he keeps on his stupid smile, “i do not!”

“so you won’t listen the next time i rant to you?” oikawa makes a pretend frown on his face, he pairs it with puppy dog eyes that honestly disgusts you with how you find it cute on him.

“i.. i uhm," you stutter at the sight of him, you really were weak to his charms, "of course i’d listen,” you mumble, turning away, “you have a nice voice, so it’s tolerable,” you pull on your hand that was still in his and cross your arms.

oikawa grins wide, biting his lower lip, ears a little red, “i knew you really liked me!”

“that’s not what i’m saying!—”

series masterlist | chapter one

nonsense ! an oikawa tooru social media au

synopsis. you were oikawa tooru’s #1 fan, until you became his #1 hater. you hated him so much you went viral on twitter (accidentally) and literally became known as “the oikawa tooru hater”, doesn’t help that he keeps fueling the fire by subtweeting you. everyone is all in for this new drama. what isn’t known to the public, is that this particular drama’s been on hold for three years (him being your ex and all).

a/n — play i wish you would by ts~~ like seriously the song is stuck in my head cuz it reminded me of nonsense like “you’re thinking that i hate you now” “i wish you would come back” “i wish you were right here right now” "wish i never hung up the phone like i did" i wanna kms anw ch29 is on its way its just long and has writing and u guys know im a slow writer!!

#she likes the way he talks #haikyuu #haikyuu x reader #haikyuu smau #haikyuu fluff #oikawa tooru x reader #hq x reader #hq #oikawa tooru #— nonsense.

[hauntedmoors]

okay. I had this typed out days ago but why not post it etc but it was so baffling to witness the multiple posts asking the show to make it clear that the seanchan are despicable people. well. I disagree that the show hasn’t done enough to convey the horror of the seanchan occupation and brutality - uno being murdered brutally conveyed that the seanchan were horrible people effectively. the seanchan tearing away young women who can channel from their families conveyed that effectively. egwene being collared and elayne describing them as ‘invaders’ was done specifically for the audience’s benefit. the idea that imperialism and invasion is always tied to more physical, visceral displays of violence is flawed (although the seanchan certainly have plenty to show for it in that department) and ignores the way empires launched programs to tame the minds and spirits of their subjected populaces besides merely establishing control over their bodies (the oaths of allegiance the seanchan extract, for example) - be it through martial rule or through the suppression of indigenous cultures; this notion also downplays the role of the insidious methods employed by imperial powers to establish control i.e. the suffocating influences of neocolonialism and the historical role that christianity, with its missionaries and ruling principles of benevolence and paternalism, played when it was wielded as a tool by empires in their pursuit to establish and expand their territories. I somehow see this being done with the books too which is absolutely baffling?? seanchan settler colonialism intentionally riffing off of the american expansion into native territory doesn’t deserve to be downplayed in your examinations of the story. the idea of ‘manifest destiny’ manufactured to justify colonialism has a blatant analogue in the text by way of the hailene and the prophecies, omens and superstitions that encourage saviourist narratives about the empire and are geared towards ensuring its preservation. the series has multiple narratives geared towards freeing and rehabilitating the damane who’re enslaved. tldr, the books are very critical of the seanchan and the show has (so far, given the material it’s adapting i.e. tgh) done very well in carrying over that criticism! jordan’s books also do a lot of subtextual work and I think it’s unfair to dismiss it simply because they’re less obvious.

also re: I don’t really Understand the multiple posts citing that line by the innkeeper in atuan’s mill and conjecturing that only egwene’s time in captivity will enable show onlys to truly internalise how awful the seanchan empire is, tbh. the ordinary layperson living in a village far from a governments’s base of rule is likely bound to be unaffected, especially if he’s a selfish man more concerned about his own bodily wellbeing. I don’t even think the line was meant to be taken literally - it mostly served to convey the populace’s general dislike of the whitecloaks, and especially so the branch of questioners who’re known to torture captives to extract confessions from them.

#I promised myself I would not make a post about this but some of the book criticisms I also see are so. #the idea that the gags on the damane make the horror more obvious akdhskdhs those were the worst kinds of posts on this site tbh. #it’s still the most annoying costuming decision on the show for me #text #wheel of time #also if one of those people who made those posts is reading this. I genuinely don’t intend any malice with this post or anything.

[celestial-sapphicss]

Thai BL Favorites List Tag Game

thank you for tagging me mel @justafriend-ql & @dragonsareawesome123 & @solana-ceae !!! i always love a chance to talk about thai (mostly gmmtv) bl skksksksksks

favourite bl:

surprise surprise 0 points for guessing its *drumroll* bad buddy!!!!!! of course it is i don't even have to talk about it more

favourite pairing:

TinnGun - they took me by surprise i love them so much its unreal!!!!!

most underrated actor:

listen! book kasidet is so freaking underrated! like after seeing him play gun in abaab, im a lifelong fan! and also SEA!!!! vice versa & 55:15 my beloved 💘

favourite character:

i will forever and always be biased to pran like no character will ever even come close to an extent that it's unfair to include him in this listing i feel because no one even stands a chance lmao

favourite side character:

tiwson!!!! and literally every mark pakin character skskskks

favourite scene:

it's like suddenly every show ever vanished from my mind but like every time tan acted a little cheekily with dr. bun, it was a good scene lmao ALSO this scene below y'all it was a moment (I'm so sad tul decided to leave full time acting 😓)

favourite line:

lives were changed when pran told off his mom and said:

most anticipated bl and why:

yeah no I don't think any explanation is required for this one

healthiest relationship in a bl:

WinTops from Ingredients the Series! nobody did it better than them!

most toxic relationship in a bl:

there are a LOT. i didn't like how any of the pairings in LITA came about. or the second season mess that is IPYTM. and there are some obvious ones like TharnType.

guilty pleasure series:

my guilty pleasure shows are those which i can play easily without having to open my laptop or mobile aka YouTube/Netflix so (Still) 2gether lmao

bonus! most underrated series:

there are a lot, but i feel like we don't talk about the campy masterpiece that was YYY! like I don't remember a single plot point of the show but it altered my brain chemistry forever. also lay talay my beloved

this was the most difficult list i have made in forever thank you for tagging me mel i had so much fun 😭

tagging: @dribs-and-drabbles @grapejuicegay @i-got-the-feels @casualavocados @mantrisanu @morkofday @jyuubin @bellepark and everyone whose gifs i used here (no pressure 💘)

#tag game #thai bl

[archivalofsins]

I'll probably and still probably will get a good deal of flack for saying this even though it's not in the tag. However, the Mahiru situation truly feels like overt sexism to me still. I feel like people have a hard time understanding that even if the outcome is positive sexism can still play a part.

So here are some things that I personally find questionable. Feel free to ignore it though since the series is basically testing biases anyhow of course there would be some noticeable ones.

A. How people assume Mahiru's lover is the one who cheated and not her.

This combined with the assumptions about Kazui cheating really does just give the energy that a lot of people assume men cheat exceedingly more than women. It is true that more men than women cheat. However, according to a self-reporting study conducted it is a marginal difference of 7%. Twenty percent of men reported that they have cheated in comparison to the thirteen percent of women in a survey conducted over the course of 2010-2016.

That then literally goes on to say this-

Outside of the fact that Mahiru literally admits to cheating in the lyrics of her second fucking song and everyone graciously went oh she's referring to the murder. Despite him being on his knees begging pleading for her to tell him where she's been something also alluded to not only through lyrics but visuals. People really only went as far to go the visuals are a metaphor and that's where critcal thought ended it seems.

Because there's no way saying some shit like this shouldn't raise a few red flags-

"Unfair and stuck between in love and love."

Okay, Mahiru what do you mean by that second use of love. How are you stuck between being in love and love care to elaborate-

"This can’t go on, something’s got to give, I even love saying the words, “I love you” My emotions are out of control, that’s inconvenient? I don’t care! Tell me, oh tell me why, won’t you just accept me?"

Um- okay that explains nothing... Your emotions are out of control how, exactly? Accept what about you?

"I don’t need anyone else, as long as I have you. I could do anything as long as you smiled, I actually believed that. The happiness we tightly bound up and suffocated, is no longer here. If I could see you again, I wonder, what would I say to you and how?"

Oh, so you meant stuck between wanting to be in a state of romance and having flings. Um, don't fucking date then or have an open relationship- Oh!

"I guess we can just say that this feeling is happiness. I can’t stop feeling like there’s something missing. What do you think? I know it's not the type of question you want to be asked."

Oh-

"Giving you love to the point of pulling you down." - "The happiness we tightly bound up and suffocated, is no longer here."

This could be referring to the restrictions of a committed relationship. Since that's referred to as tying someone down, tying the knot, making things official. So, this could just as easily be referring to the difficulties or feeling of being confined that comes with having that more serious relationship but still wanting to experience more casual things.

"Stuck between in love and love."

Q.19 What was your lover like?

Shidou: She was a strong person. I'm quite careless in private, so I’ve been relying on her.

Mahiru: Overall just a kind person.

"This can’t go on, something’s got to give, I even love saying the words, “I love you”. My emotions are out of control, that’s inconvenient? I don’t care! Tell me, oh tell me why, are you not here anymore?"

Being sung as we see this image

Just to be followed with these lyrics

"Saying I love you but doing what I did, I know I have no right, crossed and covered in sin. My love, it scored an own goal, destroyed my love and me with its weight Tell me, oh tell me why, can’t I just do it right."

and this image

Mahiru literally says I know I don't have the right to say that "I love you" after what I've done and people generously went she means the murder but that's some grade a horseshit. Oh, well Gunsli how do you know that because all of these lyrics are in present tense not past and Mahiru blatantly writes this during her second trial interrogation-

Q.02 How do you feel about your victim?

Shidou: I do not know which one you are referring to.

Mahiru: I loved him.

Specifically past tense. This tells anyone immediately that her song is displaying the situation as it happened without considering the way she feels about him now. Meaning this is a conversation that occurred just like with Yuno and the "What do you want to do? Please tell me." line in Umbilical.

