#like the point of the character is how insane and illogical he is

[randaccidents]

Downside of rping such a messy, complicated, utterly insane maniac of an asshole of a character like Host: I cannot touch thoughts related to what Host might think about doing or planning when I want to wonder about the future of the rp with a ten foot pole unless I am already in character. Because his thoughts are so violently disgusting and disturbing that its begun to make me Physically Ill recently

#rambles #rp chatter #Im ok guys dont worry I noticed that it was hurting me after the first time #but I am sad that I cant plan his shit unless Im In A Session #like the point of the character is how insane and illogical he is #but at the same time good lord almighty #good harmonia above some of those plans and thoughts are truly truly sickening to consider #and thats what makes his eventual actions and decisions so fun to me #because its both easy and not easy to understand where he is coming from #you might know why hes doing something but the way he does it is just inane and doesnt help him in his goal

[lovebugism]

hi babe hope this isn’t too personal but not having the greatest time right now. therapist did not answer any of my calls today so im kinda a mess 🥲🥲 if you’re willing to write any kind of comfort fic with any character that would be the best 💗💗💗

hi anon! i hope things are going better now! take this eddie munson comfort fic as my attempts to make you feel a wee bit better ily mwah <3

You were pretty good at taking care of yourself most of the time. Eddie always thought your innate sense of responsibility was extremely hot — mostly because it meant that you were even better at taking care of him.

He said it was a perk of being your boyfriend — “one of many,” he’d say, just before smacking a kiss to your cheek.

You were the yin to his yang in that way. Peace in all his chaos.

Eddie, himself, was a being who thrived on mayhem. There wasn’t a single thing he loved more than unpredictability — well, you, of course. Then maybe DnD. But spontaneity was a close third.

He isn’t quite sure how to live his life without the company of total disarray. He isn’t sure he would want to if he had the chance either. The unexpected makes things fun. At least, that’s what he always tells you. You’re not so sure.

When he makes you late to things because of his horrible time management skills, or he can’t find his keys because they’re hidden somewhere underneath a pile of clothes in the corner of his room, it feels a little like the end of the world.

And not just in the oh no, this thing is really stressing me out; good thing I know it’s illogical sort of way. But in the oh fuck, we’re gonna be ten minutes late to this get-together where there are zero consequences whether we show up or not, but it’s inducing so much panic that I’m not sure how long I’ll be able to function properly.

You’ve gotten pretty good at hiding your fear over the years. It’s just that Eddie’s so damn attuned to everything going on in your head that it makes it insanely difficult to wallow in your dread alone.

He knows when you start pacing and talking a million miles a minute that something’s working you up. He knows when you start getting snappy and don’t think his jokes are funny anymore that you’re close to your breaking point. He knows when you stop talking altogether that your entire world is caving in around you.

So Eddie takes great care in getting to things on time and tidying up his room when you're around. He doesn’t even care that he finds it all a bit irrational, he just wants to make things easier for you. Even if it means getting to Steve’s house an hour before everyone else or actually folding his clothes before putting them in drawers.

Eddie knows you use structure like a weapon rather than a shield. Organization isn't a way to keep your life together, it’s to keep it from falling apart. When something is out of order, when there’s one piece out of place, it’s not an easy fix — not for you. It’s more like a ticking tomb. 

You’re the ticking time bomb. And the faintest scent of disorder is bound to make you explode.

But maybe calling it a bomb isn’t the most accurate way to describe it. The way Eddie sees it, it’s a lot more like an avalanche.

It starts off small, a little rumble of uncertainty that jostles the comfort of your routine. You blink and suddenly the snowball weighs two tons and you’ve spiraled into a full-blown crisis that threatens to swallow you whole.

You don’t let anyone see any of it. Not even Eddie a lot of the time. You just bury yourself in the landslide until the heavy snow melts and you can function normally again — it may last a couple hours, maybe weeks.

So it’s a good thing Eddie can see all the warning signs before they start.

It’s all the little shit he notices first — the not showering as often, the not keeping things as tidy as usual, the closing yourself off. Eddie Munson knows a depression room when he sees one. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know you’re slipping.

But rather than acknowledge that boogeyman, he pretends like it isn’t there at all. He thinks if he acts like it doesn’t scare him, then it doesn’t have the power to hurt him. That’s exactly how he treats the funks you get into. He knows they’re there but doesn’t let them take over completely.

Eddie comes around whenever he gets the chance and helps you do your self-care routine — even though all you do is complain that you don’t need his help the entire time.

He coaxes you into the bath and tidies up your bedroom while you’re gone. He does all the steps of your skincare for you after because he knows you can’t do it yourself. You’re too tired to, but you feel like shit when you don’t. That’s the same bitter cycle that started this whole mess.

He doesn’t do anything crazy. He just takes care of the little things to make you feel less consumed by it all.

You’re a pouting mess in the middle of your bed after, freshly cleaned and drowning in a too big shirt that smells like the musk of Eddie’s cologne with a towel twisted up in your hair. It’s almost cartoonish, the way you cross your arms over your chest and scrunch your face in displeasure.

“I don’t want you to do all this stuff for me, Eds,” you gripe. “I’m a big girl, okay? I can do it myself.”

The boy shrugs from where he stands at the foot of your bed. “I know I don’t have to. I want to, though. I like doing this stuff for you.”

“You hate cleaning, Eddie.”

“Yeah. I do,” he affirms with a nod, all but flopping onto the mattress beside you. He rests his head on his fist and blinks up at you with wide, twinkling button eyes. A grin pulls at his pink lips as he asks you, “But you know what I don’t hate?”

You huff but entertain him anyway. “…What?”

“You,” he beams and taps the tip of your nose with his pointer finger.

You meet his smile with a grimace.

“Actually, I sort of love you, as it turns out,” he corrects himself in a lilt. “And when you love someone, you do the shit you hate to make them happy, right? Isn’t that what it’s all about?”

You don’t answer him, just shrug.

“Well, either way, I’m happy to do all the boring shit if it means there’s a chance I get to make you feel even a little bit better,” Eddie tells you, pinching his thumb and forefinger together and leaving just an inch or more of space to squint his eye through.

That hand flops down and lands on your thigh. His thumb absentmindedly rubs over the skin there. His smile turns sheepish.

“I will happily fold laundry and do taxes and wash dishes and… all that stupid, boring shit for you for the rest of my life, as long as I can look over and see you next to me…”

Your heart swells with a distant happiness you haven’t felt in weeks.

Eddie helps you until you feel better enough to do it yourself.

Needless to say, when he stops by your place and finds it completely spotless, he doesn’t bother to hide his excitement. He rushes to your room and finds you in bed, flipping through a book. The small radio on your bedside table plays something synth-y.

He realizes you’ve traded in The Smiths for The Psychedelic Furs and that your lavender candle is burning on your desk and that you’ve spritzed yourself in your vanilla perfume.

Those are all staples in your little routine that you borderline can’t live without. You always missed out on them when you got into your funks, but here they are again…

Eddie tries not to smile too wide.

“How’s it hangin’?” he sing-songs when he waltzes into your room.

“Fine...” you murmur, half-distracted by your novel. After a few long seconds, your eyes finally flit up to his. He’s doing a terrible job of hiding a grin. “…Why are you looking at me like that?”

Eddie shrugs as he takes off his leather jacket. He neatly lays the thing over the back of your desk chair and smooths out the wrinkles.

“‘Cause I love the shit out of you,” he answers like it’s nothing, like the words don’t mean everything to you. “And I’m really fucking proud of you.”

“Proud of me?” you echo in a scoff.

Because, to you, crawling out of a three week long funk is hardly something to be proud of. You don’t feel like you should be rewarded for being human, but Eddie knows that getting through the hard shit is a part of being human. And he’s so goddamn proud of you for it.

“Yep,” he nods with pink cheeks and a hopeful grin. “I’ve never been prouder of you, babe. And, like, I’m always proud of you, so that’s saying something.”

“Shut up,” you mutter under your breath. Your attention flits back to your book rather than focusing on the intense gaze Eddie looks at you with. You don’t get through a single sentence before he rips the thing from your hands. “Eddie!—”

You look at him again and find that he’s sterner now, but still so tender — chocolate eyes hardened but soft around the edges. There’s a kind grin on his and an air about him that tells you he’s serious. 

Eddie rounds your bed and plants himself at the edge of it. He keeps your book hostage in one hand and holds onto your calf with the other, running his thumb over the soft skin of your knee.

“I’m serious,” he tells you. “Like, I know shit gets hard for you sometimes, but... I don't know, watching you get through it is… really fucking cool, babe.”

He laughs when it makes you laugh.

“Seriously. It’s like you get stronger every day, and… not to be a total sap or whatever, but I feel really lucky that I get to see it.”

You’re not sure whether to duck away from his gaze or revel in its warmth. You manage somehow to do both with a distant pout on your face. 

Eddie’s grin widens until the dimple in his right cheek reveals itself.  “What?” he laughs. “What’s that look for?”

“‘Cause you’re nice to me,” you mumble like the cutest little storm cloud. “And it’s gross… And also I love you.”

“Well, get ready, babe. You got a whole lifetime of me being nice to you coming your way, so… Be prepared to be sick of me by the time we’re all old and wrinkly, alright? ‘Cause I’m still gonna love the shit outta you then.”

You grumble when he smacks a kiss to your knee.

You hope he keeps his promise.

#published by bug #eddie munson x reader #stranger things x reader #eddie munson imagine #stranger things imagine #eddie munson x y/n #eddie munson x you #eddie munson fanfic #eddie munson fic #eddie spaghetti drabble #st drabbles

[mailjeevasfan]

Okay I have a dialogue idea but I don't know how to put it together so I'm going to throw it out with the couple of words I have loose and hope for the best lol. Okay so "you're fucking crazy" "for you" with the death note characters. As if their s/o did or said something that caused them to drop that phrase and their s/o responded that way, what would their reaction be?

Personally I don't think that neither Near or L (or at least Near) would curse but you get me. Anyway thank youuu ^^

sorry for disappearing for a little longer than anticipated, but she’s making her comeback!

ty for the req!!! i hope this is what you were after

-light, l lawliet, misa amane, mello, matt, near

༺♡༻

‘you’re fucking crazy’ ‘for you’ with dn characters ❦

light

-it’s bound to be a struggle to be dating light whilst he’s literally kira for lots of reasons. but one of them is that you really worry for him and his safety. you trust him most of the time because you know how intelligent and calculated he and his actions are. however, there come times where he just seems to be reckless. you would hit your limit in these times and take matters into your own hands.

‘i’ve told you before y/n, let me handle all these things. what were you even thinking, you’re fucking crazy!’

‘for you.’

light would probably either disregard this and still continue to berate you, but if you caught him on a certain day then he’d drop it. either way, he’d be doing it purely out of love and care for you.

༺♡༻

l lawliet

-we all know that l’s got a few screws loose himself. the plans he likes to carry out in order to benefit his investigation(s) are insane and surely bound to fail, but his intelligence prevails every time. so, you can be slightly influenced by this after long enough. at some point, he’s struggling with the kira investigation and running out of ideas, and this seems to be taking a toll on his self esteem and mental health. you don’t want to see him this way, so you’d come up with some crazy plan to proceed through the situation. (i’m gonna go with the idea that he would rarely curse, and when he does then you know it’s pretty serious)

‘y/n, this is completely illogical and just… crazy. you’re fucking crazy!’

