#this is less funny jokes and more actually criticizing the musical

[unproduciblesmackdown]

the most recognized as comedic song being the best part of the movie musical because the conventions that serve as a mode of communicating ideas, for example "people just bursting into song" or "choreography" or "'noticeably stylized' cinematography" that accentuates nonliteral nonrealism-invoking choices, are regarded as Silly or Frivolous. and the effort to shove everything else that's more "serious" into what is expected to be read as dramatic cinema that's not stylized in any ways that seem too "Genre" which only makes [but someone's singing?] underwhelming and out of place because no other elements are supporting it

#that plenty of Thee Establishment most concerned w/the commercial angle of musical theatre is also like ''musicals? is silly'' #or rather is forever defensive about this. all the musicals you know tonys will be comfortable with b/c they're gently ''edgily'' Serious.. #that old deh interview where p&p are like ''haha eugh we're not writing MUSICAL numbers musical numbers X'D this is serious this is real'' #deh as a living room play....like don't get me wrong. all Critiques / dunks on deh the stage musical even deh the movie...are not the same #all mine are better and wiser. but actually really for example like ''ben platt old?? he hair a joke??'' are criticisms i reject lol #wait a second does anyone in the Stage Musical ever do any more dancey choreography than they do in sincerely me....probably not #remembering the great times of that jared goldsmith interview where they were telling him to walk less dancily in ywbf lmao #taking some chassés across the stage....finally looked up if ''sashay'' is just a misheard + phonetic ''chassé'' & yes #anyways and just connect this all to the broader issue of Any ''genre(tm)'' understood as like. Unserious. style that is so unartistic.... #insert joe iconis talking about it. basically that if some Noticed ''unusual'' style usage is taken seriously it's presumed ''self aware'' #such that it may be like; parody of; commentary on; homage to whatever Conventions.... #like is a movie too associated with women as creators or audiences? some style choices that might seem to have some odd effect or w/e is #then just like wow guess this isn't good enough to be an experience i can completely intellectually disengage with as viewer.... #whereas if it's Not ''''gendered'''' so associated enough w/men as creators & audience (not much room for ''&/or'' there) then like #oh that perhaps somewhat awkward noticeable Style Usage? that was innovative; fresh; if it's funny it's ''clever'' rather than comedic #Don't Even Get Me Started on comedy also being an unserious ''easy'' too-Genre(tm) lesser style / way to communicate ideas #but i'm already started! it's right in the premise! ppl not even noting Sincerely Me has any material About anything b/c like #well it's Just Funny. jared & alana are Easy parts b/c they're so often Funny & set apart from the Serious Drama of parental angst #i actually haven't seen that many movie musicals but the ones unembarrased about themselves are superior #plus the idea of Worthy funny/noticeably styleized things as being Distinguishingly ''Self Aware''....the idea of Being Funny as either #being Unselfawarely the butt of the joke; or awarely deliberately Clever as what makes one superior to others; laughing At them surely #and i'm right back as well to what i was musing on re: the limits of billions' own language and in turn the limit of ideas if it cannot eve #express otherwise / beyond....that worthiness is awarded with this Dignity backed by the elements of the medium as tv's discretion #versus if someone's undeserving & unserious; or usually deserving/serious but is messing up & we want you to notice; then #they Will be beset with some humiliation; probably at least more proximate to being Laughed At; material may go out of its way to do this #another thing is that billions seems to have so little to no room for anyone having a capacity to be Silly #people Being Funny On Purpose is largely making references or pwning another character; both establishing competitive Worthiness #another shift from 5x08 onward like. rian truly able to humor herself is gone with her desk clutter #the fate of winston's =] ness is found in 6x01 when both quants are being funny until rian's funniness goes [abuse coworker] mode #that illustration that Hierarchy generates a Joke; at someone's expense. characters (& the writing?) Can't do otherwise to him or fathom it

[skymagpie]

I was in the mood to discuss the most common criticisms for Below Zero today on Reddit because I feel like people do not give some of the writing of this game enough credit, it’s actually good, you just need to read a bit between the lines. Yes it could’ve been better, it was slightly underwritten, but the core line was great and with more polishing it would’ve been excellent. I can probably talk more about it (and I will make my full rant one day), but I just felt this at the moment.

[ ID: Reddit reply from user ‘SkyMagpie’ reading: I think it also comes down to taste and to each individual person, so I respect that some people will not like the plot. I have to just disagree on some of the points and comment on others because these discussions come up often (SPOILER WARNING for people reading this):

I think the current version of the story is less cliche and stereotypical than the original version (from the early access which was written by the same writer from the 1st Subnautica game). There Al-An was cold, uncaring and an asshole. Some aspects of that story were better (Robin working for Alterra and having a change of heart), but some were worse (Al-An being the stereotypical asshole alien and the villain guy being a clearly bad guy with malicious intent)

.Al-An is not an emotionless computer to whom Robin has to teach emotions, he knows emotions - he clearly realizes right away that Robin is angry that he invaded her mind and decides to give her space to process it, he talks how his people upon realizing their mortality found a shrine to think on what it means to die, he asks her about memories (so he is trying to process grief) and he correctly notes that she is upset about her sister's death and copes with food. He clearly understands Robin's emotions and his emotional changes come from within himself and not from Robin, he chooses to hide information from her and he is also scared she will be mad at him for it. The only thing Robin show's Al-An are human customs and cultural elements as well as human concepts such as music for the purpose of entertainment, having pets just out of pleasure of doing so and the meaning of poetry when referring to abstract concepts such as "hope".

To go off my last point, Al-An has knowledge, but he has a hard time grasping human concepts because he has not lived with humans. It's the same about not being able to understand jokes and comedy between IRL cultures because the difference in language and way of living means that a part of the joke is lost (for example not all people who don't speak English well or are familiar with British culture will find British humor funny). This is what Robin teaches him. Al-An knows what hope means in the semantic sense, but he doesn't know what hope means to humans. To Emily Dickinson, hope is the thing with feathers - even we as humans who know the poem can disagree on the meaning of hope and interpret the poem differently. I feel that Al-An's writing broke out of the common stereotypes for aliens in subtle ways which are not obvious straight away. A lot of his ignorance came off as charming curiosity rather than instant dismissal of emotion. The note he leaves Robin after she tells him the Emily Dickinson poem is really sweet and shows his willingness to learn and to understand.

Robin and Al-An mutually helped each other go through grief and came out changed. I'd argue that Robin's character is probably the weakest point of the story because it is not clear when she changes and she comes off as preachy, but she is still driving the story forward with enough space for us as players to insert our own emotions. The story with Sam was good, but I think it was pretty brave to take the less obvious route and not just have Alterra be evil and kill Sam, covering her murder as Robin believed, rather have Sam die because she wanted to do something good and she screwed up - she still did well, but not everyone walks out a hero, and in this she parallels Al-An who had a good idea and drove his race to extinction because he also screwed up. Not everyone walks out unscathed. But Al-An learned from Robin and Sam as much as Robin learned from his story and found peace with her sister's death. Robin finally met Sam after she died and learned that her sister was brave and willing to fight what she believed in, even if it ended in tragedy.

Thank you if you read this far, I just think that this story is very cute and it falls together nicely. Maybe the original premise is cliche, but the elements make it very interesting if people are willing to dive into them. That goes for most stories, strip any story down to it's summary and you will get the same stories over and over, but its the way the are told and the execution that people enjoy, that's where the charm is and for me personally this was a really nice story. However it's okay if some people don't like it. And we have to note that Subnautica games are PG10+ so these were written with a younger audience in mind and the plot lines are simpler for children to grasp. Older players and fans have enough things to dig through to still be entertained by the story. The original Subnautica had a pretty cliche story line too, but the way it was executed in combination with the world is what makes it so lovable. When it comes to story, both games are equally good in my opinion.” end ID ]

#subnautica #subnautica below zero #al-an subnautica #robin ayou

[neighborlywelcome]

Well hello there! I would like a match-up please! :D pronouns/gender: I'm a genderfluid that uses all pronouns!

sexuality: omnisexual, with a greater preference for men and enby's over women (though they are still very attractive :D)

fandom: Both!

Characters not to be paired with: can't think of any so none!

hobbies/interests: Drawing, watching tv, listening to music, writing stories, and relaxing!

personality: I'm a pretty socially awkward person. I don't like to speak up unless I feel like I'm in a safe space and know what I'm doing. To close people I can be VERY sarcastic (to others I'm not really). I can be very quiet when I talk in situations where I don't want that many people hearing me (social anxiety go brr), and I prefer to talk loudly when around safe spaces (Areas I'm comfortable with). I'm kind though, making sure that everyone is included and that no one is sad.

my "type": someone to hang out with. I like someone that is easy to talk to and is very supportive of me. I don't mind if they're kind of grumpy and I like people who also like physical attention.

Love language(s): Physical intimacy is a major one, I love being hugged and held along with being touched in general (holding hands yasss). I also love to give and receive gifts, it makes me happy.

I hope that it's not too much work for you!!! <3

Hello, of course! Thanks for the request! I’ll give you a Welcome Home one, but if you’d like a TADC one too, let me know!

YOUR MATCHUP IS...

BARNABY!!!

Barnaby is the best dog around, he’s easy to get along with even as friends and is 100% supportive of you when you’re in a relationship. I can’t imagine a more loyal pooch! You two would be a great match!

Barnaby doesn’t mind that you have social anxiety—he finds it cute, actually! His best friend is super quiet too, so he’s used to it. It gives him more room to yap and yap and fill the silence… unless you want to talk, in which case, he’s happy to give you room in the conversation!

Most of Barnaby’s talking consists of jokes, though, whether it be puns or knock-knock jokes or what have you. He’d pride himself in getting a laugh out of you, especially when you’re feeling less sociable, and if you’re open enough to be sarcastic with him, he’d love it! He thinks your sarcasm is funny.

You said you like physical attention? Barnaby’s got you covered! He’s always touching you some way or another, holding your hand or patting your head or wrapping his arms around your shoulder. He loves, loves hugs and if you reciprocate all this affection by petting his head (maybe scratching behind the ears?) his tail will wag with happiness!

His favorite pastime with you is definitely cuddling while doing something idle like watching TV while you run your hands through his fur and he holds you like a big, soft weighted blanket. As long as you give him small pets and scratches, he’s content! (He is a dog after all…)

Besides that, he also loves to watch you write and draw. He’s already used to modeling for Wally’s paintings a lot, so he’d love to do the same for you! And read or critique your stories if you wanted… but beware most of his “criticism” is that you should add more corny jokes that he comes up with.

#welcome home matchup #welcome home x reader #wh x reader #barnaby b beagle x reader #barnaby beagle x reader #barnaby x reader #welcome home #anonymous #my matchups #barnaby b beagle #romantic matchup

[theblackdragon-studios]

Helluva Boss S2 E7 Reaction Notes

I finally watched the latest episode of Helluva Boss, and I wrote down my thoughts and reactions during. Here they are.

Warning: Contains spoilers to the episode

Thoughts as I watch:

-I wondered what Mammon’s voice would be…Cockney was NOT on my list of expectations. Wow. XD (Edit after rewatch: I think it’s actually Australian…thickly Australian. I could be wrong but it sounds either Cockney or Australian now I rewatched it.)

-Huh, Fizz and Blitz were fans of him when they were young…

-Only in Hell does anyone actually WANT to be a clown. XD

-Weird how Blitzo is so weirded out by Mammon’s pitch about working with him…though actually Blitzo really wanted to run his own circus, so maybe that’s why.

-I love how obvious this guy is. XD The jabs being made at corporate bosses here through this asshole’s whole character so far…they’re terrible at lying, yet people believe it anyway

Blitzo is all of us that caught onto the bullshit. XD This episode is so great already.

-Going for the jugular with that “women just aren’t funny” line. XD 1.) the show is by a woman. And 2.) …yeah. Most of them really aren’t funny to me. XD I know that probably wasn’t the joke (women comedians aren’t funny…), and we obviously aren’t supposed to like him, but yeah.

But also the “written by Vivienne Medrano” credit, AKA Vivziepop herself I think. That was great. XD

-“it’s not weird. You’re weird!” “It’s not exploitation” Exactly what Hollywood says now to anyone being critical of their stuff. Seriously, first South Park and now this…bravo adult comedy people. Just bravo.

Also playing an electric guitar version of “Carmen” I think it is. XD Even more clever, as that song was about how shady and manipulative that woman was if I remember right.

-…weird to hear adult Blitzø’s voice on his teenage self. Though I guess he went through puberty already. lol And I think Fizz’s adult voice is partially because of the fire accident.

-And now taking a jab at the entitled fans out there that aren’t giving constructive criticism and are demanding things then being all butthurt when they’re rejected. Finally an episode I fully get the social commentary on. lol

-$69.99 Subtle. Very subtle. XD (and “no refunds: if you don’t like it, it’s your fault”)

-I LOVE Ozzie here. You go man! Yeah he has his flaws too, even as a demon…but he is so sweet and so honest with Fizz it’s great. I also love the message here about both being a perfectionist…and being a people-pleaser. Destroying yourself to especially please someone that doesn’t give a fuck about you…because you think that gives you your worth. Especially after his accident… I have a lot of thoughts on this, but I’ll see where things go.

-Asmodeus calling Blitzø…somehow the most bizarre thing on the show yet. XD And how Blitzø is perfectly chill about it. Well I know for one, Blitzø knows about Fizz and Ozzie’s relationship and is happy his friend is happy…but I think this is also more evidence Blitzø wasn’t that upset at being picked on by Oz, and instead by being called out by his ex-friend, ex-girlfriend, and Stolas acting ashamed of their own relationship (which is transactional only he thinks…)

But he is at least a little polite when talking to Ozzie. lol So that’s nice.

-…the horse thing. He is STILL on the horse thing. Oh my gosh.

-Vivzie and her team are treating us to so much great stuff lately! First Stolas and Ozzie working together, and now Blitzø and Ozzie. This is comedy gold! Also Ozzie’s happy smile at the end of that scene when Blitzø said yes. Why are all these bird demons so cute? XD

-First, I still love Ozzie’s theme music (it’s the song from his debut episode) and second, cool to see his less flashy, public appearance in other parts of hell look from that first episode he’s in too. It looks really good on him.

And it’s cool seeing a Deadly Sin icon being more subtle outside of his ring. Makes me wonder what Bee looks like when she’s trying not to steal the show.

-Eh spoke too soon on Blitzø and Ozzie teaming up. Ozzie left, but I understand why.

-More jabs at Hollywood and their harmful treatment of their stars through Mammon calling an already incredibly thin Fizz fat

-Huh that rock music…I know I’ve heard it in the show before. I think this IS the Greed ring’s music…but I can’t remember.

-I figured one rescue and hug wouldn’t fix everything…but Fizz clearly no longer hates Blitzø and vice versa, and they are friends again it looks like. But I wonder if Fizz still has anxiety about Blitzø being at a performance of his…or maybe he’s just suspicious because Blitzø has always been openly critical of Mammon and these shows.