So, she just comes on the mic and admits to cheating but everyone just overlooked that in favor of going fuck men. Something I'm just not behind because when it comes to cheating and domestic violence the gender of the perpetrator shouldn't impact how you feel about objectively shitty behavior.

Mahiru knows what she did was wrong and says so. Despite knowing how much she loves saying, "I love you" enough to make it the title of her song she literally near the climax says she doesn't deserve to say it. To me that says a lot about how she feels regarding her own actions.

Simply put, who cheated or not doesn't matter, and it should never have any impact on if it's excusable/justifiable to take someone's life or not. People can end relationships without someone ending up dead, it's as simple as that to me. If he did cheat fucking dump him and if she cheated and he didn't dump her that's his prerogative but fucking sucks overall.

B. How people were quick to forgive Kazui believing that he cheated and that possibly led to his significant other committing suicide so it isn't murder.

Ummm big talk coming from a fandom that voted two people guilty trial one for what they suspected to be suicides. Futa for the hat girl situation and Mahiru herself for the situation with her boyfriend. Stating Futa's harassment is what led to the victim committing it, so he was responsible and that Mahiru being clingy/suffocating led her significant other to killing himself so in that sense she was also responsible.

However when it came to Kazui cheating an incredibly trust destroying and emotion shattering thing to do to someone you claim to love let alone married leading to someone taking their life- Yeah he wasn't responsible for that he's a man after all they can't control their urges that well. Plus, if he was gay there would be a lot of societal reasons why he would get married just out of convenience or to avoid stigmatization in that sense he is a victim too.

Wow, that's a nice story some have created there. However, being gay doesn't excuse murder or literally using another person that loves may love him and he under this context fully knows loves him to cover his own ass without once being honest to them about his feelings. That's literally emotional manipulation but let's not even go into that part. If driving someone to commit suicide through a relationship/communicative issue is okay here, then why wasn't it okay for the other two?

Well, the circumstances were different.

Yeah, they were a good deal of people assumed Mahiru was lying about dating at all and that Futa was the source of the worst bit of harassment that girl faced despite him downright saying other people were involved.

Kazui on the other hand came on stage singing about the curse of reuniting with someone, how that other person's heart would never change, and how if nothing changed his feelings would float away and disappear. People not only did not question the status of his relationship at all, but immediately attached the most sympathetic narrative they could to it.

Based on the appearance of one guy who is yelling at Kazui who very well could be the other woman's husband or her again because they are wearing very similar clothes.

Yuno, someone we can deduce through context clues slept with somebody else's husband or significant other. Along with directly bringing up how adultery is sensationalized in her very first trial interrogation says this,

Q.18 Which of the other prisoners is most like you?

Haruka: Nobody. They’re all amazing people.

Yuno: Kazui without a doubt.

Second issue if Kazui was fucking married why is his voice line a love confession?! Is he confessing that he loves his wife to his wife? Is his confession to the woman at the bar,

"Er, so…… could you listen to what I say without laughing? I……Hinako, I love you more than anything. I'm so dumb...why did I have to dream?"

Who he's cheating on his wife with if the cheating thing is true?

Hell, to take it a step further- Haruka stole his mother's necklace why didn't anyone just go oh Kazui stole his victims wedding ring at any point? Because he could have done that just because he has a ring doesn't mean he's married or it's his.

As much as I like Kazui he was given a great deal of the benefit of the doubt and leniency. Something I am inclined to believe is because he's conventionally attractive since literally every adult who was voted guilty during trial had conventionally undesirable traits.

I'm bringing him up to go why was it okay for him to cheat yet the idea of Mahiru's boyfriend cheating on her justifies him being murdered somehow. Even though in my opinion Mahiru just literally admits to cheating in her second song. She's not even really that vague about it. Plus, it would make sense if she did cheat because jumping into a committed relationship immediately after gaining some personal freedom without giving oneself time to experience more things considering her upbringing is a good way to end up cheating.

Q.05 Did you have a good relationship with your family?

Shidou: Yes. It really was a family as happy as you could dream of.

Mahiru: I think I was what they call a "sheltered girl". I'm thankful to my mom and dad, but perhaps they were a little strict.

Q.17 Tell us your dating history.

Shidou: I don't remember much but, I had one girlfriend in kindergarten, and in elementary school I had two relationships. I started going out with my wife in the 2nd year of middle school, and we've been together ever since.

Mahiru: I attended a girls middle school and a girls high school, so I didn't date anyone until I started university.

So, jumping into a committed relationship immediately may not have been the healthiest thing to do. Since a romantic relationship is a long-term commitment that comes with a myriad of restrictions especially if it's exclusive or strictly monogamous.

C. Ignoring blatant signs of domestic abuse

Regardless of the circumstance Mahiru's actions caused her partner emotional distress which she continually ignores and revels in ignoring throughout her song.

Literally singing,

"This can’t go on, something’s got to give, I even love saying the words, “I love you” My emotions are out of control, that’s inconvenient? I don’t care! Tell me, oh tell me why, won’t you just accept me?"

Then when he is displayed doing something similar her immediate response is to start forcing something in his mouth to shut him up.

Visually implied to be forcing him to eat as she sings,

"I just love you so much."

She even continually repeats throughout, I Love You-

"What you trampled is my, “This is how to be in love with you”."

Which may not only be referring to the audience but him as well and directly after this visual we're back to the merry go round and the next time we see him he's hanging as she keeps singing.

"Mon-mon-monstrously in love, in love! Mon-mon-monstrous, cuz I love you so much! Mon-mon-monstrously in love, in love. A monstrous dilemm... “DIE”."

Die is in quotation marks here something used to indicate what characters within the series have said at a point. We see this done throughout all the songs and these appear to be snippets of conversations or things they said to or around their victims or regarding their crimes.

In a creative way of going, this is a direct quote not an artistic retelling like the rest of the song.

There are several in I Love you.

“See you next week?” , “This is how to be in love with you” , “I love you”, and "DIE".

In This Is How To Be In Love With You there are three.

"I'm ok", “Good Morning!”, "ok".

So, at one point she told him to die, and literally used the English word for it. This means she probably wanted him to die for one reason or another that we don't know yet.

Overall, I'm not saying all this to be like oh yeah Mahiru should be super Guilty just pointing out something that's been annoying me lately. That's why I'm not really tagging this.

[breadvidence]

'72 part II in detail, part 1. My overall feelings are still "hmmm", but now they are "hmmm" backed with line-by-line film analysis. I'd emphasize that this adaptation accomplishes a lot that's interesting and fresh, and you can dig in to it critically in a way that would collapse a film like '52 or '98. Ultimately it fails for me as a whole, but not without me being glad to have the pieces in hand that are good.

Julien Verdier plays the best Mabeuf, which—well—just because the competition isn't brisk doesn't mean you didn't win it, right? We open part II with a little speech of his that if I'm not mistaken (correct me if I'm wrong!) does not come from the Brick, but is a bit of freewheeling on the adaptation's part. Given the placement, it seems significant, and the temptation to boil it down into some straightforward political sentiment is strong, given the series' overall sense of politicalness. Eventually this man's degradation (his priceless books being made cheap by the necessity of their sale to literal goods) makes him a revolutionary of sorts, if a very wobbly and incoherent one—some counterpoint, a complication, maybe, to the fact that poverty in this story otherwise leads to crime? Not sure.

Thénardier continues to have far more status in '72 than in the Brick or other adaptations. The musical master of the house wishes. You see, the narrator takes us on a breakneck adaptation of III.VII: we open with III.VII.I "Il y a sous la construction sociale, cette merveille compliquée d'une masure—" and skip mid-breath to III.VII.II "—et il y aura, tant que l'ignorance ne sera pas dissipée, la grande caverne du mal," it is a charge through a very dense section of novel, and these are as far as I can be fucked to pick out all direct quotes until we get to the very end: "Avoir faim, avoir soif, c'est le point de départ; être—" Well, in the novel, Satan. In '72? "—Thénardier, c'est l'arrivée." The camera zooms in on Alain Mottet's best quivery stare; his beard is very bad. I am of several minds: on the one hand, if you don't know the original sentence culminates in Satan, you wouldn't think it's odd to find Thénardier, and it's perfectly possible the script writer was only thinking, I've got these badass lines but I really need my tv series to be a little more concrete than Hugolian, and Alain Mottet is more concrete than the Father of Lies. On the other hand: perhaps they're saying that the original text sees the outcome of all this to be the Catholic concept that is Satan, but they see it to be the concrete harmful/harmed individual human. Or, on a foot: '72 Thénardier is the fucking Devil. Whatever the case may be, in the Brick Thénardier does not even appear in III.VII—Hugo is talking about Patron Minette, and he's not a member. Given Thénardier's importance to this series, I don't mind this change at all.

After this really significant and interesting alteration to its source text '72 proceeds to decide Brujon is now a fifth main player in PM. lol, ok.

Nicole Jamet looks stoned off her gourd this entire series, with an expressive range from numbly dull to a ghastly blank smile. I hunted down clips of her in La piovra to see if this is her acting style overall, and while she's a little flat there as well, it's more in the line of being afraid to show a wrinkle and less whatever's happening in Les Misérables. Since it's paired with Georges Géret's Valiumjean I derive this is a directorial choice. It's our luck she only appears in, generously, 20 minutes of part II. I don't think I've ever wanted less Cosette in a LM adaptation, but she's such an unpleasant take on the character that I'd rather simply not.

I re-read IV.V.VI to see whether my harsh judgment of Nicole Jamet's performance in this scene was unfair—maybe Hugo also described Cosette as baked, I've been wrong before, and I won't blame an adaptation for fidelity. But, nah. Jamet more or less stands and stares, a little head shake here, a little lips parting there. In the novel, while we aren't given as much of Cosette's interiority as Marius' (thanks, Hugo) and we don't hear her voice at all as much (THANKS, Hugo), we see her first caught between two impulses: "Cosette, though ready to swoon, uttered no cry. She retreated slowly, for she felt herself attracted." and then a point of drama, "And she sank down as though on the point of death." I'm not saying you have to be howling and flailing your way through it, but c'mon, there's life to be found in this moment, and Jamet is a stiff. There is the issue that Marius monologues and we have zero idea in the novel of Cosette's actions during this time—a challenge, yes; one the film doesn't meet.

