#its part of the entertainment industry in the worst ways

[itgirlgasly]

I just wish the sport itself would remember its a an extremely dangerous sport, not a fun little hobby, not a movie, not a nettflix show, its not a spectacle, its a sport with high risks. take it seriously, it deserves that, the people working deserve it. 

#its part of the entertainment industry in the worst ways #and it hurts

[botnasty]

The Missing Link

Pornstar!Bucky Barnes X Director!Reader

Words: 2.2k words

Warnings: Smut (Duh), lill past trauma, but sweet ass bucky.

Note: I am getting rid of some of my draft and this was part of it.

Main Masterlist

“Where is she? She was the one who begged to do a shoot with him!” It was almost chaos in the house you rented. Everyone was ready for today; the cameras were set up, Bucky Barnes, aka The White Wolf as the porn industry calls him, was in the back getting ready with his fluffer. Everything was set and ready, except for his co-star. She was the one who approached you in the first place, Bucky’s manager, to do this shoot with him. She had begged you for months to be able to do a video with him, and the moment it was supposed to happen, she disappeared.

“Did you contact her manager?” asked one of the cameramen. You almost wanted to roll your eyes. “Of course I did, John. What do you think I’ve been doing all this time? He says he can’t contact her either. She is completely AWOL.” Your hands were almost shaking. You couldn’t just ask everyone who came; unfortunately, they weren’t needed... And Bucky, you made him come out here on his day off. You couldn’t just tell him it was all for nothing.

“Think, think.” You said to yourself as you kept on pacing in the white hallway that led to the bedroom where the shooting was supposed to happen – hopefully. What did your own manager do when you were a pornstar? You sighed and leaned against the wall. He would have done nothing, since he was a sack of shit who literally stole money from you, which was the reason you left being a porn star to become a manager yourself.

Years ago, being a pornstar was some of the worst times of your life. The lack of respect and regulation in the industry made it hard for anyone to truly enjoy what they did. It was a world where exploitation lurked behind the glamor, where your worth was often measured by your ability to perform on camera rather than your humanity. 

But now, times have changed. The industry has evolved, becoming more professional and respectful of its performers. Your own experiences in the past have shaped the way you approach your current role as a manager. You left behind the world of adult entertainment, partly because of the exploitation you faced, but also because of a manager who took advantage of you, stealing money and betraying your trust.

Despite the challenges you faced, you've found a way to navigate the industry with integrity. Your decision to step back into a role you thought you had left behind speaks to your dedication to ensuring the success of this shoot. You're willing to do what it takes to make sure everything goes smoothly, even if it means revisiting a past you'd rather forget.

“Boss, you okay?” You jumped back to see Bucky out of the room that was assigned to his dressing room. He had no shirt on, only a pair of jeans, which was how he was supposed to be in the scene. “Yeah, all is good, but I think you heard about the problem.”

“She still hasn’t shown up?” He tossed his hair back with his hand. “Well, this complicates things… Maybe I could do a solo shoot? It could be a solution,” he grinned, "because I do not think any random co-star will pop out of nowhere.”

You walked closer to him and looked up into his eyes. “You could, but there is also another solution, only if you are comfortable with it…”

It’s like he knew exactly what you were talking about because his eyes widened. “You would do that? But wasn’t your experience in the past something you told me you never would’ve wanted to do again?”

You looked at the time on your phone. “I know, but it would be necessary. We are on contract, and the agency wants a full video, not just a solo one.” You tried your best to keep your voice steady. You trusted Bucky; you knew him ever since he was an amateur in the porn industry, and you knew how he was with all his co-stars. He always tried to make them comfortable, get to know them a little so that when the camera rolled, everything went smoothly.

“You would trust me with that?” He scratched his pec and leaned closer to you as you nodded. “Okay, and I am comfortable doing that with you too, but if at any time, it gets too much, we stop, and I do not care what the agency says. It’s not our fault she didn’t show up.” His eyes went back and forth between yours. “Are we clear?” You wanted to laugh. You were the manager here; you were supposed to be the one comforting and all that, but here he was doing that to you.

“Yeah, big guy, I guess it’s time for me to go get ready. I'll tell everyone it’s almost ‘go’ time. And you,” you pointed at him, “Go back to your fluffer and get ready.” You said with a smile.

He smiled back. “Oh, I do not think I’ll need one for this shoot.”

After the decision is made for you to step in as Bucky's co-star, the atmosphere on set shifts. The initial tension and uncertainty give way to a focused determination to make the best of the situation. As you both prepare for the scene, there's a sense of mutual respect and understanding between you and Bucky, forged through years of working in the industry.

As the cameras start rolling, the room falls into a hushed anticipation, a quiet reverence for the performance about to unfold. You and Bucky stand facing each other, the air thick with tension and unspoken words. The set fades away, and it's just the two of you, locked in a moment that feels both intimate and exhilarating.

Bucky's touch is like fire against your skin, igniting a passion that burns brightly between you. His eyes are intense, filled with a hunger that mirrors your own. Your head is all over the place as to what is about to unfold. You can feel the heat of his body radiating against yours, heightening every sensation, every touch.

"You ready?" Bucky's voice is a low growl, sending a shiver of anticipation down your spine. His fingers start stroking the skin on your arms.

You nodded, your voice barely a whisper. "More than ready."

He grins, “Well then, let’s start this.” He grabbed your head in his big hands and kissed you on the lips. Never in your life would you have ever thought of being on the receiving end of Bucky Barnes. You had always guiltily imagined it: being his co-star. Your arm traveled around his neck as your other hand explored his tone body. He was so firm at all the right places. You wanted to smirk when you heard him growl as you reached lower and lower.

Suddenly, before you could even reach his bulge, he let go of you. “Get on your knees, baby. Come on.” He let you slide down on your knee as he held to your hair. “Get in out for me.”

“I happily will.” You couldn’t help but say. You licked your lips when you saw a glimpse of the head poking out from the top of his boxer. He was so big, you were already salivating at the thought of having him in your mouth. 

As you pulled down the boxers, his dick springs out, the tip so red it looked uncomfortable. You placed your hands on his thighs and let a drool of spit land on the tip. It’s so thick you couldn’t help but think. You wrapped your hand around the base and you heard his breath hitch. You looked up at him and saw his eyes were dark with desire. “Fuck my face, big guy.” Was the last thing you said before he took your head in his hands and pushed his dick deep inside your mouth, almost choking you. He must have realized his mistake because he asked you: “If it’s too much, tap my thigh twice.” You never did. 

His dick was so heavy in your mouth, so hot. You had never liked sucking your co-star’s dick before, but his dick was now part of the exception. Hesitantly, he let out a low groan, shutting his eyes tightly as he gripped onto your hair even more tightly. His free hand went instinctively towards his chest- covering his heart that was now racing wildly.”Fucking hell, baby. You have such a wet mouth. It feels so good.”

His head fell back slightly, letting out a shaky exhale." Jesus fucking Christ." He muttered, closing his eyes as he took a deep breath. A small smile appeared on his lips though as he opened them again.”Squeeze my balls, baby. Grab them in your hands.” As you did a loud groan left his mouth and he suddenly pulled out.

“I was about to cum, baby. Oh, fuck.” You smirked.

“Oh really? And here I thought the big bad wolf had more in him.” You taunted him. You saw a big smirk appear on his face. “Oh, you asked for it baby.” He grabbed you suddenly, a little gasp leaving your mouth, and threw you on the bed.

“Touch yourself. I want to see what you do when you think of my dick every night.” Slowly you brought your hands to your tits, your fingers twisting your nipples as you looked straight in his eyes. You saw him swallowed thickly, still staring at you with an unreadable expression. For a moment, it’s like he was simply watching  you – taking in every detail of your appearance, committing it to memory.

With one last pinch you brought your hand to your clit, never in your life had you been this wet in a shoot. Always, before, the guy needed to use lube with you, but this time, you could feel some wetness dripping down your thighs and also down your ass. It had been such a long time since you’ve felt pleasure at all.

He got on top of you, hid dick in his hand. "I’m going to fuck you so hard, baby.” He said loud enough for the camera to pick it up, but in your ears he whispered: “You okay?" he asks, his eyes searching yours for any sign of discomfort.

You smile, a mix of gratitude and admiration in your gaze. "I'm perfect. You're amazing."

He pecked your lips. “I’m gonna put it in…” He slapped his dick twice against your clip, making you jolt with a moan. The tip of his dick gently breached your opening and already you felt full. He was so big. You placed a hand on his lower back and bit on his neck as he went deeper. “OH, fuck. So fucking tight.”

Your hands grabbed whatever you could have he trusted deep inside of you. The wet sound of sex vibrating in the air, as he kept going. He growled. “I fucking love your pussy.” He grabbed your waist and pulled you closer as he went on his knees. “How come you hid this from me, huh?” You could feel all the ridges of his dick, how veiny it was and the tip always brushing your sweet spot inside in this position. 

You grabbed one of his hands and tried to bring it to your clit. “Please, please, please.” Once he understood, he started rubbing your clit with his thumb as he forced his dic depper in you. Everything was too much.

You let out a moan and tossed your head back, your legs were shaking all over the place. “I can feel you tightening, baby. Are you gonna cum like a good slut on my dick? You are, aren't you.” You tried to nod, but to no avail. Your body was just completely shaking, before you let out a loud moan and you felt your pussy tighten around him. Somehow this was enough to make Bucky Barnes, the man you knew could last for hours, to cum in you. He groaned and moaned as he kept on doing little thrust in you, making all of his cum pooling inside of you just as he fell down on you. Both sweaty bodies against each other and heavy breath mingling.

The room seems to pulse with a shared energy, a connection between you and Bucky that transcends the physical. When the director finally calls "cut," there's a moment of stillness, as if everyone is caught in the spell you've woven.

"You were incredible," Bucky says, his voice filled with genuine admiration and he kissed your cheek. "I couldn't have asked for a better co-star. Maybe we should do this again sometime"

You smile, feeling a sense of pride wash over you, a sense of reborn. "You weren't so bad yourself.”

Thank you so much for reading! PLease do not hesitate to let me know what y'all think:)

#sebastian stan #sebastian stan fic #sebastian stan smut #sebastian stan characters #sebastian #bucky #bucky barnes #bucky barnes au #bucky barnes angst #bucky fanfic #bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes x reader #bucky x reader #bucky x you #james bucky buchanan barnes #bucky barnes x black!reader #bucky barnes fanfiction #bucky barnes smut #bucky barnes x you #sebastian stan x reader #marvel fanfiction #marvel smut #modern au #au #smut #fanfic #fanfiction #winter soldier

[henrysglock]

Wonderful! A group of rich people died! Let’s dance on graves; I’ll get my good shoes.

But first, tell me:

Did the accident redistribute their wealth to the masses?

Did those deaths take out a harmful corporation in a way that makes life markedly better for those it was harming?

Did it enact any kind of helpful policy, regulatory, or socioeconomic change?

Or:

Are they just going to replace that CEO?

Is that wealth just going to get passed to their next of kin, remaining withheld from the masses who both need and deserve it?

Is this whole thing going to be forgotten by the next news cycle?

Is our collective glee just ‘bread and circuses’ type behavior that gloats over useless and frankly stupid deaths without any actual impact being made?

“People are justified in their lack of pro-social response to this event because of the socioeconomic state of the world.”

Okay, so show me where any of this changes the socioeconomic structure of the world. Show me where there’s anything worthy of “I hope they all die a slow, agonizing death for,” [checks notes], “hubris, a typical characteristic in most humans at some point in their lives.”

Was it all incredibly stupid? Absolutely. Did most of the dead have it coming? Absolutely. The tragedy in it is that there were no regulations in place to say “Uh…no?” when that voyage was in its planning stages.

And the worst part is? Nothing. Changes. So far, these are meaningless deaths.

Imagine we’re in ancient Rome. The CEO of Oceangate has convinced a group of his buddies (and the kid they dragged along) that “Hey, y’know what would be really fun? If we all dressed up as gladiators and paid to tussle with the lion. No, no, yeah there’s a chance you could die, but trust me, it’s gonna be so cool.” And then we all fucking ate it up, half of us cheering on the lion while the other half wept for those poor, poor rich people (yeah I know, I’m rolling my eyes too)…all under the watchful eye of our royal highnesses who put on the show: The Corporate System and The News Cycle, who both stood to profit whether the group of idiots lived or died.

Did the rich folks have it coming? Absolutely. Is it still horrific that it was allowed to happen at all? Yes.

This is why they don’t broadcast the other tragedies. It’s not good for them as a partnership. Those gut wrenching tragedies, the ones with true injustice? They don’t placate us, they upset us and turn us against those in power.

But dumb rich folks dying? On my TV? Oh goody, my fave show is on. Let’s see if it’s started another useless internet war, creating low-level enemies for us inside our screens so we forget about the real enemies for a while longer.

Not only that, but killing a CEO won’t change anything. That’s a replaceable employee, and the corporation as a unit cares about that person about as much as it cares about the rest of us (which is to say: not at all). That CEO’s wealth will just be given out to their relatives, and the money will stay contained within that family unit. The CEO will be forgotten in the next news cycle, when their death is no longer profitable for the news industry and the internet has moved onto its next useless spiral.

Guillotines in France worked because they dismantled the government, which also happened to consist of all the rich folks, to enact socioeconomic change. Thus: people celebrated the deaths of the rich, and rightfully so.

That’s not what this is. This isn’t “eating the rich”. This just the joy of entertainment, a good show.

Nothing ever changes. We stay entertained, temporarily placated by the deaths of a couple rich people.

Bread and fucking circuses.