‘yeah, for you…’

‘…i see.’

he’d probably sigh and drop the issue. he wouldn’t admit it but he definitely saw something sweet in this (and probably enjoyed it)

༺♡༻

misa

it could be something similar to light, but it could also be something to do with her occupation. she’s very famous and attracts the attention of a lot of people, so dating misa could be hard sometimes. you may be a little jealous at times, but also worried that she may not be safe, like she’s attracting the wrong kind of attention or something. so you’d respond to the situation in ur own way depending on your personality i suppose. the gist is that you’re maybe a lil possessive at times 😁

‘jeez, you’re fucking crazy sometimes y/n…’

‘for you.’

‘aww, you’re adorable!’

misa would find this the cutest out of everyone 100%

༺♡༻

mello

mello gets into a lot of dangerous situations due to the work he does. after a while you get used to the mafia lifestyle, and it certainly helps knowing that he’d kill anyone who even laid a finger on you. that being said, you can’t help but worry about him too. you know he can handle himself fine, and that he’s more well versed in these topics than you, even without his extremely high level of intelligence. but you still worry about him getting hurt or mixed up in something he can’t handle. you try your very hardest to leave yourself out of it because you know how much mello cares about doing things himself and not accepting help from others. but one time, you probably couldn’t help yourself, and got mixed up in a dangerous task.

‘what the hell y/n?! i told you, this isn’t for you to be handling, it’s too dangerous! i swear, you must be fucking crazy!’

‘for you, mello.’

‘i-‘

his rage would probably subside quicker than ever as he tried his hardest to tell you how cliche and unreasonable you were being, but he still relents and drops it after that comment.

༺♡༻

matt

matt is consistently involved in whatever mello is doing, which, as i said, is very dangerous stuff. he just kind of goes along with whatever mello has planned because their bond is strong and he trusts him with everything. you know matt isn’t stupid, in fact he is very smart. it does help that he’s usually just on the sidelines, managing some sort of technical work like surveillance, but every once in a while he’s right in the middle of the violence. you worry about this because it’s dangerous for a start, but also completely out of his comfort zone. you may have stopped him from going along with a plan one time, as it just seemed like way too much.

‘y/n, i need to do this for mello. please just trust me.’

‘i do trust you matt. but you can’t do this, i won’t let you!’

‘listen, i love you, but you’re fucking crazy.’

‘…for you…’

it was already a shock to hear matt being so serious, let alone so vulgar towards you, but this stopped him in his tracks. he’d stay silent for a moment, before returning to his usual self and laughing it off. he couldn’t possibly say no to you after that, but he also couldn’t let you off without teasing you a little.

༺♡༻

near

near is kind of a mixture of everything that has already been said. despite his methods being at least a tiny bit more conventional than l’s, he’s still in threatening situations often. he’s very well protected and very intelligent himself, but similarly to the others, you still worry regardless of this. you’d sit him down one day when you began to worry about his meeting with the task force, and your emotions became a more intense than you anticipated.

‘y/n, you need to stop and think about what you’re saying. you know how long i’ve been planning this, what you’re saying is just crazy. you’re crazy’

‘for you, near.’

he probably wasn’t expecting something like this. however, he dealt with it as he usually would, reassuring you and realising that he should be more sensitive when you’re acting this way. it is out of love after all, and he’s beginning to realise this.

༺♡༻

#death note #mail jeevas #mello #mihael keehl #l lawliet #matt #light yagami #death note x reader #near #misa amane #misa amane x reader #light x reader #mello x reader #mail jeevas x reader #l lawliet x reader #near x reader

[transmutationisms]

pleaaase share any and all thoughts you might have on as i lay dying by william faulkner if you're willing, i'd appreciate your analysis on any topic dealing with it. I recently had to read it for class and kept thinking "tumblr user transmutationisms would probably find this very interesting" and when I search your blog i see its one of your fav novels! personally am interested with the treatment of darl and what is considered "sane" vs. "insane" as well as addie and how her death is handled.

yeah this book made me so insane when i first encountered it lmao. i was always surprised by people who read it and thought that darl had genuinely or intrinsically 'gone insane' or even that he was in some kind of decline throughout the book. i thought what faulkner was doing with him was very different.

i'd posit there are basically 2 main mechanisms by which darl comes to be regarded as insane. one is the construal of criminal action as prima facie pathological. in darl's case it's specifically criminal action against his mother's body (so, the violation of a blood tie that is so important it has guided the entire novel) and ofc the barn burning has a more general sort of antisocial effect as well. so, the designation of insanity follows not because darl's action shows some kind of intrinsic breakdown or loss of lucidity, but because it puts him outside the bounds of accepted familial and social behaviours. so, in that sense there's a very straightforward connection between the social mores, the criminal code based on them, and the invocation of insanity to preserve the dichotomy between 'sane' and 'criminal', ofc with the asylum then appearing as another arm of the carceral / criminal apparatus.

in addition, though, faulkner's work is generally marked by an interest in the sort of social breakdown and decline that articulates along family lines. which is to say: although i wouldn't attribute to him the same degree of evolutionary-hereditarian degeneracy theory as, like, zola, there is certainly a repeated interest throughout faulkner's work in the family as a site of inherited social and economic decline. i don't think the point here is to write anse as insane, per se, or as passing on a discrete malady to darl, but parentage matters (cf. jewel's illegitimacy) and in the same way that anse is antisocial, illogical, and frequently illegible to the surrounding characters, darl by the end of the book has come to occupy a similar socially marginal position. darl is ofc punished more violently for his transgression; anse's chapters convey pretty clearly his outsider position and complete inability to make sense of the world on linguistic-logical terms, but darl escalates this when he burns the barn because he's breaking a rule that has more external social ramifications than, say, anse's biblical exegesis about snakes and trees and whatever.

broadly and kind of annoyingly you could say the novel is investigating the relationship between consciousness and language, or at least feeling and language. the words are "a shape to fill a lack", vardaman's fish chapter sort of sums up the failings therein, &c. so, anse and darl are interesting to counterpose in this respect because the disconnect between their inner worlds and linguistic abilities are very different. darl is the most linguistically adept narrator in the book, yet by the end he's committed an act so illegible to the state and to his community that he's declared insane for it. anse, on the other hand, is motivated by what is in certain ways a very clear and simple moral code (he is driven primarily throughout the novel by the desire to bury addie and then take care of his own material needs re: teeth and a new wife), but he's not really able to communicate this directly in narration, which makes his chapters some of my favs to re-read. with anse the stream-of-consciousness is continually hinting at and around what he's trying to convey; with darl there are certainly things he's capable of expressing clearly and directly in language, and so the effect (for me) is to surprise you when it's revealed that darl, too, is on a kind of margin of social logic.

#as i lay dying

[mae-i-scribble]

I've recently read through all of fabiniku (my life as an ordinary guy who reincarnated as a girl or something like that for the english title) and it's just been such a fun and genuine time that made me so much more endeared to the series than I thought I was going to be going into this. And for me it touches on a very important part of representation and the argument that queer people will inherently tell queer stories better (spoiler alert i think this mentality is simplistic and unrealistic). Because full disclosure, yeah the author of fabiniku is not someone i assume is the best ally on the planet, and i dont even know if she's queer or not. Her author notes have some pretty :/// stuff in them about trans identity and the idea that being trans is a fetish or childish choice. However, there could also be translational errors messing up what exactly she means, and I can't exactly translate myself, so there is some doubt in that regard. But regardless of the author's opinions, none of that changes the very genuine and heartfelt story she is telling with Tachibana in fabiniku.

(putting the rest under a readmore bc its getting longer than i thought)

There's a reason fabiniku got its reputation as one of the queerest isekai's to ever isekai and that reputation is well deserved bc holy shit yeah these bitches gay and trans as hell. Fabiniku does something with its queer narrative that I personally really appreciate: it sidelines the queer themes. Now this may seem contradictory, but for me, I don't always want queer stories about being queer, I want the queer elements to be a part of the narrative without it being focused on them. And fabiniku absolutely delivers on this. It isn't the story of tachibana finding out he's trans and jinguuji finding out he's gay but also kinda technically bi now- it's a batshit insane isekai romcom about 2 best friends realizing they have feelings for each other. Of course, those queer elements are still very much there, but they're entrenched in the characters, not in the author saying "see this aspect of identity, i want to use these characters as a vehicle to tell a story about it." (Not that there's anything wrong with that, its just a difference in writing goals and how one goes about writing themes/stories)

Fabiniku was never trying to be anything profound or meaningful in terms of queer representation, its mostly a gag manga with some large overarching story beats, but the author's earnestness in portraying the romance and personal growth gives the series a real heart that 1)makes it enjoyable unlike some other comedy based isekai and 2) stops it from being offensive representation. Tachibana is a guy who finds himself becoming a girl one day without and warning, and his slow journey into realizing what exactly he wants in regards to his gender identity is never used as the butt of the joke or mocked. (I'm using he/him for tachibana bc literally as of a couple chapters ago we just got him admitting he may not want to go back to being a guy, he's still on the first steps of his trans journey). In the same vein Jinguuji's love of Tachibana is never truly treated as "only now bc tachibana is a girl, no way did jinguuji love him before nope nope." (yes the initial premise suggests this interpretation, but as the manga grows on it is increasingly clear that both these 2 loved each other before this isekai shenanigans began).

There's a lot more words in my head, but Im gonna wrap it up here. Fabiniku is hardly "perfect" representation, but it is telling a meaningful story with a lot of love put into it regardless. Blaming its mistakes on the author not being trans or gay while ignoring its strengths is useless nitpicking. I saw a post saying it would be a much funnier manga if a trans person wrote it, which is such an illogical point to make that I just had to go ????? at my screen for a minute. There's a lot to talk about with this story, and that's what you took away from it?? And im not saying there aren't criticisms to be made, I still think Jinguuji's arc should have been about him realizing that even if he didn't like women, it didn't change the fact that he was attracted to Tachibana- would have made for a more in character arc for him but again, the author was never intending for anything more than a romantic comedy manga, so I won't hold it against her too much.

Anyways everyone go watch or read fabiniku you won't regret it its so fucking good

#fabiniku #Life with an Ordinary Guy who Reincarnated into a Total Fantasy Knockout #hinata tachibana #tsukasa jinguuji #i am totally normal about the media i consume i promise #you want to read my rambling about the queer aspects of this show so bad right right #genuinely i think the rep in this is so fucking good #judt because it isnt perfect doesnt mean it doesnt have value #it is also 3am when i write this so things arent exactly coherent

[madfoxx]

listen i loved s2 as much as the next guy but some of the plotholes are just hilarious to me because they employ the fanfiction logic of “i want this scenario to happen so it will just happen” and i feel people aren´t talking about it enough, so here are some of the things that made me go “oh, no beta read huh.”:

1) first question: why the fuck did gabriel delete his memory?? seriously though, i havent seen one single post about this, but i just dont understand!? So, heaven threatens to fire gabriel and delete his memory, which, okay, bad news. and then his solution is to....delete his own memory for them, so now he doesnt remember his own name let alone the love of his life, beelzebub, who he planned to run away with?? WHY??? he left heaven immediately afterwards anyways it literally made no sense and just caused major problems for everyone involved. But i guess the answer is: we needed him to have no memory for the story to happen so that makes sense by ao3 standarts

2) on a related note, why was he naked?? he could have just speedwalked outta heaven in his suit with the matchbox in his pocket, so why strip down?? Again, no reason, but arent you glad we got to see john hamms naked butt, so lets pin that on gabriel being an sweet dumb himbo maybe

3) also, how did he find aziraphales shop while not even remembering his own name? Dont know dont care, googlemaps probably.