-“Smile inside and out”…I’m surprised Fizz doesn’t have depression like Stolas…

-Interesting how the background demons in this scene are just silhouettes. I don’t know if that’s to emphasize how he’s this colorful entertainment prop and toy for them and they represent real world fans…or if it was to save on work load

-Ooh these girls (the twin performers) look like they’re from the Envy ring (Leviathan’s ring) by the fish-like look of them

-I used to find Fizz annoying…but seeing him in the last episode and this one, he’s more like Moxxie. Too nice for this world when it comes to one-on-one conversation with the way he was so polite to those contest participants

-Oh yeah! Mammon said women aren’t funny. XD Ha! I thought that was just a joke for the opening, but he actually called back to it

To be honest I didn’t think any of their acts were funny though. Just cool acrobatics and talented crafting

-More “clearly the money-greedy corporate bosses don’t care about you, their stars, or anything but what sells”.

-I know people will still find reasons to hate this episode, but I find it hard to think of anything they could hate without really reaching for something

Actually…they’ll probably complain that Mammon-who is fat-is an asshole and they made him fat because of it…when really, I think it represents the greed thing. He’s supposed to be the stereotype of those fat business men in old cartoons and movies. But as a jester. (Edit: And because spiders have big abdomens)

(Edit after looking through the Helluva Boss tag seeing the nitpicks and complaints: Called it. And a few other things they really zeroed in on just to find something to hate about this. 🙄)

-Giant hellhound background character…was not expecting that. XD

-Fuck…they didn’t have to include that moment with the sign language. But they did…that’s so sweet

Though seeing that kid’s horns…I wonder if their horns also act as their ears? Because his are broken… or maybe he’s mute, not deaf, but Fizz still signed back (despite being exhausted, miserable, and wanting to win this and go home I bet) to show that kid deaf or not, that he took the time to learn for demons like that kid. (Edit: I rewatched it and the kid only had one broken horn in the later scene he’s in. …and I forgot Fizz’s horns are also broken but he can hear just fine…so ignore this theory from when I was watching…)

-…oh my gosh. The entitled fan is back now. This is absolutely commentary on both Hollywood and the Twitter freaks. So good.

-Entitled Fan remembers Blitzø too? Huh.

-Mammon’s 8 eyes…NOW all the webs around the place make sense. And all I can say is YES. Perfect design for the demon of GREED to have spider themes to him. It makes me think of Slughorn from Harry Potter, who was envisioned as a spider spinning his web representing his habit of collecting and exploiting the success of graduating students.

-Fizz making excuses for a shitty boss…also way too real...

-Again…seeing the twins’ performance, clowns must mean something else in this world. That wasn’t funny. It was cool though.

-Ozzie’s back! Yes! He’s so sweet to Fizz…and getting stuck in the door. XD

-Fizz is every famous person that is losing popularity to new things…the ones that cling onto it desperately instead of bowing out with dignity and what they have left…

-I know how Fizz feels here too…feeling he only has all the good things he does because of his fame...he thinks because he doesn’t look as great without it, that he’ll lose his relationship with Ozzie…

But man this couple is so healthy with each other. They try to be very private and secretive (and fail) which is straining, but they communicate with each other and they don’t allow for room for any misunderstandings…I hope we see more Bee and Tex too in the future (Bee might need a new VA if Ke$ha is still dealing with things or too expensive to hire) but these two couples will I hope play a part in Blitzø and Stolas’s drama with how they’ve shown they are in love with low-class demons as well…

Though Goetia are very different from the Deadly Sins…they isolate themselves from the lower class, while the Sins thrive on their company since they feed off their energy or it helps business and stuff.

-Oh my gosh, another Fizzmodeus song! Yes! And the adorable dance…man…I love these two! 💜

-Thank you, Blitzø! The entitled fan guy has been asking for it! And yes. You tell Fizzmodeus off for being hypocrites. XD He has every right to be mad after they bullied his friends. XD

-Oh man I see why the broadway version on Beetlejuice is Fizz now! That was an amazing song! Also Ozzie helping him. XD And getting…a bit more excited than he should. Hilarious. And Blitzø’s part helping too! This trio was awesome!

-The way the cheering kids track plays when Mammon appears in front of Fizz. XD I didn’t notice that until now.

-Yes! Get him Ozzie! Fight! Fight! Fight! Two Deadly Sins in their full power forms! Yes!

-Oh my gosh, the con artist Imp saying ‘I say I say’ again. XD He keeps showing up!

-Ozzie’s animal sound effects…so cool! And the twisting, lashing tails…I love how all-out they go with him being a mix of three animals! Cause Asmodeus apparently is described as having three heads (hence the two shadow heads in his mane) and this design shows that so well! I love it!

-Yeah I think Fizzmodeus being open will help a lot in several things. Including upper class demons getting their heads out of their asses about this stuff.

-This final frame is perfect! XD

Basically I loved this episode. It was so fun and I loved the worldbuilding seeing the leader of the Greed ring, and of course Fizzmodeus being adorable as always! 💜

I do think clown has a different meaning in Hell…but we did only see some of what they did. Most of the humor for me was definitely in the social commentary stuff. And as this is a show for adults…that is what you expect. Jokes about adult problems and mature themes. I got exactly what I was expecting from it.

#helluva boss #helluva boss episode review #(sort of) #blackdragon speaks #spoilers

[bramble-scramble]

Ok! Time for some SPOILER FREE Mario movie impressions!! I'll post plenty of more detailed thoughts later, of course, but these are general thoughts about its quality. Of course this is still very long because I always get carried away, lol

So, I had a great time, but I can definitely see where some of the criticisms come from. Let's get the less good stuff out of the way first. The plot is nothing to speak of, it's basically a video game plot which... whatever, there are actual Mario games out there that have better story and dialogue and themes than this, but at the same time I don't see a problem with this approach? I've seen people bringing up Super Paper Mario (which as you may know is my favorite Mario game) as evidence that Mario can have a good story around him but at the same time, like. This is an origin story, and they wanted to tell a fairly basic story that resembles the incredibly basic plot of the VAST MAJORITY of Mario games and that's fine, they didn't need to pull an epic story about ancient prophecies and mystical macguffins and doomed lovers out of their ass. It's fine y'all. They can save epic RPG plots for sequels.

The dialogue is serviceable. I know it's a kids' movie and whatever (which is almost always a poor excuse for whatever it's defending) but there were plenty of moments where the characters basically hit you over the head with the themes or state exposition so bluntly I thought it was leading into a joke. That made the moments where certain characters started to gel with each other and have naturalistic and endearing dialogue stand out all the more, and yet those charismatic moments are over almost as soon as you realize they're happening.

Overall I think the movie's rapid-fire pace is what hurts it the most. We are given very little time to sit with these charming character interactions, or scenes where a sense of wonder is evoked, before it's on to the next colorful and action-packed setpiece. On the one hand it's nice to have a movie with such a pared down runtime, but I think a little bit of extra space and breathing room in there could have done wonders in getting people who only know Mario as the funny Wahoo man who lives in the Nintendo to buy into the appeal of these characters and their world. I guess they thought kids couldn't pay attention in quiet moments or something, but again, give kids a little credit.

All that aside, the movie's strengths are many, in my opinion: outstanding animation and design, attention to lush visual detail, creating a Mushroom Kingdom that maintains a sense of magical bizarreness while actually seeming like a real place that people live in, and a sense of sincerity to the whole enterprise with a minimum of irony and self-distancing snark. It's also a very good, fun and refreshing take on some of the characters and their relationships - although, again, I just wish there was more screentime for it. I'll go into more detail when I talk spoilers later.

I've seen some snippets of criticism which I will say I disagree with, which is... People are justifiably cynical and tired of the Space Jam 2s and Ready Player Ones of the world where the creators are like "Look at all these nerdy references!! Look at all the IP we got access to, PLEASE POINT AND CLAP" and saying this movie is the same type of thing, but... Idk in my opinion there's a huge difference between a massive crossover of shallow nerdy references, and a movie based on one single franchise making a bunch of deep cuts that fans will recognize. Like yes there are references to other Nintendo properties but those are all subtle background things and sensibly contained to the Brooklyn portions of the movie.

Listen, I know Nintendo isn't my friend, they are out to make money and in a very real sense we ARE being advertised to... the Kart portions felt especially like "Hey did you ever buy Mario Kart 8 Deluxe yet??" Still, I think between the outstanding musical score and all the deep-cut references, this movie was obviously made by people with a deep love and care for the Mario franchise who were excited to work on this project. So in a sense it's kind of an ad for Nintendo's games rather than some pure work of art free from ulterior motives, but one that comes from a place of sincerity and care. If you want to be maximum cynical you could view that as even more insidious, but idk... relax and have some fun, go play some Mario Party.

It's not an advertisement for those of us who are already bought in. And maybe that's the major disconnect with some critics, which isn't to write them off as elitist, but just an attempt at explaining the difference in fan reception vs critical reception. Some people feel like they're being advertised to while others feel like they're being treated and the video game world they love is being respected. The idea that there are people, adults, who take video game IP this seriously, so much that we've pretty much already played all the games being referenced, is either hard to believe, or seen as even more cringey than being into Marvel movies or something. But there are plenty of us, and we know what we're getting into and are excited to see it.

Some of us are even Donkey Kong fans in particular and this is the best/most content we've gotten in years so LET'S GO TEAM KONG

#mario movie #bramble ramble #fan analysis #super mario

[numericalbridge]

TOH rewatch semi-liveblog. Season 1 part 1a

episodes 1-3

Episode 1

- I didn't remember this, but pretty much the first thing Camila says is that she supports Luz's creativity, yet the fandom ignored it and demonized her with no restrain. And at the end of the episode when Luz places a photo of her with Camila - it is clear she loves her mom so much, and the photo is of them hugging openly - compared to the Blight's portrait for example - the show would've shown the true dynamic through the photo if that was necessary. And yet the fandom wanted Luz to abandon her mother, her father's grave and their culture to live with the 'more accepting' white 'mom' (which is, you know, actual colonial propaganda). I wasn't even in the fandom before season 2b, but the behavior around Camila was so gross even i knew about it.

- I would say the extra quick pacing of the first 2 episodes and meta humor 101 are much more tolerable when you are prepared for them. When i tried watching it the very first time i couldn't get past the first 10 minutes, then i tried again later, and it still felt like the first episode was way too fast, even compared to something like the Infinity Train which had 11 minutes episodes. But this time it didn't seem that bad. Luz's speech to the Conformatorium prisoners was maybe the only thing that felt too quick.

- Some humor is actually funny and some is very much dark humor 101 aimed at tweens that is probably hilarious and novel for the target audience, but seems like it was done 100 times before for anyone older. That's not a criticism, it is what it is. (when the show attempts humor aimed at older internet-based fandom, especially later on, that's what i find much more cringe-inducing tbh).

- Really like Eda's voice acting, and voice acting and music in general. Love most of the designs for non-humanoid demons. Pity that we don't see that much of them later.

- Oh, but all the things Eda does that would've made fandom hate Darius if he did the same. From pocking Hooty in the eye to joking about Warden Wrath tormenting 'some tiny creature', to only promising to bring Luz - who doesn't understand this world and doesn't know about the tyrany of the Emperor - home if Luz helps infiltrate the prison, to calling an 8 year her roomate, to not thinking about whether Luz would be able to do magic before promising to teach her... but i bet no one crawls into the notes of any random art of Eda with King to whine how "she should've been nicer from the start".

- What's with this thing:

it looks like the owl version of that cat-with-human-face gag from what we do in the shadows movie.

Episode 2

- I don't have a problem with it, considering the target audience is younger than the characters, but the kids (except King) really act younger than their ages.

- But i do have a problem when the fandom interprets it as Luz being 'less smart' than other characters and painting her as over the top reckless especially in the takes that aim to be more realistic than the show's stylized storytelling, when she is actually smart. Even in this episode Luz quickly starts to wonder whether it was the right choice to follow the quest, and only the confirmation of the magic makes her fully engage (and prior to it Eda and King just laughing at her like that surely is something that would've made any teenager more reckless)

- Puppets... kinda curious whether it was always meant to be a parallel to the finale, or the dream sequence in the final episode was added and connected to this episode after the shortening. Or maybe there would've been actual fighting with the puppets with full season 3? Who knows /desperatly hopes there was no puppets at all before the shortening.

- They've really fully intentionally murdered (and ate) the villain, lol

Episode 3

- This was actually the first episode i really liked when i first watched the series.

- Willow is so good! From the first scene they show how angry she is without painting that anger in a negative light. Could've been one of the best chracters in the show if they didn't mess up the pacing of her arc.

- King is so mouthy towards Eda sometimes. Yes, i find it funny that King and Eda are often mean towards each other - and sometimes, i admit, it crosses the line where i wish the writing was different - but supposedly the kids watching this can stomach it and understand their relationship, yet 20+ years old fandom adults can't deal with anything but the most obvious therapy talk when it comes to the precious woobie they twist Hunter into being [and by that i don't mean some awkward characterization but turning him into the same woobie type every fandom makes out of fan favorite white characters that very specifically relays on erasing or demonizing other characters, most often character of color or turning them, as others have called it, into comfort machines]

- I love that Eda is allowed to be mad at the school and how she was treated. There could've been a pretty interesting connection with Willow in this regard too, but alas.

- Luz is a fake weird animal-loving girl for not being interested in the dead slug /j

- Forgot that abominations can talk... kinda...

- Yeah, i think Amity is way too mean towards Willow in the first scene - making the abomination draw on her forehead - considering what actually happens with Amity's and Willow's arcs later, and where the focus of their relationship gets shifted. If they wanted Amity be this mean, it should've been either some unusual circumstances (like, after Willow gets the good grade over her) or there should have been more exploration about it later with more focus on Willow and with different things focused on in Amity's arc. If not, they should've toned it down to be more in line with how it is written later on.

- And Luz and Willow's chemistry is so, so great! It's such a shame how quickly it was abandoned😞

- I feel bad for the slug... interesting how all the more obvious one-off 'villains' in the first season are less humanoid demons or creatures.

- And yes, i really believe the old hexsquad as a friend group was something only added later, otherwise Eda never reacting to Gus (or even the Blight kids later on, but especially Gus considering how he gets less focus from early on) is surely a choice.

----

I bitched a lot in this post, but i actually like the first 3 episodes, and the first 2 i definitely like better on the rewatch.

#toh rewatch numericalbridge #toh rewatch liveblog #it's part 1a and 1b because i watched in 4-5 episode batches but the first part was getting too long #long post #the owl house

[thorne1435]

Heya, Random-Music-Anon here (as you christened me with that name). Just... Gonna drop you some more music and watch as you review em and give recommendations.

Hope you like it, includes a couple more pure EDM and foreign language songs 🧡

The Edge - Panicland

Rome Falls - Panicland

Same Graves - The Ghost Club

Secukupnya - Hindia

Where'd U Go - Illenium

The Edge: Yo, it's like All-American Rejects but, like, with a synth. I'm really fond of how the entire everything changes for the chorus. Like, the chorus and the verses are different songs, and that's cool. I'm not sure what all changed. The tempo, for one. I'm tempted to say the key changes also but actually I'm very bad at judging when a key changes, most of the time. It just makes this song more unique though and I like that. It should be said, that its chorus being significantly slower than the verses does sort of set up and then subvert the idea that the chorus will be significantly faster than the verses. This could be deliberate ("Edging" so to speak) or...they could've just had that chorus written down ages ago and wanted to use it somewhere but then they wrote a verse that was completely different and they just mashed them together because they really wanted both things to get used. I've done similar things before, so it sort of makes sense that it would happen with better composers than me.