#like yeah no shit rich people don’t care about us #but can we think critically about the situation? #please for once second can we think critically about what’s going on here? #i love dancing on the graves of those who exploit us but for the love of god can we acknowledge The Rest Of It All #i just [face in hands] it’s so interesting /neg #watching my fyp and my dash and my timeline and all that other bullshit do *exactly* what those in power want us to do #oceangate #titanic

[literary-illuminati]

Book Review 52 – The Gods Are Bastards Volume Three by D. D. Webb

Okay this is properly a review for Books 8, 9, and 10 of the gargantuan serial – which I’ll freely admit I read more than a month ago in one week-long fugue along with all the books before them and the next few after. Which is to say I really shouldn’t have waited this long to write this review, and my apologies for all the vagueness and inaccuracies that are going to result. Which is a pity, because this is the best volume of the serial I’ve read and it isn’t even particularly close.

The serial continues the story of a Dungeons & Dragons-esque generic fantasy world advanced a couple hundred years and in the throes of a magical industrial revolution. The story theoretically stars the now-sophomore class of almost comically privileged and powerful students at what’s basically Adventurer University, but compared to the previous volumes they get barely any screentime in this one. Instead you get the Bishop of the god of thieves, the Archpope of the Universal Church, their respective pet openly-plotting-and-near-mutinous adventuring parties, political intrigue in the goddess of war, and a huntsman we’ve never met before learning the secrets of creation and also that his god was always just kind of a dick. It’s great! Also, to reiterate, the students get barely any screentime!

Really I kind of get the sense that I’m a deeply atypical fantasy reader, in that I find 90% of both involved romance plots and drawn out action scenes deeply tedious and basically the price you pay to get at the good parts of the story. In this case the good part is incredibly byzantine and too-complicated-by-half political shadowboxing carried out by proxies only barely kept on their masters’ leashes. Also several thousand words of pure exposition about the deep lore of the setting delivered by a malfunctioning AI.

Because yes, the big massive reveal of the volume is that the elder gods who were overthrown millennia before the story began had actually pulled a Lord of Light. The world runs on generic fantasy tropes because it was created by powermad demiurges who were also specifically insufferable 20th/21st century earth fantasy nerds. The different types of magic were just the results of them folding and rewriting physics, the fact that mortals can only access four is down to the vast majority getting wrecked when their creators died in the Titanomachy. Gnomes are an apparently successful attempt to perfect humanoid life.

This is, first and foremost, an absolutely hilarious bit of worldbuilding. Like, I actually burst out laughing. Knowing that orcs existed because the elder gods were big Tolkein and Warcraft fans may have permanently damaged my ability to take the setting seriously on its on terms but like, honestly? Probably worth it. Also just an excellent excuse for any shotcuts of contradictions in the worldbuilding and for all the kind of lazy fantasy worldbuilding tropes.

While it hasn’t happened yet, I hold out some hope that the increased pivot to the divine and Deep Lore means the serial will start to live up to its title and foreground the gods and their bastardry more – as I’ve said before, a narrative where the literal lords of creation are present but only because they just show up sometimes to descend to earth and make the protagonists lives easier is just boring. Which is why Archpope Justinian, the scheming mastermind who wants to overthrow heaven and earth and works exclusively through needlessly convoluted schemes that don’t stop a single person from knowing he’s to blame. I’m sorry but ‘somehow brainwashed the gods into making him their high priest so he can use the resources of their church as his personal power base’ is such a great bit. Also he’s opposed by literally every major POV so of course I need to root for him. (Honorary mention to Basra Syrinx, who is literally just The Worst in an incredibly entertaining way)

#book review #web serial #sff #the gods are bastards #d. d. webb

[thatgirl4815]

BL/QL Ask Game : The Ugly, the Bad and the Worst

I was tagged by the lovely @waitmyturtles for this game! Thank you! It was fun! Admittedly though, it has been very difficult for me to pin down some of my answers. I know that there are definitely more bad BLs/QLs that I've managed to forget about (thankfully), so this is what I managed to come up with off the top of my head.

I'm learning as I'm doing this that I am much more equipped to talk about what I like compared to what I don't like, so apologies for unintentionally side-stepping some of these questions, haha.

*Original post can be found here

Worst soundtrack / weirdest song choice in a BL -> This might be an unpopular opinion, but the part of LITA where Payu sings to Rain stands out in my mind, because it just felt so forced in and uncomfortable. I also watched 2gether a long time ago, but I remember feeling like some of the singing just felt...off. I always find singing in BL cringey to some extent, so it's hard for me to judge any song fairly because I'm too busy squealing in agony.

Most cringe-inducing line (cute) -> To keep it recent, I'll say "Without wind, how can a windmill spin?" from Dangerous Romance, because it's so on the nose, but I'll admit it is endearing. The wind/windmill thing is giving me MAME, LITA flashbacks, and I'd just prefer to avoid those cliches altogether.

Most cringe-inducing line (actually bad) -> As I said above, I'm sure there are many more I could pick out with time, but the one standing out in my head is "If you don't have sexual intercourse within 2 hours, the poison will spread to your internal organs and you will die." For reference, this line comes less than a minute into the first episode of Tonhon Chonlatee. Suffice to say, I promptly closed my computer screen and that was the end of that. (I love Khao but they failed him here.)

Most stupid decision made by a character -> For Leo to give a single flying fuck about Fiat in Don't Say No. I know this sounds harsh, but I have such disdain for Fiat's character. All he did in TT season 2 and Don't Say No was whine...and yet Leo still liked him? He still wanted to be in a relationship with him? I'm failing to see what it is about Fiat that attracts him.

Worst plot line -> There are a lot of contenders here, but SCOY was pretty bad and ultimately pointless. And I don't think I've ever cringed harder for an extended period of time.

The most problematic show you've watched -> The fact that I'm going to put TharnType above KinnPorsche speaks volumes. At least KP was self-aware and eased us into the problematic content. TT didn't hold its punches at all.

A show people love but you find bad -> For me, it's probably A Tale of a Thousand Stars. Bad is a strong word, because I wouldn't say it was bad...it was just boring. I was really into it for the first couple of episodes, but the longer it went on, the more depthless I found Phupha to be. There was actually a point I remember thinking that Tian should be with Longtae instead. And thus my love for Khaotung was born.

A show people find bad but you will defend -> I'll say KinnPorsche too, because I also think it was a cultural reset for Thai BL in a lot of ways. I know a lot of people found Love Mechanics problematic, but I personally really like YinWar's chemistry and found the storyline compelling enough, so I'll defend it for that.

A show that is just objectively bad but you enjoyed it -> War of Y? Not sure if this counts since I didn't finish (but I'll give myself a pass since it does cover a bunch of different couples, so it's basically like several shows all in one). I think it had the potential to say interesting things about toxicity in the Thai QL industry, but it just...didn't? Or it tried to, but it ultimately fell flat. Anyways, the part that I watched (BillySeng's storyline, I think) was entertaining enough.

A bad show that you kept watching because you were intrigued/fascinated -> TharnType. I was fascinated to see if either of the leads (but mostly Type) could possibly get more annoying/problematic. Spoiler alert: they could.

A bad show that you kept watching because you were horny -> Hmm, maybe Big Dragon?

A bad show that you kept watching because of that one character -> This is so hard because I don't think Until We Meet Again is a bad show, but the first thing that popped into my head was Win and Team, mostly Win. I was getting annoyed with the main plot, but I looked forward to seeing my man Win whenever possible. (Plus BounPrem are cute together.)

A bad show that you would still recommend -> Goodness, idk...Why R U? was kinda fun. Even though I wouldn't say I found it particularly great (probably due to the cuts they made due to COVID).

The character that ruined a show the most -> Fiat in Don't Say No. That one's a no-brainer.

Most awful character that you hated -> Fiat. Get him off my screen.

Most awful character that you loved -> Vegas. I love to hate him.

A character that wasn't awful but that you just don't like -> Rain in LITA. I found him annoying. I get that his behavior was supposed to be cute, but he just came across as pouty and immature.

A hero that should have been a villain -> I kinda think Kim in KinnPorsche would've been a good villain? It would've been unexpected. Also, something about Jeff Satur playing a villainous character is just *chef's kiss* (if he had played Vegas, I think I would've lost my mind).

A morally bad character you're into -> Vegas from KP. Also Vee from Love Mechanics because the cheating stuff was bad, but I also just find him very endearing? He was having an internal crisis, which isn't an excuse, but I empathized with him. (Can I throw Ray from Only Friends in here as well? Not sure he entirely fits. Apparently I'm just looking for any excuse to bring up Khaotung, lol.)

A morally bad character you're not into and you wish people would stop being into -> I'm having a hard time with this one...my first thought was Boston because his behavior makes me sick to my stomach, but I think it's funny how other people are into him. Like I get it even if I don't agree with it (Neo is hot, in any case).

The show that disappointed you the most -> This one is hard. I guess I'd say A Tale of A Thousand Stars? As I said above, I loved it at first, but I started to get so bored.

The Worst Show of Them All Because of Your Own Reasons -> Don't Say No. Sorry Fiat.

Whew, that was much harder than I thought! Will tag some of my moots if any of y'all wanna play--as always, no pressure! :) @abstractelysium @thegalwhorants @nihilisticcondensedmilk @bird-inacage @aprilblossomgirl @dreamedofyou @firstkanaphans @itsmelb @k-white @way-too-indecisive @autisticbokutoenthusiast

And of course, anybody and everybody is welcome to play along!

#bl ask game #ql ask game

[cutiemarkofcain]

Rick and Morty spoilers. Under cut for length and negativity. This was eating at me.

I hated That's Amorte so much. It literally makes me angry. I was so excited for it. They were hyping it up. It was written by the same person who wrote Final Desmithation- a really entertaining episode! Morty was going to be in it a lot! It was compared to Pickle Rick and Vat of Acid! And then... we got this mediocre thing.

I have seen Pickle Rick and Vat of Acid, and you sir, are no Pickle Rick or Vat of Acid. And I'm even kinda meh about those episodes, but at least they showed the complexity of Rick's character!

Okay, characterization. Rick was reduced to the toxic dudebro fan ideal of him: asshole who gets away with being an asshole because he's always right. Morty- poor Morty! Finally gets an episode this season and he spent the whole time being pushed around and shat on by other characters and the narrative. Don't get me started on the rest of the family. They were fucking demons- I felt like I was watching an episode of Family Guy, just swap Morty for Meg. (Disclaimer, I haven't watched Family Guy in years, but I remember it being really mean-spirited for a while, I don't know if that's still the case, but yeah that's what I'm referencing.)

As for the theme... I just really dislike moral dilemmas that are totally bizarre and never apply to the real world. Just strikes me as pseudo-intellectual. And what is this episode trying to make a point about? Assisted suicide? The meat industry? Capitalism? Pick a fucking lane.

The story was the worst part. We've seen Morty try to do the right thing, only to make things worse, so Rick has to fix everything (Mortynight Run, Rattlestar Ricklactica, etc), so nothing new there. And it's fine that that's not new, because at this point it's happened enough that it's a trend, but That's Amorte does nothing new with it. The scene where Morty was letting his family have it was reminiscent of a similar scene from A Rickconvenient Mort, except it had emotional weight there. Here, the family's dismissal of Morty is treated like a joke. The suicide angle worked so much better in Analyze Piss because the subject was treated with the gravity it deserved, whereas here it was an element in a stupid thought experiment. And that scene showing the random dude's life? I was so pissed I refused to watch. It was like they realized what an emotionless husk the episode had been so far, so they tried to tug at the heartstrings in the laziest, easiest way possible, with some poignant scenes and sad music. That shit worked in Vat of Acid because it was about Morty and we care about Morty. I can tell when I'm being emotionally manipulated.

All in all, it felt like they took a bunch of superior episodes, had no understanding of what made them good, and threw them into the blender dimension along with a bunch of spaghetti. It felt like it was written by AI.

I can say, with confidence, that it was my least favorite episode. There was nothing I enjoyed about it. Less than Rickdependence Spray? Hell yeah, that episode was dumb but funny. Less than Raising Gazorpazorp? ...Okay, that one had no redeeming qualities either, but I didn't get hyped for it, so it wasn't a disappointment. Less than the last two episodes of season 6, which I refuse to remember the names of? Yes. Even though the last one bored me, at least Rick was nuanced and interesting there. As for the penultimate one... welllll, I mostly felt betrayed about that episode lying to us, so I feel I can't properly judge its quality. So that one doesn't get a score.

This episode offended me as a fan of Rick, as a fan of Morty, as a fan of the show, and as a writer.

Rick and Morty forever, huh? If it's just going to be an eternity of Rick being an insufferable smug jerk, Morty being abused, and both of them being miserable and hateful to each other, I don't even want another day of them. I guess this is the "Too Bleak, Stopped Caring" trope in play.

The only thing that makes me feel slightly more at ease is pretending like this episode didn't follow the main family. And that's why everyone felt like they were from season 1 and hadn't gone through any character development. (The mind eraser device looked different, by the way.) But that only solves the characterization issue, not the rest of it. Edit- realized that couldn't be the case because of how Summer says "parmesan".

Okay, I think that's everything I wanted to say. I hope that's everything, because I don't want to talk or even think about this episode anymore.