4) not really a plothole, but that whole Maggie and Nina getting locked in the bookshop thing was the tropiest trope they pulled this season and it didnt even work because we got nothing from that scene, not even one hearfelt deep conversation

5) this one is a bit pedantic, but how is it that a demon with magical powers has to live in his car? i guess its a character thing and we need to see him at his lowest point but he could literally just miracle himself an enormous pot of gold if he wanted to

6) why would beelzebub order an attack on the bookshop and risk gabriels life? why didnt they simply explain the situation to aziraphale & crowley? well you see we didnt want the story to be over after 1 episode and also we needed a finale of some sort.

7)  i mean the whole attack on the bookshop was just....a thing that happened i guess. kinda strange the demons (especially shax who seems to have at least 1 spare braincell) would dare to kidnap an archangel in the first place. isnt he like, insanely powerful? and they didnt even know he lost his memory, so to them he was just an archangel hanging out on earth because he wanted to. how did they think storming the bookshop and taking him prisoner would go down?

8) tbh i dont really understand why heaven wanted gabriel back so much they would threaten to destroy anyone helping him and then....they just let him just go without any problems whatsoever? feels incredibly anticlimactic and illogical to me but i suppose the season needed some kind of threat to make the romantic elements work

9) this might actually get resolved in s3 but i cant believe Upstairs wants aziraphale - an angel who spend years deceiving heaven and overall just sucked at his job because he was too busy trying to fuck a demon - they want him to be the new supreme archangel of heaven. he literally stopped the last apocalypse a couple of days ago and now he´s in charge of armageddon 2.0? that´ll for sure take some explaining!

there´s a lot more stuff, but these are the most obvious things that have been on my mind since s2 aired. i also want to reiterate that i do love many things about this season despite the writing being all over the place. and no, i dont believe that all inconsistencies will be magically explained away by s3. i think it boils down to neil gaiman saying “lets make a big budget 6 chapter fanfic so david tennant and michael sheen can kiss each other on the mouth. also not beta we die like eric the disposable demon” and i can respect that. 

#good omens #good omens spoilers #gos2 #gos2 spoilers #ineffable husbands #gabriel

[lavenderpanic]

Question Fourteen, also I Am Ash From Your Fire

14: Is there anything you wanted readers to learn from reading this fic?

I feel like your story is so well written and deep that there’s a lot to take away from it but what did you specifically intend for the readers to capital on?

I mostly want people to understand the complexities of relationships like Bucky and Brock's. The majority of media depicting abuse paints the dynamic as very static; the victim is basically imprisoned and hates their abuser, and once they manage to leave, that's it and it's over. Or, there might be some token resistance when the victim's friends try to help them, like "no, you don't get it, he loves me," and that's the extent of it, when it is nearly always more complex than that.

I won't get too personal here, but I really can't articulate how painful the thought of leaving can be. It's completely possible (and common) to know and acknowledge and understand that you're being abused, but to struggle to want to leave. It's not that I want to be abused, or other victims want to be abused. It's weird and illogical but that's how it is. It's not only normal to go back once or twice (or seven times), it is in fact almost always the case.

I, honestly, was a bit surprised by how many people responded to my last update essentially saying that they couldn't understand how I could write about abuse and seem to be so self-aware but simultaneously put myself in the same position as my character. It hurt to read, but it just proved to myself that this point of view is necessary to have out there. People truly don't understand what it's like to be in this kind of relationship, how painful and confusing and isolating it is.

Anyway I feel like I was rambling and whatever but basically, if my stories can educate just one person, or make just one victim feel slightly less alone, I'll have done my job. I can't tell you how many times I've read stories about the perfect victims who get out and get to have happy lives and it just makes me feel so rotten inside. I think maybe if past me had read this I wouldn't have felt so insane.

#bucky barnes fanfiction #fanfiction #marvel fanfiction #stucky #stevebucky #bucky barnes #marvel #mcu #fanfic #ao3 #ao3 fanfiction #i am ash from your fire #iaafyf #tw abuse

[faroreswinds]

Claude's not a lunatic in Hopes. His thoughts and actions are coherent even if you find them amoral. He's just an opportunist. It's why Claude's character description in Engage is "calculating and enigmatic". "Calculating"'s definition being "acting in a scheming and ruthlessly determined way" or "often controlling situations for your own advantage in a way that is slightly unpleasant and causes people not to trust you". It's why Claude is descended from the youngest Blaiddyd brother "widely perceived as a cool, calculated, and sometimes cold-hearted man, Kite was said to have inherited much of his father's wisdom" rather than the oldest Blaiddyd brother like Dimitri with their description being "Banfig, a talented warrior and military strategist, was backed by the Knights of Faerghus in this conflict. Yet, despite his prowess on the battlefield, Banfig was said to be a gentle soul with no real desire for war and power". Claude is Machiavellian not insane.

I mean... I think you might have taken my "lunatic" comment a bit too literally.

It's not that I think Claude is a lunatic in the sense that's he's clinical. But rather, his logical reasoning is beyond amoral- it's down right idiotic.

Claude is labeled as the genius of the three lords. He's the clever one, the one that is supposed to see 5 steps ahead the rest of the leaders. That's how he is marketed. His clever tactics are what allowed his tiny army to keep up with the other two armies - Edegard's is the largest, so has strength in numbers, and Dimitri's has the strongest weapons and soldiers, so has strength in individuals. Claude's army is merely the wealthiest, but lacks the unified structure of Edelgard's and Dimitri's armies, lacks the size of Edelgard's, and the physical individual strength of Dimitri's.

So the army makes up for it in schemes, in traps and tricks. Frankly, I really like this set up, because it gives each army different strengths and weaknesses.

It's actually quite a clever set up by the writers, because it's all believable. I can believe Dimitri's army has the most physically strong warriors - more Hero's Relics, more recent history of battle experience, a culture structured around knighthood and wielding weapons, and bloodlines that make literal superhumans like Dimitri. I can believe that Edelgard's is the largest army, because the Empire is the largest nation in Foldan. And I can believe the Alliance is the smallest and weakest, because it's the smallest in landmass and lacks the same advantages and culture the Kingdom does.

But despite all this great set up and how Claude is billed to the audience, the writing around Claude just makes no freaking sense.

OK, take, for instance.... When Claude invades the Kingdom. His dumbass reasoning aside, he makes a big stink about how he wants to lessen the amount of deaths of the war. OK, fine, he reasons that invading the Kingdom the way he does will achieve this, whatever. But then, after literally cornering the King of the Kingdom at his doorstep... they turn around and rush home because someone else is making a big stink. So they cancel their attack at the literal cusp of victory and go home.

I'm sorry... WHAT?! No, that is completely illogical. He seriously left no one behind? He took his ENTIRE army? AND decided to just start over with the Kingdom? He literally lets Dimitri go, when they were legit in arms' reach. How is that "lessening the deaths of war?" Those sacrifices you made along the way have literally become naught. He killed people for no reason at that point.

Or, here is another one! Claude reasons that killing Rhea will end the war, or at least force Edelgard's war to become amoral and force her to stop if she wishes to stay on the right side of history. Fine, whatever. But then Claude will talk about how it's very unlikely that the war will not stop, that he is probably being used by Edelgard, and yet continues his war anyways.

These actions are not written for a genius leader. These were written for a specific story to happen, with disregard of characters and logical progression.

Claude is running circles around himself justifying his actions at each step, and most of it is just illogical. Like when he talks to Edelgard, he literally lets her "correct" him that she "wasn't invading because she was invited" with little to say about it. He never verifies her claims, and just takes them at face value. Even if he doubts them, it's only in his explore dialogue and he never actually addresses his own concerns. He just powers through them, like a bull. He's supposed to be the careful one, the planner. But he makes so many dumb mistakes, dumb decisions, and illogical choices that I find him to be basically a lunatic.

So, that's what I mean by my word choice.

#anon asks #Three Hopes discourse #Claude discourse

[haeresys-realm]

Please DON'T READ IT if you simp her. Because this is mg blog and I can tell what I want to tell (and I forbidden to show everyone everywhere my massages to say – look my jackals how stupid and wrong this man is; I'm really tired of contemporary childish manners and no aim to education. And yes, everything I will say will sounds stupid because I have a pooer English vocabulary and grammar, so, please, if you can correct it, do ut, but dont to correct my further opinions and try to say shit about me) and there will be my first reaction of all this shit happened in spite I thought I was ready for it. But every time it gets worse than I expected. I can't bear it, really.

... because unfortunately she was the reason I started to hate this game. All I've written before was because a year ago it was leaked she is the 4th. Now she and her pathetic pathos that was just taken from other character model is forced so much that I can't see anything but childish praising for such a trivial cliched character.

It is so funnuly because she behaves ABSOLUTELY LIKE THE DOCTOR. As if he was her REAL FATHER AHAHAHA.

And after that this idiots on developpers say this!?

https://youtu.be/SycnWxUMvpU?si=fINqhY0EyT5JJw5l

I guess the author of this cringe deleted my most emotional comment for my canonical pointing out that this is an illogical delirium.

And I'm absolutely horrified of what a shit character they made of her. Just a stupid good-mommy with sad fate who got everything from nowhere. There's no reason she could live so well with such a "curse". There's no reason she would be forgiven. They said she's insane cursed child �� no, she's just an absolutely fanservice character for nowadays teen girls and nothing else. Absolutely nowaday-teengirl-fanservice character.

Arlecchino is just a female fanservice mommy character of the so-called strong woman with bad fate. It's disgusting how hoyo uses this image to attract teen girls to this character. And this empty cliche really works.

How idiotically stupid should this little girl be to threaten a GOD. Dottore power lvl can't be even compared with her. Kusanali said he is God-leveled and she isn't EVEN a rival to him. I really feel sick of what a shit these idiots on game developers made with characters and harbingers now just to show stupid children cliched black and white morality that doesn't work in life and what made us all (adults especially) feel too boring while watching it agaaaain and agaaain. I never were so dissapointed in this game. The worst character for me ever.

The girl with Mary Sue powers from nowhere tells she could kill a 500 years old genius who made himself a god who can defeat archons. But children say they like it and respect her. I have no words. If you want the science to improve and new developments work on people you SHOULD TEST IT ON THEM WHETHER YOUR LIKE IF OR NOT. And if there are people the society don't need it is the only way to do, ESPECIALLY when we are talking about JUST A GAME. Fuck. This is not just boring, it's the worst scenario it could be. Some girl killed a Harbinger when she couldn't. And everyone just forgave her and gave highest rank and trust. Just because children wanted to see a mommy character with manly outfit, strict character and transgender nickname. The woman can't be a father. Live with this information. And good luck in your mental evolution, because there's no way for degradation if supporting such a cringe and see no strange things and insane idiotism in it.