Man, you'd fuckin love this band called half alive... Here, listen to this!

Rome Falls: Billie Joe Armstrong is that you?! Oh-- oh that's the joke?! Shit dude, I don't even know what to say. I was gonna do the same joke I did up there and recommend some green day song and then give you the link to something completely different but now I feel like that's lazy, because this is a style parody. But it's a really good style parody. Save for the opening. Green Day would never try to be that ornate, I've never heard a Green Day song with that kind of choral element or that vocal range.

Wouldn't it be so funny if I recommended Green Day anyway? I think it would.

Same Graves: You ever just listen to a song and hear the same basic concept as a country song you heard like 5-8 years ago? And you think "Well, I shouldn't say it, because if I do then everyone will know that I took note of a country song, and that's social faux pas." But you think about it, and like, it sticks with you. And then you think, "Hey, didn't a rap record say this, too?" And then you remember rock icons like Cobain who hated the celebrity worship aspect of music as a modern medium and how they would probably agree with the message, too. And then you think "Huh. I guess no matter how you make it big as an artist, if you manage to in the first place, your social life will become a dichotomous mixture of harsh criticism and blind devotion and you'll never be a person again, and artists probably go into it knowing it'll occur but needing money less than artistic expression." and then you go "Fuck. I hate capitalism. I want the art back. I want our peaceful existence back. I want life to be what it should be." And then you cry about it...

I'm sure that's a universal experience.

Anyway, uh, what were we doing? Music share? Oh, fuck, uh... take...this? I guess?

Secukupnya: Unfortunately, I don't speak Indonesian (or any other Austronesian language). So, I had to look up a translation of the lyrics, which is always sketchy when it comes to small artists and/or languages that have no real western presence like Filipino or, like, Romani or something. From what I can gather, though, this song is about life being fucking depressing. People living paycheck to paycheck, marriages being loveless and weathered beyond repair... but it's not about that alone. They're saying that it's better if we're all sad together (Bersedih bersama-sama) which I think means grieving what could have been as a community instead of as individuals. After all, everyone fails sometime (Kita semua gagal), so we all have something to be sad about. Sharing our problems with each other will make us feel better than just keeping it to ourselves and watching everything collapse in silence. I choose to believe this is a call to action for our communities to start caring about each other like we should: to start being communities. Because that is the based interpretation.

Well, I have sad music in another language also! Granted, it's Molchat Doma which kind of blew up a year or two ago, but...shut up.

Where'd U Go: Ah...EDM. I really liked the lo-fi drum set, about a minute in. But that usually isn't my style. Modern dance music seems to follow an easily-listenable formula and then gets really loud and full, with heavy emphasis on beats and percussion, which is pretty cool but I don't tend to like easily-listenable music, at least not in its modern iterations. I stand by it being valid art, all the same. It's just usually not as memorable to me as shit that I had to listen to a few times to actually understand what it was supposed to be. There's usually nothing to say about EDM. It's just music, specifically for listening. No real meaning outside of the sound itself. That's interesting, and I think it absolutely says something about humanity and "The Human Experience", just by virtue of existing. But it's not good for overanalyzing which is what I love doing to music, so, like...it's not for me. (unless it's really jazzy. if you put your edm on a blues scale i will suddenly pull a 180 and love it unconditionally)

That being said, sometimes I do like to no-thoughts-head-empty while listening to a piece so, uh, here. Take this.

#music share

[amoveablejake]

Album Of The Week: ‘The Way Of Water - Main Theme’ by Versus

Stand out song: ‘The Way Of Water - Main Theme’. 

Anticipation can be a doubled edged sword. Whilst it can build excitement and let the mind run wild with thoughts of what the anticipated thing could be, it can also, if left for too long, let the mind wander down a path that leads to second guessing. Anticipation can quickly turn to turning away from the road that you at one time though that you had to run down, to sprint down infact. The thing is though, that even in those situations where you talk yourself out of feeling all consuming swell of excitement or intrigue there will always be a part of you that will keep a small fire burning. To still be excited for that thing. To still be intrigued by it. To still think, maybe I do want to go down that path afterall. And in those instances what you need is a sign. It can be small or it can be all consuming but something that tells you that you’re on the right track, to not lose hope or to not lose faith. Keep believing, keep anticipating because you know, that that sign will come and sometimes that sign is a smile. Sometimes that sign is a dream or a vision. And sometimes, that sign is a trailer that has one of the most spectacular pieces of music accompanying it. 

To see that the sequel to ‘Avatar’ is the most anticipated sequel of all time is simply not true. Its especially not true considering that since the first ‘Avatar’ came out, new Star Wars films were announced, shot and released. The Marvel Cinematic Universe that thrives on building anticipation also found its feet and had a bit fo a growth spurt. Hell, it hasn’t stopped. No, ‘Avatar: The Way Of Water’ is not the most anticipated sequel to grace the silver screen. However, there is something about it that I think has captured collective interest. Really, that isn’t down to the ‘Avatar’ story. I remember when I saw ‘Avatar’ when I was little and it came out in the cinema I was blown away but even then I remember that being largely down to the visuals because thats what ‘Avatar’ was, what its legacy is. A film that showed what cinematic technology pushed to the extremes (for the time) can do. Whilst it did have a story it was more of a vehicle for how it looked. Since it came out its story has largely become a joke. Not down to its actual content but rather because no one or at least not many people are truly invested in it as they are its counterparts. I have been thinking about watching ‘Avatar’ again for quite sometime and I’m sure I will watch it and think hey this story still holds up but even I with my endless cinematic optimism can’t pretend that the wait for a sequel has become a bit farcical. The problem isn’t that its getting a sequel, its that the moment ‘Avatar’ came out I think between a hundred and a thousand sequels were announced and then, they didn’t come. They kept being pushed and pushed and eventually they became the joke that they are now. Or were because suddenly, out of the blue (I didn’t intend that but I have found it far too funny) a trailer appeared and in one clean sweep, silenced its critics. In part due to its visuals, and perhaps due to the story its establishing but for me, it was primarily down to the song it featured. And what a song it is. 

I remember when I watched ‘Avatar’ in my old local cinema that I grew up with that I was speechless. Watching it felt like the air was being taken from my lungs and replaced with a constant longing for that kind of cinematic experience that defines a time in your life. A similar feeling swept me up when I watched the ‘Avatar - The Way of Water’ trailer. Not necessarily because of the trailer but rather because of the song that accompanies it. Originally, I thought that this had to be a Moby track and the fact that it isn’t is astonishing. Its astonishing because what Versus does in this one song is create the sort of feeling that Moby has built whole albums around. In less than a minute the song fills you with a sense of awe and wonder that it took the entirety of the original ‘Avatar’ to do. This is cinematic scoring at its finest and in my eyes or ears it has completely eclipsed many of the scores, it not all, from recent memory. I am sorry ‘Dune’ and for the record, the score for ‘Drive My Car’ doesn’t count as its in a league of its own and I may or may not have briefly forgotten it when I wrote the above sentence. This theme, at the rate I’m losing to it, I may get sick of it by the time ‘Avatar’ two rolls around. Maybe. Or when its featured in the film, in the beginning and the end and versions riddled of it throughout the rest of it, I will feel the same swell of emotion and awe that certain tracks from Star Wars make me feel. Maybe. I wasn’t anticipating this fated sequel too much before but now, because of a song, its all I can think about. Sometimes it is a mistake to anticipate something too much. But other times, the anticipation, the wait for something that you know is coming as you can feel it in your soul, there are no words for it. But you know what that feels like and when it does come, you know it will be worth the wait. 

-Jake, a man lost in daydreams, 23/05/2022

[rivalsforlife]

Phoenix Wright: The Truth Reborn: Oh No We’re Doing This Again

hi.

Nearly two months ago, I wrote an essay summarizing and making very wild conclusions about the second Takarazuka Musical. I did this about two and a half years after watching the first Takarazuka musical. As such I did not have the full context for many things from the musical and was relying mostly on my memory, which blocked many things from this musical for my own safety. However, just this week, I decided to rewatch it, because I enjoy tormenting myself. I said I wouldn’t write anything on it. Here I am writing something on it.

Here’s the youtube thumbnail so that you know what you’re getting yourself into. And here, of course, is the link. This is the HD version which may be slightly more pleasant to watch. Maybe.

It was not quite as cringe in a funny way as the second musical to me, and therefore this essay may be less funny, but I feel like I’m doing a disservice to people by providing a summary of the second musical while completely neglecting the first. Quite possibly doing this is even more of a disservice. I just eagerly await the day that the third musical is translated because *that* will be the day that I finally shuffle off this mortal coil. Either way, I want to write this stuff down so that I never have to watch the musical again out of curiosity.

The following essay will contain major spoilers for both the first and second Phoenix Wright Takarazuka musicals, as I will be using many points from this musical to argue my thesis of the second musical. ... like you were going to watch them anyways. 

This one broke 8k. I’m dead inside.

Introducing The Director

Again another disclaimer that I don’t have anything against the actresses or the theatre troupe. I DO have something against Suzuki Kei, who I recently learned is the writer and director of all three of the Ace Attorney Takarazuka musicals, and is quite possibly my mortal nemesis.

This man is the one who brought this monstrosity into the world.

This man, allegedly, cleared the first four ace attorney games *seven times* before sitting down to write these musicals. He played these goddamn games seven times and did not take in a single word. The man clicked through them mindlessly while watching a badly written legal romance drama in the background and got them completely confused. I genuinely have no idea how this man could have played these games more times than even me and yet managed to get so many characters (MAYA!!!!) completely and utterly wrong. This haunts me every day, truly.

This man played Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Justice for All, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Trials and Tribulations, and Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney seven times. SEVEN TIMES EACH!! and was told to create a musical based on the series. He played these games seven times each and you know what he said?? You know what he said?? “This sucks, I’m getting rid of all of Phoenix’s backstory, butchering half the characters, and writing Phoenix/Lana fanfiction, but also rewriting all of Lana’s backstory so that she was Phoenix’s childhood friend, and you know what, I’m changing her name for good measure.”

I think this man played the games seven times each and then hated it so much and was so sick of it he tried to write something that destroyed as much of the series as possible while still being vaguely recognizable. And then somehow it became a massive hit because people like me see this and go “what the actual hell” and watch it, or people who haven’t played the games see this and go “wow what a great musical!” and then he wrote TWO MORE, destroying EVEN MORE every time in his wake, until finally, finally, he stopped after making Edgeworth straight and time traveling into the past to face off against a corrupt Gregory. I guess that was the last straw.

I have to issue a disclaimer here that for legal reasons this is a joke. I don’t actually hate this man and would not punch him in the face if I met him because that would be rude, and he is entitled to his wrong interpretation of the games. I don’t know what his thought process was. But allegedly he did play the games seven times according to the wiki. This whole essay here is satire and not slander and I don’t want to offend this guy if he somehow stumbles across my nonsense tumblr post. At the same time: Suzuki Kei blink twice if you need help.

Anyways half the reason that I’m making this essay is because I want to share my fake ao3 page for this musical. The other half will become apparent later.

Sorry if that’s illegible because of tumblr quality it’s not really important. All you really need to know is that it’s a fake ao3 screenshot for the musical. Also in the author’s note I said he played the games four times but it was actually seven I just remembered wrong because I didn’t want to believe it.

at this point you may be like “Grace shut up and get to the actual musical” and okay, fine, let’s start this nonsense. Also note that I may be referencing things from my essay on the second musical very frequently; I’m not going to force you to go read that though because the fact that you’re reading this is enough of a torment already.

The Musical Begins

Unlike the second musical, this one opens with some narration from Phoenix.

Transcript:

Phoenix: I’m reviewing a particular case at the moment. To me, this case... is one I’ll never forget.

Immediately I think this is important because it establishes that this whole musical takes place in a flashback that Phoenix is reflecting on. Why is this important? Because we know, by the time of the second musical which takes place three years later, Leona is dead.

Knowing that Leona is inherently doomed to die of her Sad Woman Disease paints this whole musical in a different light. It’s not Phoenix reflecting on how he got back together with his lover; it’s Phoenix dwelling on their past together, and the opportunities they had, before her life was so cruelly and inexplicably taken away. We don’t know if Phoenix’s reminiscing takes place before or after Leona’s death... but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was after.

Phoenix, still in the present, starts to sing. “A wave appears on the horizon like a mirage, it trembles, then vanishes. Your voice, carried upon the waves, fades upon the shore, erasing the splendor of the past.”

This line actually shows up in the second musical, sung by Lucia about her imprisoned fiance quite possibly. It’s kind of hard to tell what the meaning of these songs even are. They’re too abstract for me I think. But this line appears very frequently in the first musical when Phoenix is thinking about Leona.

Then we enter the flashback time.

Phoenix inexplicably yells at a newspaper saleswoman. This is not relevant to anything whatsoever. Then Larry barges in to the office, looking for Maya. Phoenix describes him as “A real trouble maker, but you just can’t hate the guy”, the latter part of which I think many people would disagree with. 

Well, afterwards, Maya comes in. Phoenix describes her like this while making exaggerated “can you believe this shit” gestures.

Transcript:

Phoenix: She’s as ditzy as they come. Oh, and about the outfit... Apparently she comes from a family of spirit mediums. Try not to make fun of her, okay?

Suzuki Kei personally has it out for Maya and I can never forgive him for it. Maya in these musicals is here for pure comedic relief but it’s not even comedic because I just get so angry. How can you play the trilogy seven times and think this about her?? The girl who figured out DL-6?? The girl who told Phoenix to sacrifice her life in order to find the truth?? The girl who put on a brave smile in order to try and cheer up her younger cousin even after she saw her own mother murdered right in front of her eyes?? That Maya Fey?? Ditzy as they come??????

Ugh. Moving on.

Maya and Larry run off, leaving Phoenix to watch the American Broadcast.

Important things to note here are the Godot mug, the little line up of what I think are the messed up little ace attorney figurines beneath the screen, and the fact that while this broadcast is supposedly from and to America the screen is actually not at all showing America. Like literally almost everywhere in the world except North and South America.

The broadcast says that Leona Clyde, age 24, was arrested for murdering the senator Robert Cole! Leona Clyde -- that’s Phoenix’s ex-girlfriend! He runs off to the detention center.

She is not happy to see him.

Leona: Mr. Wright... I’m not the woman you once knew.

Let’s Play A Matching Game

Sorry for the abundance of screenshots that are going to be throughout this section. Phoenix convinces Leona to let him defend her. Some of the conversation seems... familiar.

Leona: No one would defend someone who admits to killing a senator. I’m waiting for a court-appointed attorney.

Edgeworth: Every defense attorney I’ve talked to has turned me down.

Phoenix: In that case, let me defend you.

Game Phoenix: Let me defend you.

Leona: Don’t be ridiculous!

Edgeworth: Don’t be ridiculous.

Phoenix: I’ll never accept that you’re a murderer. Let me prove your innocence!

Game Phoenix: Huh? Isn’t it obvious? I’m going to prove that Miles Edgeworth is innocent.

Leona: I’ve already confessed my guilt.

Gumshoe: He confessed that he did it! In court!

Leona: It’s foolish to think you can win this case.

Edgeworth: My case is near hopeless, Wright.

Leona: (in response to phoenix offering to defend her) No you won’t! Don’t ever come here again.