#bitch bitch #rage rage #long rant #seriously look away i am not nice here at all #and i apologize for nothing #except maybe for switching tenses throughout the rant

[trashlie]

hey, how are you doing? 💗 thanks for the link, that was a great read <3 and as usual, you make such great points! it does seem like yu jing's motivation is to stop yui before she harms any more people. i guess that makes sense, since that would also align (at least partly) with rand's goals. still, yu jing is not the type to sacrifice herself. she must have a way to protect herself somehow. given everything we know about the timeline of the story, we can assume the article won't take yui down completely but it WILL be impactful and yu jing will have to deal with the aftermath. and it's yui we're talking about, so i'm expecting the worst 😶 and yes nol's guilty plea changing her plans is very interesting and i have absolutely no clue why :/ there's so much we don't know about yu jing yet: her history with both the brothers, what rand did to help her, the details of her article… aah i can't wait to learn about all that.

what i also can't quite figure out yet is how alyssa plays into this. so she's exposed and her career is ruined. then what? does yui even need alyssa for something other than to control/torment nol? and helping a "problematic" (but also very talented) girl reach fame is probably the least evil thing yui has done, it happens in the entertainment industry all the time, so exposing that wouldn't do much damage to yui. i wouldn't even be surprised if yui immediately drops alyssa once she has no use for her anymore. but then… what would alyssa's role in the story be? idk it might be just me but i feel like there's still something missing here…

"her insistence on being there" that's the closest to what i had in mind, thank you! and i get what you mean. romance that is grand and untamed and consuming like a forest fire is beautiful in its own right. but for people like nolan and shinae, who have faced so much hardship and turbulence, a love that is soft and steady, that has a healing, illuminating glow feels much more monumental in a way. like a quiet, peaceful, comforting place in the middle of a raging storm. and yes i LOOOVE how they're so well-balanced in their mutual efforts and care and how they're naturally gravitate towards one another. and it's especially obvious when compared to alyssa, who only takes without giving back, or even kousuke, who so often disregards the perspective and needs of the other person. that's why i like re-reading the first half of the formal a lot, those dynamics really come to light <3

"all these little moments that could just as easily remain platonic, except they’re stirring something up" YES!!!! i'm glad we're on the same page on minhyuk and platonic gestures, yay! and btw if you ever write that post about shinae and nol, even though it would be a tangent, i'd actually be curious to know what you think dieter's role in all this is. personally i'm undecided if shinae is genuinely crushing on him because she's drawn to his peaceful, calm, drama-free lol nature and emotional maturity (and hands), or if she's only crushing on him because it's safe to explore the possibility of romance with him and he has reassured her that he genuinely likes her at a time when she was so suspicious about whether her friends even like her (she even questioned minhyuk for a moment 💔) (and the sexy hands might be some kind of projection idk). and if verbal reassurance is part of it, then well, we just had the mutual "you're special to me" confession...

RIGHT i wanted to bring up the girlfriend thing too. shinae has been so adamant about making sure things stay platonic, but now alyssa is basically out of the picture, and the lines she drew are getting blurred, so where does that leave her? tbh i'd be overwhelmed and even a little scared if i was her. everything is happening quite fast! she's been closed off for a long time, she met nol like 3 months ago, took a lot of time to warm up to him, they've established their friendship a couple of weeks ago, they've grown close so quickly, now suddenly there is all this, whatever this is? and i'm probably overanalyzing but i do find it interesting that, in the hospital room, she doesn't hug him back. she doesn't object or push him away either so she obviously doesn't mind, and this sort of inaction (?) does read to me like a physical reflection of what's going on with her internally. the feelings are sprouting, but she can't quite process what's happening, and doesn't know what to do with herself just yet. but she also doesn't dislike this so she is just kind of going with it. then again in the very last panel in 219 we can't see her other arm so maybe she IS embracing him this time. one of quim's little details to keep us wondering i guess 👀

and please i was DYING when shinae blurted out she thinks rand is hot in front of both his sons in front of NOL who is a physical carbon copy of rand except younger and orange like girl… LMAO. (and btw yes on that moment between kou and nol; there are a few rare moments where the brothers almost… get along? it's very refreshing but in a tragic way. like a glimpse into an alternate version of the story where all the toxic conditioning didn't happen 💔)

oh god this got sooo long again i apologize!! i will try to make my future asks more concise. for now, i'm leaving you with this quote i found that makes me think of nol and shinae, i'm sure you'll understand why and appreciate it as well: tumblr. com/slavicafire/714146132919500800 (can't link it properly on anon, hopefully this'll work)

alright. take care!! -lil anon 😼

Lil Anon!!!!!! <3

I was holding off on answer this for a little bit because frankly the last couple weeks were trash and I had noooo energy and didn't want to reply until I could do a good one! I'm glad I held off, though, because there's something I can respond to MUCH BETTER now! Of course, that means this has FP 222 spoilers, so hopefully you've read! (or at least you stop here if you haven't, haha!)

It's funny how a couple weeks ago, we were still trying to piece things together "it probably won't take Yui down completely" "is it worth it for Yujing to risk her career and life?" and episode 222 came in like a wrecking ball, oh my god! I said it in my commentary post, too, but I DID NOT anticipate how much this expose was covering! All along we've talked like this is about Yui and perhaps the Hiraharas in general, but it was largely centered on her. Now, we see it's so much bigger than we'd yet realized, that the nasty, gnarly roots go deeper.

I think it's also so much clearer now why Yujing is going after this story - what it means to her, and her quest for the truth. I imagine by the time she was in university, she already knew what she wanted to do, and was already pursuing that path, but I wonder how much what happened to Manli affected her future career? Or did it already exist before that? The school Sangchul attends that's mentioned in the article about the rampant sexual assault makes me wonder if it's the same school Nol attends, that Kousuke and Yujing attended. If that's the case, then Yujing probably knows of a number of girls she went to school with who were sexually assaulted and nothing came of it. Around half of the reports ended in an incident report when the victims couldn't be contacted or refused to speak about it - doesn't it sound like they were coerced into not speaking about their experiences, whether they were paid off or threatened.

So supposing Yujing went to a school with the elite uppercrust, the wealthy, the influential, the affluent, who committed these heinous acts and got away with it. She went to a school where she watched truth crumble beneath power and influence. Her friend was later in one of those same scary situations and it's very easy to assume that nothing came of it. That she, too, lives with the haunting nightmare of an experience out of control, that left her feeling unsafe. Suddenly it makes sense why Yujing is taking it on, it makes sense why she's willing to risk it all. Because now we see that the stakes are even higher than we thought before. This encompasses so much more than just Yui and the company. This is an attack on the Hiraharas and Kims, specifically, but also an attack on the affluent, those who use their privelege to prey on and hurt others for sport, those who get away with everything, because when it comes down to it, they are above the law. They control things. This is their world.

It's a much more risky expose than we'd really considered before, but it makes sense, why it's so important to her. Yujing is dedicated to digging up the the truth - the real truth, not just media play. She wants to reveal the dark and sinister underbelly of those who have money and influence. She wants to illuminate how many lives have been ruined, how many instances of depraved, deplorable behavior has gone unpunished.

I think this also gives insight into why Nol pleading guilty was such a benefit to her story. It didn't make sense at the time, but now that we are more aware of her angle, it's clearer. Nol is being charged for a crime he didn't commit, but one that Sangchul Kim did - Sangchul Kim whose own relative was removed from his role as CEO due to his own sexual misconduct allegations. She's airing the reality - that Nol was framed/charged for a crime he didn't commit. What did the investigation yield? There must have been one, right? I guess it never came to light because he pled guilty at the hearing? Either way, Nol pleading guilty can easily be seen as someone trying to minimize the damage. He knew that even if he pled innocent there was a likelihood that he'd still be charged as guilty and the sentencing would be worse. Although, maybe he wasn't even thinking of it that way. Maybe he simply just wanted to get away and jail was as good a way to do it. But even that is an angle to work with - that the Hiraharas were so unbearable, were so cruel, he was willing to plead guilty to someone else's crime to get away.

This might be where Alyssa comes into play, but I'm still a little leery of this part, and I'll try to get to that. But Shinae's story also reveals a similar scenario of a cruel act going unpunished. Alyssa walked away without any punishment and I imagine the girls who were part of that were never found out, because Shinae certainly didn't say anything and I'm sure Alyssa didn't, either. We know that I acknowledge Alyssa pushing Shinae was an accident, but the point still reasons that Shinae was being bullied and nothing came of it. Shinae got badly injured and it was just. Swept aside. Those teachers quit their jobs. And it seems very likely that Alyss'as parents paid off the school to keep quiet, to keep her out of trouble.

It's not fair, is it? Even though it was an accident, there was no closure for Shinae. Those girls went on living their lives and for all we know, they may never have even felt bad about it. And it's just yet another case of people with money or influence being able to pay people off, of never atoning for their behavior.

Yujing's story seems to be seeking out truth but also justice. She wants everyone to know how abhorrent they are. She wants to reveal the sinister inner circle of the affluent. Someone on reddit said they'd compared Yui and Gun Kim to Epstein and my god that's exactly what it is, and that's the story Yujing is risking it all for. She wants to air what they have been able to keep quiet.

But here's the thing about Alyssa and the yearbook. As far as we know, Nol has no indication that Yujing is working on this story. When he pled guilty, she mused that she was probably giving him too much credit, which sounds like she hasn't said anything to him about what she's working on. From his perspective, the interview she had with him had to do with his hearing, had to do with clearing his name, or at least offering something for the media besides trying to make him seem like a drug-touting rapist. So why did he give her that yearbook? Why did he steal it?

People suppose that maybe he saw something else in the yearbook but I don't think so? Quimchee is pretty good about how she draws the scenes and he didn't seem to really take notice or anything until he saw that math club photo with Shinae and Alyssa and pieced together their history. He didn't have a chance to go through it further because Shinae tried to take it back, so it feels like it must be about Alyssa. But I just don't get it? What does he stand to gain from taking the yearbook? Some people thought he was going to confront Alyssa but... I really don't think so. Is it possible he knows what Yujing is working on? I just... can't see how he'd know? I know he's perceptive and smart, but has he even seen anything enough to indicate it to her?

Was it more that he hoped that by giving her the yearbook she'd look through it and recognize Alyssa and look into it? Even that seems flimsy at best, so I'm still a little ??? about this. I'm sure there's something I'm missing, or just something that's yet to be revealed but I'm at a loss. Like, Shinae's story certainly plays right into what Yujing is writing about, but is that just a coincidence?

You bring up some really good points about Alyssa, too. It does feel like Yui's only use of her is to torment Nol, and that's not really working anymore now is, it it? He's only with her for their mutual benefit. At this point, if he wanted to end things for good, he could, because would he feel bad if she lost everything when she was no longer connected to him? Nol seems pretty done with her - he does not use light words when he talks about his resentment of how she acts and her admiration of Yui, and he's long-since given up on trying to sway her away. Does a part of him remember when they were really friends and he stays so she can have that? But I've also considered that maybe if he's "dating" Alyssa, she's the main target, the main one Yui tries to use against him? That feels flimsy, though, because Yui watches like a hawk and she is well aware of Shinae's affinity for Nol, and that he shares the same feelings, which is why he tried to keep that distance. But I don't know if staying with Alyssa is really protecting Shinae at all, so the questions remain.

Of course, like I said, I think Alyssa's involvement here may be more about her family, and the dirty hush money they may have paid. In that case, the hush money + Yui creating her career starts to look more questionable. But I think, and this is something that makes me feel sick if I think about too long, I worry there may be some... "sponsorship" involved. I desperately hope it's not the case, but I sometimes think about at the Kim formal when Alyssa danced with that old photographer man, because she needs to schmooze and she needs to appeal to the media. Have there been other scenarios where she's had to... rub elbows... with prominent media figures? Has she been forced into anything heinous as a "payment" for getting her name, her group out there? I REALLY hope not because no matter what Alyssa has done, that's too vile for me. But considering the material Yujing has collected, considering the number of cases of sexual misconduct that's been covered up (that's been ENABLED when you think about it), the idea of Yui taking a girl and pushing her into such disgusting situations doesn't seem at all outside the scope of what we're dealing with.

In an old curiouscat post, quimchee was asked which characters are virgins and which aren't, and for Alyssa she used the 😬 emoji. It just feels... hmmmm. Obviously at the time no one was thinking deeper about this and took it as maybe Alyssa has cheated on Nol but... I can't help but worry that this response is more because we'll see something far darker than people were thinking. I hope I'm wrong! But!

that's why i like re-reading the first half of the formal a lot, those dynamics really come to light <3

Oh my gosh, SAME!!!!! I honestly can't remember when I started feeling shippy feelings towards Nol and Shinae, but I think the formal really played a big role in at least creating that foundation. There was just something about the way Shinae found herself seeking security in him, and how he was able to anticipate her wants and needs when Kousuke was unable to, it was the hospital scene showing the way Shinae thinks of others when Alyssa puts herself first, and the way that quietly impacted Nol. It was just seeing the ways that they just suit each other and somewhere along the way it made me go "oh no" lol when I realized the shippy feelings were starting lol. I know I've said it before so it really doesn't need repeating but they just feature so much of what I enjoy in a good pairing, the way they meet those needs and compliment each other, the way Shinae learned friendship by emulating him and turns it around on him. I would love them regardless if there was never any romance, but I'm also a sucker for a pairing that grows out of friendship like this because in so many ways they are what the other one wants and needs.

But we all know what a sucker I am for parallels, so it was only natural I would start to feel so strongly about them lol, that I would delight in them getting these cute little moments together. You are so right that they both have just been through SO much they deserve so much soft, so much warmth. They've had enough stress and excitement lol they just deserve something healing. Clearly we are nowhere near that unfortunately, but I really hope that in time we'll get to see Shinae - and Dieter and Soushi! - become some kind of safe spaces for Nol. Romance is well and good, but more than anything I want to see Nol accept that they are a safe space for him. I just. I LIKE SEEING THEM HAPPY! I WANT TO SEE THEM COMFORTABLE! I know safe is a long way away for them, but god I want to see pockets of safe space, moments of safe space. I want to see them taking refuge in each other I want to see them becoming that pillar of support to each other! This is so far off tangent lol but I've just been thinking and talking about them so much today, and the development of their relationship, the roadbumps they still face, and I just! Want! Them to find safety and comfort in each other ;~; ROARS

i'd actually be curious to know what you think dieter's role in all this is.