Because I know how inadequate the childish community for whom it was done are I know that soon there will be plenty of so-called "arts" with Arlecchino humiliating Dottore, dominating him, etc, and he, perverted as a character, crying and begging for mercy as Furina. I really feel too sick of all of this disrespectful attitude to canonical images and characters stories and core. Bur now I'm afraid the so-called contemporary developers are doing the same shit. They are not much smarter than these teens because they have chosen not to improve their concepts but to make a fanservice primitive shit instead of it.

And you can think what you want but if there are her lickers everywhere, you shall know that there's another point of view and if you're not that dumb and mind-limited child you shall listen to the alternative side and accept it's existence. Don't answer me if you want to say some shit about me just because you feel offence for your waifu. I warned you before you read. Have a nice day.

P.S. The moment of sudden faith in humanity. I must mark it.

#dottore #arlecchino #genshin impact

[distort-opia]

Wish people who want Bruce to kill because " realism and rationality", try and see how TERRIFYING that man would be irl- a billionaire man, with anger issues, deep rooted trauma, abusive behaviours, child soldiers, who's hobby is beating people up at night( many of them mentally ill and poor), and playing law, and has money and power to control both healthcare and police, and to acquire any weapons he pleases, has connections to important people, can pretend to be a charismatic social butterfly and then flip a switch... If someone like THAT fired a gun at the homicidal clown, even worse walked out of that free, I would not see it as some hero bringing evil down but a powerplay between very dangerous men that should both be locked up somewhere far far away...

A great point, yes. At the end of the day, there's so many problems with the "Batman should kill Joker" argument, but a big one is that almost never all aspects of the comic book world are viewed through the same lens. If you insist on judging the universe of Batman using moral standards and rules of existence that apply to our world, at least do it consistently. I mean, it's illogical to do this in the first place -- the world of comic books functions so differently compared to ours -- but hey, if they did it consistently, at least hypocrisy would be something that'd annoy me less about the whole thing. Think I saw someone go "Batman should kill Joker because I think he's annoying. Lmao but I know he never will" at some point and you know what, that person was at least aware of this being due to their own personal feelings, and aware that it's a choice utterly contradictory to Batman's character :)) Good for them. Hope they're doing well.

Because in the end, the concern is never actually realism. It's simply that some fans want to see Batman kill, for one personal reason or another, and instead of just admitting it's a preference, they insist on justifying it as the universally "morally correct" or "realistic" choice. When it's obviously not, for a plethora of reasons, including the one you've described. If you transplant the concept of Batman in the real world, it's terrifying. A person with this amount of unchecked power should never be allowed to exist in the first place. But even leaving that aside, arguing for Batman needing to kill ignores the very basis of his character; the no-killing rule is not borne out of realism or rationality on his part, it came out of trauma. Bruce will not kill because it would destroy him, most of all, and he's perfectly legitimate in making this choice. No one should be forced to take a life and ruin themselves because other people think they should. And leaving that aside too, it's not Batman's failure that criminals like Joker or many others in his Rogue gallery continue to escape and to kill, time and time again. It's mainly a failure of the legal system, if we really want to get "realistic". Sure, they keep getting off by using the insanity defense, but in a world where half of these villains have supernatural/metahuman powers and origins, it falls to the legal system to adapt in order to protect its citizens. It's not the responsibility of one individual to commit murder, in order to protect an entire city.

[sigh] Anyway, this tired debate gets rehashed again and again, and it's just best to ignore it, I've found. Discussion is only worth doing with people who are open to it; it's useless when one side has decided from the start they will never change their mind.

#carefully curating your online experience... my beloved #asks #batman #joker #fandom negativity

[monstertsunami]

okay i cannot for the life of me remember the names of the pafl people (i am. bad at names. as evidenced by me not having one) so gimmie the pafl ship you've got Brainworms about right now. not in the sense of love or hate, but the one that just has a specific rant locked n loaded for and which leaves you awake at night.

HI HIII IDC THAT YOU DONT KNOW THEIR NAMES IM JUST SO HAPPY THAT YOURE SENDING ME AN ASK ABT MY FIXATION DESPITE KNOWING NOTHING ABOUT IT <333<3333<3

temnova/olya would be way too obvious for this SO instead im gonna ramble abt sergei/olya my favorite ever (so-called) m/f ship<3<3

forgive me in advance for fumbling my analysis bc words do not come to me well n settling with the second-best word choice always ends up skewing the meaning.. i am also not good at organizing my thoughts at all lol :p

sergolya (made up the ship name myself bc idk if theres a widley used one oops) is a canon ship and thats why its GOOOD. bc pafl is like. REALISTIC and not in the annoying nihilistic grimdark way but just in the way that the characters feel so natural with how they interact with each other and the world and how they react to situations and how situations effect them... its just. real as fuck. absolutely insane skill on ferry's part. but this is REALLY GOOD for every pafl relationship, romantic or not, because they're complex.

sergei and olya have a flawed relationship! theres a lack of communication, sergei being sergei, olya being olya, etc. but its still so so obvious that they love each other DEEPLY! maybe olya's blinded by her insecurities and maybe sergei doesnt externalize it in an obvious way, but when you look even an inch deep into their motivations throughout the entire story, especially when they make poor decisions, its just intertwined with their love for each other.

now where sergolya REALLY gets developed is in The Mill, which specifically touches on olya's insecurities and sergei's overbearing-ness. yes this is why its my favorite pafl song :3

olya appears stoic and logical, she never looks affected by anything, she is taking a fucking prison sentence with stride. but shes still a very emotional person at heart, shown by her affection towards anya, some random kid that keeps following her home, and her getting so attatched to a mutant that she puts herself at risk to keep him safe. all very illogical, emotion driven actions that you wouldnt expect from her based on her external disposition. olya is not as untouchable as she lets off, and she is especially deeply affected by nikita's view of her. (even before kolya's death he was an asshole. fucking misogynist) she cant help but take nikita's harsh words to heart, and that effects her and sergei's relationship. she's terribly afraid of opening up to him in fear that he will leave her the same as nikita left nadya, and has trouble internalizing and accepting the love he expresses to her. she desperately wants to ask for some reassurance, some promise that he wouldnt one day just decide that shes too much of a burden, that shes not worth it anymore, and abandon her. she DESPERATELY wants him to love her, but she just cant accept that he already does love her for herself.

"ill draw a circle in the sand / drive myself around the bend / in a desperate attempt to hold onto your battered hand"

now this is where the dramatic irony comes in. because seeing his internal monologue in the mill, the same song where olya was lamenting about all that, it is very very obvious that he cares so deeply for olya. now sergei has his issue with being overbearing and overprotective when it comes to those he loves, sheltering sanya to the point where she acts out and befriends yura. its his primary flaw, but god if it isnt the most prominent indicator of sergei's attachment to a person. once you know that about him and how he expresses those types of emotions, he practically wears his heart on his sleeve. he wants what he thinks is best for her and sanya and he really DOES care so so much about them both but he doesnt stop to think and its so. oh my god i just love them both so much u dont understand.

"now my only hope is that one day youll understand / ill wrap the chain round my heart and her hammering neck / and save whats left / though i know that someday this weight will come to break my back"

just the way that sergei and olya have such similar problems that manifest in different ways to affect their relationship. olya masks her emotions bc of experiences with misogyny and shes trying to be a Strong Woman and.. sergei masks his bc the environment he grew up in (& his own experiences and traumas) fostering toxic masculinity(???) and poor coping mechanisms. and so its this ouroboros of poor comminication because sergei doesnt know how to show olya he loves her and he doesnt even know thst she needs that because she wont TELL him and then SHE goes on to think that sergeis percieved indifference is his lack of affection and CONTINUES not telling him out of fear of rejection. i. UGH. these two are destroying my mind

thanks for reading if u got this far. have my favorite official sergolya doodles

(i could write an extra essay on my thoughts abt these doodles specifically as well but ill spare you<3)

#:3 #sorry this took 4 ever to answer i had to find time to sit down and write this all #BUT I AM SOO HAPPY THAT UR INDULGING ME IN MY WEIRD INTERESTS THAT U KNOW NOTHING ABT #SQUEE #sergei #olya #boss makes a dollar i make a dime thats why i answer asks on company time #pafl #schziobabble #long enough to go in my talk tag

[ultraericthered]

Star Driver - To The Guy Who Didn’t Get It

It seems like whole decades have gone by since the early 2010s and it makes me feel so old, yet I tend to forget how somewhat different the online fandom/social media scene was compared to now, especially in regards to critiques of then-still running shows done on blogs. And I happened upon one on Blogger (Anyone remember that blogging site? Does anyone still use it?) by an anime reviewer who blogged his thoughts on different anime episodes after they’d aired. And back then in 2010-2011, Star Driver was one such anime.

To say he wasn’t a fan would be almost understating it given the scathing remarks he blogged about it on a weekly basis. While obviously his thoughts and feelings on it and mine could not differ more, I understand that people have different tastes and that’s perfectly acceptable and right even. ...But y’know the saying that goes “you’re entitled to your own opinion, but not to your own facts and logic?” If your argument for or against something is based in illogical fallacies and disregard for objectivity and truth, even the sort of objective truth in regards to what’s grounded in what is canonical to works of fiction, it’s not a good argument and deserves to be torn apart. It doesn’t help that this blogger was that sort of pseduo-critic anime snob who had some ideas about how good storytelling, character writing, worldbuilding, and overall execution of a made-for-TV animated series should look like that I don’t think has aged very well on today’s online world. So even though it was years ago and on a whole ‘nother site, I just HAVE to rip this hater a new one here!

On Episode 1:

...wait, what the Hell is going on in this show?  It's only episode one and I already feel mired in things that I don't understand, a sense of confusion that only feels all the more jarring after the sudden change in gears from comedy school setting to giant robots and people with masks jabbering about Cybodys. I'm sure this sense of confusion is kind of the point, and that all will be explained in due course, but I can't help but feel that this plunge into "the science bit" was a little too sudden - had it come at the very start of the episode it might have worked, but in jerking us out of our previous sedate reverie it just feels wrong.

In Which Anime Blogger Complains About The Entire Effing Point. The series is meant to hook you in here because you’re sent reeling from what’s going on, because you’re confused and don’t understand what’s being talked about and what’s being done, because of the tonal whiplash and clashing between two types of shows that leads to such insane high octane action and unashamed campiness. There is no “kind of” about it, it is absolutely the point. I swear that this came up elsewhere on the blog but this blogger was not familiar with the creators other works, mainly Revolutionary Girl Utena, and it constantly shows. If Star Driver, right out the gate, is How Not To Make An Anime, then Utena should’ve tanked and never recieved all the glowing critical praise it’s gotten over the years because it did all the exact same stuff with its storytelling and presentation. And he thinks the show needed to lead with the Cybodies and the Crux in order to let the viewer know that this wasn’t just some high school romcom anime and that we’d be in for some weird and exciting mecha stuff? Not only is that unimaginative and belittling of the audience’s intelligence, patience, and attention spans, but it misses that one of the earliest spoken lines was Wako saying “I smell a boy I don’t know”. The guarantee of silly weirdness was already given to us right there, we didn’t need to see the costumes and robots yet.