Edgeworth: Look, just go away, and leave me alone!

Phoenix: You of all people should know. Once I decide to do something, I see it through to the end.

Edgeworth: Once you start on something, you always see it through, don’t you?

Leona: I never thought that you’d be representing me.

Phoenix: Ah, who could have guessed this day would come?

Edgeworth: Not me.

Phoenix: You believed in me. You saved me. And this time, I swear... I swear I’ll save you!

Game Phoenix: Edgeworth believed in me, and I believe in him. I’m the only one who knows the real Edgeworth. I’m the only one who can help him.

I could’ve done a few more, but tumblr is already threatening to murder my laptop.

So long story short, Phoenix manages to convince his lover to let him be the defense on the case. Then immediately after swearing to save Leona, he starts singing a song, which I’m not screencapping because this is enough:

“As long as there are people in this world, there’s only one path I will follow! As long as there is love in this world, there’s only one path I will believe in!”

Edgeworth sings this in the second musical after saying that he returned to California because of Phoenix. Phoenix sings it now after swearing to defend Leona. You draw your own conclusions.

And then we finally get the opening credits. Eleven minutes in.

Just Pretend This Is Narumitsu Fanfiction

Following the credits, we see a beautiful beach. Couples (exclusively heterosexual, of course,) dance and embrace in the background for some time, before revealing Phoenix and Leona, in the Even Further Past, before the LSATs or whatever the ace attorney universe’s excuse for law school exams are.

Phoenix establishes his absolute hatred of change, an important characterization moment.

Phoenix: The view here never changes, huh?

Phoenix reminisces on when they were kids. Leona’s parents were both lawyers (they’re both lawyers) and sometimes they would be like lawyers with her when she was a kid. This inspired her to also become a lawyer after their tragic death of Sickness. They never specify what the sickness is that caused two people who must be relatively young to die while Leona was in her early twenties at the latest. It may be whatever sickness claimed Leona’s life later. Sad Woman Disease. (Sad Man Disease for her father, I guess?)

Phoenix also talks about why he’s becoming a lawyer.

Phoenix: Watching you chase your dream inspired me to become a lawyer too.

So, it’s not “my childhood friend looked sad in a newspaper” because I guess that makes no sense or is too gay or something. But this is another important piece of Phoenix characterization. His entire life so far has been focused around Leona. They’ve been friends since they were kids, and then Phoenix decided to become a lawyer solely because Leona was becoming a lawyer. Not even to try and get back into contact with her after she moved away or anything; just because he’s so obsessed with her that he wants to have the same career as her, then they can run a Mom & Pop Law Firm or something, years in the future, after years of happy marriage and a few children or like whatever the hell.

Well, there’s a few steps they’ll need to get to that. At this point Phoenix still hasn’t confessed his feelings for Leona. He does so here, on this beach.

Leona tries to protest.

Leona: But I’m pushy, selfish, and only care about my goals... You’d get fed up with me.

Phoenix: That’s what I’ve always admired about you. That’s who I’ve been chasing all these years. That’s the only person... I love.

Sooo, Phoenix, your type is pushy selfish people who only care about their goals...? In the first, older lower-quality video translation it was “only care about my work”, too. Hm. Things to think about.

They sing a little duet together. Then we go back to present-day of what’s technically still a flashback. Whatever. Murder is happening.

Back To The Murder

So some plot things to establish: Leona is the legal counsel of Governor Miller, who is running for president in the AMERICAN PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION. After the flashback so that Phoenix has some time to change clothes, they show an interview of him talking about the murder.

Governor Miller: I vow to forge a peaceful country with my own two hands, and to prepare myself for whatever may lie ahead.

Reporters: Through thick and thin, he’s a friend of the people!

The Takarazuka musicals are not very good at hiding their killers.

Phoenix: Oh yeah... It’s almost time for the presidential election, isn’t it?

NEVER FORGET, WRIGHT. THIS IS AMERICA. LAND OF THE FREE! god what even was that line.

Anyways, we meet Gumshoe, who is incompetent once again. Maya runs around the crime scene, picks up the murder weapon, puts her fingerprints all over everything, moves things around, all while Phoenix is like “lol get a load of the world’s stupidest girl” or whatever. But who cares about that.

It’s time to get to the only valid part of this musical.

Edgeworth’s Gay Little Villain Solo

You may have seen this one before.

Edgeworth arrives, but not really. It’s like Phoenix heard Edgeworth was prosecuting and immediately entered a dream-like state, where Edgeworth is heralded by the sound of trumpets in Great Revival. He’s played by a different actress than in the other two musicals, since I think she retired in between the six or so months from this musical to the second. She still plays the role well, though, or as well as can be when you’re written in an ace attorney Takarazuka musical.

Shrouded in scarlet solitude... it’s Edgeworth.

Yes, those are six Edgeworths. Yes, they pick Phoenix up and carry him around and dance with him. Yes, it was probably not meant to be at all homoerotic.

He sings a song that’s called “My rule”. I only figured this out later, but it’s loosely based on a “catchphrase” of his in the Japanese version - in game 1 he says something along the lines of “All I can do is get every defendant declared guilty! So I make that my policy.” In DD in his dramatic anime introduction before the trial, he says “I intend to question the defendant with all I have. For that is a part of my creed.” “So I make that my policy” and “For that is a part of my creed”, to my understanding, are both translated from the same line, which I think is like, “sore ga watashi no ruru”, “That is my rule.” (If I’m wrong, please correct me.) In this song he sings about how he’ll reduce all criminals to ash and such, basically talks about his game 1 prosecuting strategy as “my rule”. 

It’s very fun and probably if you want to only watch one number of this musical, it can be this one. It starts about 26:10 in the video I linked.

Once the musical number is done, Phoenix and Edgeworth stare at each other, and the background fades into the courtroom, so court begins. I feel like I should note that Phoenix has not picked up any evidence or talked to any witnesses in this investigation except for Gumshoe, since Maya just moved some things around and then Phoenix had some weird fever dream about Edgeworth which presumably took up the rest of the day.

The Trial, Day 1

Edgeworth: Consider it a prelude to the poignant Greek tragedy that’s about to unfold.

Maya: The real tragedy’s your pompous attitude!

Those are the only screenshots I took of this trial day. Here’s a summary, though:

The trial starts off with Leona confessing, Phoenix says “no I think she’s innocent”, and since ace attorney doesn’t care about the defendant’s wishes he’s allowed to proceed. For some reason Leona lets him do this without complaint. 

Gumshoe is the first witness, he claims to have caught Leona red-handed at the scene of the crime, standing over the corpse. Phoenix tries to claim that since Gumshoe didn’t see Leona committing the crime, he didn’t actually catch her red-handed, to which Edgeworth responds “What do you think being caught red-handed means?” 

Once Gumshoe is dismissed, Lotta takes the stand. She has a photo of the actual moment of the crime, where Leona is holding a knife in the air in front of the victim. 

The Takarazuka musicals like to do this thing where the image is blurry and zoomed out, but then Phoenix will go “I’VE NOTICED A CONTRADICTION” and it zooms in really far as the resolution increases drastically in order to show you the contradiction that is impossible to spot for yourself, because they don’t want people figuring out the mystery in this musical based off of a video game where you have to solve the mystery yourself. Anyways Phoenix zooms in on this photo and sees that there’s blood on Leona’s hand, presumably before she stabbed the victim. How did it get there?

Edgeworth suggests the victim was stabbed multiple times. Phoenix says the autopsy report contradicts that. Edgeworth, uncharacteristically, does not update it to suit his argument. 

Phoenix concludes that this photo is not showing the moment Leona stabbed the victim, but the moment Leona removed the knife! ... Which somehow casts doubt on her having been the one to stab the victim. Because as everyone knows, anyone wanting to kill someone would never remove a knife, it’s not like they’d bleed out faster that way, or anything.

And this whole contradiction is confusing because presumably if the victim was stabbed and then the knife was removed, they’d know that happened, because then the knife would not be found stuck in the victim’s body, since the victim was only stabbed once. So this shouldn’t be news to the prosecution that someone removed the knife after stabbing. But the investigation was headed by the most incompetent version of Gumshoe ever, so. sure. I guess no one knew.

That at least manages to extend the trial another day.

This Totally Has To Be Illegal

After the trial, Phoenix goes to talk to Governor Miller, aka Mr. Totally The Real Killer. Phoenix asks him why he decided to hire Leona as his legal advisor.

Basically, it’s because her parents were both renowned lawyers. Her father was a Chief Prosecutor, and her mother was a defense attorney. ... a prosecutor and a defense attorney couple... who does that remind us of...

Phoenix points out that just because her parents were good lawyers, it doesn’t mean she’d necessarily be one. Miller says that, sure, but she is actually really talented, and her law school marks were spectacular. Phoenix says “WHY WERE YOU LOOKING AT HER LAW SCHOOL MARKS”, like it’s somehow? suspicious? for a government official hiring legal counsel to look at their law school marks?

Apparently it IS suspicious because Governor Miller freaks out and asks if this is an interrogation. Before Phoenix can press much further, he gets a phone call, and leaves Phoenix alone in a big room.

So naturally Phoenix behaves like a fully grown adult running a law firm.

If all he did was sit in the chair, lift up a desk lamp, and poke his finger on a pen, that’s one thing. But then he leans over, OPENS THE GOVERNOR’S DESK DRAWER, and finds a knife that’s just sitting there casually. It looks like a butter knife. It’s not anything major. Maybe the dude just wanted to butter his toast?

I mean I know Phoenix will dig around in stuff whenever in the games, but he has no reason to suspect Governor Miller at all, much less dig through his drawer probably full of confidential government documents to lift up a knife that he thinks is suspicious. It’s not even covered in blood or anything?

Naturally Governor Miller’s assistant comes in just then, and Phoenix puts the knife. in his breast pocket. 

bud. It may look like a butter knife, but putting knives up against your chest is not a great idea. Much less stealing a knife from a governor? 

Well, in his panic, he accidentally knocks over a bunch of books on the desk. The governor’s assistant helps him pick them up, and they find a photo. Look a little familiar?

The photo has the assistant, the victim Robert Cole, Governor Miller, and the victim’s brother who died in an incident two years ago. He’s the “Neil Marshall” of this musical, and he died in what was essentially the SL-9 incident. Same general premise, except it occurred in the courthouse, and the names are different.

AND FINALLY WE REACH THE END OF ACT 1. They do a musical number here which is a weird sort of mashup of the main opening credits song, Edgeworth’s Villain Solo, and the love duet between Phoenix and Leona. They are all such different songs that it sounds a little weird.

ACT 2, FINALLY

The act begins on a sour note with Maya playing with the knife and showing off her characterization, which is one of the most infuriating Maya characterizations you’ll sometimes see around the fandom by people who don’t like Maya.

Maya: Let me whip up my special spirit channeler hamburgers!

sigh.

But then we’re saved (?) by the arrival of EDGEWORTH, who is presumably just here to chat. He asks Phoenix if he’s defending Leona in hopes of winning her back, then says to keep out of it, since it’s a very important case and he can’t understand the gravity of it.

Then Phoenix says this.

Phoenix: Would you be saying that if you were the one on trial? The defendant is in a dark prison, reaching out for hope... Can you imagine the loneliness and sorrow of being ostracized?

CAN YOU IMAGINE IT, EDGEWORTH? CAN YOU IMAGINE IF YOU WERE ON TRIAL AND I WAS THE ONLY ONE WHO WOULD DEFEND YOU AND BELIEVED IN YOUR INNOCENCE??

Edgeworth responds to this by essentially rehashing his speech in Turnabout Sisters about how he needs to find all defendants guilty because he can’t guarantee their innocence and all that. Maya gets upset and leaves so that Phoenix and Edgeworth can talk about their childhood in private.

Phoenix once again complains about how people change since nine years old.

Phoenix then says that he has something Edgeworth doesn’t: the POWER TO BELIEVE! Then Maya comes in and tries to spike Edgeworth’s coffee, so he leaves.

The Class Trial

Phoenix explains a bit about Edgeworth and his backstory to Maya. Namely, the class trial. Phoenix was accused of stealing lunch money, Edgeworth stood up for him, but instead of Larry, Leona stood up for him. I guess Suzuki Kei thought “oh the class trial, if Leona stood up for him, it would be so romantic, because she’s a woman, and he’s a man”, or something like that. 

Edgeworth wanted to become a Great Lawyer Like His Father! But then he turned cold as ice.

Phoenix: His father got too deeply involved in a case... and paid for it with his life. Edgeworth saw him murdered. He was never the same again. I bet he couldn’t forgive the criminal.

Yeah I bet he couldn’t ever forgive the person he thought killed his father all these years, Phoenix. I bet he really hates that person, Phoenix. I bet he has nightmares about that person killing his father or something, Phoenix.

Phoenix: He vanished, then returned without his mercy or compassion. He had become a monster. When he lost his father, he also lost the ability to believe in others.

So like... one of the most chilling things about this musical is that they never actually solve DL-6. This probably roughly takes place 15 years after DL-6, since they were about the same age when the class trial started, and at least Leona is 24 now. The next musical takes place three years from now, and in it, Edgeworth refers to von Karma as his mentor, implying he’s still around and doing things.

So, in addition to everything else going wrong with this musical, DL-6 still happens, but von Karma never frames Edgeworth for it fifteen years later. The statute of limitations runs out, and von Karma forever gets away with his crime. And Edgeworth has no idea.

What changes did they make to DL-6, though, you may ask? I’m desperate to know as well. In the third musical, which I’ve watched because I hate myself but am unable to fully understand because I don’t know much Japanese, there is a scene where Miles flashbacks to DL-6. It’s abstract, but he makes gun-throwing motions at Gregory, followed by a gunshot sound.

Therefore, in this musical’s internal canon, either Miles Edgeworth shot his father, or he believes he did for the rest of his life.

... moving on.

Phoenix: But he still has his humanity. It’s still there, deep down inside!

At least, if nothing else, Phoenix still believes in him. Even this Takarazuka Musical couldn’t touch that.

The Feenie Sweater

Right after this, Larry barges in, and Phoenix leaves him alone with Maya. The musical tries teasing Larry/Maya, but fortunately, Maya’s having none of it.

Maya: You’re barking up the wrong tree.

Props to this musical for not being as bad as it could have been.

After this, the two sit down on the couch, and Maya asks for more gossip on Phoenix and Leona. Larry launches into a story, which turns into a flashback that ends up being narrated by Phoenix halfway through. This one’s about Phoenix and Leona’s relationship.

This is an interesting line in here, “I’ll guide you to the future”, for it loosely referencing the sort of love ballad Phoenix sings with Lucia in the second musical which is about “I’ll take you to that radiant future”, and he later sings to the memory of Leona right around the time of his big spiral into despair.

I’m sorry if you haven’t read my other essay and just said “wait what” to what I just typed.

Leona was getting ready to move to New York to defend the weak “in the big city”. This is rather strange wording because it implies that California does not in fact have a big city. She says some things in her conversation with Phoenix that probably plant some of his later issues.

Leona: This is the first time we’ll be apart since we were kids.

Leona: We promised we’d always be together.

Leona: I’ll be waiting. Waiting for you to come to me.

Haha. Sure would be a shame... if something were to happen... and they wouldn’t be able to be together anymore...