GOD I do think about this a LOT and wonder about it. Like, it's impossible to like two different people at once, so I don't want to discount that it's very possible for her to be attracted to both in different ways, but it's also worth exploring because this is so very new to Shinae. She doesn't really seem to have had any experience with this and while it's easy for her to admit when she finds someone hot - like Rand LMAO - that doesn't mean you LIKE someone, you're ATTRACTED to them.

I think Dieter IS a safe space for her, both because he's such an unproblematic person who is very respectful of her boundaries and because he already likes her. This is something I struggled with a LOT when I was younger - how do you know when you like someone vs when you like that they like you? Shinae is very weak to Dieter's affection for her. The "date" at the amusement park revealed this, with the whole don't look at me like that lol. But I do think Shinae's crush has to do with safety, and why I think they could have been SUCH a wonderful pairing (and look if they date I do look forward to it! I may be a Stalkyoo shipper but I acknowledge the ways that Dieter could be a good relationship for her if that was what she wanted). A funny thing about Dieter and Nol is that both of them make her feel special in different ways, it's just that Dieter is actually more open about it. I think she seeks that comfort and safety because her own life has been so tumultuous and they last thing she wants is a tumultuous relationship. And right, he's been this stable pillar for her when she needs it. Everything about them is so fluffy and cute and warm! That's why I have no issue shipping them as well!

I do wonder where he fits into all of this because LMAO FIRST OFF my poor cinnamon roll is RIGHT THERE LMAO Would he ever have had the guts to dance with her like that? He's so aware of his "inadequacies" when compared to Nol (or rather, Yeonggi) who came off so personable and charming and has this easy chemistry with her, and we know he isn't blind, he's observant as hell and he sees it. Is he sleeping? Or is he awake confirming something he was aware of all along? I used to think that Shinae and Dieter would date first, and that maybe he'd go to school back home in Germany (because he's always homesick it just feels to me like he might do that) but I also didn't expect to see Shinae and Nol dancing around their feelings so soon so I have to rethink everything I thought lol. I thought Shinae might run away from her growing feelings towards Nol, especially because he has a girlfriend, but now she knows a. that relationship isn't really one and b. she is doing the exact opposite she has cleaved on to him.

And right, like you said, the I care about her confession is already out there. I was musing to.... someone... somewhere.... lol I've been talking about this a lot lately, aaahhhh! Here it is! That as much as Shinae is obviously more drawn to Nol now that he's not putting on his Yeonggi front, with all those sharp edges, the Nol he has presented to her unsoftened, I wonder how much of it also stems from what he said to Lil Buddy. Is it that his admission that she means just as much to him as he does to her has stirred something in her? Part of what she was struggling so much with was that lack of closure, and now she knows what was eating her up inside - is that part of why she reacts so shyly to his gaze? Because she knows, because they have shared something so vulnerable with each other, she has literally shared her scar with him!

And in that manner, how does this compare to or differ from how she reacts to Dieter's feelings? I think she is more drawn to Nol, but that could just because of the circumstances. I think, if given a choice, she'd want to pick something safe, but that doesn't mean it's where her heart would lean, right? I don't think Shinae is ready to process what she feels towards Nol, but if Dieter is awake, would there even be an opportunity for that? I've wondered if he would do something dumb, like date her even knowing her unprocessed feelings, but that feels rather dramatic for who he is, doesn't it? That feels like a very typical second lead cliche and I don't think that's the sort of thing quimchee would want to write.

Man, I really SHOULD write that post because I clearly have more to say about it than I thought lmao.

the feelings are sprouting, but she can't quite process what's happening, and doesn't know what to do with herself just yet.

Even before getting 222, I was already thinking that Shinae definitely didn't know how to respond at first. I think... like yes there's a lot of unprocessed feelings happening and this is the closest she's ever been with Nol, physically. I wonder if she'd still be like this if she didn't know that he doesn't have feelings for Alyssa, if she'd still be very caught up in all of this, because I don't think she's acknowledging the feelings at this point. If anything, I think there's more surprise about this, because he's always respected that line she drew. She was the one who tried holding his hands that time. When she tried to feel if he had a fever he batted her hand away. Now, suddenly, he's literally leaning on her. I think, too, it's the circumstances. He was the one who made her get up for the dance, but suddenly he's burying his head against her shoulder - she knows something is wrong, but she can only assume it's a result of his injury. Maybe she's already wondering if he was hiding something, like his pain (because I don't think she realized yet that it was his feelings he's hiding).

But yeah I think it's very much that they're in uncharted territory, it's all so new to her. I would lol really love to be in her head later, whenever she does find herself thinking about this. What IS running through her head? What does she think of her inability to hold his gaze, of the way she's flushing and getting so flustered? Is she going to chalk it up to the intensity? Is she going be able to face it? alfjkakfjkafjaf

I wonder lmao if she'll figure out the resemblance to Rand or not. Like, Idk that scene is eternally funny to me, Rand's carbon copy just there in front of her, spewing his drink all over her alfjkafkjafjkafj LMAO I... I wish we had more scenes between Nol and Kousuke like that but. Kousuke :/ never really allowed them huh lol. I get so sad thinking about what they could have been, had Kousuke not been manipulated, had he not been driven to compete for love and affection. :(

Tumblr did NOT want to show me that link btw and I am SAD! TUMBLR PLS LET PEOPLE SEND ME LINKS PROPERLY EVEN ON ANON I WANT TO SEEEEE ;A; But also haha as always no need to apologize for long messages! I... clearly... am not good at reigning myself in either LMAO but that's fine because I love these discussions!!!! Thank you for always giving me something interesting to think or talk about! <3

Edit to add that @amuraas was able to paste the link for me and ;~; Listen I am not kidding when I say this made me cry. It is so perfect, you are right! That absolutely sums up my own feelings about love lol but especially the love between Nol and Shinae. That he could see in her what she was unable to see herself, and just the same, she stays at his side even in this darkest of times to reflect back to him what he's unable to see past. It's absolutely beautiful! One of the things I talk about a lot re: Stalkyoo is the mirroring, and how they can see in each other what they're unable to see in themselves and god this quote just GETS THAT SO WELL. Love is someone who brings out the best in you, but it's also someone who can see the best when you're unable to and god I want to howl about this foreverrrrrrrr. Thank you for finding and sharing that! And thank you again to @amuraas for tracking it down for me when tumblr refused to!

#I Love Yoo #ILY Brainrot #ILY FP #ILY Spoilers #Lil Anon #Shinae Yoo #Nolan Oliver T. Lochlainn #Nol #Yujing #Yui Hirahara #Gun Kim #Sangchul Kim #Randulph Skuli Hirahara #Dieter Becker-Wulff #SOOOOOOOOO many thoughts as usual lmao sooooooo many words #we got 222 spoilers in here so be mindful of that! #otherwise we got a little bit of EVERYTHING lmao

[dropintomanga]

It’s Hard to Talk About Everything Regarding Suicide

I want to start off by saying that I’m glad Aka Akasaka and Mengo Yokoyari’s Oshi no Ko has blown up in popularity.

However, as I noted a year ago about this series, there’s a certain part of the story that’s eerily similar to an incident where a major Japanese celebrity killed themselves due to cyberbullying. 

Here we are now and episode 6 of the anime finally showed it all. Spoilers after the jump.

A character named Akane Kurokawa, a young star trying to make it big in the Japanese entertainment industry, attempts suicide after being bullied online, but she is saved. The thing is that Akane’s situation mirrors the events of what happened to Hana Kimura, a former Japanese wrestler who killed herself due to online users bullying her over her behavior in an episode of a popular Japanese reality show.

Hana’s mother, Kyoko Kimura, saw episode 6 of Oshi no Ko and criticized the anime for being insensitive and the staff for using Hana’s death as free source material. Responses to the episode have been very mixed. Some praise the episode for being courageous in talking about suicide, while others have argued that the episode was traumatizing.

The worst thing about this was that there were two Japanese articles that covered Kyoko’s statements and they got deleted. I later heard that Japanese online commenters were harassing Kyoko over her words and saying things like “How dare you voice your opinion! What if this anime gets canceled because of you?”

What gets lost here and no one really talks about regarding suicide is the people who get left behind. They usually are the family members, like Kyoko in this case. Parents who have to deal with their children’s mental health/illness struggles go through so much crap. They have to deal with potential gaslighting from people who are supposed to help, but choose to blame any systemic failings on the parent. Statements like “You didn’t do a great job in raising/protecting your kid. That’s why they are the way they are.” are sometimes thrown around to parents of children with mental health problems. It’s awful.

I don’t blame Kyoko for saying something because her grief is still there. I know that the media focuses too much on the victims to the point where they put people who knew the victim to the side. Suicide bereavement is a thing that goes unnoticed. Bullying definitely has to be addressed, but as I realized over the years, no one gives a damn in talking about someone’s grief once the funeral is over.

I know that it’s hard to talk about issues like suicide (and all of its factors and ramifications) on mainstream media. Despite the power of anime and manga in providing needed commentary on important topics, I don’t expect this to change any time soon considering many youth will still think of suicide as an answer to circumstances that aren’t their fault.

But I do know is the best way forward is getting everyone involved in a healthy and compassionate discussion (NOT a debate and on social media), which includes media, professionals, activists, peers, and most importantly, people with lived experiences and the family members/friends that know them. 

#suicide #manga #anime #Oshi no Ko #Akane Kurokawa #mental health #bereavement #grief

[sodrippy]

one of the worst parts of entertainment industry strikes/union talks is people are always so transparent about how they also view us as a product to be consumed and divided like their favourite show, and the conversation always devolves into peripheral topics centered on the audience.

the numerous things ive seen about the "art" of writing currently have kind of rubbed me the wrong way bc its as if people don't really see this as an actual WORKERS issue. these strikes are about a profession and about workers and the fact that we make Art for you to consume isnt actually the primary concern. ive seen talk about how its "ok to feel sad about your favourite show getting cancelled or ruined because of the WGA strike" and its so frustrating! i actually dont care if every show i love gets cancelled to get writers ethical and safe working conditions! this is a real and dire situation for real people. in the real world. the fate of a tv show does not and will not ever compare to that.

you dont generally have this tone surrounding other types of union action and its so frustrating to see the actual concerns and issues be obfuscated even by people who are supporting the strike.

(not to mention that almost every time anything of this nature comes up there will always be people who are pitting departments against each other for absolutely no reason. its so bizarre that your response to a guild demanding better conditions is to go "actually this other department is more important and deserve better conditions instead" or, even worse, to go "wow these artists are crazy for not having unionized already lol" but thats a conversation for a different time)

#ive mostly just seen these takes via people on my dash going 'um what the hell is this' but its still sooooo annoying #people just turn off any rational or critical thought when it comes to the entertainment industry and its so fucking annoying! #this is a JOB we are an INDUSTRY of PROFESSIONALS who WORK

[napkinscrawls]

Viktor needs Maintenance

Ficlet fluff | Vikor/OC | worries get kissed away (pos)

On Ao3

Viktor had been on edge for a while now, as resolute as the genius was, the endless venom of Piltover's finest still found a way to seep under his skin. The sideward looks at his brace, the muffled scoffs when he'd steer conversations back on topic, & worst of all; the endless 'concerns' these people would levy at Dulcie. The artist had graced their halls with her works, invigorated the prosthetics industry & all they would want to talk about was how 'inspiring' she was. Oh, how they managed to make the word filthy. All because she had the gall to exist in their presence whilst incapable of 'peak performance'.

The same as him. Two faulty parts that fit together, their jagged edges slotting in beside one another. They weren't seamless of course, but the gaps between whistled a hollow tune inside Viktor today.

Was Dulcie only with him because of solidarity? A hotfix fueled by desperation?

Viktor wincing as the thought echoed again. They are in their flat, an afternoon's light bathing the small room in gold, 'a poor man's gilding' his father would say. A fitting description for all that Viktor could offer the one he loves. Dulcie was tinkering with her prosthetic leg, unaware of Viktor's internal fretting. With a lazy tune slipping out of her, she ran through the routine of her daily maintenance they both knew she only did daily when he hovered nearby. Her two-toned hair glowing, the wild strands catching at every angle she moved in. Viktor himself sat a sofa away, pretending to read his notes as he formulated the correct way to phrase this.

"Dulcie." He begins.

"Viktor." She responds with matching inflection, not turning around.

That is a miscalculation on Viktor's half, he thought she'd at least turn her head, give him the hint of that smirk; the one that would always encourage him to try again. He swallowed the bitter rise of fear.

"What do you see in me?" There it is. Hanging in the air instead of inside his feeble chest.

The small sounds of cleaning stopped not suddenly, but in a slow meter as Dulcie absorbed his words. He could tell she was turning them over, careful with every interpretation & insinuation. She is methodical like that, though she prefers to call it 'considerate'.

Still without showing her face, she lifted her head & spoke.

"If I asked you, would you blow my back out?"

Like a discordant breaking of a finely tuned string Viktor's voice is riddled with confusion & fear. "Y-yes?" His mind still reeling from the non-sequitur.

Dulcie just shrugs, twisting a last nut into alignment.

"That's all I want in a man." She stretched her metal limb, flexing so the pistons would slide along, allowing her to assess their condition. A perfect & casual gesture. Unfitting for someone who just ripped the conversation off its tracks.