On Episode 2:

we finally come to what I'm guessing might well be our weekly dose of action, as Takuto and his Cybody Tauburn find themselves under attack by opponents looking for revenge, and of course the opportunity to get their more accomplished foe well and truly out of the way. While it looks for a moment as though they might succeed, in typical giant robot anime fashion Takuto steps things up a gear when he needs it most and wins the day once again.  Hurrah! Again he shows he’s not watched Utena or any of the Sailor Moon shows, where this sort of usual “weekly dose of action” formula was common. And yes, that’s exactly how it goes. You figured it out!

On Episode 3:

On the other hand, it still feels like we're quite some way from understanding exactly what's going on, and I can't decided whether this is a good thing or not - it's certainly leaving me hungry to know more, but by the same token I feel like I need more information to actually settle into enjoying this show or otherwise. 

“Can’t decided?” And no, it’s totally a good thing. If you’re spoonfed way too much information too soon, you coming to see the grand design of the series as it unfolds before your eyes and understanding it better wouldn’t be nearly so rewarding. The best stories give you only the most basic, general and digestible information right at the start, then more pieces of information come at you in gradual doses, big and small, so that the huge perspective-altering bomb drops of later on can come in naturally and feel earned. And once you have all the information and context behind everything, going back and looking over those earlier parts of the story that you’d first viewed through a lens of not knowing all information and context will make you see so much of what you’d seen and heard before in a new light.

Well, we're now three episodes in, and Star Driver remains little more than a pile of nonsense that doesn't know what it wants to be in terms of its plot.  One minute it's a high school comedy, the next its some kind of harem show, then it's a drama of sorts before we move to the week's admittedly impressive action scenes where we get to watch some big robots fighting... now with added swords!  I keep telling myself that there's something big, clever and more intricate in terms of the show's story just around the corner but I'm beginning to wonder - Star Driver is increasingly looking like some kind of "robot fight of the week" anime with little else to say for itself to the point of being wilfully obtuse.

Star Driver knew exactly what it wanted to be in terms of plot, what conclusions it wanted to reach, and how it wanted to reach them - this dude is the one who didn’t know. The high school comedy, harem and fanservice antics, and human drama aspects of the show are all core parts of the show’s identity when on the island outside of Zero Time and are pieces moving in tandem with one another to service not only the mecha anime action-adventure spectacle but the larger narrative, character arcs, and fundamental core themes. The “big, clever and more intricate something” was always right there, thinly veiled behind the campy, stupid, ridiculous “robot fights of the week” show, as that’s the sort of thing Igarashi likes to do.

A commenter on this blog also had this to say:

Seriously, at this point we can dispense with the rest of the show and just fast forward to the part where that caged girl starts singing. :)

Uh, no we can’t, because if we skipped the island stuff and only took in the Star Driver/Cybody shenanigans in Zero Time, everything the story culminates in by the grand finale, and the two arc finales before that, would have no meaning to us, as such meaning was only found in the parts of the show set within Southern Cross Island daily life.

On Episode 5:

I thought that perhaps the previous episode of Star Driver was paving the way for a slight shift in the show's formula and way of doing things... but no, I was wrong, as episode five proves to be another rinse and repeat affair which introduces a character, ties them in to the Glittering Crux brigade and then finishes with a Zero Time battle between said character against Takuto.

I can actually see his point here, at least. It’s rather strange that “Meaning Of The Mandrake” was placed after “Wako’s Song” rather than before it, ‘cause if it had been the other way around, the latter four episodes of the first arc would feel like they had more momentum of importance compared to the first four. The third arc had a similar issue in terms of where they placed the backstory episode - the middle arc (”Innocent Blue Chapter”) is the only one where they nailed the contents and the pacing pretty much perfectly.

Even though we're five episodes in now, I still can't figure out just what Star Driver wants to be (if it even knows itself) - last week's episode seemed set to shake things up a little before this instalment brought us back to the same old episode layout while playing its plot mostly for comic value, right up to our school nurse being defeated while she's checking Takuto out. Okay, that moment was pretty funny (and there were a few other giggles to be had from this episode), but I have to admit that it wasn't what I signed up to Star Driver for and it needs to do a whole lot more if it isn't going to join the rather considerable pile of forgettable mecha series that decorates the world of anime like some elephant's graveyard.

Yes, Star Driver knows what it is and what it wanted to be, this is a “you” problem here, Mr. Blogger. The fact that it does offer such big shakeups every three episodes or sometimes every other episode shows that Igarashi and co. were well aware of what they were doing and how they wanted to play their cards. And oh, the sheer dumb of those later statements. If you “didn’t sign up to Star Driver” for all the goofy stuff that define it as Star Driver, maybe you should’ve thought twice about signing up for Star Driver! And if by even that point your impression of Star Driver was that it could wind up “forgettable” if it didn’t push for being more than what it was at the start, I just don’t know what to tell you. Youv’e got such a terrible attention span.

On Episode 6:

At last, this feels like a real step forward for Star Driver, away from its sometimes frivolous characters and plot progression towards what feels like a more solid footing.

Yes. That was the whole point. That was the whole PLAN. NIMROD!

On Episode 8:

Herein lies the major problem with Star Driver as it continues on its merry way - no matter what happens to the major characters within the show and no matter what developments emerge, it seems like the series is Hell-bent on keeping its episode format intact. This makes for a tiring and predictable viewing experience where we know exactly what's coming, but we still have to sit and wait for most of the episode for it to happen. This wouldn't be so bad if the build-up to the giant robot scraps were packed to the rafters with fascinating drama and character development, but this is rarely the case, instead leaving us with some rather overblown stuff that doesn't have any real impact. Sugata's plight should have made for a huge amount of potential, yet here we are with that part of the story seemingly resolved and yet virtually nothing was made of it. No matter how much I want to like Star Driver (and those fight sequences really are increasingly impressive), it just seems to disappoint me every time I try to give it another chance.

Once again, see Utena, which did the exact same thing of “Episode Format Status Quo Is God, But Not Necessarily An All-Mighty God”. That show had an entire midsection story arc where the conclusion was that its main villain and events were wiped from having ever existed and from the minds of other characters, as though the whole arc that spanned several episodes straight never happened - that’s something that should be decried as a giant time waster and a Filler Arc, but the effects of what happened in it and where it left our characters mattered greatly to the events to follow. A series doesn’t have to break its status quo and throw game-changing, character-effecting, crucially timed, urgently paced, high stakes developments at us every other episode in order to have narrative depth, character development, and plot progression. Sometimes, this way is good enough, where you have the gist of what the show’s all about and know what to expect and what you might predict, but may still be surprised, enthralled, and delighted by the execution and might even find you weren’t as ready for what you end up seeing as you thought you were going into the episode, meaning it’s NOT always a “tiring and predictable” experience, as you won’t always know EXACTLY what you’re in for in terms of the whens, hows, and whys of what gets played out in the story being told. During my rewatch, I noticed a lot of the good, juicy bits of drama and character development that were seeded into those breather periods on the island away from the Crux’s lair and out of Zero Time, and Sugata’s plight was far from resolved by Episode 8 - it simply was transitioned from one point to the next, as oftentimes when things reach an “end”, it’s actually just a phasing out of something that comes with a phasing in of something else semi-connected. The Adventure Of Life Goes On and all that.

If Star Driver was disappointing him, it’s because he set himself up for such disappointment first rather than go with the anime’s flow.

On Episode 10:

Star Driver has become dull and predictable, and there certainly wasn't anything on show this episode to change that.  We're now even at the point where those previously spectacular mecha battles feel run of the mill, leaving us with little to look forward to each week. Something needs to break Star Driver out of its over-used mould, but at the moment I simply can't see anything capable of doing that.

Predictable, yeah. Dull? Hell no, hardly! And “I can’t see anything capable of doing that.” The You twins were RIGHT F**KING THERE!

On Episode 11:

So, another episode of Star Driver has passed, and I'm still utterly bored with its predictable layout and the knowledge that Takuto will always win his battle at the end of the episode one way or another.  Even outside of the action, the whole story surrounding "Simone" felt horribly forced whilst proving to be equally dull in its own right. I'm seriously starting to think that this series is entirely beyond redemption now, but can I really drop a show after sinking almost six hours into it?

If he was so “utterly bored” of this show, what was he doing still writing these posts on it? Takuto having to win all of his battles at the end one way or another is a feature rather than a bug, and does not necessarily break immersion or enjoyment - a lot of the oldest comic books and action-adventure TV serials, the sort of stuff that inspired Star Wars, were like this, where the hero is allowed to be put in peril and leave the audience going “Oh no! How will they get out of this one?” without there being any hint of a doubt that they will indeed  “get out of this one” in the end so that they can go on to their next thrilling adventure, rinse and repeat. It’s not super dramatic because it’s not made to be - it’s made to be FUN. It’s good old fashioned escapism and entertainment. If that’s not one’s cup of tea, then they ought to stop drinking it for no reason but to prove that they can.

On Episode 12:

While the comedy for this episode of Star Driver was far sharper than anything we've seen from the show of late, that's really all it has going for it as per usual - it got a few laughs, but was otherwise as dull and lifeless as ever. There are brief hints of movement courtesy of Kanako meeting and conversing with Mizuno, but considering we're effectively at the half-way point of this series it would be nice to see something other than the odd glacial snippet of plot progression. I too like to throw around words like “dull” and “lifeless” and “boring” and “tepid” and “predictable” and “frivolous” and “forgttable” and even “utterly” without really thinking about whether or not I’m applying them to anything that actually truly matches the meanings of those words but if they make me sound like a real critic who knows what the fuck he’s talking about then I use them, I R super smart! Again, the Black Rose arc from Utena’s midsection deserves mention here.

On Episode 13:

I really have nothing new to say about Star Driver now - it's utterly dull and lifeless, and the plot of this particular episode was plain to see within the first five minutes of the episode, making Takuto's eventual victory even more of a foregone conclusion then it was already. With no peril, danger or intense action to this show's name, what is the point exactly? 

There it is again - “Dull and lifeless!” And in this episode’s case, it’s a Breather Episode and an actually well-placed one at that. I also described already what the point of the show is - to entertain and be fun, sincere and wholesome and even compelling to any who actually engage with it. It’s not a bad show, you’re just mean and joyless.

On Episode 14:

That said, I do have to point out that pretty much everything that was good about the second half of this episode was blatantly stolen from Evangelion (and more specifically its recent movies), but if pinching cool visual concepts and ideas from that series makes Star Driver better than I say go for it.

A mecha anime gets mind screwy and throws in some psychological and existential angst coupled with visual horrors?  “Blatantly stolen” from Evangelion rather than just influenced by it! Overall, this episode hasn't left me with renewed confidence that this series has a clue what it's doing or what its end-game is, but it's at least managed to find a little more potential and promise to keep me watching for the time being. If only it hadn't taken so long to do so...

You’d had to have completely missed the underlining purpose of this episode to come to that conclusion. Everything about the Ayingott project and what Marino was doing as Vanishing Age’s substitute leader was thoroughly schemed out by Head and Ivrogne in order to move things to the next phase, which itself ties back around to earlier set-up with Sugata and Samekh, and what’s truly motivating Ivrogne in her actions. The series’ end-game is a clear picture that comes together like a great big picture puzzle whose pieces you weren’t even looking at ‘cause you were too busy whining about the series!