So some dancers wearing black come in and take off their outer jackets, to symbolize the passage of time. They circle around Phoenix and Leona. In this, you can just barely see, Phoenix is wearing a pink sweater beneath his jacket.

“Oh,” I think to myself, “Is that the Feenie sweater? Are they including it here as a reference to the games?”

Then the dancers keep moving.

THAT IS NOT THE FEENIE SWEATER. That is a pink sweater with a sexily drawn woman on it.

This is the other half of the reason why I decided to go through with making this essay. 

This is so incredibly funny to me. Suzuki Kei Who Has Played The Games Seven Times has seen the hand-knit bright pink sweater with a giant red heart on it seven times. The sweater Iris, Phoenix’s girlfriend, lovingly knit for him that he wears all the time even though it is one of the tackiest, cheesiest items of clothing to ever exist. And so, when the costume designers were designing the clothes for College Phoenix Wright, they asked themselves: “Should we include the Feenie sweater?”

and “NO,” someone must have shouted, “NO, we can NOT include the Feenie sweater, it is PINK and it has a HEART on it and it’s TOO GIRLY. Phoenix Wright is a MANLY MAN. He would not EVER wear something PINK with a HEART on it.”

“BUT,” someone else said, “it’s a REFERENCE to the original games, where he DID wear a pink sweater with a heart on it! We MUST include it to pander to the fans!”

“WAIT,” a third person interjected. “I have a BRILLIANT IDEA. We can keep the pink... But to make it VERY CLEAR he is a heterosexual, masculine male... we put a sexy woman on it.”

And Person Three Got A Raise.

Thank god we’re finally halfway done this musical.

We Just Have To Go On With Our Lives Now

There’s plot or something happening. Leona breaks up with Phoenix inexplicably over the phone. Probably because of that freaking sweater. Imagine wearing that. God.

Eventually we go back to Phoenix talking to Leona, and he asks about the Jack Lyon case, which is the rip-off version of the Joe Darke case. Leona is pretty cagey about it, but Phoenix proves that she was there in the gallery that day. Leona refuses to answer, claims again that she killed the victim in her case, and leaves.

This makes Phoenix sad, so he starts singing.

Phoenix: I want to bring you back! I believe in you.

If this sounds familiar, it’s the part where I started absolutely losing my mind in the second musical because this line had never shown up before then, I’d forgotten it was in this musical, and Phoenix was screaming it alone in a red room, so I thought he was like desperately resorting to a necromancy ritual in hopes of bringing Leona back to life.

Instead, this line actually has CONTEXT, though it does just end up enforcing my theory. This is Phoenix mourning what he used to have with Leona, wanting to bring the “old her” back, because he’s devastated that people sometimes change. There are several flashbacks of their college days where he’s wearing his Sexy Woman Sweater. He does succeed in winning her back at the end of this musical. Before she dies, of course.

Phoenix in musical 2 still believes that he can bring back what he used to have with Leona... even beyond death. That’s something affirmed by this musical. I’m very grateful to it for somehow managing to enforce my nonsensical theory.

Doctor Ema

After this, Phoenix returns to his office, and meets with someone new.

That’s right! Only now, halfway through the musical, do we actually get to meet the Ema-equivalent to Leona’s Lana-equivalent. Her name is Monica Clyde. She has little rainbow heart stickers on her briefcase, which is the closest thing this musical has to acknowledging that gay people exist.

But what does this little briefcase contain, you may ask? Scientific investigation tools? No.

A full surgical toolset. Because you never know when someone’ll get sick, or when someone will need an entire operation in front of you. I guess.

So yes, Monica Clyde is not a forensic scientist in training, but a doctor! She decided to become a doctor because of her parents, who passed away of The Sickness, and so became a doctor in order to save lives like theirs.

Once more this has much darker and deeper implications than the musical is even aware of, because Monica is so anxious about treating sick people that she carries a full surgical toolset around with her at all times, scared to lose someone like she lost her parents... and then sometime in the next three years, Leona, her big sister, is going to die.

Of what? The strange Sickness that claimed her parents? A car accident? A botched spur-of-the-moment surgery? Whatever it is, Monica was unable to save her, even when she’d been training her entire life for it.

Monica is not mentioned at all throughout the second musical. It’s as if she does not exist.

Because unlike Ema of Rise From The Ashes, Monica is not at the heart of this story. She is, primarily, a plot device here to make Leona not trust Phoenix so that he can angst about their relationship. 

What a mess this world is.

The Trial, Part 2

Rather than try to prove Leona’s innocence, Phoenix wants to link the current case to not-SL-9, the Jack Lyon case. He does this by showing this picture.

Senator Cole, the victim, is in this picture. His younger brother whose name I’ve forgotten, the victim of not-SL-9, is also in this picture. They are brothers. It is apparently novel that they are in the same picture, and somehow makes their cases linked.

As well, Governor Miller is in the picture. I guess you could say like... Governor Miller’s legal counsel is the defendant, so that’s another link? Even though the Governor would presumably know a Senator, so this isn’t an unusual group. Right now Phoenix has absolutely nothing to prove that these two cases are linked other than “hey, these two victims are brothers”, but apparently it works. So they spend a lot of time talking about not-SL-9, since Leona has confessed to the murder on day 1 and there is absolutely nothing indicating that she can’t be immediately declared guilty.

They hid the fact that Monica was a hostage in this not-SL-9, meaning that some of the case records were forged. Here’s Edgeworth’s reaction when this comes out.

Edgeworth: This is an outrage! I’m the most influential prosecutor in America! There’s nothing I don’t know!

In RFTA, when Edgeworth learns he’d been using forged evidence to give a man the death penalty, he is devastated, his entire worldview is shaken, he sees himself as a monster who could end up becoming horribly corrupt if he isn’t stopped.

Musical Edgeworth goes “I DIDN’T KNOW SOMETHING???”

It’s certainly strange characterization, but I guess Edgeworth is further behind in his character arc than in RFTA, so... ugh. Fine. 

Phoenix calls Monica out as a witness to prove she was involved in the case. This causes Leona to panic, and try to dismiss Phoenix as her attorney, like Lana in RFTA, but Edgeworth interjects to call Monica in anyways. He and Phoenix have a little moment.

Edgeworth: You said to believe in others. I suppose I’ll try believing in you. Try to keep up.

Phoenix: Edgeworth!

So Monica comes to the stand to testify. We get to see this picture of Monica being held hostage, and not-Joe-Darke’s incredible eyeliner.

Lots of it is very similar to the actual RFTA, except instead of the victim being stabbed on the knight with the giant knife, he’s instead stabbed with a regular old knife. Leona still refuses to admit to what really happened, until Edgeworth convinces her to believe in Phoenix.

Edgeworth: Your attorney is a runaway train with a one-track mind. Yet he placed all of his faith in you. Believe in him. You owe him that much.

Leona testifies, and says that when she found the victim, he was stabbed with a scalpel.

Here is where things get weird.

Scalpels Can’t Kill People

So basically earlier in this trial, they talk about how Leona knew that the knife that stabbed the victim was double-edged despite being buried in his chest. The judge questions if this means Leona killed him, but Phoenix is quick to say no, she was searched when she entered the courthouse and couldn’t have concealed a knife.

Yet, Monica was able to bring in her surgical toolkit which contains several sharp knives, scalpels, scissors, etc.

This is the first major contradiction.

Leona continues to say that when she found Monica, and the scalpel stabbed in the victim, she also ran into Governor Miller, who if you haven’t been able to tell yet is the Gant-equivalent of this musical. He offered to help her with the cover-up, etc.

The next bit goes a lot like RFTA. Phoenix accuses Governor Miller, who barges in, says Phoenix has the decisive evidence in his pocket. This is the “butter knife” that Phoenix took from his office when he dug around in confidential documents and stole it for no particular reason. It has Monica’s fingerprints on it! ... And Phoenix’s and Maya’s too probably because they were handling it without gloves, but they don’t mention that part.

Leona cries about how she shouldn’t have trusted Phoenix because he was apparently now blaming Monica, Monica looks terrified, she and Leona have some good sister moments but it’s not as good as it could be if the story was actually about Leona and Monica like how RFTA was about Lana and Ema. But Phoenix has the decisive piece of evidence that can turn this around.

It is this:

Phoenix: Scalpels are made for medical incisions, not stabbings. So how did it stab the victim?

...

...

...

... What?

So like. Yes, scalpels are made for medical incisions. Medical incisions often involve cutting through flesh, very easily. As a result, they are sharp. Extremely sharp. As in: their purpose is literally to stab people, very specifically.

Yes, they’re easier to control, so that surgeons don’t regularly stab people how they’re not supposed to be stabbed, but it’s not like, impossible to stab someone in a killing way with a scalpel? Admittedly, I have never tried to kill someone using a scalpel. And I do not have experience using a scalpel for surgeries because I am not a surgeon. But I’m pretty sure, if you take a sharp scalpel, and you stab someone in the chest with it with a reasonable amount of force... they die.

Like, is this a particular kind of scalpel that is not very sharp? Is the problem that the blade doesn’t match up with the initial wound? But even then, we don’t have the original unforged autopsy report or even a picture, so how would Phoenix know what the original wound looked like to say it didn’t match up? And even then why wouldn’t Phoenix say that instead of SCALPELS CAN’T STAB PEOPLE???

This is his decisive contradiction and it makes ABSOLUTELY NO SENSE TO ME!!!

Well Darn I Guess Scalpels Can’t Kill People

This is such a decisive piece of evidence, that scalpels can’t kill people, coming from the man who thought “caught red-handed” does not involve being caught standing over a corpse with blood on your hands, that it causes Governor Miller to confess.

Unlike Gant, who created the murder with Neil Marshall both to ensure that there was decisive evidence to convict Joe Darke, a serial killer who had not left any decisive evidence behind, and gain control over the prosecutor’s office in order to pull similar stunts to get criminals convicted using false evidence, Governor Miller does not have that as his motive. After all, he’s not a police officer. Instead, he ended up accidentally killing not-Joe-Darke, and then set up the incident in order to get Leona on his side. As her parents were both influential lawyers and very respectable, having her and her parents’ reputation on his side could help him become President of America Where This Takes Place.

So, let’s just take a moment to run over some of the things that made the original Rise From The Ashes great, in my opinion. Just for fun.

1 - The heart of the story between the Skye sisters. Lana closing off to protect Ema, Ema wanting to get through to her sister and get back to the way things used to be. Phoenix, in this story, is more of a bystander to this plotline rather than in the heart of it himself.

2 - Edgeworth’s Character Development. Basically RFTA creates an interesting transition between Turnabout Goodbyes and JFA. It causes Edgeworth to re-evaluate everything he knows about being a prosecutor. So quickly on the heels of Turnabout Goodbyes, it crushes the last bit of hope in him. It compares him to Gant, who also hates criminals, and forces him to wonder if his hatred of crime will one day lead to him being a criminal himself. He’s already convicted one person on forged evidence; how many others could there be?

3 - The Ends Justify The Means. ... wait come back, don’t leave. What I found neat about this case was also Gant’s motive. At one point he was presumably an honest person who hated crime and wanted to stop criminals. But over time in the police force, he became corrupted. He wanted to have all criminals convicted. So what do you do when you don’t have the evidence to convict them? Joe Darke was a serial killer who has killed several people and may have killed more if he’d gone free. The only way to stop and convict him was by using forged evidence. Other criminals could hide evidence to get away with their crimes, so people like Gant would make it up to catch them; but then when do you stop? What happens if there’s no evidence because someone is truly innocent? When does the line between “this person is a criminal and I want to stop them” and “I just want to convict everyone I’m dealing with” become blurred? This is also something he shares with Edgeworth and helps to advance his character.

All three of these things are either lessened or outright ignored in this musical. Leona and Monica’s story takes a backseat to Phoenix and Leona’s Love Story, with Monica only showing up halfway through, and mainly as an excuse as to why Leona is withdrawn. Edgeworth doesn’t seem to blame himself for the forged evidence he used, and doesn’t have a crisis questioning his morality over it. And Governor Miller’s motive is purely power. Unlike Gant, who would have become Chief of Police whether he solved SL-9 or not, Miller needed Leona to win the presidency. And instead of asking her to help him with his campaign like a normal person, he just blackmailed her instead.

... How do you play the games seven times and miss this much?

The Case Finally Ends

god. we’re almost there.

The case ends, Leona is declared not guilty but will still face trial for covering up murders and such. Probably less of a sentence than Lana because she was not involved in ongoing police corruption? Either way she’s dead in three years, so she’s got something a bit more concerning coming up.

She’s led away. Phoenix sings a bit about Leona before being interrupted by Edgeworth... who has something important to tell him.

Edgeworth: You awakened within me those once-cherished emotions I had discarded. I see visions of a distant, nostalgic past.

So basically this is the unnecessary feelings of the musical. Something along the lines of “seeing you again and fighting for my former ideals is making me question many things about myself.”

How does Phoenix respond?

Phoenix: Edgeworth... Try talking normally for a chance.

Sure, we were all thinking it, but that’s a little cold, Phoenix.

Edgeworth tries a smooth recovery.

Edgeworth: I don’t do... idle chit-chat.

This doesn’t accomplish much. So he leaves to allow Leona to visit with Phoenix alone. He’s got to go change for something more important coming up.

Leona and Phoenix decide that they’re going to get back together once Leona is done her sentence! They make a promise that is very funny if you know she’ll be dead in three years.

Phoenix: I’ll be waiting. For you.

There are a lot of hugs here, I’m not screencapping them all. There are also several moments where their faces get very close together and like, their nose brushes the other’s cheek or something, but they never actually kiss. Is it because the actresses weren’t comfortable with it (valid), or they thought kissing would be too much for the musical (sure, whatever), or since both characters are played by women the show staff did not want two women kissing on stage (probably the real answer)? I don’t like watching kisses, but I kept bracing myself for one and then it never happened, so.

Phoenix ends the main part of the musical with one last musical number starring my personal favourite piece:

Phoenix: I want to bring you back! I believe in you.

I like to think that at this point, this is present-day Phoenix, after finishing his reminiscing, still desperately wishing he could bring Leona back from death.

But alas, he cannot. And so, after one last daydream of them dancing together on the beaches of California, singing about their love, the musical ends.

Dance Time!

This starts at exactly the two hour mark, if you’re interested in watching what is, once again, one of the only fun parts of this musical.

Seriously, Edgeworth’s actress kills it here, when I first saw this I went “oh, this is why I saw so many people being gay for her on twitter.”

Edgeworth’s song is an encore of “My Rule”, so it’s lots of fun. Afterwards Phoenix gets another fun piece.

Then we get to the love ballad part, which I can probably overanalyze, I feel like I haven’t done enough ridiculous over-analyzing in this essay in comparison to the other.

Uhhh so the fog represents how Phoenix feels lost in this world without Leona. You can see it in the second screenshot separating the two of them, representing the barrier of death between the two of them. Idk it’s midnight I’m getting worn out from having to think about this musical for so long.

But his mourning over Leona’s death becomes even more apparent in the credits, where Phoenix sings that one line again:

Phoenix: I want to bring you back! I believe in you.

I’m not fixing that screenshot, I think it’s oddly fitting, in a way. That’s me right now.

Then at the very end, he sings this song.

Phoenix: I’ll spend... this eternal life... soaring through... the heavens!