He hums just to fill the silence, catching the line of her shoulders the sun illuminates as she straightens out of her hunch. Just as her muscles flex to turn Viktor remembers himself & decides to be busy turning the pages of his book, the writing all but foreign to him. "So my personality & feelings are irrelevant?" He wasn't aware he was pouting until he could hear it in his voice, he quickly readjusts.

"Of course!" Dulcie throws her hands up, a barely restrained smile visible on her face turned towards Viktor as she is. "Why would I ever entertain things so unscientific?" The end is emphasized in his familiar lilt.

Viktor stops & raises his focus to his lover, a squint pinching the features of his face, he tilts his head. Then a cog turns.

"... You are referencing me, to me." He states cleanly, shutting his book one-handed. Still attempting severity.

Dulcie laughs. Closing the small distance between them with a shuffle of her knees, she takes his head in her hands & slowly following the lines of his cheekbones with her palms. The scent of cleaning oils & mechanical lubricant lulled Viktor in. Her mouth is pursed in a pantomime of how his was a moment ago.

Finding something Viktor could never see Dulcie nods & leans in to place a careful kiss on Viktor's forehead. All was right with the world at that moment. A happy noise emphasizes the transition from genuine care to an audible smack of the end of a smooch, Dulcie leans back just enough to catch his eye.

"I knew there was another reason I love you. You're quick on the uptake." She begins to place feather-light kisses across his face. Tilting his jaw to aid her ministrations. It felt as though Dulcie was re-tuning him with every touch, & with each press of her lips his thoughts slotted into their proper place once again.

"You're trying to distract me from the issue." Viktor chides with all the tension of an old spring. His long fingers smooth over her wrists as if he were about to stop her, but instead of pulling her away, he guides her towards his own kiss. His thumbs rubbing soft circles across her skin. The book was placed on the small table beside him.

"Oh, so smart." Dulcie coos, mirth thick in her tone as he breaks away for a breath.

Viktor's eyes are unfocused from the love he is steeped in.

"That's just condescending." He mumbles before repaying her latest kiss in kind.

"Stop kissing me then." She challenges, with barely enough space between their lips.

"Never." He replied, killing the challenge with a single word, & his doubt dying with it. A swift end. As gentle in its decay as the touches exchanged between the two now.

A whistle was still a tune.

#Arcane #viktor arcane x oc #Viktor Arcane #arcane oc #Dulcie arcane #The smallest of ficlets #Fluff

[somehowmags]

HAHA i guess i haven't seen enough bad takes from the fandom about leona (albeit i definitely have seen some) so i get the impression that vil is mischaracterized more often on average. regardless, ive also seen a lot of fanfic characterizing vil as this emotionally constipated and constantly nagging narcissist who is incapable of showing affection and it makes me [rat clenches fist of rage]. im aware angst often draw out the worst part of a character for the feels, which in this case is vil's strict scrutiny BUT PLELALSLELADE IM SCREAMING MY TEARS ARE ON THE FLOOR.... how are you gonna ignore the scene in chapter 6 where vil literally moves past his stern housewarden persona in order to be vil schoenheit. not the actor, not the model, not the housewarden countless students look towards as a leader-- but vil schoenheit, friend of yours and ally. all to give epel, rook, and yoy; his beloved poison apple, his beloved hunter, and his beloved prefect, a hug and kiss.?? like. kuekd emfusjbfe.??? when he literally squeals for joy after getting his youth back from malleus? when he weeps as an old man? vil schoenheit IS an emotional person! he's an actor with responsibilities on his back, he's not gonna let others see him be anything but strict when the time isn't right! but the point is that he knows when to be soft and loving ESPECIALLY after his overblot!!! 3!&!$!!$!#! he cares so deeply for each and everyone of his pomefiore students and especially those closest to him-- his method of expressing his affection isn't just limited to the occasional praise or hug and kiss, he genuinely wants the best for you when he cares and he'll support you/offer help in achieving your best self! it's not just a byproduct of his need for perfection, but to love is to grow and change and metamorphosize from the flower to the succulent apple and he can see your potential. for the man who knows what it's like to never be enough, he knows you're more than. if only you try. if only you grasped your dreams with your bare hands because god does he dream of it for you. my point is that vil is genuinely one of the most loving characters, even if his ways aren't the most conventional or he may seem harsh. he's not heartless-- though im aware his reaction towards epels moment of emotional vulnerability in the vdc rehearsal gives off said impression, he's grown and changed. i doubt current vil would be so uncaring and stern still if you expressed hurt or discomfort over an austere sentiment he's said or done. if he knows it's what you need, he probably would take a softer and kinder approach. the same water that hardens the egg, softens the potato. he can learn, or perhaps he already understands that some people reach their potential differently-- especially as someone who has lived in the entertainment industry his whole lived, he may be accustomed to the unforgiving nature of its expectations BUT HES NOT ANYMORE!!! and he knows others lead a normal life outside of it, so the same approach taken to him likely wouldn't be suited for them! he won't ever stop trying to suggest betterments for your health, appearance, and outfits but if you express different sentiments he wouldn't take to forcing them onto you!! he just wants you to live your best life, because from what he knows, it brings you gratification and he WANTS you to succeed and be satisfied! im sorry i have a lot to feel about him, i just really despise seeing people overlook the caring trait of his in favor of cheap angst. for someone who has rook as his favorite i really cannot shut my zest fest mouth up about vil <|:-( love his ass

- same anon raving about vil from earlier pt.2 except im more insane

god yeah this is so true....i think about him cheering and crying after malleus restored his youth literally every day of my life he sounds so happy and relieved!!!! had to replay the scene of him kissing rook and epel and yuu like twice to process everything bc i was so !!! at him showing emotion it was so. and like him crying as an old man is mostly played for laughs but it's also so. holy shit. (also the fact that he isn't crying because he's "ugly" but because he wanted more time to play young roles before he started doing older ones.) he's so much more open and emotional in book 6 it's like he's realized he can stop being "the fairest of them all" and just start being vil. like the ice has melted!!! he's so endearing i have gotta hit him with a 2003 toyota corolla

also no this is in character for someone whose fave is rook. this is rook behavior alksjddfhalksjfhlkasdfh he would definitely be on magicam defending vil with his LIFE

#asks #twst #vil schoenheit

[moiloru]

🦸 My Hero Academia (Seasons One Through Five) Review! 🏫

Well, here's a big one! Welcome to a new anime review, everyone! In this one, I'll tackle My Hero Academia, the one and only!

Needless to say, this one doesn't require any introduction, but hey, I'll do it anyway. My Hero Academia is a shonen anime that started airing in 2016. It currently has five completed seasons and three movies, for a total of over 100 episodes.

MHA has established itself as one of the most well-known names in the industry - for both fanboys/fangirls and haters. In this review, I'll only be talking about the stuff that has already aired, so the ongoing sixth season will be for later.

My Hero Academia is fascinating because it's a very... normal anime, in a way. There's no real quirk to it (see what I did there?), just superpowers. But it still works, even if some people would tell you it sucks ass.

The plot's simple: to become the strongest hero in the world and defeat the Big Bad. After that, it's fight after fight, training session after training session - sometimes incredible, sometimes dull. Some arcs are great, others not so much.

S1 felt a bit slow to me, but the show truly peaked in S2, which was excellent. S3 was still very good, and half of S4 was great, but S5 was long and only sometimes entertaining. Still, every season has its good moments.

The first and third movies were quite remarkable, and while the second one looks marvelous visually, the ending sucks and is fanservice at its worst. Their canon-compliance is unclear is annoying since you can't tell precisely when they happen or if they're even important.

Still, the overarching plot is pretty interesting to follow, even if I wish some of the most boring arcs - and villains - were skipped more quickly.

One great strength: the main characters. They might not be the best-written characters ever, but they're an endearing cast I grew fond of. Their dynamics are amusing, and their group development is excellent. Required for a school anime!

The villains are meh, though. A few are memorable, but some are not interesting and make their arcs forgettable - if not outright bad. However, the Big Bad has a decent backstory, so that's something. Hope they make good of it in the future.

One thing MHA excels at is music. The OST is a banger, and some of the action themes sent shivers down my spine, sometimes making up for the plot being silly. That's a fantastic asset for a shonen to have!

I personally loved openings ODD FUTURE and Merry-Go-Round, even if others are good, too. Overall, the OPs and EDs are pleasant to listen to; some get you pumped up!

Visually, this anime has improved tremendously over the years, becoming beautiful to the eyes in the latest seasons. It's colorful, well-animated, and highlights some critical scenes in the anime - and even more so in the movies.

Overall, for all the criticism it got, MHA is still a good anime. Of course, it could be much better, but I mostly enjoyed watching these first five seasons. I just wish they skipped the boring parts!

In seven years, it has earned the status of legendary anime, so I'd be a fool to tell you not to watch it. It has flaws, but you can't not watch an anime such as My Hero Academia. Go make yourself your own opinion and decide if it deserves the critics!

Down below are the tierlists for the characters and the narrative arcs! No spoilers, so no worries!

#my hero academia #mha #boku no hero acedamia #midoriya izuku #bakugou katsuki #todoroki shouto #all might #anime #anime review #tierlist #tier list

[talenlee]

Story Pile: Oshi no Ko

With 2023 over, there comes an inevitable wave of conversations for those of us who watch anime slow, to ask: Hey, what was good back then? What anime was there, now fully complete, that is worth going back and watching again now there’s a full set of episodes to engage with? And that brings with it a ranking system and a conversation about best and worsts. I tend to think of this in terms instead of favourites – of what thing was it that I liked the best, or spoke to me the most deeply. I figured I’d talk about that in April, in my month.

One of the anime that was considered in contention is the anime Oshi no Ko, which is a – it’s about – it’s –

Hm. Hang on.

If it is time for me to talk about Oshi no Ko, a manga and an anime and technically a movie and a music video clip, then it is time to set up some basic boundaries for the audience. It is an anime with a pretty pervasive and well-defended culture regarding spoilers and their importance, though, and while I think having access to information about this series is one of the best ways to keep from giving up on it, I want to make sure you know good and clear up front that I am going to be doing spoilers about what’s included in Oshi no Ko. Not a lot – but definitely stuff from its first episode onwards, where the big twist of the series – as much as it can be considered that – is explicitly and clearly spoiled. If I’m going to talk to you about this series, I need to talk to you about this series and not about what the series pretends and implies it might actually be.

Problem with that is that brings with it its cousin, the content warning. And while normally, I can kinda just smooth things over with the phrase ‘oh lords, there’s a lot of anime bullshit going on here,’ I think it’s best to be a bit more specific in the context of Oshi no Ko. That means I’m going to talk about:

Death of a parent, particularly directly experienced

Murder, but you know, this is very low key and it’s allowed, as a treat

The ongoing experience of stalking and its ramifications

Cyberbullying and suicide attempts

Uncomfortable age gaps we summarise as ‘anime bullshit’

Sibling and parent-child incest

part 1: what it is

Oshi no Ko is a manga and anime from the pen of Akasaka Aka, the author most notably otherwise of Kaguya-Sama: Love Is War. It’s an anime ‘about the idol industry,’ focusing on the story of one Ai Hoshino, but shock! Surprise! After the first volume slash episode of the story, Ai dies! It’s not about Ai at all! It’s about her son’s quest to find his father and kill him.

I’m simplifying, but I’m not lying.

Oshi no Ko is an anime about the entertainment industry of Japan, as told by the entertainment industry of Japan. It’s that particular genre that I love where there’s a vision of economics and material realities of a space. The system that makes the media that the series is about is a system that works on layers, and maybe sure, a character may be perfect for a job but what if that job doesn’t exist ten stages later in the production process?

But okay, I feel like I’m not explaining this well, which makes sense because Oshi no Ko is a staggeringly hard anime to explain. I resent a great deal the people who simply said ‘you should watch it’ like that explains everything – I did in fact watch it and took a month break between episode 1 and 2, because I was so disappointed with the direction the series was taking at that point. Let me start again.

Part of this is because the narrative of Oshi no Ko is complex but the plot is pretty simple. The difference here is that the plot is the sequence of events that make up the story, one after another, while the narrative is how that plot is revealed to the audience. Lots of stories you know tell the plot out of order – any time there’s a last minute twist, that’s because part of the story is being told after its immediate occurrence. The example I normally use is that the start of the plot of Hamlet is that first, Hamlet’s father is assassinated, then Hamlet’s mother marries the murderer, then Hamlet returns home and sees a ghost. Except we don’t see that story in the order; the narrative presents it almost in the opposite – Hamlet returns home, finds his mother has remarried, and then thanks to seeing the ghost, learns his father was murdered.

The plot of Oshi no Ko is a woman is murdered, and her twin children dive into the entertainment industry in response to this tragic loss.

The narrative starts not with the woman but with her obstretrician, who meets her in secret because she shouldn’t be having kids, because she shouldn’t be having sex, because she’s an up-and-coming idol, and idol culture is incredibly puritanical and controlling of women’s bodies and identities. When he’s murdered by her stalker, he is reborn as her baby child, and spends a few years growing up and getting to know her better, before her stalker returns and kills her. He’s left with a burning want to take vengeance on the person he sees as responsible for this idol slash his mother’s death, and that means hunting down his new biological father, comparing their DNA to prove who he is, then killing him. Also through this whole sequence, he has a twin sister who is also a reincarnation but even though it is very obvious she is the reincarnation of the Littlest Cancer Patient he took care of years ago and made him a fan of the idol in the first place, he doesn’t learn that, and the audience only gets it confirmed in the ‘second’ episode.