Now I'm being a petty bitch, but I don't like that they changed the exchange from "Vous m'aimez donc?" "Tais-toi! tu le sais!" to "Et vous, est-ce que vous m'aimez?" "Je t'aime." Please, let someone tell Marius "tais-toi". (To be clear, I think it unfair to expect an adaptation to completely follow the source text. but. y'know. If you're going to have this many direct quotes, maybe don't put in bland substitutions where your deeply invested viewership will notice them.)

Great adaptation of Gavroche and the mômes in this. The whole exchange around "monsieur, pourquoi vous avez pas un chat?" "j'en avais un, mais les souris l'ont mangé" kills me, it hits the pitch perfectly of the combined humor and horror of the situation.

In continued "Thénardier is the main character of '72" news, the scene in which he's saved from the top of the wall takes about four minutes—about a minute and a half more screentime than Marius and Cosette's first love confession. Not to get into the nitty-gritty of what this series cares about, or anything.

By the by, Claquesous rather than Montparnasse comes to fetch Gavroche, a small change that I suppose is irrelevant overall when the series doesn't have the time to draw the Montparnasse-as-future-Gavroche connection anyway, but which falls into this pattern '72 has of odd small alterations to Patron Minette.

Hermine Karagheuz's performance is uneven overall, in my opinion, but I could watch on a loop as she replies to Thénardier's "Faut bien qu'on vive, tout de même" with a raspy "Crevez". Having driven off the would-be thieves, she takes a few shuddering breaths, she collapses back against the gates with a gagging exhalation, she looks like she's going to be sick. Is it dramatic? Hell, yes. I'm into it.

We cut to Jamet, who cannot even fake weep.

I feel awkward that I've got nothing meaningful to say as we swing into revolution mode even though this is an essential pivot point in the series. Shrug emoji.

I have a very bad ear for French but one of the terms I can pick out reliably is now "mouchard". Thanks, Javert. I got nothin' deep to say still as he is uncovered at the barricade, but I did laugh when the revolutionaries steal his hat in the process of searching him. Did they think he was hiding something up there? Better check in his whiskers next.

This adaptation really suffers from the lack of Le Cabuc.

On my initial watch of this series the poetry recital wrecked my shit, here we have one man say "Do you remember our sweet life, when we were so young, we two, and we had in our hearts no other desire than to be well-dressed, and to be in love," another responds "We... We lived hidden away"———the combination of the stutter and the furtiveness, y'all, I did a double take, I knew fandom would've alerted me if there was explicit homosexuality in this, and still I had a moment when I thought I saw the ripples in a waving rainbow flag.

They pull directly from Hugo's aside about civil war in IV.XIII.III for Enjolras' speech—I'm not sure how often '72 actually puts narration into characters' mouths rather than into the narrator's, now that I think about it (would have to re-rewatch which isn't going to happen anytime soon). This is interesting to me; we have here a character who makes several speeches, all pertinent to the politics of revolution, and yet instead the show decides to have him recite—a passage which occurs in the inglorious context of Marius justifying to himself that he is fine to shed French blood when his father shed that of foreigners.

I'll come back for the final thirty minutes another time—that's enough for now.

#les misérables 1972 #les mis

[aihoshiino]

your analysis are really interesting and are a joy to read! i wanted to ask about your thoughts on the tokyo blade arc of the manga because its really interesting and gives a lot of characters more depth

thank u so much anon! 🥺 I feel like I've said this in like every ask but it really does surprise and delight me how many people vibe with my longform takes on the series when the extent of my fandom engagement for the last few years has been talking about fate grand order in a group chat comprised of like 5 other gay people LMAO

That said, Tokyo Blade is... an arc I have mixed feelings on! It was, in fact, the arc I originally dropped the manga on back when I was first following it in 2020/2021 feeling it was poorly paced and that I wasn't able to get invested in the cast to the degree it wanted me to me. But upon revisiting the series and this arc in particular with fresh eyes, I think I was being pretty unfair to it - though I do stand by my feeling of the pacing being not the best at least when reading it week to week. It's one of those arcs that definitely works better when you can take it all in at once as opposed to having it doled out over what felt like an agonizingly slow 30+ weeks.

As for my current feelings... in isolation I think it's extremely strong and has some incredible moments that I am PUMPED for seeing animated in season 2 but the further we get away from it and see its long term effects on the cast (or I should say, the lack thereof) the more I feel like it ultimately adds up to less than the sum of its parts.

Not that it's a bad arc, mind! Like I said, it has some insanely strong individual moments and I think the character arcs it ends up serving are super interesting. Its commentary is compelling and I literally can't gush enough about the massive glowup Melt gets in this arc. Every time I have new friends get into the series and understandably react with derision towards him in Sweet Today I just sit there crying tears of blood like that's my fucking baby son you don't understand

I also just really appreciate that the arc is willing to slow down and just let us breathe in some of the emotional baggage the characters are all dealing with without needing to shackle it to Aqua's revenge quest. Even the side characters like the mangakas and the production staff feel like they have real, human lives beyond the ways they factor into the plot and again, it feels like there are real weight and stakes to ensuring the play's success beyond just whether or not it will help Aqua do a thing. So many people's careers (and by extension, their lives) are hanging in the balance and you feel the weight of that responsibility absolutely crushing everyone involved. It's great!

This is potentially a sillier point to add but can I also say that I really like how authentic Tokyo Blade feels as an in-universe piece of fiction LOL. Everything from the premise to the designs rings so fucking true to the exact sort of manga it's a pastiche of that I'm half expecting to hear about the Studio Bones Tokyo Blade anime adaptation announcement any day now because it feels so real to me.

On the less positive side, though... like I said, this arc is s l o w. I believe it's still Oshi no Ko's longest arc at three volumes's worth of chapters and change and it's such a change to the story's until-then relatively breezy pace that it can be really jarring when you go in not expecting it. Again, having the arc available in full to read as quick or slow as you like does a lot to alleviate this problem but if you aren't connecting with it, you're stuck with it for an incredibly long time. This also means that B-Komachi in general and Ruby in specific get completely side-lined for almost thirty entire chapters - Ruby basically vanishes during this entire arc and if you were invested in and excited about her as a character, it sucks to see her get so immediately and completely sidelined after what felt like a big triumphant step forward for her, which is a pattern that will unfortunately continue through the rest of the series.

And speaking of unfortunate patterns... Tokyo Blade is the arc where Akane starts taking steps towards becoming the version of herself I like the least lmao. I've said to friends elsewhere that short hair/LoveNow!Akane and long hair/post Tokyo Blade!Akane basically feel like completely different characters to me and while I really love and am invested in LoveNow!Akane, PTB!Akane is easily my least favourite member of the main cast for reasons that are not entirely her fault.

She doesn't quite achieve her final form in Tokyo Blade arc but the seeds of my worst future annoyances with her (lack of meaningful connection to the extended cast, largely just orbiting Aqua, the overly convenient nature of her deductions, etc) start to take root here. There are some teases of interesting ideas and I particularly enjoy the build up, development and reveal of the true nature of her rivalry with and animosity for Kana but I don't feel like these bear any long term fruit.

That's probably my biggest problem with Tokyo Blade - it feels like an arc that should massively advance the story and the arcs of all the characters associated with it. In some ways it does and we get some tasty crumbs about the central mystery but when you take a step back and really look, the broad strokes status quo of the plot and the character relationships really don't get much of a shakeup and even the things that do feel like they should lead to big changes (Akane figuring out Ai's secret, Aqua finding his half-brother, Kana getting her shine back and Akane's reaction) just kind of... don't? Or at least not in ways that are as impactful as they feel they should be.

Kana and Akane's rivalry is probably the worst example of this. It's built up across the whole arc to the point of their on-stage confrontation basically being the arc's climactic high point. Kana finally stepping into the spotlight again and outshining Akane so beautifully really feels like it should have served as a gigantic change to their dynamic but not only have they barely interacted in any meaningful capacity since it happened, but the times they have it's just been the same old shit of hostility and sniping at each other with the tiny flavour difference of "oh gosh, akane is just such a tsundere tee hee <3". It just doesn't feel like the meaningful, impactful change it should have been based on how hard the end of that arc made me FEEL it.

I've said elsewhere before that a lot of the characters feel sort of like they've been stuck in holding patterns since Tokyo Blade and I'm hoping that in the Movie arc, with the cast being crunched together into a single, extremely emotionally taxing and relevant project, it might shake a bit of life back into the proceedings, especially given that Aka has said that he thinks the manga's ending is probably within sight - though that could be anything from fifty to a hundred more chapters depending on what he's got planned so who knows how things might shake out.

I do ultimately feel more positively about the arc than negative, though! I feel like I rambled a lot more about the things I dislike here than the things I enjoyed but that's because I feel like the arc's strengths speak for themselves while the stuff I don't like as much needed a bit more explaining. At the end of the day, I think Tokyo Blade is a really solid arc that I'm beyond excited to see animated - it has one of my favourite scenes in the whole manga (given that I am an Ai enjoyer you can uh, probably guess which one it is) and I'm really hopeful that we might get a sneaky peek at a certain someone if season 2 ends at the point I suspect it might...