Technically, this refers to his name Phoenix, but let’s dig a little deeper. He spends the rest of his life soaring through the heavens... the heavens that Leona went to after her untimely death, perhaps?

Overall, the musical becomes much more interesting when you just see it as a prequel to the second musical. This musical establishes many core concepts of Phoenix’s character: his refusal to believe in the concept of things changing, for one, and also his extreme dependency on Leona who he was never separated from since they were kids and where he based his entire life around her dreams and ideals. All he can think about is her. And in the end, he promises to wait for her in California.

Yet, to paraphrase Miles Edgeworth, all that is waiting for him is her death. Their dream of opening up a Mom & Pop Law Firm will never come true.

Thanks again for bearing with me even though this wasn’t as funny!

#ace attorney #phoenix wright the truth reborn #idk maybe someone wanted to know what the first musical was like without actually watching it? #my essays #my posts #i'm TIRED i'm going to BED goodNIGHT #this is less funny jokes and more actually criticizing the musical #because so much of this is like. wow. you really thought that was a good idea huh #just skip to the feenie sweater part honestly that's the funniest part of this musical

[thefloatingstone]

What are the Deltarune takes? o.o

Ack! Sorry I asked and then bounced. We were hit with a bad storm that knocked out my wifi for like a whole day!

Anyway, people did in fact want to know my bad Deltarune takes as I haven't had any contact with the fandom as a whole's opinions yet, so here we go!

Let's start with what my friend tells me is tumblr's new favourite, Spamton.

I do not like Spamton.

I don't DISLIKE Spamton necessarily, but I don't reallylike him. (his music fucking slaps tho)

I liked him when you first meet him and he's just kind of a silly dude, but the more he talked and the more things he said the more he just genuinely unnerved me. I find the dude incomprehensibly creepy. And not in a 👀 way. In a "hmm. Don't like that." way.

All I can imagine when I read him talking is fucking SHODAN.

I don't like it.

His song when you fight him the first time is genuinely in my top 3 of the chapter tho. And his very first fight is the first fight in ANY of Toby Fox's games where I managed to end the fight without taking a single hit. His NEO form is also the first highly difficult fight I managed to beat. (I need to go back and do Jevil since Seam said if I defeat him in any save file the darkshard will appear in my chapter 2 save file.)

So that's it for Spamton. Dude's creepy.

-

I've really REALLY grown attached to Susie. I think she's my favourite character in this whole thing. I replayed Chapter 1 to get ready for chapter 2 and yeah. I love Susie so fucking muchhhhhh!!! I think when I played chapter 1 the first time it was during the Hell Year for me, and I was really nervous and like weirdly uneasy about "a new maybe-Undertale" game and what it would mean for the original that Susie's mean-girl personality was genuinely intimidating. But now knowing what her character arc is in chapter 1, I was much more on board with her in chapter 2 and she's so greatttttt aaaaaaa

I took every opportunity to be nice to her.

she's my fwend

*weeps*

-

Ralsei is suuuuuuuper fucking Sus in this chapter.

I've been pretty open that I was really disappointed when at the end of chapter 1 it's revealed he's not a fluffy little spider boy but instead Asriel version 2.0. But he is acting REALLY suspicious throughout this entire chapter. Not like he's evil or anything like that, but like he knows a LOT more than anything he says, and he's purposefully being vague and trying to manipulate Kris and Susie's actions and decisions because "they have to make the choices themselves but it's super important they make the RIGHT decisions so I'm just gonna gently nudge and manipulate them and withhold critical information and generally just be incredibly untrustworthy."

I have never agreed with Susie more.

-

Noelle is.... ok.

She's a really passive and meek girl who got introduced to the friend group late when Kris, Susie, Ralsei, and Lancer had just bonded into a unit. So having her introduced after this but not too long after this makes her feel like a bit of an intruder, but I have a very strong feeling this might actually be on purpose which I'll get to later.

The date was ok. I liked the part where I told Susie to eat moss to impress Noelle.

-

Queen is a difficult character for me because I can't actually figure out what her personality is.

Ok so she's "teh lol random XD" and she's basically one of the less plot crucial Homestuck trolls, but I can't really figure out who she is? Other than She friggen imprints on any unsupervised children she finds and decides to adopt them faster than friggen Batman, I don't really know.... anything about her as a person.

She's funny I guess, but jokes and shitposts are not a personality.

So I don't really know what to make of her.

-

I was so happy to see Lancer was along for the ride! I had a very genuine concern that he might not show up in chapter 2 at all since the end of chapter 1 ends with everything in the dark world turning into real world items. So part of me was rather unsure whether that dark world and the characters even still existed. But chapter 1 overall had a very strange and slightly off-putting undertone where everything and all the characters in the over world had a rather unpleasantness to them which I couldn't really figure out. I genuinely thought it was a plot point that was going to lead to something, but after Chapter 2 I'm not thinking perhaps Toby was going through something when he was making chapter 1 which might be why it had a strange off putting undertone to it.

So yeah, my point is I was very very happy to see lancer 1: still existed XDDD and 2: was gonna be along for the ride to a smaller degree.

I didn't think of checking him in my inventory as I played tho, so I might need to replay to see if he has unique dialogue as you play. I did think Toby leading you to use him to solve a puzzle was REALLY well done. You put something in your inventory which seems weird, so you check your items to see what it is only to find it gone, so you think "oh it must be under key items" and go there, only to see Lancer say he ate it. And then right after this is when you need to use Lancer to solve a puzzle, and you've just been reminded that he's there. I genuinely thought this was a brilliant bit of game direction.

I also really really REALLY like the concept of the little castle town that you're building as you play. I love this so much.

-

But now I wanna talk about the character I find most interesting in this game; Kris.

Honestly I like Kris as an individual character a lot more in chapter 2 than chapter 1 where they still felt like an extension of the player. After replaying chapter 1 and playing chapter 2 I really enjoy them as a character on their own more.

There's a continuous theme in chapter 2 of Kris getting pushed aside, first by their family and the town in chapter 1, and now in chapter 2 even by the friends, they made in chapter 1. Which introducing Noelle into the plot feeds into on purpose. So again, it's not that I dislike her but not exactly a recipe for me to like her that much. I just notice Kris' friends pushing them aside more and more, completely by accident, as they get more wrapped up in each other.

One of the enemies (I forget who. It might have been Queen or even Spamton) make fun of them for it. As does a save point. Like "aaaawwww, did your friends all ditch you?" And when you're alone with Noelle after Susie runs off with Ralsei, she mostly asks you about Susie. Just like all the people in town in chapter 1 mostly talked to you to hear how Asriel is doing.

So when you find out Kris had slashed Toriel's tires at the end of the chapter I was like "oh yeah. yup. that'll happen."

I don't see it as spooky scary Chara possessing Frisk. I see it as Kris being a very troubled kid who really really needs some help but they are continuously overlooked, forgotten about, not considered etc etc.

Kris also obviously has massive issues with fitting into Monster society. They show a lot of discomfort about being a human among monsters and shows to try and avoid any reminder of other human beings, which is also a running theme in the game. You hear about them in chapter 1 asking about when they'll grow horns and how Toriel had to buy Kris little fake ones to make them feel better. You see in chapter 2 Kris has been googling how they can learn to use magic like the other monsters can (and sadly only getting results on being a magician). You see Toriel had checked out a library book multiple times on how to take care of a human child and when kris pages through it and gets to a photo of other humans they quickly slam the book shut.

Kris has a feeling of "not belonging". Which is why I think them making friends with Susie, who is also a complete outcast is so great. Especially since Kris is seen as the one who "has it together" more than Susie does when I think the reality is, Kris is a lot more troubled than Susie is.

This is why I like Susie a lot, I like her friendship with Kris and Lancer, I think Susie, Kris (and Lancer) have a LOT more synergy than with Ralsei who is basically the babysitter trying to herd a group of cats, and I think that's why the introduction of Noelle as a main character is rather sad, because just as Kris manages to develop a friend group removed from Asriel, Ralsei is shown to basically be Asriel 2.0 and Noelle comes in and starts turning Susie's attention away from Kris Which gives the impression that Kris is basically just there as a bandaid for Susie while she goes through her character growth. and once she becomes a better adjusted person she'll move on from him to a new friend group in time.

Kris is her "training wheels" until she can form other, stronger, closer relationships and friendships with other people. Then she won't need Kris any more. And will probably move on without even realising Kris is getting left behind. I think Kris is aware of this, and it hurts them as is obvious by the save points in theanymore game when Susie runs off with Ralsei so she can bully him into teaching her healing magic.

I knew when she did that, that that is what she was doing. It was too convenient timing with her suddenly getting the idea to learn healing magic and then basically forcing Kris to shoo so she can ask Ralsei to teach her in private because she feels embarrassed asking in front of Kris. But the save points during this section makes it clear that Kris' feelings are a little hurt.

My friend said she's picturing Kris as wingmanning Noelle and Susie's relationship and I 100% agree, except I saw it more as gently encouraging her and Noelle to get closer to each other because Kris has this belief that Susie will ditch him eventually anyway, just like Asriel did. and Asgore did.

And Lancer is as well. Lancer is obvious BFFs with Susie, but Lancer is also branching out and making friends with all of Kris' growing social circle too. He's made friends with Queen, he's been nice to Berdly who is almost definitely gonna become a party member in the future. He's making friends with the new dark world characters who join your town from the computer. Lancer has always been more Susie's friend than Kris' friend, but it's just an added relationship slowly moving past Kris.

This is also why I think it's super important that Susie said she'd walk Kris home at the end of the game. I think (and I hope but I do believe this is gonna be the case) that the longer Susie spends with kris, the more she's gonna notice everything is not actually ok. And if the story goes the way I think it will, It'll be good to see her completely reject this "I'm just your training friend until you can make real friends" idea and punch some sense into Kris. This is also why I like that she stood up to the kids making fun of Kris behind their back in the overworld.

Susie is proving to actually NOTICE. And to actually LISTEN.

This is also seen after beating Spamton NEO although this might be me reading too much into things. But after you leave, Susie asks Kris if they're ok. You have the option to say no which I took. Kris has a meltdown at Susie which we only hear from Susie's side, but then RALSEI fucking bumps her out of the way to be all "hey hey~ It's ok Kris! Everything will be ok~ Just take deep breaths~!"

And Susie's little side-eye squinty glare of suspicion as she just stays silent before breaking the awkwardness and lightly calling Kris a dumbass for trying to do stupid shit on their own without her help. (ie fight Spamton).

And then she breaks the tension by smashing a fuck ton of pots in the next room.

-

This is also why the tire slashing, and the reveal that kris is the person creating the dark fountains wasn't even a twist for me. I didn't know what Kris was doing when they climbed out the bathroom window, but Toriel calling the police because the tires were slashed made me go "oh yeah. There it is."

And I had pretty much become convinced Kris was the knight around the middle of the chapter. I can't remember what it was that made it clear to me. I don't think it was any individual moment or thing that made me realise it. I think it was a suspicion I've had since the end of chapter 1, and the further I went along in chapter 2 the more convinced I was of this.

-

Anyway. Those are my Deltarune Chapter 2 thoughts before the fandom has a chance of swaying my opinions or thoughts on any of these things.

I hope you guys enjoyed???

Also....

I loled at this part because all I could think was "I wonder how angry this made people."

Beautiful.

#Deltarune #Deltarune chapter 2 #spoiler #spoilers #thoughts #analysis #idk what else to tag this with #long post

[ms-demeanor]

Some meandering thoughts about jokes about rape and cultural changes in the last decade and a half

Like, don’t get me wrong, I’m really glad we’re in a place now where we DO question rape jokes and it would be much harder to get away with “raping Jonah Hill is incredibly amusing” as the center of a scene the way that you could in 2007-2013 but I do kind of feel like we don’t talk about how sudden that change was enough.

People talk about how you should have always known that awful things are awful but if you’re surrounded by rape jokes and pedophilia jokes all the time and that’s what’s funny to the other kids around you and the adults in your lives and what makes up the jokes in the movies you watch then it’s hard to act like you always knew it was wrong.

Dead baby jokes were a HUGE thing when I was a teen and in my early twenties and sitting around swapping dead baby jokes was just a thing we did, and tossed in among them were things like:

A joke about incest with the punchline “Get off me pa, you’re crushing my smokes.”

This joke about a pedophile murdering a child.

Let’s not turn this rape into a murder.

And hell, look at the activity graph for “soap on a rope” on urban dictionary:

2014 starts a significant taper.

Letterboxd has their “sexual assault against men played for comedy page” and if you sort by release date there’s a downward trend with 2014 as a really stand-out year for rape jokes about men in popular movies:

2010 - 10

2011 - 12

2012 - 14

2013 - 12

2014 - 18 (jesus, which includes a prison rape joke in “Paddington”)

2015 - 9

2016 - 9

2017 - 11

2018 - 15

2019 - 4

2020 - 1

(this is of course with the caveat that this is only what has been documented so far)

Shock porn sites used to be a thing and they used to be a COMMON thing. A thing that would get remixed and have late night hosts make jokes about them and that got parody music videos.

So on the one hand I was really glad that in 2010 the hacker conference WASN’T asking me to make a rape joke on their tee shirt, but since Pool 2 Girl came up at every single “this is what defcon is about” discussion and some of the guys from the con had printed up “lemonparty.org” stickers to slap up around town it wouldn’t have been *surprising* if they’d been asking for that.

If you were a teenager in 2005 would you have known how much of a dick move goatse-ing people was? We didn’t have the same culture of trigger warnings (not that I disapprove of trigger warnings, they are good and I like them) and there was very much an attitude online at the time of “if you can’t handle it log off.”

I think the fappening was the turning point for a lot of this stuff - I think that was a big cultural moment that changed a lot of people’s attitudes really quickly and I’m seeing echos of that with what Chris Evans is dealing with right now: people are a lot faster to say “oh, that sucks, don’t be an asshole, report people for posting the pics” while I remember sitting and arguing in an imgur thread because there were a bunch of people saying “if you don’t like it don’t take nudes” about the celebrities who got caught in the icloud leak.

People look at Shane Dawson’s (admittedly gross and incredibly inappropriate) behavior with a poster of Willow Smith and act like it’s unprecedented***** but as someone who remembers not only Olsen Eighteenth Birthday countdowns but ALSO the jokes about fucking the Olsen twins that came BEFORE they were legal that’s just bizarre. Seeing people my age and older react to James Gunn’s pedophilic twitter jokes like they’re worse than Jay Leno’s jokes about Michael Jackson (which were made on TV! Across America! On a major network!) is just. It’s bizarre.

I’m glad we are where we are now, I’m glad that making rape jokes in public or jokes about incest or pedophilia (or murder or abortion) is less common and less okay (especially in children’s media, jesus fuck) and more likely to get criticized.