Oshi no Ko is an anime that starts by telling you it’s going to be about a really cool woman investigating a mystery while trying to navigate the Japanese entertainment industry that wants to chew her up and spit her out. Then, surprise! It’s actually about a cat and mouse game between her two year old son and his biological father! Then, surprise! It’s about watching him and his sister navigate the entertainment industry, for competing reasons – her want to be like their mother, and his want to murder their father! Then, surprise! It’s about all these other characters and all these economic realities of how media gets made!

Once the first episode has gone and stuffed its central character good and hard in the fridge, the story that follows jumps forwards ten whole ass years to follow Ai’s children, the reincarnations of her old fans. Named Aquamarine and Ruby because Ai is extra as hell and also the god damned best, they make friends in performing arts schools, they connect with other actors and they get involved in the creation of media while trying to build a connection with one another. Each child is holding an enormous secret, which is really funny when you think about it because both of them just think they’re the reincarnation of someone else, which in the real world, is a thing that a lot of people just think is true anyway, for everyone. The first season doesn’t actually resolve much of the murder mystery plot, and has a rough start about treating women badly, but as it progresses, Aqua demonstrates a truly fantastic grasp on alienation in acting, and Ruby shows its counterpoint: Feeling things incredibly hard in the pursuit of being able to project an authenticity.

They both do this by lying a lot!

Oshi no Ko is a lot of things, and it’s quite good at a lot of them. Part of what it is is the incredibly disappointing twist of realising what it’s not going to be, or how it might sometimes pivot to something else, something wildly different, for completely inexplicable reasons.

part 2: the things I really like about what it’s doing

If you’ve looked at the scroll bar you know you’re in for a long one here and I want to get my praise for this series out of the way up front. Oshi no Ko season 1 is an anime I really enjoyed watching, and it has a bunch of things I really like in it. Presented without much context are some of those things.

I love Aqua and Ruby as characters. Set aside the reincarnation element, you have two kids with a deeply fucked up relationship to their mother thanks to the murder, whose whole lives twist around that woman and therefore, one another. Ruby appreciates what their mother made, the image she could construct, and Aqua appreciates – he thinks – what their mother was, the person she was under the image. Of course, that’s stupid – we see Ai’s inner mind on this and we know she was creating the image because she was choosing who to be, and who she wanted to be was someone who could talk about love and be beloved. It’s great.

In a show full of great women characters I like a lot like Miyako (cool hot adopted mom), Karina (That Bitch grown up into your high school crush), MEMcho (we all love entertaining lies), I want to bring special attention to Akane. It’s pretty easy for a character like Akane to play her part in the story, then close that off and step out; you have the online bullying victim encounter, the almost loss of her character, and then – like the rest of the crew on the reality show, if you want! – she can step out. But instead Akane takes initiative and works on doing something different, and in the process we get two things I really like. First, is she makes herself a conspiracy wall, and I love a character with a conspiracy wall. Second is, she walks into the next scene and she takes an assumption about the world that the main characters have and piledrivers it to pieces.

See, the assumption about Ai – it’s even in the opening theme – is that she’s a once-in-a-lifetime talent, a star come down from the heavens to the earth. The stars in her eyes are part of this — shown to fade out when she dies. It’s not that her eyes look materially weird, it’s there’s a way she presents herself that the show symbolises with the stars as being fundamentally engaging. Aqua and Ruby both ruminate on how nobody can do what mum does. Then Akane steps into a scene and shows how they’re wrong. Being like Ai is a thing you can learn, it’s an affect, and it’s something that someone can choose to do. Being Ai was a choice, and I love when characters are shown to be the results of choices not destinies.

Aqua’s hot. I love the chameleonic ability to shift into roles, I love the dull understated affect of a boy who is thinking of murder and trying to be normal about everything else. I love the moment in the B-Komachi play where he pulls out the glowsticks and does what he can to support the group. It’s not necessarily part of his plan – he’ll have other ways to get into the idol industry, he doesn’t need B-Komachi to succeed. But he shows up and supports his sister and his friend and his other friend, and he is affected by Karina’s performance. Which again, in that moment, she chooses!

There’s a lot of idol culture experience this anime makes look really cool. In the OP there’s the sea of glowsticks, which first look like eyes peeking out of the dark and then become a roaring sea almost like fangs or thorns. The actual song performances in Oshi no Ko kick ass. We Are Star Train (god don’t know how to romanise that one properly) and the OP Idol especially. Idol really goes so very hard, I love it so much. And yeah, this means 2023 had two different banger Yaosobi songs headlining anime I liked a lot about shows with fucked up mum situations. Don’t think too much about it.

This series sure seems to be about love, and what that means. More than I would consider most things that ‘want’ to be about love, Oshi no Ko wants to dig into questions of what you love and who you love and what you express. Is love a feeling? Is love an action? Is love a choice? These are not easy questions to answer in the context of an anime trying to also make sure you pick up the next issue.

I love the breadth of what the story bothers to include. In a lot of media I know that characters are there to serve purposes, like story machinery. A set of gears turn and a piece is put in the proper spot and then they’re done, and the machinery can move on. In Oshi no Ko I don’t know who’s done and I don’t know who’s coming back. A mystery story can be very hard to do well, and part of what’s going on in Oshi no Ko is multiple competing stories which means pursuing the mystery is something being chased through these other competing needs. It’s not sitting around forcing focus on a drip feed of clues, it’s doing things in the mean time.

Really really like this show!

And I feel like if you ever talk to me about it, you wouldn’t believe me!

part 3: Guess We’re Talking About Incest

I mean I don’t have to talk about incest, but in the context of talking about Oshi No Ko I kind of do have to talk about incest. You may not want to talk about incest. In which case, you want to jump down to the next image bumper, and just ignore this whole section. After all, incest isn’t a topic some people want to talk about. The purpose of this big chunky introductory paragraph is to make sure you don’t just stumble into the next paragraph without being very, very aware that I’m about to talk about incest.

Anyway, incest is a mainstream kink that’s more commonly referenced than feet.

Now I think the reaction to this is split into three basic groups. One, ‘no, it’s not,’ two, ‘oh yeah, Game of Thrones is popular,’ and three is ‘oh yeah it is isn’t it.’

For anyone in the first group, I’m not talking about pornographic material. I’m talking about how mainstream, common, well known and prestige material regularly invokes incest and incestuous themes as a thing to titillate. I mean that ‘stepsister’ and ‘stepbrother’ tropes are extremely common. I mean that calling one’s sexual partner ‘mommy’ or ‘daddy’ is so common that evangelicals do it. What I mean is that in the context of sexual fantasies, ‘one person having sex with twins’ is so fantastically common that I found it showing up in episodes of Magnum PI. An ongoing clock throughout my childhood, which shows up any time there are celebrity twins, was people talking about the idea of sharing a pair of famous twins. In my childhood, it was the Olsen Twins, with people literally maintaining a clock on how long before they were legal.

And now you may be stopping me to go hey hey hey, hey those things are different. Stepsiblings aren’t proper incest. Sex with twins isn’t proper incest. And that impulse, that intuitive counterpoint – that these things ‘don’t count’ is stupid. Two related people having sex with a third person is, what, not showing and demonstrating a level of sexual intimacy that passes muster? Do you imagine they do not touch one another in the act? Is there a garbage bag set up to ensure nobody’s fluids get on anyone else? Because the point where you’re saying there’s incest and there’s proper incest, you realise you are just arguing about degrees, not about categories.

(And I guess this is an example, albeit a sticky one, of prototype theory.)

You need to be prepared to think about incest in this kind of sticky, dimensional zone way, because it’s not like Oshi no Ko provides a clear and unambiguous relationship to what incest means and its ramifications in the setting. After all, these children are the reincarnations of other people, which I assume happens all the time and it’s just that Ruby and Aqua are just rare examples of people who remember their previous lives. They are, legitimately, Ai Hoshino’s children, and it is entirely normal and natural for a pair of babies to nurse on their mother. It is not sexual to nurse on their mother. There is nothing sexual inherent to nursing at all, it’s literally a job of the body, and treating it like it’s inherently sexual is really messed up. But these two do treat it as if it is sexual, because to them, it is, and at that point you have infants without sex drives or the ability to act on those sex drives who are entirely, 100%, sexually interested in their mother.

If you want to argue Ruby isn’t interested because she says it would be fine for her to nurse on their mother, note that she’s only using that idea to tease someone who she is actively trying to make feel bad about her getting to do something sexual that he does not. It’s ‘but we’re both girls’ level argumentation.

Don’t worry, though, because as the story unspools (and I checked ahead in the manga for this one), there’s an eventual conversation about how Aqua and Ruby are going to kiss (it’s for a movie). Aqua is uncomfortable about it, and Ruby expresses that hey, you don’t need to feel bad about kissing me, you can just imagine it as the doctor you are kissing the child patient he had.

Who was, again, a child.

At the time these characters have this conversation they have been siblings for sixteen years. They have grown up together and been directly associated as siblings together their entire new lives, even if there’s thirty years before it for him and twelve for her.

To be as blunt as possible about it, I don’t care about the incest. Incest, as a kink in media, is not only widespread and mainstream and incredibly common, is also something I only ever see complained about when it’s a queer woman who brings it up, especially if that queer woman is talking about an entirely fictional character pairing. It’s possible some queer nonbinary people I know have talked about it too and gotten attacked, some things get complicated. It’s hard for me to see a kink referenced in Friends and then see a conspicuous trend of shitting on women for talking about it and imagine this is coming from any kind of good faith criticism from a coherent societal other position.

The incest kink is in Oshi no Ko, in much the same way that age gap kink was in Violet Evergarden, except in Oshi no Ko it’s, like, more tasteful? And the actual kink in question is handled in a way that doesn’t make me feel creeped out. Like, I can see the kink, the subversive element of the story, and how the story winds up there and think ‘oh yeah, that’s part of the complicated relationship in this story space.’ And it’s been a long time since the story brought up nursing motherhood as if it was a kink space because it very much is a kink space. To cruelly summarise, the incest doesn’t detract from the story because the story is already so aggressively weird for seemingly no purpose but to set up this kind of kink narrative. It’s a Christian Baby hypothetical, but for brotherfuckers.

Basically, if you’re here to have this kink tickled, it’ll probably do it but it didn’t stand out to me as doing a good job of it, but also didn’t do it in a way that made me ask questions about the story. This is a thing the series wants to be about and it’s having fun with it in a supernatural and fantastic way. It’d be like arguing about Loki’s sexuality in Norse Myth, or about what genders Sun Wukong was on — the parameters of your conversation are so wildly inadequate for the task.

part 4: Trust and Motivation

I try very hard to not be dogmatic about interpretations of media. I have the impulse, time to time, to tell someone ‘that’s stupid,’ about interpretation of media, because they may have missed something obvious. This can be really telling when I’m dealing with people who have recontextualised a piece of media without some very important information. There are quite a few people who struggle with interpreting the universe of the Pokemon franchise because they forget ‘this is for four year olds.’ A lot of what’s ‘wrong’ with Steven Universe is because it’s a cartoon for children. More than a few times I’ve dealt with students who don’t understand American media because American public health is so bad (and counterpoint to that, I’ve dealt with Australians who don’t know that they have public health care because they’ve ingested American media). The maxim I work by is that anyone I see talking about media is negotiating with that media, and that means their biases are coming to bear in trying to talk about the biases that are in the work.

I don’t tend to like long-running anime.

It’s not just because it’s a bigger investment of time like I’d assume is a problem for me. It’s also that anime that runs over a long time tends towards being anime with a plot that’s less focused on things that I think matter. I would rather an episodic series of series, like Slayers, where each season brings with it a new whole distinct story, than the more sprawling, deliberately processional ongoing myth-arc structure of a show like, well, Kaguya-Sama: Love Is War or Oshi no Ko. The fact that Oshi no Ko has a full season that doesn’t actually conclude any of its story arcs and merely says ‘tune in for next season’ is something I found incredibly frustrating. Mystery stories promise a resolution and if you can’t do a resolution in twelve episodes chopped up weird to include a movie, what trust can I have in there being a resolution worth waiting for?

Complicating that further is that sure, fans of Kaguya-Sama: Love is War would say that trust is important in this artist, in this writer, because look at all the work, the doujin work too, in making that work hold together across its extensive sprawl! And to that I would ask why we need to sprawl? Is the manga of Oshi no Ko concluded, does it include some brilliant twist and we’re all just waiting to get there?

No!

No, Oshi no Ko is still going and it’s not wound up its conclusion and it’s got seasons worth of anime to go to get there, and that makes me extremely suspicious. This series, this season, was worth the twelve episodes of time I spent on it. That was really good! But if the story then says that I need to give it not another season, but another pair of seasons, maybe three extra seasons, maybe an ongoing, steady sprawl of seasons, to get to the end of its story I suddenly lose a lot of interest. How am I going to trust it was worth it? How is it going to be worth it?

At that point, I have to stop thinking the resolution is the reason to care and instead the focus should be on what the show is doing moment to moment and instead of relying on the driving mystery to instead focus on what, as best I can see, the story wants to be about and what that story can be relied upon, trusted, to bring me, all while it radicalises me into thinking that maybe every entertainment industry everywhere needs to be burned to the ground and everyone with the job title CEO for a media corporation should be hung inverted in the streets with nails.

Bear that in mind here, I’m trying to not just be like ‘well, this show is doing X because it’s Y.’ There’s more to it than that. There’s my biases at work. For example, I think that Oshi no Ko is a pretty horny series. I think that the way the show depicts mouths – Ai’s in particular – wants you to pay attention to it. Characters are sweatier, and thirstier and breathier than anime normally represents. There’s a focus on eyes – sure – and how people look at things and look at one other that speaks to ideas like their inner lives, their conception of what they’re dealing with. One of the characters whose eyes you never see is treated as being breathtakingly inscrutable.