#oshi no ko #oshi no posting #onk spoilers #sorry to akane enjoyers that i never have anything nice to say about her i promise i am not a hater lMDKFJSKDND

[immaturityofthomasastruc]

I had this dream about Miraculous ladybug getting a Nintendo game Kirby super star ultra style with the main 5 heroes has the playable characters and the original villains being a secret character you can’t play outside of he’s game mode

And the game was supposed to be the typical cartoon game about using bunch of Akumas and hawkmoth has bosses being just this atemporal history everyone would forget in a week (or at least the first game mode) but then there was the rest of the game which send hawkmoth to the trash replacing him with new villains which I can’t remember exactly but they were better written and had this Spider-Man villain level of connection with the heroes and actually developed them (in just three cutscenes but was better than most of the shows writing for just making sense) especially the main villain which I can only describe has the opposite of everything the agreste’s are which means a well written villain with sadistic nature yet human and smart man who always makes he’s promises which has good human relationships with he’s only relative and actually values he’s soldiers life’s and actually causes unfixable damage to Paris and actually develops Adrien by punching the Bratiness out of him

And actually make time to explain he’s back story which doesn’t justify but explains he’s actions making him a victim but not excusing he’s sins and why getting defeated by the cat made him so mad to the point it brings to the secret final boss which I can’t remember anything but being just a copy of the galacta knight fights of Kirby but with Magolor mechanics (and for not Kirby fans it means a boss who forces the player to use all they’ve learned mixed in tactics and mechanics with a extremely aggressive AI with some attacks able to destroy your life bar in three attacks and break through most shields like paper being very hard but not unfair, which means a dark souls boss fight)

And then it devolves into the game characters getting very popular,chad game and virgin series memes,lots of fanart,fanfics,a second golden age for miraculous and ending with a fight between the game director and astruc which astruc loses and literally nothing happens until astruc retired from the show and they decided to make a adaption of the game history in a kind of soft reboot and now ladybug ends up in a similar place to sonic (in the adaptation thing) there’s 20 different versions of the character with unique characters for each and some wildly different but the writing while varies from adaptation from adaptation yet all having something good and worth its existence,making miraculous one of those franchises which isn’t has big has the sponge,mouse or plumber but still big enough to last through the years has a Icon with good and bads

And then I wake up and saw astruc having a war in Twitter with a Spanish YouTuber for a meme about encanto which devolved into hacking and some green goblin memes,don’t ask how and yes this last part is real and something you should check out,it already has some time but I think Is worth your time

I actually think there’s a Miraculous Ladybug video game coming out this fall.

I’m going to have to talk about this in a few months, aren’t I?

#immaturity of thomas astruc #iota #miraculous ladybug

[frogs-in3-hills]

dgs case 2 thoughts babeyyy. oops it's long this time

sooo no trial this case!! very interesting!! personally it felt like things got a little boring quite often, maybe because there were so few areas to explore? and i think the pacing was, much like the first case, a little sluggish at times. however i still think it felt wayy better than the aai games, which also had no trials. i would love to have seen a version of aai more like this case, with "argument" portions removed and the logic system more similar to the dance of deduction. overall i am really glad they let the story do what it needed to do instead of trying to squeeze a trial in there, it would have felt really forced considering the setting

i am sooooo obsessed with the dance of deduction by the way,, i think out of all the unique investigative functions throughout the series (magatama, perceive, mood matrix, etc) this might be my favorite. the conceit of it is so creative with ryuunosuke having to course correct using his observation skills, and it actually makes me appreciate sholmes' presence a lot more since it offers a lovely bit of insight into his character: you can kind of see where he's going with everything, but it's his vivid imagination, not stupidity, that leads him to get details wrong-- and those details cause his deductions to spiral out of control and miss the mark. he's so creative, but he doesn't even stop to think that the world might not operate with that same level of creativity. i just think that is so charming wtf. and while it does seem a little too easy i imagine it will get more difficult later, and mechanically i think the visuals really spice things up and i love seeing them take full advantage of the 3d models. i think its a really excellently designed system

speaking of taking advantage of 3d models can i just say i love how the settings are built and how the characters take up that space??? because i looovve the way it creates a more dynamic space and feels more like the characters exist in their environment, while still keeping true to the visual novel style. all that is to say i'm so impressed by the actual game design here and i'm really excited to continue playing through it

anyways i guess i should like. talk about the plot. i guess. hi this case was like super fucked up, but like, in a very unique way?? genuinely, the conclusion to this case felt more like a danganronpa trial than it did an ace attorney case. and the fact that this random 15 yo kid accidentally killed this guy for NO reason?? that's heartbreaking dude, it makes me wonder a lot about what asougi's true goal was and how it relates to the concept of revenge and closure. bc what dgs is telling us with this case is that the truth isn't necessarily all that rewarding, right? knowing who killed asougi doesn't make me or ryuunosuke or susato feel better, and knowing he wasn't planning to reveal pavlova's identity makes her feel worse. even before that, learning that he literally just broke his neck due to an unlucky fall only invites this keen sense of unfairness. there's no closure or revenge or schadenfreude, just a little girl who made a really horrible, but ultimately sympathetic mistake.

i said last post that i felt asougi might be one of those seeking revenge types, or something like that, what with his connection to family honor as well as his obvious ambition. so i can't help but wonder if, when we finally figure out what it was that asougi needed to do in london, ryuunosuke has to face a choice: is he really going to continue his friend's legacy? after all, he's the one holding the sword now, which isn't just symbolic of a man's soul or his honor or whatever, it's a weapon. why did asougi really want to bring something like that so badly?

anyways aaaaaug susato. shes great i love her. no crazy thoughts abt her yet but i love her

anyways i think thats about all i wanted to say there, i liked this case a lot and i'm really excited to keep playing ^_^ semester doesn't start back up for a few more weeks so i'll probably have plenty of time to do so

#dgs liveblogging #sully is typing #dgs spoilers #tgaa spoilers #dgs #aa

[sheikah-simp]

So Exile//Vilify is complete, what comes next?

(The following is a really long post both on my thoughts on the end of the novel and what it means to me personally, as well as my plans looking into the future and where you’ll be able to find me from here.)

First of all, I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for reading and coming to the end of this fic. It was a monster of a project and I’m both sad and relieved to see it come to an end. It started out just as an idea that would not leave my mind, inspired by a song I somehow came to associate with him, playing on repeat over and over again the same way I pictured him brooding over his fate and exile.

Images of him staring out over the canyon and thinking on the castle, a place he might have once loved and lived in, as he watched the king raise armies and the Divine Beasts that would only serve to seal his doom. How Astor, knowing this, simply watched it all happen, beholden to his own part in the prophecy, destined to take his part against him, like something on a giant chess board the two of them were forced to play out.

Ever since December of 2020, I have wanted to do that picture of him justice, and while the story evolved to put much less focus on the mental chessboard between Astor the king - the makers and defiers of prophecy - I found that truly a lot of set-up and explanation was needed in order to build a world in which Astor would inhabit, love, and be doomed to destroy. A man who is destined to have everything stripped away from him in the name of Ganon must have something to strip away in the first place.

It also started from a point of observation for me, something about the world in BOTW and the Legend of Zelda franchise as a whole I had been mulling over long before we met Astor. And that is, in their world: it seems like there is no free will. Zelda must awaken her power despite her own desire to focus on Sheikah tech, Link is chosen by the King, and then the sword, and simply must fight because he is destined to be a hero, and that is what heroes do. There is so much focus on fate and prophecy in the LOZ series as a whole, and the more you think about it, if prophecies are always meant to be true, and some people have no choice in being heroes, others must then have no choice in being villains. People in prophecies are “chosen,” they do not choose, and even on a meta level, as this is a video game franchise, the player is literally controlling every aspect of the character and their movements. Their actions are not their own. They are being puppeteered.

I played through BOTW the first time and progressively thought about how unfair it all seemed - the very same thing had happened 10,000 years ago, and how it was rearing its ugly head again. Did Rhoam, like many a tragic Greek figure, actually fulfill and exacerbate his doom by trying so desperately to work against it? These are the very same questions that plagued my mind when I began the fic, posed by Thelem at the end of the book. I use my writing to explore concepts, ask questions and discover the answers for myself through the process of writing a book. And in the almost two years I spent to write Exile//Vilify, I found myself ending with just as many questions as I had at the start, with not a single one of them answered. No knowledge gained, nothing completely worked through. The same doomed prophecy as it was at the start, and nothing anyone could do about it.

But by the end, I realized that it didn’t matter. I wrote 150k words about a life to be stripped from - a life we all knew the ending of from the beginning - and just like many of the characters kept repeating, it was about the moment. The process. Loving and fully living in each moment even if you fail, even if you know where it will end. Failure is something I fear desperately in my own life. I have great anxiety about putting so much time and effort and love into making my dreams come true, only to have them fizzle out and stripped away from me in the end. What if I fail despite how hard I try? What if I am destined to fail, what if I have no say in whether I fail or not? And while this book by no means made me overcome that fear, it did draw my attention to it, which I should have recognized from the beginning when I joked about Astor being such a failure as a villain. Unlike Astor though, I am happy I get to live in a world with free will, where even if I do fail, I can try again, and make choices on how to respond, and know my life is mine to do my own with.

Astor is not as fortunate.

I know I’m not alone when I say that I felt robbed of Astor as a villain. He seemed so interesting, to have such great potential, and yet he was hollow and near pointless in his existence. I wanted so badly to fill the gaps, to do justice to an otherwise eschewed character. I love doing that in my work - focusing on the stories that lie between, that other people may write off or ignore. My writing of this fic was an act of appreciation, in a way, or a proposal for something that could have been, something we - all of us - had the freedom to create after being given such a one-note villain who will be nothing but thrown away and forgotten in a spinoff game. It doesn’t matter, because he matters to us, and that is what makes the difference.

I’ve been told multiple times this fic has been viewed as “the bible” in our small but mighty Astor community, and I can’t tell you what this means to me. It means a lot for me to be viewed as someone who had that kind of influence on our collective idea of this character. I’m certainly not claiming to be an authority, but I’m glad my fic has come to have its place in our literature and that so many people have come to recognize and enjoy it. It’s a gen fic with no major romance about a side character in a side game, there’s no way it was ever going to reach the levels of big mainstream loz fics out there, but that doesn’t matter, because Astor matters to me, and he matters to us, and the nearly 4k hits and 150 kudos the fic has at the time of writing this - along with all the comments - are more than enough for me.

But now that the fic is over, what do we do?

I’ll admit I’m still going through the writer’s mourning period/withdrawal after finishing a book, but I can feel the recovery coming on soon. I have a few smaller ideas already on the table (along with Trouble Will Find Me), one regarding an alternate route I almost took for Astor in Exile//Vilify (more explicitly as a reincarnation of Ganon’s seer). That would be a very small one-shot fic. I do still have Stories from Exile for you to read and will occasionally update (have a lot of ideas still on my list there). However, that said, these are no longer my top priority in the same way Exile//Vilify was. Because until I started writing Exile//Vilify, I hadn’t really considered myself part of the loz community at all. I was a Pokémon writer, and I have a trilogy that I took a detour from in order to get this fic out of my mind. I’m going to set my focus on returning to that series now, although like I’ve said, I do still plan on popping into this community. I’m not going to ghost you all, I’ll still answer asks, stay active, and post every now and then. You, and this fic, have meant too much to me over the course of this journey for me to go away like that.