But I’m also pretty sure I’m going to get called a rape apologist by *someone* for saying “2010 was a different time, rape jokes were more common and we didn’t realize how shitty it was” when it really was a different time and rape jokes were more common and most people didn’t realize how shitty it was. I sure didn’t. I do now, and I’m glad I do now. But pretending that we should have ALWAYS known this, pretending that this was NEVER acceptable, pretending that it WASN’T a different time is ignoring the fact that for over a decade there was an entire genre of pedophilic rape jokes (that were frequently also racist) centered around one celebrity and that people told these jokes in public and in pop culture *all the time.*

Does that make it right? Fuck, I don’t know, shit is relative. It was still largely acceptable to electrocute gay kids and people tossed around the word “faggot” pretty freely. Mean Girls is full of jokes about how awful it is for people to think you’re a lesbian and Superbad is full of jokes about getting people shitfaced so they’ll sleep with you (so date rape) and there’s an entire “cute comedy” from the 80s starring Kurt Russel and Goldie Hawn that’s an extended rape-by-fraud joke. I think that as a whole we’re better now as people than we were in 2010 and the 90s and the 80s and the 50s and I don’t think that someone who made a sexist joke in the 80s is irredeemably evil and I don’t think people making rape jokes in the 2010s are rape apologists in 2020 and I wish there was a lot more understanding of both history and nuance in these conversations.

*****to be very, very clear Shane Dawson has been filmed kissing underage fans on the mouth and having explicit sexual conversations with his very young cousin - Dawson has done things that go beyond “inappropriate” and fall clearly into “wrong” “bad” “dangerous” “illegal” etc, which is all the more reason that it’s so strange to see people focusing on him fake masturbating on a poster of Willow Smith. YES doing that was gross but why is it even being compared to the way he’s been filmed interacting with fans? The lack of nuance, making “fake masturbating at a poster” and “creating a sexually abused puppet character” the same as “inappropriately touched and kissed minor fans and engaged a young child in explicit sexual conversations” is NOT GOOD. That is a bad thing. Two of those things are tasteless and two of those things are actively harmful and it’s the actively harmful stuff that we should be focusing on and part of why it’s really weird to see shit like “pizzagate conspiracist accuses James Gunn of making inappropriate jokes” like yes Gunn please don’t but can we maybe refocus and talk about the dude who can be pretty significantly assigned blame for a fucking shooting? https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/aug/01/james-gunn-alt-right-marvel-film-director-tweets

Actually, you know what, I thought I was done ranting, I’m not.

It’s purity culture.

YES you should attempt to do less harm with your language, YES you should attempt to not use slurs, YES you should try to avoid making rape jokes. But there’s an entire huge group of people who are willing to drag up rape jokes from a decade when rape jokes were REALLY REALLY common in order to say that nothing you say or do today matters.

And that same group is ALSO really interested in expanding the concept of what pedophilia is to include age differences in adults or liking the wrong style of drawing and it’s a purity culture silencing tactic and can we PLEASE stop pretending that gross, tasteless jokes are the same thing as actually sexually abusing people? Can we stop pretending that pointing out “rape jokes were more common fifteen years ago and I feel bad about it but that’s just the way it was and I don’t make jokes like that anymore” is the same as saying “rape isn’t bad and you shouldn’t make a big deal out of it.”

It’s always good to try to be a less shitty human but if you’re only allowed to grow and improve and be less shitty if you never fucked up in the first place then it’s all just calvinist bullshit and none of us could ever really be saved in the first place.

I dunno, dudes. We got so careful about disapproving of the wrong kind of language that we let a white supremacist concern troll Disney into firing a director who caught the attention of the alt right by shit-talking the president.

I think perhaps we need to reexamine some strategy here.

[a-shakespearean-in-paris]

Why Cullen?

Today I bring you a post I’ve been in the process of mentally drafting for a while, a post that essentially analyzes the age old question in the Dragon Age fandom: Why is there always something with Cullen?

To do this, I am going to go through different “phases” of Cullen discourse. My thesis and answering the titular question: It’s complicated, and I don’t think I can answer “Why Cullen,” but “there’s sometimes recycled discourses made about his character through the years, maybe there’s a pattern.” When it comes to Cullen’s detractors, I understand the fact that it might be frustrating to see much content for someone so “boring” when there’s more “interesting” and “well done” characters (though interest is of course relevant) so it leads to a lot of vitriol from both new and old fans who think the man had too much screen time already. Furthermore, he is highly complicated man dressed as a Disney prince, and the “Disney-esque” feel of his romance creates a dissonance between coming to terms with his problematic past and reveling in the romanticism. We can have a happy medium everyone,  but because of what I can only describe as “tik tok thought” it’s become looked down upon to have problematic favorites, which leads to guilt in liking something problematic, or outright revisionism.

But liking things with problematic elements doesn’t make you a bad person.

Alright, let’s begin: 

The first phase truly began of course with DAO with Cullen’s crush on the female Circle Mage Warden. Some were endeared, others not so much. I cannot speak to this phase too much as I was around 15-16 and pretty preoccupied with my high school drama instead of fandom, though I played both DAO and DA2 upon it’s release and followed updates for DA2 before it came out. Despite not being an active fandom member I was what they would call, a lurker. I knew some people liked Cullen and thought he was cute, wishing for more screen time after the game and hoping he’d be in DAI through IMDB message boards (remember those?) and YoutTube comments. When news broke he’d be an advisor in DAI and a romance option, I remember seeing a lot of people in those same spaces rejoice. I’m sure there were also people who weren’t so pleased, but from what I saw, people were happy. When Inquisition did release, I actually did quite a bit more lurking on tumblr despite the fact I didn’t have a blog, because I played the romance route, really gravitated toward it, and wanted to see fanart and such. People liked the romance, liked his arc and how Bioware handled his struggles with lyrium; and found it realistic. Even in my lurking days I did see some blowback on Cullen from detractors, those who didn’t think he should have been the military advisor (which canonically it makes total sense to me why he’s where he’s at, but I won’t get into it here however.) But likely because I wasn’t fully “in fandom,” my surface level understanding of how tumblr felt about Cullen was relatively positive and there was only standard fare discourse.

Phase 2: I can speak about this phase better because I established this blog in 2017. Two years after DAI was released, you still had a lot of fans who loved his romance and character, but you also saw a lot of those fans really dive into his flaws, insisting even that just focusing on the Disney Prince aspects of him reduced his character. There were also more internal debates. Would realistically Cullen be a good father was one. One thing however was for sure, there was a strange them and us line between detractors and fans, and to many fans, myself included, oftentimes the Cullen blowback would extend beyond the valid, “hey I don’t think his characterization was handled well” or “his redemption arc isn’t that great” to outright vitriolic hate that blatantly ignored his PTSD and lyrium addiction, and even sometimes “you just like Cullen because he’s white.” As a POC fan it was a fantastic thing to be accused of. I used to be more involved with discord during this period and I remember a few discussions about this as well. Even those indifferent to Cullen didn’t get it.

Overall, I have to say the air was one where people in Cullen fandom enjoyed all aspects of him, from delving into this troubled past to indulging in the Disney prince aspects of him. It was a happy medium I think, even if occasionally I would see a Cullen fan feel bad for liking him, and feel like they needed to justify it. Heck I even did and still do feel that way sometimes, like I need to justify what I like. But we all come into fandom for different reasons. I come into fandom some days for different things. Sometimes I want smut with my favorite character, other times I want more intense thought pieces and challenging fics. Great thing about fandom is that it’s a bakery that has cherry tarts, cinnamon rolls, or all kinds of pie depending on your mood. Craving a different sweet treat, you can make your own. Or you can commission an artist or writer for something you fancy.

*(sexual assault mentions here late in the paragraph****)And now I’ve been warped back into Cullen/DA fandom through what I am calling phase three, where the general air on Cullen reads as….very different. After having one foot outside DA fandom for a while coming back and reading the air has been different. There was the bizarre nuggetgate and other things with Cullen. Now, instead of accepting his flaws and exploring him there seems to be a lot of revisionism going on, as if his past never happened or we’re supposed to ignore he was a templar. A sexually active Cullen is looked down upon but in a different way from before. Instead of smut works with him “reducing his complicated character.” it’s distasteful to write smut with him where he’s sexually dominant or even just a lot of smut because he was sexually assaulted. (***Now, it is implied that he was, if you are a female Circle mage in DAO, with “sifting through my thoughts, tempting me with the one thing I always wanted but could never have” but this is an implication. I will be honest, it is what I have implied. However, it’s not there if you’re not a female Mage. He was however canonically sexually harassed in the Winter Palace, something I will always argue, even if canon treats it like a joke, even if Leliana tells him to “just look pretty.” Just because he is a man doesn’t make it funny that someone grabbed his bottom, and if you take Cole he flat out says “Cullen is afraid.”***)

So here I am, wondering what changed and what’s going on. Here’s what I believe: Cullen is a complicated character and his flaws and his past make him interesting to me, and they are interesting to explore. However there is nothing wrong with wanting to just explore a romantic, sexual Cullen. He’s a character with many facets. He’s romantic, determined, nostalgic, stubborn, unrelenting, loyal, driven, all things that made him seem so real. Here we get to my theory: in today’s media “criticisms” I see people—particularly younger people—beat themselves up for liking something problematic. It’s like every time you engage with media that’s potentially problematic you have to write essays to yourself why it is so and hold yourself accountable. I see this on tik-tok a lot and why I refer to it as “tik tok thought.” Look at the way some young Hamilton fans talk about the musical, or heck even here, and you may see what I mean. It’s like if you don’t acknowledge the problematic aspects of the historical figures behind their fictional portrayals in the show you’re a bad person. Same thing with nostalgic Disney fans my age in younger, if you don’t clown on Ariel for “choosing a man over anything” (SHE LIKED THE SURFACE WORLD BEFORE SHE MET ERIC) you don’t get your brownie points.

I want to make it clear: being critical of media is good. I am glad I see young people and people my age think about the messages we are given in media, but somehow this is turned into ANALYZE EVERYTHING ALL THE TIME. Ya’ll I’m a grad student. I’m critical most of the time, when I come to my tumblr blog’s lawn I’m here mostly to have some fun, and hey sometimes my fun is being critical. But sometimes it isn’t. You do not have to always be critical. You do not have to beat yourself up for liking something that’s problematic or write an essay about why it is as if that’s your due diligence in stanning a fictional character. I’m going to be honest I used to kind of think I had to justify my likes once, especially because of the Cullen vitriol on tumblr. I worked overtime in my early fanfic efforts to try to prove to the world I knew Cullen was problematic for fear I’d be perceived as just an idiot horny fangirl. Well, let me tell you: I largely don’t think that way anymore. If I want to just enjoy writing some smut or reading some smut with him, I am. But I think there is a second part of this in Cullen fandom currently, a revisionism of his problematic elements. Now, if you have to do mental gymnastics with a character in an effort to ignore problematic elements, perhaps you don’t like the character that much. That’s totally okay. DA has many awesome characters to write about and stan.

So, why Cullen? For so many reasons a bit of a shit show has always followed this character. There’s a divide between fans and his detractors and sometimes there’s a divide within the Cullen fandom. What I can extrapolate for now is the need to keep him squeaky clean and safe and away from anything “problematic” because his of past, his templar roots, or the fact that he’s white when there are POC characters with less content. It reads as a guilt associated with liking him. But please, do not be guilty. He’s not real. Templars aren’t real, mages aren’t real, Cullen isn’t real. Here’s my advice, something I learned while in my directing class in college. What my teacher always said was direct what turns you on, direct a story that gets you thinking, gets you excited. What gets you thinking and excited in a fictional world may be tons of conflict and dramatics, or it may be peace and love. Sometimes it can be both or more. Don’t shame others for coming to a bakery and wanting blueberry when you want cherry, and the baker has both, especially if the baker labels each pie, especially if the recipe for the pie has some salt in it and people like the salt. We can have it all and enjoy it all. What we want in our fiction doesn’t always align with something we may want real life. Lots of people write Modern girl in Thedas stories. Ya’ll if that actually happened to one of us it would probably suck. I’d probably get killed and not even get to meet Cullen and pose around the desk to get things going, so I’d rather it not happen. However, it is fun to read about.

Again, don’t be guilty for liking Cullen, please. But if you have to do a lot of mental gymnastics to like Cullen, maybe you don’t like him at all. To that I say, there are many other amazing characters, or perhaps you could write your own.

#fandom critical #I spent too long on this #deleted a lot #but now it's written and I can move on #Cullen rutherford

[bosspigeon]

Carabosse et la Fee des Lilas

Prompt: 💋Drag

Pairing: Adam/Male Detective, Bonus Found Family Vibes~

Words: 5,346

Summary: Tina spends some quality time with Arlo and Unit Bravo as they prepare for Wayhaven's first real Pride festival, Tina torments her best friend and his maybe-boyfriend (as is her god-given right), and Arlo has a big think about his favorite role and what that role allowed him to explore~

CW for references to transmisogyny and implications of past trans/homophobia

Sometimes, Tina wonders if Arlo missed his true calling. His hands are surgeon-steady as he pencils delicate patterns onto Felix’s cheeks, outlining with white eyeliner in preparation to fill them in with bold colors and glitter. Tina almost can’t wait for her turn, even though Felix looks like he’s in real, physical pain with the effort of holding as still as possible. She’s no stranger to that struggle herself.

Neither is she a stranger to Arlo’s forceful, if toothless, threats, overcome as she is by fondness when he growls that he's going to draw a mustache on Felix’s face with permanent marker if he doesn’t stop bloody bouncing.

It’s pretty fun to watch from the outside. Sure, when you first sit down when he’s like this—all sharp and snappish and “stop moving or I’ll chuck you out the window”—it’s hard to keep still, but Arlo’s got this sort of quiet intensity to him when he’s focusing on something that’s oddly meditative. He’s just a soothing presence, really. Like a capybara or something. He’s friend-shaped.

Whatever weird magic it is, it’s definitely catching, because Felix looks less like he’s about to burst, like he did when Arlo was putting down the foundation, and more like he’s enjoying the attention. Tina’s not sure how long it’s going to last, seeing as Felix has given her a run for her money in the “manic energy” department, and he’s nowhere near as caffeinated as she is at any given time, but for the time being, he’s (mostly) still and quiet.

There’s music playing, quiet enough that the broody one (she knows his name, but it seems to bug him when she calls him "the broody one," which is funny, so—) only grumbled about it for a few minutes when Arlo turned it on, and even seems to enjoy sitting close enough to Arlo’s stupidly fancy stereo system to, she guesses, feel the rumble of the bass through the floor. Vampires are weird.

Anyway, it’s Arlo’s usual sad goth boy nonsense, but as quiet as it is, and with its intense instrumentals and rumbling vocals, it’s pleasant background noise more than anything.

Nate (the handsome and charming one, because of course all Arlo’s vampire friends are handsome, so she has to differentiate between them somehow) is rifling through Arlo’s bookshelf like it’s his job, and visibly struggling to pick something to read, because Arlo’s sitting room bookshelf (the one she found at a yard sale three hours away and lashed to the top of her sedan with every single bungee cord she could find at the local hardware store because it was coffin-shaped, for god's sake) is where he keeps all his weirdo occult stuff to, quote, “make people who pop by unannounced leave faster.”

And then there��s the big, handsome, stupidly fit blonde Arlo still won’t call his boyfriend, even though they’re so obvious it’s sickening, and she means that with all the love in her heart. He’s sitting in the armchair by the bookshelf, positioned so he can look like he’s reading one of Arlo’s old music magazines and totally isn’t taking advantage of the perfect line of sight of Arlo perched on the end of his coffee table so he’s not too tall to work on Felix, sitting in a chair from the kitchen. Tina sure hopes he doesn’t think he’s subtle, being a super special vampire secret agent and all.