These are details I focus on. These are things I think indicate that there’s a deliberate intention in this series to look at characters as whole people with individual motivations and wants, and those wants are informed by the things they’re familiar with and the things about themselves they may not have interrogated. This level of intentionality makes it hard for me to ever treat stuff in Oshi no Ko as being accidental or just a meme or chosen at random. Not that there can’t be things like that in the work, but it just feels so thoroughly constructed to me that everything that’s in the story is there for a reason.

Couple the intentionality of the story with the horniness of the story and there’s this creeping step-step-step up to the point that yeah maybe the incest kink and the age gap kink and the hot pregnant lady in the first episode and the way girls ogle one another and the lizard eyes are all things that are in here for a reason and that reason may be because this show likes those things and wants to include them. Maybe the reason this show is the way it is isn’t part of some grand conspiracy.

part 5: is this a dril tweet?

Now this is where we do verge into a conspiracy theory, something I cannot prove and also do not want you to imagine is necessarily true. It’s more a story, a story that makes something make more sense to me. It involves talking about What Japanese Culture is doing, and I want you to remember any time someone like me, especially someone who can’t speak or read Japanese, says that, you are being told a story.

This story is about my journey trying to understand Oshi no Ko.

I couldn’t work out why Oshi no Ko worked the way it did. Specifically, I couldn’t work out why the first movie-length episode was about a character being isekai’d into reincarnation in his own world, as the child of someone who he had already met, and how that idea then failed to play meaningfully into the plot of the story afterwards for a whole season. There’s nothing in the story that benefits from the addition of this element; indeed, if you skip the first episode, it barely comes up in the series as a whole. There’s one moment where Aqua references it, and Ruby doesn’t make it focal outside of that first episode.

At the same time, it was central to the first hour of the story! It was so important that the story bent its structure around making sure that pre-Aqua Aqua met Ai and had a positive opinion of her. That doesn’t seem necessary at all, after all – if you remove the supernatural element and merely have Aqua and Ruby as the children of a talented idol performer who was tragically murdered, does anything about their motivations need to change? They can both still be precocious children following in the wake of the mystery of their mother’s murder. A story could even be built around finding the videos we know Ai made about her feelings and her history – instead of building ninety minutes of television around the importance of one character so you can feel upset and shocked when she died.

I did not understand what it was doing or why, because who comes up with ‘reincarnated as the baby of a girl I just met, and having some weird intimacy issues around that’ outside of a hentai doujinshi specifically about satisfying that, singular kink?

Turns out, at least according to Mother’s Basement, this is a common phrase used in Japanese idol culture. The idea of wanting to be reincarnated as the child of your favourite idol is a thing that’s been a meme in the culture for about ten years. Hah! Fool on me, I see! I was just not clued into the culture of idols in Japan, which is a supremely fucked up space and not because of this single idea. This single idea seems like supernatural fantasy kink, honestly imagining nonsense about people you’ll never meet is a lot better than y’know, actually inflicting that on the people in question who are in many cases real humans. It is strange, though — it’s like such a singular idea it feels like a meme, like a joking repeating of an incident everyone is vaguely aware of, or connected to.

Dot dot dot.

Ten years ago, and a few months as of the time of this writing, dril tweeted:

here’s a list of touhou girls i want to have as a Mom someday & here is a copy of that list in case you accidentally throw it in the gabarge

Dril, September 14, 2013

Now hold up hold up hold up hold up. I don’t know a line of cause or effect here. What it looks like to me, knowing a natural flow of meme structures in my language space, is that sometimes someone will make a joke, and it will spread and be shared wildly and now I can talk about walrus fairies vanilla essence goncharov and you know what I mean, and if you don’t know what I mean you have no idea what I mean.

The story for how this looks to me is that dril made this joke, and someone shared it on 2ch because it was funny (it is) and then that led to people who got the joke making reference to that joke and that became a common enough thing on 2ch that it spread to the idol niche and now it’s seen as their thing to joke about wanting a character as a Mom Someday, even if nobody cares or would want to care!

That story is pretty wild, though I want to make it clear it’s just a story. It’s nothing that I can prove, and I don’t have the skills to prove. An equally possible version of the story is this was already a meme for how people referred to their idol interests and dril made a joke about that where it being decontextualised from idol culture in Japan to American fan culture around Touhou was the bit. It’s also possible both ideas stem from another, earlier, thirdier, secreter thing. It’s also also possible they’re both unrelated and it’s just that the time was right for that kind of joke. I can’t say and you shouldn’t treat what I’m saying as ‘dril shitposted so hard that Oshi no Ko came into existence.’

The idea of being reincarnated as your favourite idol’s kid, to have her as a mom someday, is a thing that you have to already know about or you’d have no reason to reference it. Without knowing that it’s a thing people say, though, its presence in the story is completely inexplicable. When it’s in the series, it’s a Funny Bit, a Bit that’s about how important this weird kink-interest (kinktrest) is to the speaker. It’s about ‘imagine that common thing we all say, and what might flow from that.’ There’s no sense to it because part of the point is a relentless desire to have this scenario that is pre-negotiated by common conversation! Part of the joke is, after all, being so invested in the idea that you’re prepared for people to ignore or discard it!

part 6: conclusion

2023 was a year I consider weaker for anime. When I set up my blog entries to make sure that I’m not just banging on the same theme over and over, I have two slots: Anime (Good) and Anime (Cringe), where I know that if I’m going to talk about the anime I think of as unequivocally good, I want to space those out. It’s important to me to not dwell too much on good things at once to not lose perspective but also so you don’t notice I praise the same things the same way all the time. Oh, it’s about choices is it? It’s all about choices? Well who woulda noticed that! I wonder if Talen is going to like this anime about a hot boy he can project onto who also has an awful relationship with his father and some extremely damaging power fantasy like he’s looking at Unit-01 rampaging through the NERV base thinking ‘This would fix me,’ as he’s been doing in his head for twenty five years.

I think that Oshi no Ko might be my favourite anime of 2023. I also think, with all these words out there, with all this hindsight, I think that’s embarrassing. Oh, not for me, I’m great, no, but for 2023 anime. I think that as good as the best bits of Oshi no Ko are in the context of the series, there is so much stuff in Oshi no Ko that could just be improved by not including it. Hell, consider the importance of the premiere movie, and how I have a hard time not thinking this series is improved by not watching it. This is a semi-complete story with a premiere episode so bad that I stopped watching it for a month. It is an anime that can accurately be described as taking a story about an interesting woman then killing her so it can instead become a story about two men involved in her murder. This is an anime about the idol industry and related entertainment media that somehow doesn’t seem like it’s going to conclude with the main characters storming an executive meeting with abbatoir bolt-guns so how satisfying could its ending ever really be?

There are other 2023 anime I’d recommend more highly. I’d say that you should check out Apothecary Diaries first for an anime that’s more straightforward about how it’s enjoyable and what you should enjoy about it (though you know, just as much weird content warning shit). I’d say Overtake is an anime with a better and more tightly contained story that doesn’t leave you with a giant ‘we’ll get to this later’ end point. As much as I have come to despise it, I’m sure you could watch Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End and have a better time engaging with its immaculate vibes and its central character who’s a woman.

I can’t pretend, though, that I don’t care about this story and its characters. I want it to go well. I want to see Kana and Akane hate each other in ways that feel tinged with horny (because everything in this series is tinged with horny). I want Aqua to talk more about how his obviously damned soul might as well be put to some use tinged with fatalistic violence (because everything in this series is tinged with fatalistic violence). I want more of the music, oh my god, the music, that OP goes so fucking hard.

I may be literally waiting for years for it to be done and then I may need to work through the anime slow and steady as they drip it out, which seems incredibly inefficient to me. I may never get the conclusion I want out of this incomplete mess with its weird choices and its eerie haunting of sexy dead mum mouth.

Still love it though.

Maybe it’s just that Aqua is really hot.

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

#Anime #Oshi no Ko #Media #Story Pile

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[rewordthis]

So one episode left…

Gate: … Close?

How come we’re robbed of an episode this season? Season one was 24 episodes long. Usually anime with double the size of episodes are 24 episodes long. Could this be due to the recap I wasn’t able to find? Or because the animators are about to pass out from being worked to the bone?

⚠️Be warned: I rant ALOT this time around so don’t read if you can’t handle it. 🤷‍♀️

I see right and left people screaming at each other, especially those saying how this isn’t a nicely animated series being told off for ever mentioning something like that and that this season is literally killing the animators working for MAPPA because of the inhumane working schedule so people should be thankful to even get it and you know what? I held back all this time from saying it but it was nowhere near entertaining watching the show thus far save for some very specific exceptions.

Certainly not the nicely put-together series I loved from first season…

I keep comparing it to the first season and the movie and beside the five first episodes (not that these were stellar but still…), that many claimed it to be an artistic option to look like that, the series is decimated with bad scrip and awful flow and disturbingly bright colours that sometimes actually detract from the vibe. Not always! And I stress that because the Choso vs Yuuji fight was beautiful and Mahito’s deployment in Uzumaki was beyond pretty but the series are dark alright. It’s not exactly some neon-pop phantasmagoria to have that all the time. Also, the fight scenes have zero choreography and are often a mess that portrays nothing sort of non-cohesive stills here and there. Not to mention how annoying it is to have the luminosity suddenly drop from 100% to 30%. I have paused and rewinded FAR too many times trying to understand what’s going on to find it amusing anymore. All in all though, the worst part out of this season are the fights and I don’t think there’s anyone that caught whiff of what was going on without “rewinding” and pausing every frame — there’s no way you can enjoy something like this — unless you know, you have read the manga first... 😕😔

And in general let me break this down further by answering some really simple questions:

Are there incredible scenes? Yes.

Are there nice proportions and nicely portrayed characters most of the time? Yep!

Is the flow making sense? Somewhat?

Is the build up of the story engaging? Meh.

Are the fight sequences easy to follow with beginning, build up and climax? 7/10 no.

Animators are overworked? Then let them rest for fucks sake! I rather have the season postponed than have this… this “THING”! *waves hands wildly* This is not nice or good or desirable for both the fans and the workers. Give them time to sleep. Give the series time to come out properly. MAPPA managed to fuck up both its manpower and a popular series with one stone this time!

Honestly, I may come off as an ungrateful bitch and you know what? Think what you want, I may very well be one because it already sucks for me watching the series and knowing how much it sucks for the people behind it’s production; I can’t feel thankful for their efforts even more if it’s a product of frustration and pain. I feel disgusted by the executives for creating and prolonging this situation. I feel guilty for the animators working just to make their living. I hate the whole scheme of things inside and out of the anime industry. I honestly, honestly, would prefer the series went on hold until there was enough time to be produced normally and evenly. Just churning out episode after episode with shit quality simply because they need to ride the hype from the manga is not just bad business, is bad fan practice too.

If I didn’t know jack how the anime business in Japan works, I’d wish for the fanbase to turn their backs on this production but from what I’ve gathered projects get the guillotine treatment when there is no engagement. And it’s not like the employees can have a legal say on all this, as the Japanese law allows for companies that get negative criticism to file for defamation against whoever so much as speaks about them. I really hate that… 😤 Even worse, leaving a company is viewed as you not being a proper and cooperative employee in most cases, so you end up being undesirable for other companies. Unless these animators don’t have a back up plan they literally have nowhere to go if they leave MAPPA. Someone do correct me if I’m wrong, but I’ve come across many articles talking how this is a main toxic work trait in Japan. It’s why Nanami got killed, kids. Wake up!

But to make it perfectly clear, those who say that this season is not good? They have every right to say it if you’re just going to claim the bad working conditions in MAPPA. To be more precise, it is exactly what is shown in this season that makes it bad. It’s the mess in production that pours through and that’s why this is a badly animated series. Not just the wacky lines or the mad dimming etc. but also the scenario and the flow that are just… gasping to catch up to the events. No matter how much the animators work themselves to the ground producing amazingly beautiful imageries the problem remains the same; there’s a scenario that confuses and breaks off and leaves openings way too much to help the viewer follow the story and that is what a story is mainly told for. Each mean/medium (call it whatever) has a different way to tell a story effectively. Just because Gege wrote it that way in the manga it doesn’t mean that is the optimal way for the anime to play it out, too. It’s not that hard to understand that, is it? And that’s exactly what I don’t like this season. The scenario. The direction. The flow. That’s all I’m saying. Will I still watch it? Yes, because I like the story and the characters and more importantly it’s already out. I’m not having a say as to when or how an episode airs so I take what I’m given. Do I like the execution so far? Mmm… Some parts I adore, some I hate, and some are neutral as they should. Do I think it’s a masterpiece? Well, I’ll have to rewatch it with that specific question in mind to be able to answer this one. It sure is one hell of an effort, though. 🫤

Anyway, moving on from my rant — holidays bring out the worst in me, so ignore the negativity I give off in this post; let’s see what this episode’s good points were because I need to laugh this off somehow and let’s ponder on the new info we got from it… Shall we?

So! MeiMei bailed, huh? Same, not gonna play the bigger person here. But if she had the time to pick up her laptop, fly to Malaysia — ah, Nanamin where are you? 😭 — and treat herself a Merlot wouldn’t that mean she also had time to buy a bra? Girl! Put them melons away from UiUi; kid’s gonna die of nosebleed!