On Episode 15:

What's this?  An episode of Star Driver that doesn't follow the exact same pattern of nearly every other episode that came before it almost to the second Stop the presses!  After moaning about it for so many weeks, simply breaking out of Star Driver's cycle of drama -> Zero Time -> Takuto wins feels like a breath of fresh air which left me watching the clock and thinking "however are they going to fit a pointless Cybody battle into this episode?".  Well, thankfully they didn't, instead giving the rest of the plot some much-needed room to breathe - something it did reasonably proficiently with plenty of angst and drama to lean on whilst also shifting the positions of a few key pieces on the show's chess board, most notably Sugata and our "mysterious" (or not so mysterious) painter aside from Mizuno herself.  

Yeah, even this asshat couldn’t not give these episodes their due.

only to enter some kind of Endless Eight-esque state where every time she leaves she simply wakes up and has to start all over again - a situation which leaves her a nervous and bawling wreck in a ferry terminal car park after numerous iterations (again, much like most viewers of Endless Eight after a few episodes).

Including this here because it’s actually pretty damn funny. This alone wasn't enough to make Star Driver suddenly seem like a far more compelling series, but following on from last week's more focused offering the signs of improvement are certainly there to be seen. It has a way to go, but at last there's light at the end of the tunnel of mediocrity from which this show desperately needs to escape over the coming weeks.

If it wasn’t, then maybe it honestly didn’t even need to be? What it did for me was make these episodes themselves, and retroactively every episode that featured and slowly advanced the arc of the You twins, far more compelling in and of themselves. The remainder of the show could’ve tanked and it wouldn’t change how great this section was.

On Episode 16:

This leaves me with an episode that I'm rather torn about - the revelations and story built around Mizuno turned out to be quite a nice twist in the tale (although they arguably weren't used to their fullest extent) and the Zero Time section this week was absolutely stunning even by this show's standards, while the Glittering Crux finally reaching their so-called Third Phase after blathering on about it for several months is as much of a relief as it is a sign of some tougher competition for Takuto. Set against that, the whole flashback element into Takuto's past for this episode felt clumsy and bolted on, leading in to a sudden upgrade to Tauburn's powers that was boringly predictable but unavoidably so.

Fair point. I can see why the action grinding to a halt just to give us some backstory that ties directly in with Takuto’s big finisher of that day might feel off for some viewers and take them out of the whole moment, but I personally liked it and will have stuff to say on it later.

Thus, I don't know what to make of it all - certain elements of the series have moved in some decidedly interesting new directions while others look to be stuck in a rut. Overall I suppose that's an improvement, but it still isn't enough to turn Star Driver into a good series at this juncture, let alone a great one.

See what I said before about these Mizuno arc episodes. And to me, Star Driver was always a good series, and these episodes, plus Episode 20 and the final two, just solified it into a great one.

On Episode 17:

Just as it seemed as it Star Driver had broken free of its repetitive episode conventions, it looks like the announcement of third phase combat last time around has seen a return to the tried and far from trusted episode layout of weeks gone by - high school hijinks, Glittering Crux meeting, big battle where Takuto wins via some previously unknown/unexpected deus ex machina.

“This show...is still Star Driver! WHY IS IT STILL STAR DRIVER?!?”

On Episode 18:

I remain both bored and unimpressed with Star Driver again at present - every time is looks set to do something to come out of its coma of predictability, it somehow manages to ruin the whole thing. For what is supposedly an anime about Cybodies which could change the entire world as we know it if the Glittering Crux Brigade succeeds, there's still no tension or drama in anything we see - battles are finished with the equivalent of a flick of the wrist, and more time is spent on school life shenanigans than any form of character building or plot development.  Perhaps someone should get the Madoka Magica team onto a mecha series when they're done with that show?  By all accounts they could do a far better job than this effort which seems to borrow from numerous other similar series whilst completely missing the point of what makes those shows great.

Oh my God, this dude.... The anime is not “about” the Cybodies and the stakes of what should happen if Zero Time was broken and they were all active outside of it again. It literally ends with Zero Time broken yet doesn’t make anything more of it than what’s needed for the immediate focus of the final action. This is called “missing the forest for the trees.” There are some shows, even shows with giant robot fights, that are not made to ride and die on the sort of “tension and drama” that this blogger pines for. And in fact, a lot of the character building and slow-burn plot development to set up the next big advancements are in those smaller, so-called “school life shananigans” that he thinks shouldn’t be allowed in a mecha anime. The reference to Madoka here is important because it’s such an apples-to-oranges comparison; Madoka is a anime with plot and character drama that’s very tightly written, and drama and stakes that escalate by the episode, because it was a 12 episode one cours anime where continous serialized storytelling was necessary and breathing room a no-go. Star Driver, meanwhile...is not that. And how ironic that he said that last part when he himself was missing what made this show great because he was too hung up on his own preferences and expectations, likely influenced by other shows!

On Episode 19:

That aside, I felt that the whole "body snatching" aspect of this episode was rather a wasted opportunity - not much was done with a scenario that was ripe with potential, and Kou and Madoka were both so useless in their body switching roles that they frittered away the chance to cause some genuine chaos far outside simply messing with Wako's head.

Another valid, legitimate criticism. Those are more relieving to come by on this blog than outlier episodes are to come by on Star Driver!

On Episode 20:

After frittering away so many (read: almost all) of its episodes, it's nice to see things finally building in an interesting direction at this late stage - although I can't quite get my head around Takuto's parentage at this juncture (is Tokio really that old?), we did learn some significant information about the man at the helm of the Glittering Crux Brigade, finally see a fire (or at least a slightly damp match) lit under Takuto's feelings for Wako, and perhaps most important we got a Zero Time battle that was interesting for almost thirty whole seconds, which is a new record on my watch. With next week's episode also promising to continue in the right direction, can Star Driver pull out a decent ending to this tepid series?  It won't be enough to save it from the halls of anime mediocrity, but regardless of that I sure hope it does so that my hours of watching this series don't prove to be in vain.

Tokio’s First Phase slowed his physical aging, which is why he still appears to be college aged at most. Oh, and more throwing in big sounding critic words/ “Tepid”? “Mediocrity”? By whose measure?

On Episode 21:

Not for the first time with this series, Star Driver hits upon something interesting only to render it utterly dull and useless with its staunch refusal to add any kind of peril to proceedings. In this case, we were finally faced with a conflict where someone absolutely had to die, no questions ask or no chance to sidestep this brutal truth... until the episode pulls out a deus ex machina so it can all end without anyone getting hurt.  What. The. Fuck. Star. Driver.  This, ladies and gentlemen, is why everyone is raving about Puella Magi Madoka Magica and the world it's woven where everything has serious and realistic consequences; this is also why nobody gives two flying monkeys about Star Driver any more. The sooner this show finishes and puts us all out of its abjectly mediocre misery the better.

I cannot with this doofus and his vocabulary. Here’s where the Madoka thing comes back (ironic since that’s the name of the character in question who didn’t get offed), and for one thing, it aged poorly given how Mami and Kyoko, two characters who we saw absolutely definitely die on-screen just come back to life at the end which sort of negates the weight of their deaths (though Sayaka doesn’t for some reason?), the serious consequences at the very end of the series were so mired in the fantastical that you can’t really call it “realistic”, and then after that initial series, everyone came back and a whole freaking Madoka multiverse was established, so it’s not exactly a super grounded, gritty, true-to-life anime experience. And second of all, it exposes how limited this person’s scope of what can pass for a solid, enjoyable, satisfying series with good storytelling even is. If a series isn’t like a steadily building, super tense, dark, bleak, violent and suspenseful “Anyone Can Die At Any Point” affair like Game Of Thrones, or even a one cours quickie filled with darkness and edge, thrills, chills, kills, shocking plot developments, mindblowing and/or soul-crushing reveals, and constant bordering-on-torture-porn misery and despair at every turn every week like Madoka, then it’s just garbage to someone like this. It’s so sad to me.

On Episode 22:

Mark, who is played by Takuto and really doesn't do anything interesting at all aside from getting to kiss Wako at the end of the entire ordeal.  Which is, to be fair, a pretty awesome thing to do.

Another moment where even a first class fool can see reason.

Above all though, much of this episode is really just about hammering home the current state of Wako's heart when it comes to choosing between Sugata and Takuto, as though the end of last week's episode didn't make that entirely clear and we needed to sit through all of this to explain things. The state of Wako’s heart at the moment wasn’t about “choosing between Sugata and Takuto”, as she was starting to realize more and more after her birthday that she felt equal love for them both. The real drama that was being shaped here was the idea that Sugata could possibly renounce what his heart was feeling for Wako in favor of finally embracing and using Samekh’s power, which is the future that Keito was offering him and hoping that he would take.

I probably wouldn't be so harsh on this episode if it were ensconced within the first half of Star Driver, but with only three episodes to go the series still seems intent on pissing away what little time it has left on incredibly dull and forced plot devices in the hope of somehow seeming "deep" that really add very little to either the show or its characters. I know that Star Driver is a lost cause now, but there's still so much I want to like about it that even at this juncture I get frustrated by its inability to do anything worthy of note with its setting and the individuals within them.  Goodness knows it has enough intriguing, likeable or downright cool characters to play with, so how we ended up with this tepid and clumsy cluster-fuck of a series is becoming increasingly mind-boggling.

You know why that entire paragraph got bolded. Take it away, Luke!

EXCEPT for “Goodness knows it has enough intriguing, likeable or downright cool characters to play with” - those words were right.

On Episode 23:

But what's this?  A major plot twist involving Sugata?  Wow, I never saw that one coming at all.

A good plot twist is one that makes logical internal sense within the narrative and character-based framework and advances the story in an interesting direction, not just one that you don’t see coming. I mean, he even goes on to say this and thus sound contradictory:

Okay, so Sugata's defection does make things a bit more interesting for the final couple of episodes, and it does also fit in better with the evolving relationship dynamic between the remaining maidens, Sugata, and Takuto.  

However, that doesn't make this anything less than another clumsy implemented slice of utter mediocrity where Zero Time also means Zero Excitement and Zero Peril.  Nothing has grabbed or surprised me even at this late stage of the game, meaning that the only real excitement I have left is the thought that in a couple of weeks I'll finally be done with this tepid series - fingers crossed it doesn't get licensed in the UK so that I have to watch it all over again though.

“UTTER mediOCRITY!” “Where’s teh EXCITEMENT and PERIL?”  “This is most tepid series! TEPID, I SAY!” And of course he’s British!

On Episode 24:

Even a show as largely dull and tepid as Star Driver can't screw up its penultimate episode on account of being too dull... although episode twenty-four certainly tries its best at doing just that before the sheer weight of interesting stuff available to the series finally forces its way through.

And I don’t know what else I expected from YOUR penultimate effort!