So please, don’t be a stranger! Your thoughts and asks and messages are always welcome. If you want to make art or other fics inspired by my worldbuilding, please do. I thought this was clear, but I’ve never explicitly stated it. You’re fully welcome to use my ideas as long as I get a shoutout - mostly just because I also want to see it :). I worked too hard on this for too long for other people not to use it for ideas. Please do. Show me your art. Show me your things. I want to love them.

So where can you find me now? Here on this blog, of course, although tumblr seems to have not necessarily “shadowbanned,” but blocked some of its functionality after the ios ban. So if you’re not checking here, you can reach me on my main @silverjirachi.

If you are interested in my pokemon series (focusing on the hoenn region and hardenshipping, Archie and Maxie) you can follow @the-dead-sea-trilogy and @hoenn-pride, my pokemon side blogs, the first of course for my fic related things and the other for general pokemon things.

And of course, you can still find the rest of my work by browsing my author page on AO3. I’ve posted WIP wednesdays and previews of my coming fics there.

Also-

In the coming weeks or a few months into the future, I may be making a special offer regarding a physical release of this book. I get all my fics hard-cover bound for my own personal collection, but I’ve already had a few people ask me about having copies of their own. Keep your eyes open for an update on when/how this will happen if you are interested. It will be a very small, one-time thing to friends and close fans as, naturally, it’s going to be a gift coming from mostly my own wallet.

I’m going to conclude by dropping a bit of music here. (Slight Exile//Vilify spoilers, so if you haven’t read the ending yet, please do). But, as you might have figured out by the ending, Thelem is somewhat of a narrator character. He was my way to ask questions of the fic - the questions he asks at the end - and acted as a guardian angel of sorts of the book. He is my representation of my love for the story, and of the story of Astor as a whole. It was very, very early on in my writing process when I realized what would have to happen to him by the end, and I cried and was frustrated about it when I realized, but somehow that made me grow to appreciate and love him even more, strengthening his role in the novel as a whole. There was one song by The National - who also wrote the song Exile Vilify (The National, weirdly, has inspired all my fics thus far) that I came across around this same time that somehow I came to associate with Thelem.

The lyrics, though indirect, speak to me of a man resigned to yet content with his place in life, and how that place is flooded with this melancholy sort of love informed by the pain of the reality around him. This is in such stark contrast to the way we see Astor throughout his life - who knows no peace with the weight of prophecy that weighs over his head. I kept turning the lyrics, “Sorry I hurt you, but they say love is a virtue, don’t they?” over in my mind, like this man knew how things would end and let it happen anyway - out of love. He knows what he has to do is painful, but he does it because love - devotion - is a virtuous thing that is not always happy. And so as much as the song Exile Vilify is the namesake and first inspiration for the fic, Sea of Love has been its secret, underlying theme. It followed shortly after, and has always informed my perspective in writing it, knowing where it all would end, and I’m glad I can finally share that with you.

Because while I thought I was writing a book about prophecy, about the inherent “fucked-up”ness of being a chosen one, in a weird way, the fic was written about, and at its heart, is about love. Love of the character, love of the process, love of the story, and the twisted, distorted love of prophecy. It’s about how all those things affected the courses each of their lives - both for better and for the worse - at the time of Astor’s demise. It’s not the ending, it’s the moments shaped by love in between. Because, as Thelem says at the end of the book - love, while painful, still lessens the fall of everything.

And so that is how I will choose to end. Once again, thank you so much for all the support, for making me feel like I was part of a community, and for reading my story of Astor to its ending. It made such a difference to me, and I’m looking forward to the next things on the horizon.

#sappy love letter is sappy and love #current mood #exile vilify #exile vilify updates #the final update #thelem #trouble will find me #sentimental author is feeling sentimental #thank you i love you all #Spotify

[muninnhuginn]

🔥🔥🔥 popular and generally liked fictional characters that you're not really fond of maybe??

It took me several days but to figure out a character, but I'd say Kaworu from Eva.

I guess the main thing is that it's just fanon importance is disproportionate more than anything? Before I'd watched the series I thought maybe he wasn't as key as Rei and Asuka and such but still played a decent role so when I realised he was literally only in one episode I felt weirdly misled. He does get a bigger role in the rebuilds at least but the thing is a lot of what I'd seen about him wasn't even rebuild related? It was og series?

I respect his role in the series (especially when the rebuilds go more explicitly in on the idea of Kaworu/Shinji paralleling Gendo's relationship with his wife) and the idea that he literally drops by, flirts, and dies, cracks me up if I think of it out of context. But I think his popularity across the fandom (and this is more than just tumblr tbh) had me expecting something much different than I got and that's kinda coloured my view of him overall. (I know it's a bit unfair of me)

Tangent here, but his role reminds me more of how Madoka as a series tends to treat its characters in terms of their story role being the most important thing and then character arcs/personalities being woven into that. Everything Kaworu does is in service of his role within the story.

But yeah basically he's one of those characters I appreciate more what he represents than who he is and if you asked me my top 10 Eva characters he wouldn't even occur to me.

#pinkie-satan #sorry for taking so long about this. I spent several days realising my tastes are incredibly normie #so most of the popular characters I also like unless it's an instance like this where I think fandom builds much more out of a character #than is there in canon #that said I do like kaworu a lot more in the rebuilds because he gets to feel a bit more real there #especially when he freaks out about the angel numbers #ask meme #thanks for asking!

[kolbisneat]

MONTHLY MEDIA: October 2022

The spookiest time of the year and I’m not talking about tax season! Here’s how I spent the month of October.

……….FILM……….

Tremors (1990) Really really great. The premise is simple enough yet I was consistently surprised by the movie’s creativity. Plenty of suspense and really great effects PLUS a gun-toting Reba McEntire. This movie really has it all.

Wayne’s World (1992) Having never seen this before, it held up surprisingly well! I’d never expect 100% of the jokes to survive 30 years but the characters and writing are really really great. That Scooby-Doo ending/call-back? Incredible. Really fun.

Forrest Gump (1994) Having never seen this before, I’m surprised by how dated it felt. I know Hanks won an award(s) for his role but it...is a different watch today than it was in ‘94. It was just so jarring at the beginning of the film, you know? And it’s interesting that a lot of the special effects that were cutting edge then are the sort you can now do with filters on your phone. Just wild progress in 30ish years. Anyway it really is about two people: one with fantastic luck and one with terrible luck, isn’t it?

Romancing the Stone (1984) Perfect casting and Danny DeVito’s style in this movie is a 10/10. Lots of fun and I can only assume the mudslide scene went on to influence the waterslides in the Goonies.

Werewolf By Night (2022) Happy to see some visual and tonal variety in the Marvel stuff. I wish this one better connected with me but it felt incomplete and I’m not sure why. Oh well. Practical effects, puppet corpse, and B&W blood were all top notch.

……….TELEVISION……….

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (Episode 1.06 to 1.08) I liked it. Maybe i’m the perfect viewer since I’ve read some of the books, liked the movies, but am not reeeeeeally all that concerned with the show’s accuracy; I just want some good television. If each season follows Sauron’s journey deceiving a group and getting them to make the rings, I’d be happy.

……….READING……….

Feet of Clay by Terry Pratchett (Page 264 of 415) A little slow reading this over the course of the month but still totally enamoured with the Discworld setting. Maybe it’s unfair for a series with 40+ titles but I’ve never felt more like I’m in a real and living world than when I’m reading a Pratchett novel. Truly a pleasure to read each and every entry.

Batman: Dark Victory by Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale (Complete) These two make books that are meant to be read around Halloween. I remember reading this shortly after Loeb and Sale’s The Long Halloween and not liking it as much but now as an adult, I recognize it for being its own thing. Really great and these two create what are the epitome of comics: flashy yet considered artwork, accessible yet rich narratives, and a really beautiful merging of the two. 

Delicious in Dungeon Vol. 11 by Ryoko Kui (Complete) Still my favourite ongoing manga series and still one I will recommend until I’m blue in the face. So good. I can’t tell if the series is wrapping up, or really digging into another phase. EIther way, I’m loving it.

……….AUDIO……….

Articles of Interest (Podcast) For those who wear clothes, I can’t recommend this podcast enough. The new season is all about ivy as a style but if you want more episodic listens, go back to the previous season.

……….GAMING……….

Oz: A Fantasy Role-Playing Setting (Andrews McMeel Publishing) The group is digging deeper into the political intrigue as they explore Munchkin District and finally met the regional mayor, Hungry Tiger! No word yet if they’ll be able to meet Cowardly Lion or explore his sapphire castle. If you want more detail then you can read all about it over here!

Neverland: A Fantasy Role-Playing Setting (Andrews McMeel Publishing) The Mof1 group had just one session this month where they fought a giant stone obelisk. They literally chipped away at it for a couple hours but it was a satisfying victory!

Wizorb (Tribute Games) I don’t play video games often but a mix of fantasy and pinball for like...$5 sounded perfect to me. I played it a bit but I found there were too many frustrating level designs to really enjoy it. Maybe I should go back and play Kirby’s Pinball Land on my Gameboy.

And that’s it! As always, let me know if you have any recommendations and see you next month!

#Monthly Media #Kolbisneat #Andrew Kolb

[nakedmonkey]

i feel like a lot of people here are in denial that JPL could fuck up so bad in season 2 because season 1 was so perfect but the reality is that this season is a mess, poorly written and its like i am watching a different series, and its hardly gonna get better cause there are only 2 episodes left after all

i am not trying to be a bitch about this i just feel like people are being too forgiving, which is common since lesbians and queer women rarely get fair and/or good representation, but i think we are way past that and they have given us enough evidence that they are not going to go the way we hoped they would, not even close

I both agree with you and understand where people are coming from when they want to give them the benefit of the doubt. I mean, it was fucking perfect, right???