Yet, you’re flying out of Japan for what? To avoid the higher ups, I’m sure. All while tracking the stock market and telling your friend(?) that is at a completely different time zone too(!) to sell everything they have in Japan. And who is that friend you want to keep you in the loop? What loop??? To which country??? (The one country with a strong economic presence and a day/night deference I can think of is A… 😬) And so what if you move your assets? If the curses win, fuck the world! Not just Japan or the developed countries! 😑 That friend also knowing of jujutsu… I’m so curious, but also scared. This is Gege we’re talking about here. 😬

At this point though, I’m amazed that Kusakabe didn’t do the same already… Ah, but it’s not that he didn’t try, huh? With Panda around, not even crawling under a rock (rubble, but still— literally!) and playing dead didn’t work. lmao

No, he’s good, he’s good. I like my scaredy-cat to know where to draw the line and not feel ashamed of being afraid. His character is actually starting to grow on me okay?

Also, I take it he’s Miwa’s mentor? Why? How? I can’t even begin to explain why this is hilarious and wrong at the same time but I mean, he’s gotta be, right? The one moment Miwa was talking about her mentor (very vague her background story ngl — only notable thing the fact her hair are natural ciel! Whaw!) and the next Kusakabe enters the scene like… he’s gotta be her mentor!

His New Shadow Style slays btw. Didn’t expect it to be that powerful. The way he cut Mahito and left a crater… mhnnn 😳 I mean, MeiMei did say he’s super strong — Yuuji-level — but that was a new level of strong even when accounting for Yuuji as well… 😗

By the way, Mr. Braingoo going full-mode Geto before realising it himself... I laughed. HARD!!! I mean I was having a double take when he started explaining about Uzumaki to Yuuji, much like how Geto did during his fight with Yuuta. Oops~

“Geto! Give the Goo back!”

Mr. Call-Me-What-You-May laughing at himself has some good humour in him though, not complaining one bit here. He’s intriguing as a character. Waiting some good cooking from Gege with this one.

Now, my biggest issue in this guy was that he didn’t really let Yuuji’s fight with Mahito have a closure. I mean maaan? Why did you have to do that, Gege? I wanted to test my “Soul Portion” theory*[see end of post]! Not to mention, he really used Mahito’s abilities in Uzumaki against MIWA! BRO! Anticlimactic, Gege… 😗 Aah~

I even felt bad for Mahito — if you believe that! I actually pitied him at the end. He realised he was going to get betrayed “Because you are humans. (So I was right when I said in a previous post that this little fella (Brainy) was actually a human before, huh?) Because I was born from you (humans).” Because he understood the human nature. I still think this had something to do with my theory but Gege made sure we won’t find out. 🥸 It was interesting to see that Mahito was still ‘alive’ as a cursed ‘pill’, too. (How do you call them balls Geto’s technique turns those spirits into??? 🥶) And that all from Mr. Brainiac admiring Yuuji’s ‘durability’. He actually said: “even I am surprised”. And why him specifically? 🧐

Also, was he speaking to Geto or Mahito, when he said that he had also noticed the ‘other presence’ he felt? I got confused over this.

And panda asking if Yuuji was back to being normal. Huuuuuh… I’m just glad Yuuji reunited with someone as persevering as Panda. 😮‍💨

In that respect, I also didn’t understood to what exactly Panda referred to here. The Prison Realm? Or Gojo in the Prison Realm??? 🤨🧐 Darling be more specific?

And then Choso came back — and here I had started wondering what happened to him — sweet urchin buns came right in the moment. (I won’t talk about how cute he was all curled up in that curve in the wall, ok? I can’t! He was too cute!!! Gives him my handkerchief to wipe his tears… 🫠) And what revelations! 🫢 Yuuji is his brother? His BROTHER?! Choso is the Onii-chan, again?! 👀 Another buratha? No… I get it. He said it’s a side effect of his technique so he is actually related to Yuuji, if not by genes then surely by blood and technique. He also said he’s got three parents… Fuck Cramer vs Cramer. Fuck all custody battles ever fought. Gege just clowned every single one of them! 🤡 And Choso just going “my father who I hate, Kamo Noritoshi!” and Noritoshi actually asking “Me?!” I do not kid you as I say I HOLLERED!!! HAHAHA Darling you can’t be his papa, Choso may be a newborn into the world but he’s 150 years old!!! I want to know if the Thing still has Kamo’s technique in store, now. I’m curious. From what Choso said Mr. Goo could be the papa of Yuuji in a way, too??? O3O Does Yuuji baby have a blood manipulation technique he’s yet to discover??? @3@ And Brainy did say “even I”, to be sure, earlier… so he does have something to do with Yuuji. And we still are in the dark of Yuuji’s origins. Huff hufff huf! Whatever it is it’s in Yuuji’s blood though. In his body, I’d say but who am I. Choso made it clear that he’s got to have a blood relation to someone to feel the changes they go through. And he also specifically said that Kamo-jisan put his blood into the mix; potentially what gave a physical body (that’s why I say Yuuji’s body) to the cursed paintings… Hold on! Does that mean Yuuji and Noritoshi are also blood related? Are Yuuji and Choso the great-uncles of Noritoshi??? 🤯

Then Noritoshi actually opening his eyes to see Choso using Blood Manipulation Technique was funny as hell. He peeled those eyes wide open like I’m sure he’s never done before! Look at him! lol

Kusakabe, the poor man only just starting to connect the dots and realising how seriously fucked up everything (and everyone) is… Very relatable the stages of suffering this man goes through so far…

And Panda’s comment… Jujutsu Kaisen Omega AU trope just unlocked! Muhahaha 😈 Gege is such a damn yaoi fan, it brings joy to my fujo heart. lol

By the way, Yuuji not beating the omega allegations either. Kid shed the uniform not like walking into the battle but onto bed. 😭

Look at him pushing his hair back à la Sukuna style! 😎 (Bro! autocorrect kept changing Sukuna to skunk, and like, ok I get it? but also how about “NO!”? 😬) As for Panda still having two cores… does that mean we’re finally going to see what form his ‘sister’ is? O.O

Now, where the fuck Uraume flew into the scene from still mystifies me but one thing is for sure, it makes absolute sense to be Sukuna’s bestie. Wanting everyone slaughtered sure is the ticket to the King’s heart. haha

Also. Ice powers?! From how Noritoshi reacted it sounded like it’s a pretty rare technique. Wow! This gives such a ‘fresh’ vibe to the character. Not to mention, it somehow makes me believe that Sukuna may not be able to control ice that well — considering he’s got access to jujutsu through his own technique (the box) — as in, I think he’s able to use the five elements (maybe?) but not the different forms of specific techniques… Eh…??? 😵‍💫 Maybe that’s another reason why he kept Uraume around? Because of the rarity of that technique and the kinship of bloodlust was just a bonus? Not too stretched a hypothesis, right? And why are their characters starting to give off Leo—Virgo vibes? Is it just me?!

After Uraume’s entrance to the scene everything kind of got rather out of whack though. The use of Reverse Cursed Technique was the last straw for poor Kusakabe who must be feeling way too out of his waters with everything that’s happening right before his eyes. I mean, who can blame the man?

I’d want to go home, too, Kusakabe-san… 🥺

And then Choso not backing down, not stopping to try to protect the ‘little brother before his eyes’, totally amazing this dude right here. And let me just admit that I actually think this time the fight with Goo-jisan was infinitely more palatable than what I’ve seen this season. I’m just starting to appreciate him (Choso) more every time, even going as far to head on challenge Uraume! He turned and stared right at Uraume as the ice was about to pierce him! Man didn’t even flinch. I didn’t expect to feel so protective towards him, but he’s like a faithful dog that will get between you and danger, he’s so damn adorable! And in the nick of time, Yuuji saving Choso from Uraume… Ughhh~ *biting finger* Agh! Gege! Agh!

Or Uraume’s reaction to Yuuji moving through the ice, potentially hurting himself; “Whose body do you think that is?!” 😡 Um, hate to break this to you, Ura-chan but he thinks it’s his and so far he’s… right. Aha~ 😋

But that was nowhere near as funny as when I was shaking whole when Choso asked Yuuji to call him Onii-chan!!! LMAO Read the atmosphere, Chosooo!!! 🤣🤣🤣

Like… try it! Try it, Yuuji! You’re not getting off the hook this time! Haha

And just when Uraume was about to put everyone in the freezer for the year’s provisions… bam! Miss Yuuki is here to save the day!

I mean… how much more do you need to turn a shounen into a fetish series I don’t know, but you probably don’t need much more than what we already have in our hands here… That slow, upward close-up of Yuuki’s ass reflecting in Yuuji’s eyes was just the perfect example after the MeiMei scene, me thinks… 🫣🫢

Girl, you just got here?!

By the way… where is Yuuta? I’m still waiting for him since season one! 😩

Right… So— long post is long. I just had some time to sit and write a couple things before the last episode airs. I didn’t really managed to stay on top of this every week, even though I’d love to. I even tried to combine the previous two episodes but tumblr is being annoying with the number of pics per post and I also couldn’t finish writing everything I wanted before Episode 22 aired.

Anyway. Let’s see if I’ll have the time to write for the final episode, too since I have some more thoughts I want to talk about… or you know, I may as well do the reviews along a rewatch later on. :P

Thank you for staying with me and my crazy theories till now~ 😊 Do pardon my ‘angry’ rant on the MAPPA working conditions. But it’s a “those who are outside of the dance, know many songs” kind of thing.

✨ I hope you all had a very Merry Christmas Day and wish you Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year!!! 🎄 ✨

⛄️

Short excerpt from the previous episodes’ rant that I didn’t get to post on time for those of you wanting context: * Not to mention how I have this strange feeling that Mahito’s ‘soul’ is actually that blue eye. Like… why do I think that, I have no concrete proof or any indication whatsoever but I just think it’d be neat to have his ‘core’ manifested like that. We do say that “the eyes are the mirrors of the soul” after all. Not to mention, out of all the curses so far, Mahito is the only one that bleeds actual blood and not ‘curse juce’ so I thought that; hey, you know what? That’s because there’s actually a part of him that is human. That is very breakable. That even though he’s a curse through and through, being born out of the fear for humans has also given him some very human properties and weaknesses as well. I don’t know… maybe it would be nice for him to have misunderstood his own existence— to give some more depth to his character as a concept. Hm… 🧐

I’m actually going insane thinking this and I have a Head Canon that could be very plausible if Gege hadn’t gotten scared. That damn cyclops cat! Grrr

#itadori yuuji #choso #kamo choso #uraume #geto suguru #mahito #jujutsu kaisen #jjk #jujutsu kaisen 2nd season★ #mei mei #panda senpai #kusakabe atsuya #episode rant #fandom talk #feel free to come geek with me about my HC too #I have enough to even feed the chickens! 😎 #also feel free to have a different opinion on my take of the animation #but remember that we all have different tastes and aesthetic sense. #I do NOT owe anyone an apology because of that and if you disagree either be civil about it or ignore this post. #I simply needed to scream into the void about it! 😤

[sportsitebet]

The Thrilling World of Sports Betting: A Deep Dive into the Excitement and Strategy

The Rise of Sports Betting

Sports betting has come a long way from its humble beginnings as a niche pastime for enthusiasts. Today, it has evolved into a multi-billion-dollar industry that attracts millions of people worldwide. The rise of sports betting can be attributed to various factors, including technological advancements, changing attitudes towards gaming, and the sheer excitement it brings to the world of sports.

The Intersection of Skill and Luck

At its core, sports betting is a unique blend of skill and luck. Unlike games of pure chance, such as lotteries or slot machines, sports betting allows individuals to use their knowledge and analysis of sports events to make informed decisions. While luck plays a significant role in the short term, skill becomes increasingly important over the long haul.

Strategy and Analysis

Successful sports bettors are not merely gamers; they are strategists who rely on a combination of research, statistical analysis, and a deep understanding of the sports they wager on. Here are some key strategies that separate the winners from the losers in the world of sports betting 먹튀폴리스:

Bankroll Management: One of the fundamental principles of sports betting is proper bankroll management. This involves setting aside a specific amount of money for betting and sticking to a budget. It helps prevent reckless betting and ensures that losses don't have a catastrophic impact on your finances.

Research and Analysis: Knowledge is power in sports betting. Serious bettors spend hours studying teams, players, historical data, and injury reports. They analyze statistics, trends, and news that can affect the outcome of a game. This information is used to make informed betting decisions.

Value Betting: Value betting is the art of identifying odds that are mispriced by bookmakers. It involves finding situations where the implied probability of an outcome is lower than your estimated probability. This is where skill and expertise come into play, as bettors must be able to assess whether a bet offers value.

Bankroll Diversification: Betting on a single game or outcome can be risky. Smart bettors diversify their bets to spread risk. This can involve betting on multiple games or exploring different types of bets, such as moneylines, point spreads, and over/under wagers.

Discipline and Emotion Control: Emotions can be a bettor's worst enemy. It's essential to remain disciplined and avoid chasing losses or getting caught up in the excitement of a winning streak. Setting clear limits and sticking to them is crucial for long-term success.

Continuous Learning: The world of sports is dynamic, and so is sports betting. Successful bettors continually update their knowledge, adapt to changing circumstances, and refine their strategies.

While there is no foolproof strategy that guarantees success in sports betting, these principles can significantly increase your chances of making profitable wagers. It's also essential to remember that responsible gaming should always be the priority.

In conclusion, sports betting has evolved into a thriving industry that combines elements of skill and luck. It offers excitement, entertainment, and the opportunity for profit to those who approach it with the right mindset and strategies. While it can be a challenging endeavor, the thrill of predicting outcomes and being part of the action makes sports betting a fascinating and enduring pastime for millions of enthusiasts worldwide. Just remember, success in sports betting comes to those who are prepared, disciplined, and willing to put in the effort to stay ahead of the game.

#먹튀폴리스