Okay, I have to confess, the end of this week's episode of Star Driver was pretty damn cool - once I'd suppressed my laughter at the sheer stupidity of nobody recognising any Glittering Crux member until they remove their mask and go "hey, guess who?!", there were some awesome visuals on show and everything seems set up right to deliver a finale free from all the fluff and nonsense that the series has drowned in up to this point. The fact that it took half the episode to get to this "good bit" remains a blatant reminder of everything that's wrong with Star Driver, but at least for once it seems set to actually deliver on its potential - if only it hadn't left it so late to do so.

I’m starting to suspect this dude might actually end up liking Star Driver: The Movie better than Star Driver: The Show, as it gives him basically what he’s asking for in terms of cutting down on the “fluff and nonsense” and hitting off all the “good bits” of lore and drama and fighting action with marked high stakes and twists and turns and all that PLOT PLOT PLOT!, even when said “good bits” would feel hollow and stripped of all deeper meaning due to what was missed out on with the “building block bits” of the high school and island community content that are there to give you an actual connection to the characters, the setting, and the going ons. Again, reading this feels alien in an age where shows “cut too short” and having a lack of breathers and “filler episodes” is more bemoaned than celebrated.

On Episode 25:

It's taken half a year, but we finally we get the episode of Star Driver everyone had been crying out for from the very start.  

................................. This fucking guy just went and said that  “the episode of Star Driver everyone (read: he) had been crying out for from the very start”....was at the very end, as in the final episode, the episode that by its very nature had to be built towards and earned by a whole series worth of episodes leading up to it. 

Crowning Achievement Of Dumb right there. Who thinks like this? That an action-based and character-driven serialized TV series has to lead with a series finale-worth of material from the offset in order to be deemed good?  What is even the point of such a show if it can play not just its full hand but its full deck of cards right from the off-set? This is ludicrous and exposes what an impatient child this guy was. He had zero deep understanding of shit he was talking about!

Okay, it still has an utterly stupid plot (Head's motivations and actions come straight out of a Saturday morning cartoon, and Takuto's decision-making isn't much better), but it had lots of awesome action and visual spectacle to make up for that lack of coherency. 

That was the whole idea. That was his character, that he was like a damaged piece of art where underneath the deep, detailed, beautiful and enticing surface, at his core were some very simplistic ideas and desires. A seflish, petty, ultimately hollow and lacking man pretending to be a boy pretending to be a man and wanted to be a boy again.

Having seen this example of what Star Driver could have been all about somehow only serves to make the rest of the series all the more disappointing - if only the series had this level of tension and peril written into it from the very start, then we might have been able to forgive the ridiculous dei ex machina that turned up on a regular basis and the distracting slice of life shenanigans that would have served better as a spin-off series in its own right. 

Again, ASS. BACKWARDS. It is only because Star Driver was about so much more than the surface level space tech lore and mecha action, because it did not carry itself with this level of tension and peril written into most of its regular proceedings, that this grand finale ends up feeling as grand as it does and carrying such a staggering amount of high quality to it, the quality it feels was built, reached, and earned rather than taken for granted. And if there was anything you found to be “distracting” in the slice of life shenanigans segments, it came from you rather than from the show, which was laying its heart and soul bare in all of those moments, offering up all the smaller pieces that were to be joined together to show you the bigger picture whole of the story, but your mind and your gaze turned away from it.

In terms of wasted potential, this Star Driver must rank at the top of the tree for the last year, and one line in this final episode really said it all: an exclamation of "this battle meant something".  At the show's own admission it took twenty-five episodes to have a meaningful battle in a series built around such action sequences - I rest my case.

Twenty-four episodes of a show built around (but not necessarily super focused on or all about) mech battle action sequences were all stocking up its energy and budget as it built up to the Big One, the one that would be so meaningful that it’d retroactively justify and give validity to all the smaller steps taken towards it, at the very end. This sounds perfectly reasonable, yet this guy puts it as though it’s a serious flaw. Absolutely obtuse, illiterate, unimaginative buffoon.

There were also some choice comments I had to pick out:

There was so much potential depth in SD's universe... the Cybodies, the Entropeople, the Seals... and none of it was really explored that much in depth.

Almost as if those things were never actually made to be the focal points of the story, and that the greater depth lied elsewhere?

Not to mention the lack of focus on the characters. A lot of times it feels like they're there just for the sake of being there (i.e. the lesbians).

The characters who needed to be focused on and earn the shits given about them got their focus, though it’s true that some in this cast got very short-changed, the Vanishing Age lackeys especially.

Star Driver isn't meant to have a complex plot or anything, it's meant to be mindless entertainment. People are raving about it anyway, so I don't quite understand that part o.o

I am with the spirit of this post but not the letter. Star Driver’s plot, unlike Utena’s overarching storyline, is not especially complex, its events easy to follow and dictated by certain patterns that make it pretty predictable and its primary purpose is to entertain - to please, to thrill, to amuse and even to arouse. But to call all that “mindless?” Nah, that is giving it way too little credit. I’ve seen it in its entirety more than enough times to say with certainty that there’s a great deal of cleverness, brilliance and meaning behind this camptastic joyride.

Now here’s the blogger again with some imput on his own:

although it's also interesting that both of those posts are suggesting that "people don't get it" without really explaining what we're missing beyond having not seen Utena.

I’d not seen Utena in full by the time I watched Star Driver and I was able to get it just fine, so he’s right, it really is no excuse.

I comprehend the reason for the repetitive way each episode is framed, but to be frank that framing wouldn't be a problem if the show actually had worthwhile content within that frame - witness the reaction to Madoka's early episodes which were similarly repetitive in terms of their layout compared to Star Driver. I'm also pretty sure I "get" all of the allusions the series is trying to present, but unfortunately they're all tired old concepts that aren't remedied by dressing it up in some snazzy outfits.

It’s a purely subjective matter. If the content doesn’t seem worth your while, then OK, don’t engage. It’s not going to be the same for everyone. And yet again with the Madoka reference, even when in that show’s case it only had two episodes worth of standard formulaic Magical Girl layout before someone’s head got bitten off in Episode 3, so it was never interested in playing things straight and sincere the way Star Driver was. Deeper allusions within repetitious framework are just kind of Igarashi and Enokido’s whole thing, same as Ikuhara.

What really holes Star Driver below the water is that for all of its allusion, big set pieces and attempts to build a compelling character-driven narrative, there's absolutely zero tension in Zero Time - arguably any tension disappeared the moment we were told that Takuto dying would mean "game over". We know what's going to happen every single week, and that's where Star Driver makes the jump from "too deep for people to understand" to "dull". There is shed loads of potential in Star Driver, but by this juncture it's been entirely frittered away to the point where I doubt watching a couple of other series will suddenly help it much or cause some kind of "eureka" moment.

He’s argued this ad nauseum and it’s still not holding water. Stories where the hero overcomes their obstacles and “saves the day” on the regular don’t automatically lack tension just because we’re not biting our nails with suspense or even anticipation over who might die at any given moment or itching to see the status quo upended by some destructive instance of successful evildoing that the hero fails to stop. Sometimes, Saturday Morning Cartoon flavor works and is not “dull.”

Lastly, this is who he was responding to, who has some refreshingly solid, well thought out, well understood and very agreeable things to say on the matter. As such, I’ve bolded the ones that hit the best. 

I generally enjoy reading your blog posts, and you have interesting thoughts on different shows but really it seems there are things you don't comprehend about Star Driver.

What I mean by saying that you don’t ‘comprehend’ aspects of Star Driver is not that it’s ‘too deep’ but more from a narrative perspective. You’re right in saying that the posts don’t explicitly explain what people are missing. But the emphasis is that ‘plot isn’t the point’ in Star Driver, it’s more about the allusions / symbolism / themes / characters. So if people focus on the former opposed to the latter, they’re ‘missing the point’. And it’s the case that most people relate/understand to traditional narrative. In Star Driver, the audience makes out the story for themselves using the allusions / symbolism / themes / characters rather than an unfolding plot and this is where people get lost, ie don’t understand therefore don’t like it. That’s cool. This way of storytelling isn’t for everybody.

I suppose it bothers me when criticisms like yours are based on a traditional narrative as opposed to the jigsaw puzzle way of Star Driver.

I’ll elaborate. Themes / symbolism / allusions / characters are the devices used for the audience to create their own overall understanding as opposed to an unfolding plot granting them this understanding. Generally speaking, this is how it was done in Utena, hence the comparison in the links.

In a conventional narrative we have conflict/tension/resolution (simplified form). Star Driver doesn’t utilise this as stated above. From your posts I gather that the lack of tension is your major dislike, and what I’m saying (and what the links are basically pointing out) is that Star Driver isn’t designed to have conventional narrative/plot (ie tension). This is why it doesn’t resonate with many people. This is what is meant by ‘not getting’ Star Driver.

Basically in Star Driver, there isn’t a straightforward pan of events that involve conflict/resolution or build tension to ‘tell’ us the story. But rather it’s the allusions/symbolism/themes AND how the characters work within these that ‘build’ the story.

I will use your example above of the lack of content within the repetition. Within the repetition we are given clues to characters’ motives. No, they’re not big world changing reveals. But using these clues (such as reactions, dialogue) and combining them with whatever symbolism is floating around, the audience is able to build the story. Star Driver requires the audience to be cluey and build, rather being given the story. Specific example this episode: Kanako notes that Wako was angry at Madoka for flirting with Takuto in Zero Time. This is a hint that Wako is leaning towards Takuto. Combine this with a frame last ep which shows Wako carrying Takuto’s watch (opposed to Sugata’s knife) reinforces this. The ‘story’ point here is that Wako has chosen Takuto, so the audience wonders how Sugata will react to this. Yes the audience will need to use various clues to work this out.

That is how ‘story’ is told in Star Driver. Putting together the puzzle. It requires the audience to be active and build it. Which is not for everyone. Which is perfectly fine.

It’s not that Star Driver is ‘too deep to understand’. It’s that the storytelling method of Star Driver doesn’t resonate with a mainstream audience. I just wanted to enlighten you to other ways of thinking about it because for me, criticising Star Driver using traditional narrative as your frame of reference (as you are doing), doesn’t hold water.

All of that. Beautifully put. This is the link they put out there too :https://revolemina.wordpress.com/2010/11/05/notes-on-star-driver/

Related: a more recent blogging of Star Driver from “Wrong Every Time”, who ironically seems to get it much more right than this guy. https://wrongeverytime.com/tag/star-driver/

And another great one!: https://randomc.net/category/star-driver/

Bottom line of this post: this person had no love for Star Driver to begin with; that’s why he couldn’t see its actual greatness.

#Star Driver #anime #opinion #criticism #defense #hatedumb #elitism #stupidity #misaimed fandom #completely missing the point

[blglplus]

My Top 10 BL’s of all time (and also 2022 because I’m new)

So I only discovered BL this year and what an incredible year of TV watching it has been. This year was difficult and I needed the escape. I first got obsessed with Heartstopper and then someone suggested I check out Thai BL and she was a goddamn genius. I had already been reading a lot of M/M romance novels and watching all the western queer shows I could like Heartstopper, Love, Simon, Young Royals etc. But the absolute joy and madness of BL knows no equal. 