I have to say that there have been more things this season that I've hated, than things I've loved. And that's very sad considering that last season every time I watched a new episode, I could not believe what an incredibly put together show I was watching.

I think it's fine that people want to believe in JPL and that there's a purpose for everything, but I also believe that people who are angry with them for certain things, are allowed to be angry or upset because...you can't deny that the quality of the show is uhhhh different lol. It's miles below the first season and I don't think that's unfair to say. I think the build-up of last season has been brushed off too easily, and that the whole thing with the email was dealt with very sloppily. I think the comedy isn't as thought out and that they have employed some played out gimmicky shit straight out of 90's sitcoms.

If I were to recommend this show to someone who's never seen it, I'd tell them to watch season one as if every little thing has a purpose and as if it all relates to really satisfying character development. And I'd tell them to watch season 2 with little investment in anything, like a sitcom where nothing that happens actually matters or has consequences. And that's fucked up lol

I don't even think, for myself anyway, it's about denial, but just like...clinging to the good parts because it just was SO. GOOD. you know? And there's traces of that still but I do agree that we shouldn't be waiting for the next episode to make sense, after literally every episode. I don't want to watch this show for cheap laughs. And that's what this season has felt like for the most part unfortunately.

The good things have been amazing, but I miss loving 95% of Hacks as opposed to like 30% now.

[subbyenbywitch]

[movie review] godzilla vs. king ghidorah (1991)

y’know what? this one is surprisingly good!

okay, kind of a weird thing for me to say about a godzilla movie considering how much i love the series as a whole.

basically, this one didn’t leave much of an impression last time–which, admittedly, i was running through a crazy marathon of watching basically all of the godzilla movies for the first time in the space of i think less than a week? i had just started getting into kaiju movies and i immediately fell in love, so there was a breathless “now, now, NOW” excitement about getting through the whole series that i don’t really regret. unfortunately as a result there were definitely a few that ended up kind of blurring together in a “yeah, that was good, what’s the next one?” kind of space. watching them on their own and only thinking about them as individual movies is just almost always gonna do them some pretty big favors.

i’ve also just never been the biggest fan of king ghidorah? i recognize his importance in the series and i think he’s often a good antagonist, he just isn’t really as much of an intrinsic draw for me in the way a lot of other kaiju are?

... a particular guy being a “draw” is a thing that gets talked about a lot in wrestling. as longtime readers may have noticed, it’s hard for me to not occasionally frame these movies in wrestling terms.

and on top of that, this movie has godzilla as a baddie and mecha-king ghidorah swooping in to save the day!! i hate that!! like, despite my mostly-indifference towards him i think ghidorah works fine as a godzilla antagonist, but having him as the good guy and godzilla as the bad guy is just never really gonna work for me.

so yeah, that plus the ridiculous time-travel plot were basically the main things i remembered about the movie. and the ridiculous time-travel plot was a point in its favor for me, but not really enough on its own for me to look back on it as one of the better ones. so, yeah! i didn’t really know what to expect upon revisiting it.

plus one of my concerns before doing these rewatches was that i might be overrating the heisei era movies slightly just because of the drastic increase in production values, but honestly? that drastic increase matters.

there are some shots of godzilla’s maw in this that are gonna make anyone with even the slightest inclination towards vore blush, and the increased facial articulation lets him emote so much more without like literally having to do a jig or whatever. it just really opens up how much he can be characterized. and even though that characterization is still gonna be broad, obvious wrestling-adjacent stuff, those little details still really help. like, when godzilla’s pissed, he looks pissed. the music and dialogue don’t have to do as much heavy lifting.

the music!! this installment represents legendary composer ifukube akira’s return to the series for the first time since terror of mechagodzilla. as well as the first time he’s worked on an entry not helmed by honda ishirō!

something that really jumped out at sonic was that he added some much more sinister undertones to his cheerful military march that’s always playing whenever the toy tanks come out. it’s a really nice touch. and i really appreciate how much of his original work he brings in and reworks. there’s some really interesting uses of his original godzilla theme throughout the film. ifukube will go on to score the remainder of the films of the heisei era, save for godzilla vs. spacegodzilla, so it’ll be cool to keep an eye on how the music in the rest of them stacks up!

maybe ifukube’s music plays a large part in why this one feels like such a return to the glory days of the honda ishirō-helmed monster mashes, but i like to think that honda himself was damn proud of the titular slobberknocker between godzilla, king of the monsters and false king ghidorah. (i said what i said. wanna make something of it, ghidorah stans?)

it’s unfair to compare this fight to honda’s given the inherent advantages the technology available to this movie had (... and to be honest i was never really in love with any of their shōwa era confrontations), but this has got to be one of the best fights between these two ever. ghidorah gets in some great offense, at one point literally stomping on godzilla and later wrapping his necks around godzilla and choking him out.

… yesOKAYfine, i have some less than pure reasons for enjoying all that, but please trust me when i say that it was a legitimately good fight? and after godzilla manages to fight out of the chokehold he decides that he’s just capital-D done with ghidorah’s bullshit and beats him the fuck down before savaging him with his atomic breath, leaving him less one head and plus one massive hole in his wing.

i don’t necessarily mind the development that godzilla then goes and stomps the fuck out of sapporo en route to tokyo. especially given that it’s one of the better city destruction sequences in a series chock full of good (and occasionally but rarely bad) city destruction sequences.

the sequence of shindō waiting for godzilla in his office at the top of a skyscraper in the city he helped rebuild is… something else. there’s a moment of recognition between the two, i think one of the first times in the series that godzilla acknowledges an individual human? and shindō just nods meaningfully to godzilla before godzilla destroys him (and the building he’s in) with an atomic breath ray.

… okay this isn’t usually how the wrestling stuff is incorporated (it’s usually just kaiju-to-kaiju interactions that fall into these patterns) but that is so wrestling? i’ve seen that shit in so many retirement matches. and not even just retirement matches. i feel like something similar happened in the triple h/undertaker hell in a cell match at wrestlemania 28, and more recently in aew when hangman page was about to beat kenny omega for the aew world championship in front of the young bucks he hesitated before delivering the final buckshot lariat before receiving a nod of acknowledgement from matt jackson who was in a position to interfere in the match but chose not to.

I’M SORRY THESE MOVIES ARE MORE THAN WRESTLING BUT THEY ARE ALSO JUST NOT NOT WRESTLING. I AM NOT FORCING THIS OR MAKING THIS UP, THEY’RE JUST… THEY’RE JUST SO WRESTLING, AND I LOVE IT!

and then emmy swoops in from the future and saves the day by piloting mecha-king ghidorah like a godsdamned zord and i hate it conceptually but damned if it isn’t kinda great in execution?

i’ve barely talked about any of the human characters in this but honestly sending them off on a time-traveling adventure is a great move because the human stuff is usually at its best when it’s more about the kaiju-related Stuff they’re given To Do rather than trying to make them intrinsically interesting. the humans in a kaiju movie are basically never gonna be intrinsically interesting. i’m sorry. they have to compete with KAIJU.

perfect example, actually. miki returns for her second of six movies and she… well, she… uh… she sure is there!

but, yeah. like i said, the human characters are deployed exactly the way i’d ideally like them to be. there’s certainly other directions you can go occasionally that work, but i think this is a pretty good default position. the only approach i like even better is when the human characters are marginalized even more and doing basically nothing but reacting to what the kaiju are doing and the kaiju are onscreen for a majority of the movie.

anyway, yeah! godzilla vs. king ghidorah. right now it’s just inside of my top ten. it’s unlikely to stay there given some of the movies that are coming up later in this gradual marathon, but it’s still a lot more memorable than i remember it being. yes, i phrased it that way on purpose.

what’s that? you want me to talk about this movie’s kinda awkward politics? yeah, that makes sense given my usual approach. so, yeah. as an american, i think the thing i can say about that is

a-rank

#godzilla #godzilla vs king ghidorah #kaiju #movie review #movies #reviews #king ghidorah #thirst

[hometownrockstar]

tumblr users and tumblr anons can be so aggressive sometimes i dont get how ppl can do it, if i act too jokingly angry in my own post i feel bad abt it...

#also i wasnt saying like. animal crossing was the worst franchise ever or anything #i literally like that series and play it a lot but its not an unfair thing #to ask for more personality types and stuff after 5 games? geez.

[cardentist]

I haven’t been in the star trek fandom for very long (I’ve only just started binging the series in the last couple months), so it’s been pretty surprising to find out just how negative the perception of the reboot movies are.

this isn’t coming from the perspective of someone who grew up with the series, so it hit different for me than it might for people with a different relationship to TOS, but I thought it was genuinely clever and Respectful with how it was handled.

To quote leonard nimoy: “Well the alternative timeline gives them license to escape from canon concerns. I can’t see people saying ‘they shouldn’t do that because…’ or ‘that doesn’t tie in to such and such’ because it is a different time and place. Am I right about that?” [Link]

the entire Premise is that the original series happened as it was presented in TOS, but an event late in Spock’s life caused the creation of a parallel universe in which everyone’s lives were significantly altered through two key changes to the timeline. this gives them the freedom to Both revel in fanservice And explore different facets of the characters and their relationships. 

the destruction of vulcan Vastly impacts the characters and the plot moving forward, and its a detail that a lot of people take issue with. but the emotional impact of sarek admitting Directly to spock that there is value in his humanity, that his feelings Aren’t wrong, that sarek married amanda because he Loved her cannot be understated. you can read all of these things into sarek as he was in the original series, but he Never had an open conversation about these things with spock. this creates a Believable and Rewarding change in their relationship, where we get to see a different facet of them Because of the changes made. and that’s exactly the appeal. showing us pieces of these characters that we never got in TOS that are nevertheless undeniably Them.

everyone is Different yes, but they’re also fundamentally the same people at their core and that matters.

kirk’s personality obviously takes the biggest change, with him experiencing trauma at a young age, losing his father, and having an implied abusive father figure after that point. he has a harsher personality in reaction to harsher conditions, he’s spikier and harder to love. but he’s also still fundamentally a Good person whose willing to risk everything to help people. he still has what made kirk prime a good captain and a good friend.

I’m not gonna say that it’s the most nuanced story in the world, but it explores a version of kirk that was born from even Less fortunate circumstances than kirk prime, exploring a kirk brimming with potential who learned to bite back after he was kicked down. exploring those themes of trauma and loss, of insecurity and growth, and coming to the conclusion that Fundamentally He Is Capable Of Good isn’t a Bad thing. you don’t have to like it, but his growth into a better person is The Point. they deepened his flaws (all of which were present in a less exaggerated form in TOS) To Show That Growth.

and then of course there’s his relationship with spock.

people are totally justified in not liking that they had a rough start to their relationship, I usually don’t like to see that kind of thing in reboots or hollywood adaptations either, but the way people talk about it is just unfair.

Yes kirk and spock and bones have a very strong relationship in TOS, they also already know each other by the time the show starts. to look at them having to learn to get to know and trust each other when they first meet and say that it’s Bad because they were already full on ride or die for each other in the og series is silly. TOS kirk and spock had to meet and fall in love with each other too, it didn’t just happen over night kings.

secondly, the entire point of the first movie is that Even With reality itself being altered to pull them apart they are fundamentally compatible people that are Bound to each other. they meet each other on bad terms because of circumstances outside of their control, and yet they’re still pulled into each other’s orbit and find the other slotting into place next to them as if they always belonged. one of the first things that spock prime says in the movie is “I am and always will be your friend,” spock and jim are Meant for each other and the movie goes out of its way to explain that. which is what makes it so Weird to see people complaining about how they don’t like each other.

it’s a Different relationship, but it’s absolutely no less steeped in yearning or queer subtext. 

speaking of queer subtext ! some people are Very unhappy with spock’s relationship with uhura.

first thing I wanna say is that making the argument that they’re doing anything that the original series hasn’t done is just, completely untrue. kirk has fallen in love with more girls in the og series than he knew what to do with, leonard nimoy was a heartthrob in his time (and he deserves it, awooga) and spock reflects that ! Spock usually turns the women who come onto him down (or when he doesn’t it’s because a plant has literally altered his mind), but there are exceptions to even that. all of three of the main boys have plenty of romance subplots, it happens. if that takes the possibility of them being queer off the table for you (which it shouldn’t, m-spec people exist) then I’m sorry to say that TOS is not exempt.

now, I can understand why Specifically This Relationship could rub people the wrong way or being disappointed that they didn’t outright depict kirk and spock as having a relationship (if not in the first movie then in the following ones after they’ve gotten to know each other), but even in that context the way I’ve seen people talk about it comes off as insensitive.

no, the relationship did not come out of nowhere. they considered having spock and uhura date each other in the original show (and you can see signs of this in the earlier episodes, where uhura very obviously flirts with him and they spend time together in their down time) before they decided against it, and spock was originally going to kiss uhura until shatner insisted that he wanted to do it (because it was the first interracial kiss on tv). [Link 1, Link 2, Link 3]

nichelle nichols was asked about this exact thing (spock and uhura’s relationship in the movie), you can read the interview in full here [Link] but I’d like to highlight this paragraph in particular:

“Now, go back to my participation in Star Trek as Uhura and Leonard (Nimoy) as Spock. There was always a connection between Uhura and Spock. It was the early 60’s, so you couldn’t do what you can do now, but if you will remember, Uhura related to Spock. When she saw the captain lost in space out there in her mirror, it was Spock who consoled her when she went screaming out of her room. When Spock needed an expert to help save the ship, you remember that Uhura put something together and related back to him the famous words, “I don’t know if I can do this. I’m afraid.” And Uhura was the only one who could do a spoof on Spock. Remember the song (in “Charlie X”)? Those were the hints, as far as I’m concerned.”

the film makers looked at the fact there were Hints for uhura and spock, that they were Interested in exploring an interracial couple for the first time (both before and immediately after interracial couples won the right to legally get married) but Couldn’t because of the circumstances of the times and decided to Make that depiction. you don’t have to Like their relationship just because of that fact, but it’s Incredibly reductive to play down it’s significance as just a No Homo cop out. explicitly queer relationships are not the only progressive or culturally important relationships in fiction.

moreover, if you can’t imagine polyamory in the communist utopian future that’s on you.

moreover, this perception that this was a soulless cash grab is just, unfounded.

leonard nimoy returned to the role as spock for the first time in 16 years (since 1991) and this was Entirely because of the respect they had for nimoy, spock as a character, and the franchise as a whole. 

Lets look at some quotes from nimoy in interviews regarding the film:

Leonard Nimoy: When I first read the script (...) I immediately contacted J.J. and said “I think it is terrific…I think you guys have done a wonderful job. There is still work to be done, but it is very clear that you and your writers know what you are doing and you know how to do this movie and know what it should be about….and I am very interested.” Then as time went by we worked things out with Paramount, but the most important things were J.J. and the script. (...) I am very pleased about that and I am very comfortable with where this is going. I think the writers have done a terrific job. They have a real sense of the characters and the heart of Star Trek and what it is really all about.

(...)

TrekMovie.com: Now in the case of the new movie you have been retired from acting for years. What was it about this one that made you want to act again and go through the make up again? What was it that made you say ‘I really want to do this?’

Leonard Nimoy: You are right, this is a special situation. First it is Star Trek and so I have to pay attention. I owe that to Star Trek. Second place is that it is J.J. Abrams who I think very highly of, he is a very talented guy. Then came the script and it was very clear that I could make a contribution here. The Spock character that I am playing, the original Spock character, is essential and important to the script. So on the basis of those three elements it was easy to make the decision. So those three things: Star Trek, J.J. Abrams, and an interesting Spock role.

[Link]

Praising the cast playing younger versions of characters from the original 1960s TV series, he [Leonard Nimoy] said: “Let me take the opportunity to say this. Everybody at this table [the cast] are very, very talented and intelligent people.”

“They found their own way to bring that talent and intelligence to this movie, and I think it shows. (...)  When Karl Urban introduced himself as Leonard McCoy and shook hands with Chris Pine, I burst into tears. That performance of his is so moving, so touching and so powerful as Doctor McCoy, that I think D. Kelley would be smiling, and maybe in tears as well.”

“The makers of this film reawakened the passion in me that I had when we made the original film and series. I was put back in touch with what I cared about and liked about Star Trek, and why I enjoyed being involved with Star Trek. So, it was an easy way to come on home.”

“[In this Star Trek] they said things and showed me things, and demonstrated the sensibility that I felt very comfortable with, and I think that shows in the movie. I like it.”

[Link 1, Link 2]

again, you don’t have to like it just because leonard nimoy did, you don’t have to Agree. but the idea that nobody working on the film Cared is provably false. near everyone working on the project was already a fan of the series or were excited to be involved and did their homework. it’s genuinely a Miracle just how much of a labor of love this was, and in my opinion you can feel that through the movie itself. I’d highly recommend looking into interviews and behind the scenes details about the movies. they had a respect not just for the source material, but for leonard nimoy as a person.

there’s definitely more I Could say about this, but it’s 4 am now so I’m gonna shelve it jklfdsa

that said! it’s Fine to not like the movie, not everything is going to be suited to everyone’s taste, but the specific criticisms I’ve seen feel very off base

#star trek #kirk #spock #uhura #nichelle nichols #leonard nimoy #star trek aos #aos #star trek tos #tos #meta #long post #hello followers I write essays about star trek now

[doctorbunny]

MILGRAM theory time: Haruka!

This isn't going to go super in depth (famous last words) but there's a few heavily debated parts of Haruka's MV I want to share my findings/thoughts on because I think this is my new special interest and during my quest to get best boy's song to 1 million views I have been looking over his first MV with a fine tooth comb so to speak.

Disclaimer: As the Jackalope said in the "This is the MILGRAM" trailer, we don't necessarily know everyone's crime from just the first video, its possible that a lot of things will be re-contextualized in the second MV, however I am not psychic or bilingual and thus will only be working with content released before August 20th 2021 and translated into English (which could cause some language/cultural details to be lost on me as translation is not a 1 to 1 process).

TW for discussions of ableism, child abuse, murder and animal death. Also this is really long so sorry to all the people that follow me for non-MILGRAM stuff

Firstly, I want to start on the topic of Haruka as a person. He is disabled. He does not have 'the mind of a child' (although he is 17, making him legally a minor in both North America and Japan). He is not just 'child-like'. And he is not mentally ill (well he might be, in the sense that many disabilities like Haruka's have strong comorbidities [where a person has two or more conditions but neither directly causes the other] with anxiety, depression and PTSD, but usually when I see people talk about him 'struggling with mental illness' they go on to refer to aspects of his disability). Sometimes on tumblr, people like myself, will see canonical traits written into a character and identify them as being traits associated with our disabilities/mental illness and headcanon them as such. Sometimes this even involves saying things like "It's basically canon!" Although we understand that these characters were probably not the result of a writer intending to write a disabled person. When I say that Haruka is being written as a person with a neurodevelopmental disability, I mean the writer intended to write a disabled character and wrote them in a way that they wanted the audience to pick up on. As an autistic person (which is one of many neurodevelopmental disorders and also something I probably didn't have to specify because who else would be writing an essay about a series they got into a few days ago at 11 o'clock at night) I really like how Haruka has been written so far. There's definitely some parts of him that have been exaggerated so abled normies can pick up on his disability (namely how his MV 's main motif is really child-like drawings) but the writers also included a lot of smaller details I appreciate like how it is noted he avoids eye contact when talking to other people and is depicted as nervously pulling at his sleeves in official artwork, or how he says he finds his prison uniform (which has tight straps) 'relaxing' and when he gets nervous/tense, he will dig his fingernails into the palm of his hands. (These last two potential being examples of 'self stimulation' [aka stimming] where a person seeks out specific sensory stimuli in order to help regulate their nervous system/emotions, in this case the tight uniform creates a comforting, secure feeling [you may have heard about some people preferring to sleep under weighted blankets for this reason] and digging nails into his palms sounds uncomfortable/painful but is done in an attempt to deal with a greater sensory discomfort caused by the situation/environment) I also appreciate the depth he is written with, he struggles to communicate verbally but in his MV and interactions with other inmates is shown to have insecurities, opinions and a consistent thought process (this is all basic character stuff but unfortunately not always present in disabled characters)

Also I want to add that (in terms of what we've been shown so far) Haruka did not kill anyone because of his disability/mental illness. Disabled people are not inherently more innocent than abled people. But there is no disability/mental illness where a symptom is that you kill people and real people have to live with the stigma when you speak carelessly and suggest things like "Haruka is the kind of mentally ill person who kills people as a cry for help" 🧂 (or at the very least real people have to read BS like that and cringe). TL;DR Haruka is less child-like and more onion-like (as in, he has layers) 🧅🧅🧅

Now is the actual theory stuff, oops:

Every prisoner in MILGRAM is supposed to have committed murder in some way, obviously considering Yuno just had an abortion (which i personally do not consider an act of murder) whilst Mu literally stabbed someone to death, this definition is stretched a bit. But it is not agreed upon yet who Haruka killed/how many people he killed or why he killed.