So here is my personal top ten BL’s that I watched this year. Meaning many of these are from previous years it’s just that I only discovered them this year. So the title of this list could be very misleading

1. 2gether - this was the first one I watched and will always have a special place in y heart. It was like watching high production fanfiction and I’m INTO it. It loses some points for being homophobic/femmephobic towards Green of course. Also it had a LOT of “sing your feelings” but it was cute, funny and Bright was SO good. Not to mention insanely hot? I even watched Boys Over Flowers because he was in it and ENJOYED it. 

2. My Beautiful Man - this one hit me on a personal level and I just loved it. The complexity of the characters and their journeys. The actor who played Kiyoi was incredible! He deserved the award/awards he got. This one had depth in a way that I can’t quite articulate.

3. Seven Days - this was so freaking cute. I watched it because @absolutebl recced it and Phi was right - I have already re-watched bits of it multiple times. The chemistry was on point and again there was a complexity and depth to the characters that was explored really well. Love it. Also I love all the nods to the manga in the filming style, very cool. Phi was also right that you need to ignore the hair.

4. Cherry Magic - how is it possible for one show to be THIS adorable? This is the one I want to show all my friends and family. I was constantly giggling in that shy way you do when you’re texting someone you have a crush on. I loved it.

5. KinnPorsche - how much hotness can one show contain? And I’m not even into dudes very much! Was this show messy and at times illogical? Sure. Did I care? Not at all. I love every single inch of it. I loved the narrative behind it. It was a trip and it was amazing.

6. Semantic Error - this show is perfect. It’s cute, it’s funny, it’s beautifully shot, the leads have great chemistry. Perfect romcom. The uke is so hot!

7. Why R U - I honestly found this show hilarious. I love a neurotic meta thinker (Zon) and Tutor/Fighter had such good chemistry. It got messy towards the end sure. That scene where Zon was freaking out in Saifah’s bed and made a pillow fort was just so funny to me, I can’t explain it. I love them.

8. Love By Chance - the Ae/Pete only cut. Luckily I was warned by the internet about the rapiness of the side couples in this one so I skipped lots of them (though I still watched Pond’s story and Tin/Can). Ae and Pete are so freaking cute and Perth’s acting as Ae is incredible. I can’t believe he was only 16 at the time! When they look at each other I get all warm like drinking a hot chocolate. It’s so freaking cute. Also I love the read of Ae as demi.

9. We Best Love - No 1 for you. This was cute as was it’s sequel. Great chemistry, solid story, excellent.

10. The RamKing cut of My Engineer. If we were taking the whole show into account there are other shows I love more for sure, but I love this side couple SO MUCH. Even though I sort of enjoy the D/s elements of seme/uke I love it when there is less seme/uke or the lines are blurredand both characters take both roles and it feels more honestly queer. Also I’m a big fan of the silent, tough, loyal type that Ram is in this one. Plus the longing glances! And the flowers! Just so cute! I’ve already watched their cut at least 3 times through. I quickly started fast forwarding over the others when I was watching it.

Honourable Mentions:

Bad Buddy - this was great and solid plus I love that they are explicitly verse and some queer stuff is addressed. Not to mention side GL couple! We love! More of this please (though can we have some that aren’t femme please for the love of flannel?) It didn’t make the list because it just didn’t quite make me squee as hard as some of the ones above.

Love in the Air but only Payu/Rain. I feel like the dubcon with Payu/Rain is less dubious because of the non-verbal signals going on there. Consent doesn’t have to be just verbal - some people struggle with verbal. But maybe I’m just justifying this to myself haha, but hey, I won’t yuck your yum, don’t yuck mine. Plus Rain is hilarious, like honeslty hilarious. I mostly hated Prapai/Sky. The diary reading was especially terrible.

Secret Crush on You - yes it’s cringey. I love it anyway. I love the friends (especially Daisy of course - I wish Daisy’s story was more fleshed out!). I LOVE the chemistry and that there are seme/uke vibes but Toh, the uke, is hella into it! Love Jao/Sky. This show is happy and comforting and I can skip the extra painful bits!

I told the sunset about you - this one gave me too many feelings and it hurt. But it was beautiful and great also. The one I would show to my arty friends.

2moons2 but just the side couples. Especially Beam/Forth, so cute!

What I’m watching now:

I am participating in this strange antiquated tradition of watching TV shows AS THEY AIR with only one episode dropping per week! It’s madness! Absolute madness! I’m currently watching: Between Us (Win is so hot!), My School President (so cute!), Never Let Me Go (so exciting!), The New Employee, Ameiro Paradox and Gap: the series (I will watch all the GL dammit).

I’m also part way through:

The Eclipse

Be Loved in House (I do)

planning to start eternal yesterday because apparently I like pain?

#top ten list #top ten bl #bl ramblings #2022 top ten bl but really top ten of all time because I'm NEW

[daz4i]

T U B R & Z :) for the Ask Question :)

hi hi hi sorry for the late reply, and thank you for the ask!!! ^o^

answered t here!

U - Three favorite characters from three different fandoms, and why they’re your favorites.

bsd: gonna shock everyone i know..... nikolai :) his vibes are just impeccable. i love his whole view of life and what he does in hopes to achieve his impossible goal. i love that he's crazy cuuhraaaayyzeeee asylum but also is he. keeping us on our toes. and most importantly he is FUN every time he's around you can't help but have a good time even tho he's like, gruesomely murdering someone (i mean for me it's also part of the fun but eh)

fire emblem: ferdinand!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! he is just. ough. he is so dear to me. he fills my heart with joy and warmth i can't explain it. he has such a good and lovely arc and despite suffering and losing so much he remains positive through it all and tries his best to help others. and he's also just! very fun! like with nikolai every time he's on screen is just enjoyable, usually p funny, or very touching :')

persona: akechi. he makes me insane. esp in royal he's a very well written and interesting character imo, his motivations are illogical in a logical way (as in. they're illogical but you can perfectly understand why), he is so so tragic. and once again like the last 2, he is just so so fun, esp in third sem where he lets loose and becomes more violent and vulgar and sassy :)

B - A pairing–platonic, romantic or sexual–that you initially didn’t consider, but someone changed your mind.

tbh i wasn't sold on fyolai at first (which is probably shocking to those who haven't followed me when i first got into bsd lol) but creantzy's art convinced me of it ngl :P also the anthology art bc i mean. yeah

R - Which friendship/platonic relationship is your favorite in fandom?

dazai and atsushi........ hits me very deep in my soul........... it's so dear to me it means so much to me............ i can't even put it in words bc it simply makes me overflow with too much emotion at once

Z - Just ramble about something fan-related, go go go!

ig when it comes to fandoms. one big pet peeve i have is the amount of negativity ppl have around the source material?

criticism is valid and understandable and no media is free of it, but some people really spend almost all their time in a certain fandom doing nothing but hating it and its creator (biggest example is the bnha fandom is 2017ish. i swear most posts i saw abt it were hate posts from people who were still following the manga religiously)

not to mention the version of this that's like ignoring canon completely and making up new personalities for the characters in an attempt to make them non-problematic and such. pls just make ocs

like at some point i can't help but wonder why they're still reading it?? please move on to different things? if not for your own well being then for other fans bc i don't wanna see your negativity when i'm trying to be excited over smth i like 😭

(also true abt ppl who hate a character/ship and spend more time talking abt how much they hate it than talking abt the ones they do like, or worse, leaving mean comments on posts/fics made by ppl who do like it. yes that includes "problematic" ships or characters. complaining here and there is chill ofc but you gotta move on at some pointtttttt just block the tags or ppl who post a lot of it come on)

but fr it's mostly for you. esp if you're someone who doesn't have a lot of free time, why are you spending so much of it on something you're not even enjoying? i just don't get it 😔 you shouldn't take sunk cost fallacy into account when it comes to your joy i think

#ramble turned into a bit of a rant there sorry asdkjfgh but it's smth that as you can see. has been bothering me for awhile

[hekateisconfused]

Dude shut the fuck up about things changing so their "pReVeNtInG yOuR dEsIrEs" you fucking aroacephobic cunt. Bet you're just another cis transphobe homophobe racist with a karen personality. How do you live with yourself? you're such a brat no wonder you have no followers it's because no one likes you and you don't deserve to have things the way you want, whore. Go kys and do the world a favor, do something good for once fuck I hate cis people

... hah?

I- clearly you've never been here before. I'm willing to bet your a mutual that knows I find the "Lex AU Dib being aroace" thing wack as hell, but I mean- cmon dude. You could've atleast done some research on who I am and what I do before writing this. I have tons of gay, trans, and adding more poc characters. I myself am bi/pan, and I have a trans husband. Cmon dude. Is this really because I'm cis or what? Guess who's the phobe now? I'm continuing that "it's probably 100% a mutual" under cut, because for some dumb reason I feel safer under cut because not everyone looks there

Ight, cmon, calling mean aroacephobe, I have aroace, ace, and demisexual characters. Your only "attempt" of proving I'm aroacephobic is because I think the current status on Lex AU Dib's sexuality is clearly fake and a poor excuse for simping reasons. Take a hot sec to look at this all from my pov: this character you really have the hots for, who was originally bi, becomes gay. Then, when you create a more confident version of yourself and a feeling for a satisfying freedom of being able to simp with no shame, he suddenly, an insanely fucking horny ass bitch, becomes aroace.

This type of stuff just doesn't happen randomly or ironically. And if anything, thinking "it wasn't meant to affect away from me" is a gamble of the mind. You try to act calm when you have the ability to control a character and something is going wrong. When the situations go out of hand, you have the idea of changing a detail of the character to fix the situation, but you TRY to not act on it. Eventually, it slips through the cracks and happens anyway. You tried controlling it from happening, and you tell yourself "it wasn't my intention", that the fact this idea that would prevent the problem from continuing just rolled in development and it happened anyway despite the fact you were actually in control the whole time and hit the panic button, making it official, while you still tell yourself that it wasn't your intention. It's a toxic mind game. Neither people in the situation could really control it, yet somewhere someone will find a angered spark of realization. Whether they say it out loud or not, that's controlled. That, you actually have the power of saying how "this doesn't happen accidentally", how you know the mind game that played into this whole scenario in the first place. I would know, I've been both the "official changer" and the "one to cause the change".

And it's not like it even makes any sense! He is still CLEARLY horny. Dude can still barely keep his dick in his pants. Hell, I've seen newer fucking shit on him, he's still a horny fuck! Yknow, not what aroace is. The reason I've been so pissed at the word "infatuation"? This. "Infatuation isn't love", guess I've never felt love before then, huh? From a bpd yandere standpoint it's just illogical, trying to make that excuse to a irl idealizing yandere, who knows the real life feeling of the jealousy "I would do literally anything for you" mindset, it just makes no sense. This is indeed the type of stuff I would keep to myself, but this kinda changes it. If you think I'm "aroacephobic", how about you analyze every detail that's led to this point? I swear, if this is a mutual I really will lose my shit. You mutuals think you know Bug best. Yea, you guys get more info shit, and communicated more than me, but let's not forget who's Bug's wife and knows them irl, me. Learn your place.

For real, this is some new grade bull. If you see anything made out of spite, it'll probably 100% be selfship stuff, because suck it, after all of this I really do feel like I deserve something good from all of this. That and mutuals head's on a stick.

#hekate shut the fuck up #hekate shut the hell up #hekate shut up #Lex au dib simp back at it again #tw homophobia #tw arophobia