In his MV he is shown to have chased after his dog into a forest, seen something off-screen, then beaten something into a messy pulp with a rock. Some people think the dog is a red herring and that Haruka actually killed his mother/the girl from the fireworks show/his brother. I do not agree.

First: I believe Haruka when he says he doesn't have a brother. The MV literally starts by Haruka looking in the mirror and then switching between the him now

and a really similar looking younger child who just so happened to be a key feature of his memories (I don't have the vocabulary to explain it but its like cinematic parallels that establish this is the same person at different points of their life)

Its not impossible that this is Haruka's secret younger brother, but i think its unlikely. I saw someone saying they had to be different people because Haruka looks less happy than the child but like, most 17 year olds are less visibly happy than when they were 7 (or however old the child is meant to be). Life happens.

So when Haruka is shown pushing the child around and eventually strangling him, this isn't meant to be literal (homicide or suicide), but a representation of how conflicted Haruka feels about his younger self, who may have committed the murder (if you've ever been kept awake cringing at memories of something you said in the past and wishing you could go slap some sense into your former self, this is like that but 10 times more self loathing). The lyric "I am always repeating yesterday," implies he might think about this specific past event a lot.

Moving on, its pretty well accepted that Haruka's parents were abusive in some way and Haruka internalised a lot of it: he constantly apologises, he says in his interrogation questions that his one wish come true is that "[he] want[s] to be loved" and describes in his MV how when he couldn't find the words he was looking for ("you're unfair") one of his parents "would get angry at me and say “You’re hopeless.”". He seems to know its unfair but also still says he 'loves' his family, possibly mistakenly believing it is his fault, but also showing an awareness of his situation (and how his parents might behave).

Now, the MV is stylised in a way that makes certain details unclear, but there is one clear detail showing that Haruka's dog was killed

This is the first close up of Haruka and the dog. Haruka's mother is just out of frame supervising, but they look pretty happy. Notice how the puppy has a silvery chain for a collar. Somehow, this dog gets out of the house but only Haruka is shown chasing after it (whether his mother was searching elsewhere or didn't bother following her disabled son into the forest is unclear). Either way, young Haruka is now in the forest, unsupervised.

By the time he finds the dog, there is already blood, suggesting it was initally attacked by something else.

is this a sigh of relief from a boy whose finally found his beloved pet or a jealous weakling glad that nature took its course and he is finally free of that meddling mutt stealing all his mummy's attention? /j

I think this shock at the discovery that 'there is blood on his hands' could imply that rather than literally getting the blood from his dog, Haruka has seen his already injured dog and realises that if the dog got out because of him (he is previously shown to be aware his parents seem to blame him for everything) then he is the reason his dog is injured/dying and will be blamed for it. (this scene plays over the lyrics "It’s fine, though it’s really not It’s really fine, though I don’t really think so When I tried to understand it, You’ll make that disappointed face again" suggesting he is trying to avoid making his parents disappointed and letting the family pet escape into danger is something that could make them very disappointed)

now we get into rock murder (this is present-day Haruka implying that this is either: not how the scene really played out; the writers really wanting the audience to know that this was Haruka's doing and not someone else's; or this turns into a separate incident that happened much later [although note that the red sky and blue moon is the same as when young Haruka first appears at the start])

b the corpse is beyond mangled now, but its clearly the dog because the silver chain collar is still there, to the right of the body. (circled in red for your convenience :3)

My hypothesis is: Haruka didn't set out to kill his dog, but upon finding it injured (we don't know the severity aside from bleeding and also it not being able to run away from Haruka kneeling down above it w/ a big rock so it could range from treatable with a lot of vet help to already on death's door, TBH I don't think Haruka would know the difference) He knew he'd be blamed for this; made into a villain who let the poor puppy come to harm. He panicked and killed the dog out of some idea that it would make him the victim here (since he'd be found crying over a dog corpse, which might make a parent go comfort him rather than getting angry about what could've happened to the dog). This is over the lyrics: "I cried, I screamed I wanted to be a pitied and loved weakling I was in denial, I was in denial I just had to make sure I’ve become a victim, I’ve become a victim" (there's another theory that he was also jealous of the dog, which could work here too, since this is not some calculated plot; rather its a rash decision) This ties in with his Japanese song title (translated as Weakness) which is a play on a phrase sort of like "The strong eat, the weak do not" to become "The weak are eaten by society" or "The weak eat each other to survive" [once again I am reminding everyone this is based on second hand information from the youtube comments section (from users mitchki and Alphaistic) because I do not speak Japanese] This second meaning (The weak eat each other to survive) makes sense under the reading that Haruka killed his dog in order to 'survive' making his parents disappointed for the dog escaping.

Miscellaneous points:

We don't know where Haruka's necklace came from yet, it must be a gift since the most expensive thing he's ever bought was cotton candy. The younger child in the video isn't wearing it and neither is his mother or the girl in the purple dress.

Haruka's home seems quite big, at the start we can see a large flower garden outside the window and there's a forest in walking distance. This might suggest his family is quite wealthy

Haruka probably did go to school at some point as homeschooling is not a legally accepted as an alternative to public schools in Japan. (However it is estimated that up to 5000 families homeschool, this is uncommon) A lot (about 62%) of Japanese schools apparently have a 'special needs' classes and there are about 505 schools focused on educating intellectually disabled students (although I do not know which sort Haruka would've needed as whilst intellectual and development disabilities can be comorbid they aren't the same). Now, if children aged 7-14 don't go to school, their parents receive a fine, but its possible that if Haruka's parents are wealthy, they just paid it to avoid sending him to school. (This might imply they wanted to hide him or were generally ashamed of him in some way) However high school education (for students over 14) is not legally required and its likely that even if Haruka went to elementary/middle school, he hasn't been around people his own age in at least 3 years. As he seems quite lonely and glad that the other prisoners give him attention.

I don't think Haruka's parents are divorced and if they are, its not his father who left. Haruka mentions in the 30 questions that he thinks he disappointed his father. But still includes him as part of his family ("My father and mother and me"). A theory I've seen is that his father was disappointed by his son being disabled and left. but developmental disabilities (especially in non verbal and semi verbal children like Haruka) can be diagnosed before the age of 3, so I feel it is unlikely that Haruka would bring up his father if he left that early in Haruka's life

All MILGRAM prisoners have covered one of DECO*27's older vocaloid songs (DECO*27 is a well known producer who composes the music for MILGRAM) Haruka covered 'Two Breaths Walking' (https://youtu.be/puXLfVWrz2Q) which is about a boy's first relationship and how his mother's jealousy set him up for failure as the relationship becomes toxic (specifically it has some very funny out of context lines like "Whose breasts are you sucking on now?") so yeah, mommy issues: the song (Also: some people say in the song, the boy kills the girl at the end, but this isn't literal, TBW is the first of a trilogy of songs about the same relationship, it is followed by Android girl then Two Breaths Walking: Reloaded and the story resolves with the couple reuniting as adults and getting in the relationship again, although its not necessarily as abusive as before, its still implied to be codependant ending on the line 'We should live like oxygen tanks, sucking breathe from the words each of us exhale, until our last breathe')

In all seriousness, the scene where younger Haruka is walking through the city with his mother but it keeps repeating until older Haruka pulls the younger one away might indicate an attempt to focus the happier memories of his parents (since this is also over the lyrics "Why is it breaking? Tell me why? Please don’t change If I tried and couldn’t say it, You would get angry at me and say “You’re hopeless.”" which depict a worse scene) I think both his parents are still physically present but have become far more emotionally distant, not giving him as much attention, which exacerbates his loneliness from not having any friends his own age to talk to

And if one of his parents did leave? I think its likely his mother since she is shown disappearing out of his reach after the dog-incident (inferring she got angry/disappointed in Haruka anyway) This could also be where he got his necklace from: Its something his mother used to wear (although this is 100% a guess) and that's why its shown to be important to him

This one is just me, but i didn't realise until a rewatch that when Haruka is watching the younger him and the girl running together, the background has fireworks. Haruka mentions fireworks being a key memory to him so I wonder if this was one of the first/last times he got to make a friend...

On three separate occasions in the interrogation, Haruka mentions not liking animals. Despite this, he is depicted as sleeping with a rabbit plush and on his birthday art (I'd include that too but tumblr only allows 10 pictures per post, so here's a link) he is standing next to a giant blueberry and strawberry cake with two bunny themed biscuits at the side. Through my experiences of seeing Japanese fandom art on pixiv, sometimes rabbits are used to insinuate a character is cute and timid in fanart.

Meaningless details: Haruka sleeps with his necklace on; he sleeps on a bed and not a futon; at first I thought he woke up holding his plush's hand but his hand is merely next to the toy; and considering the state of the pillow and blanket, I wonder if he moves a lot in his sleep or if the is just because in this case he seems to be waking up from a nightmare about the dog incident...

Final note: I've spent so many hours writing this I don't remember if i was building up to any big finale or not but I hope you enjoyed reading this! Feel free to add on in the comments/reblogs.

#haruka sakurai #milgram #milgram theory #001 #text post #essay #long post