He seems to notice her eyeing him, at least, and keeps his attention pinned firmly on the magazine, though he is definitely not reading a single word. Nate keeps browsing, the Broody One keeps brooding, Arlo keeps working, and Felix starts to hum. Arlo gives him a sharp look, but it doesn’t seem to be moving his face in any major way, so he just rolls his eyes and keeps tracing pretty patterns onto that unfairly smooth, dark skin. Do vampires do skin care? They probably don’t even need to, and that’s probably one of the reasons people like to villainize them. It always comes down to jealousy, doesn’t it?

She sighs, loudly enough that every eye in the room turns to her, and while she did not expect the sudden attention, she knows she can at least use it to entertain herself. She homes in on Adam, and smiles when she finally looks at the magazine he’s still valiantly pretending to read. There’s a familiar man on the cover, and while she can’t be bothered to remember his name, she grins. “Oh, hey! Arlo, he’s reading the one with the guy who looks like you!”

Arlo doesn’t even look up, but he huffs out a laugh and rolls his eyes again. He’s going to give himself a headache if he keeps that up.

The comment does exactly what she wants it to, which is draw the attention of all the other vampires. Arlo even begrudgingly pulls the pencil away from Felix’s cheek so he can take a look, and he immediately bursts out laughing.

“Arlo!” he exclaims, slapping at Arlo’s knee. “You didn’t tell us you had a twin!”

Nate chuckles (warm and rich and handsome, if a sound can be called handsome) and turns from the shelf to study the magazine curiously himself. Even the Broody One peers over to see, a little smirk curling his permanently-scowling mouth.

“Considering he was born in the sixties, I definitely don’t,” Arlo drawls. “Tina’s been making that joke since we were kids. She’s just happy she’s got an audience who hasn’t heard it twelve times a week since she first saw my old Type O Negative poster.”

“Some jokes just get better with time,” Tina says archly. “Like a fine wine.”

“And some jokes age like milk,” Arlo fires back.

Adam tilts the magazine so he can look for himself, and his dour expression clouds over even more, brows furrowing and mouth twisting. He peers up at Arlo, studying him, then down again.

Got you. “Yeah, you’re right,” Tina says, nodding sagely at him. “Arlo’s much prettier.”

It has exactly the reaction she was hoping for. Arlo drops his eyeliner pencil and makes a strangled noise, glowering at her with his cute freckly cheeks going all red, and Adam, who is a good bit paler than Arlo, goes pink from the crewneck of his just-this-side-of-too-tight tee shirt to his hairline. Tina wants to punch the air as the other vampires snicker at them. Well, except for Nate. Nate’s not a snickerer. He chortles. It’s adorable.

“Speaking of pretty!” Felix crows once they’ve all had a laugh at their fearless leader’s expense. He points to his own face with both hands, dancing in his chair, and Arlo sighs and rolls his eyes again, bending to pick up the dropped pencil. Luckily, the tip isn’t broken, so he can get right back to work, once he’s given the young vampire a moment to get his wiggles out. He settles, sitting on his hands and pursing his lips when Arlo gives him a dry look. He hovers back in with the pencil, and then Felix blurts out, “How’d you get so good at this anyway? Well, I assume you’re good at it. I haven’t seen it yet.”

Arlo doesn’t say anything. He just looks at him, pencil poised, until Felix pinches his mouth shut with a quick little apology. Once Arlo’s satisfied his canvas is actually going to hold still and keep quiet, he gets back to it. “My school was pretty small, especially compared to the bigger-name performing arts schools out there,” he says after a moment of quiet focus, tracing the outline of a heart around one of Felix’s eyes. “Our department didn’t really have a huge budget, and workspace was at a premium too. We didn’t have a lot of time to prepare for performances before someone else had to use the theatre, so we all did our own makeup at once, for the most part. Sometimes we’d help each other out, because we all had our strengths and weaknesses.”

He pulls back the pencil, squinting critically at the heart like it’s not completely perfect. “Demi was the best at laying the groundwork, and at matching colors to our costumes and complexions. Viv was the best at coming up with concepts and making sure we looked like a matching set. Wendi could do insane prosthetics, and was the best at bullying our department head into giving us the money for them. I had the steadiest hands, so I always did the eyes and the details.”

“Was Wendi the one who did your Dracula look?” Tina gasps. “That one was so cool!”

“Dracula?” Felix blurts. Tina doesn’t miss how the others perk up with interest too.

Arlo glares at him, and he shrinks back with a sheepish little grin. “Yeah, we did Dracula, uh… second year, I think? That was when Tilly transferred in and started doing our choreography. She’s the one who got Professor Dacey to let us do less classical stuff and start branching out a bit.” He glances briefly at Tina, staunchly ignoring the way Felix pouts at him for dividing his attention. “And, yeah, Wendi did the prosthetics for that one.”

“She’s got to be magic,” Tina asserts. “She managed to make your sweet, mopey face look so scary.”

Felix and Mason both snicker at that, and Arlo’s mouth goes all lemon-sour pinchy, like it always does when she calls him a sad puppy man, or any variation thereof.

“Take a lap,” Arlo says to Felix. “Don’t touch your face.” He jerks his head at Tina when Felix bolts to his feet and starts zooming around the flat to get out some of his energy. “Your turn, if you’re done being a comedian.”

“I’m never done,” she says with a sunny smile, but she bounces over to take Felix’s place in the chair and closes her eyes serenely so he can start on her makeup.

“And, God, do I know it,” he grumbles under his breath, knowing full well she can hear him, and so can everyone else in the room, too.

“Do you have pictures?” Felix hollers. He’s dipped into Arlo’s studio, and he’s making no secret of rifling through the desk in there, drawers slamming and paper rustling.

Arlo tips his head back so when he sighs, loud and dramatically long-suffering, he’s not blowing his breath right in Tina’s face. She appreciates the gesture. “Bottom right drawer,” he calls back, resignation thick in his voice. Given how long he’s been putting up with Tina—and Felix might just be Tina’s second platonic soulmate (Arlo, of course, being the first)—he already knows that keeping quiet is just prolonging the inevitable. Tina opens her eyes briefly to see Felix come sailing out of the studio with a thick leather-bound album held triumphantly over his head.

“Oh, I haven’t seen that in years!” she coos happily.

Arlo bops her on the forehead pointedly with a sponge covered in foundation, and she closes her eyes obediently.

She hears Arlo’s antique sofa creak as Felix plops down onto it, rifling through the plastic pages. “Aw,” he whines, “no baby pictures?”

“I can’t imagine him ever being a baby,” Mason snorts, and he sounds closer than he was before. Tina knows better than to open her eyes while Arlo’s in the zone, though. He’ll bop her with something less soft than a sponge next time. “I figured he’s just always been a giant.”

Felix laughs, high and chiming. “No wonder Agent Priestley’s always so sour, then,” he says. Tina giggles, and it becomes an inelegant snort when Arlo bops her again on the nose.

“Ask Rebecca if you want to see my baby pictures,” Arlo mutters blandly, and Tina can feel the weight of his attention. “I doubt she has many after age two, and the ones before I’ve barely seen.”

Tina’s not a super-special supernatural secret agent, but she tries with all her might to will someone to change the subject before things get weird. Now’s as good a time as any to learn telepathy.

Felix, heart of her heart, interrupts what’s shaping up to be a real prize winner of an awkward silence with a loud gasp. “Woah!” he exclaims, and pages crinkle as he presumably holds up the book for Arlo to see. “Who’s this? Did you do her makeup too?”

Arlo’s hair rustles as he turns his head away from her, and then the hand on her cheek freezes. Tension radiates through every inch of his body, practically leaching into hers. She cautiously opens one eye, and sees Arlo sitting up impeccably straight, stiff as a board and staring at Felix like a deer in the headlights. He swallows so hard she can see his throat move. “Um,” he says, stilted and strange. “Yeah. I did.”

Tina opens both eyes and squints at the photo album. Oh.

Felix looks at the sudden strain in the way Arlo is sitting, the tightness of his posture, and looks quizzically down at the picture again.

Tina remembers that performance. She remembers Arlo dancing (ha) around the subject when she asked him teasingly if he was going to be playing the prince, who was the lead, was he excited to kiss a pretty girl?

She can’t remember the character’s name, not so many years after the fact, especially since they were all weird classical nonsense, either Latin or French or some mishmash of the two. But she remembers the costume. She remembers waiting with bated breath to see Arlo onstage, to stand and scream and cheer obnoxiously loud in support of her best friend. She shot to her feet the second she saw his obvious silhouette rise from a feather-bedecked black chariot, head and shoulders taller than anyone else onstage. The music swelled, lightning flashed, and then when the spotlight hit him, she was so stunned she plopped right back into her seat with her jaw on the floor.

Arlo’s always been one of those guys that straddled the line between pretty and handsome. Long, lustrous hair and eyelashes she would kill for, cheekbones that could kill, a defined jaw, a proud nose, and intense eyes she could only call sultry—if she hadn’t known him since they were both weird, gawky brats, she’d probably be half in love with him before figuring out she wasn’t his cup of tea. But seeing him onstage was always an adventure. He threw himself into whatever character he played, put his everything into them, from the costume to the makeup to the performance. He just became the character, and in a way that was so very Arlo, all that intensity and focus channeled into an act that completely stole the show, in Tina’s humble and completely unbiased opinion.

Carabosse! That was her name!

Carabosse was no different.

Arlo’s makeup was flawless, ghost-white foundation giving him intense Morticia Addams vibes, contouring that made his cheekbones look absolutely unreal, bold black (or maybe really dark purple?) lipstick and shiny, smoky eyeshadow that made him look ethereal and wicked, with a daggerpoint cat-eye that she spent an hour begging him to teach her after the show. When he turned his head in a sharp, birdlike motion to look down his nose at the dancers playing the King and Queen, she gasped at the way his hair rippled down his back, shiny-black and woven with actual feathers that trailed back from the ornate metal circlet resting on his brow like a bird’s crest. The costume was breathtaking, too, a tightly corseted bodice and a high collar, a dramatically billowing skirt and trailing, feathered sleeves that flared like wings whenever he moved.

And the way he moved! Arlo’s dancing changed with every role, whatever he felt would suit the character. One of her favorites was always his Hans-Peter (she had a soft spot for that one, and had ever since she was little—one of the first Christmas gifts her stepmom had ever given her was little storybook version of The Nutcracker that came with a CD) because his dancing was so stiff and stridently mechanical, he looked like a real toy soldier come to life. But his villains moved with a slinking, predatory prowl she’d only ever seen in monster movies, and never in something like a ballet. His Carabosse was as beautiful as she was terrifying, and it was incredible to watch. She wanted to fling herself at him after the show and babble at him endlessly like she always did, but she spent a solid minute staring at him slack-jawed, until he shifted awkwardly and looked down, and the confident intimidation of the Wicked Fairy sloughed away to reveal Arlo underneath.

He almost melted into the floor with relief when she finally startled to babble.

She puts a hand on his shoulder and squeezes, and he takes a slow, deep breath, offering Felix a strained smile. “Take a closer look, mate,” he says quietly.

Felix does. He looks up and squints at Arlo, and then back down at the photo. Tina has to bite her lip so she doesn’t laugh when he looks over at Adam, still holding the magazine with that metal singer that kind of looks like Arlo on it, and then back at Arlo. His mouth drops open into a little o, and he shoots to his feet and shouts, “No way!”

Mason was allowed his name back briefly, but he goes right back to Broody One when he grimaces at Felix and slinks pettishly back to his corner.

Arlo’s shoulders are practically around his ears, but he tries to keep smiling. “Yeah. Sleeping Beauty. Fourth year. I was the Wicked Fairy.”

“He was amazing,” Tina declares, shoulders back and chin tipped up challengingly. “The costume was insane, but the way he played her was absolutely, ridiculously badass.”

“You look awesome!” Felix blurts, still gawking down at the photo. He flips to the next page, and squeaks happily when he finds more pictures, from different angles, showing off the costume, the way Arlo loomed over the other dancers, the way he commanded the stage. Tina should really find out who took the pictures and send them her thanks, because they really put in the work. “Your makeup, your dress, your hair! How’d you even do that?”

Arlo laughs, and it sounds so utterly relieved, Tina’s heart breaks a little. Arlo’s always been sensitive, and for someone who dresses and holds himself the way he does, he worries more than he lets on what people think of him. Especially people he cares about. She squeezes his shoulder again, and he bites his lip when he glances back at her and smiles hesitantly.

“A lot of wire, and enough hairspray to choke a bloody cow,” he says, twisting around and slinging his long legs over the coffee table so he can face the sofa. “I think we bought every bag of black feathers the craft store had, and then spent an entire weekend painting them with this stupidly expensive embossing powder. We had to get, like, ten pots of the stuff, because the craft store only had pots the size of a quarter.”

“I admire your dedication,” Nate says pleasantly, strolling over to peer over Arlo’s shoulder. They tighten just a bit before relaxing slowly. “That costuming is superb. I’ve seen professional productions that weren’t half so detailed.”

“That would be Viv’s work,” Arlo laughs, looking down at the pictures fondly. “She took whatever cheap garbage the department had for us, raided the nearest clearance fabric rack, and worked her magic. The employees at that little craft store loved and hated us in equal measure.”

Arlo is still tense, but he’s loosening up little by little, and with him Tina does too. The easy camaraderie is soothing, and she knows how much Arlo cares about his vampire friends, so it’s got to be a huge weight off his shoulders to be able to let his guard down around them. He deserves that. He deserves to be able to be himself.

Adam standing up draws Arlo’s attention like nothing else could, and he freezes like a startled rabbit again looking up at the burly blonde vampire as he approaches the sofa. He looks a split second from bolting. Tina sits up straighter and gives Adam her most daring look, squaring her shoulders to make it perfectly clear she's ready to fight the second he opens his mouth. She’ll definitely lose, sure, but she’ll make as much trouble as she can before she goes down.

He reaches out, his hand hesitating before it touches the album’s glossy page, and he looks up at Arlo with a questioning tilt to his brows. Arlo looks like he’s barely breathing, but he nods, and Adam slips one of the pictures from its sleeve. He straightens his spine, shoulders back, holding the photo and studying it carefully. His face is impossible to read, about as expressive as a bloody brick wall. Tina’s vibrating with nervous energy. She’ll fight a vampire, though. She will.

When Adam does finally speak, his voice comes out so softly Tina almost doesn’t hear it over the adrenaline rushing through her. “You look… striking.”

Striking. Oh my god.

She wants to laugh. They’re ridiculous.

“Thanks,” Arlo chokes out, his cheeks and ears going red this time.

Oh my god. Tina covers her mouth with both hands. Arlo glowers at her. It’s a lot less threatening when he’s blushing like that. “I didn’t say anything,” she mumbles against her palms.

“Your face,” he hisses, and she yelps.

“Oh! Shit!” She pulls her hands away, and he grabs her by the chin to check the damage with a click of his tongue.

Tina thought things would get better once Arlo actually kissed the man (and maybe got a leg over, but that’s only her business when she can finally get Arlo to actually talk about if the big, beefy Adonis is as missionary-with-the-lights-off as he looks) but at least they’re not just staring longingly at each other from across the room and then getting all sad about it anymore . Thankfully, Felix seems to be an old hand at clearing up the weird tension between the two of them, chiming in a delighted, “I’ve never seen you look so scary!” as he rifles through all the pictures from the Sleeping Beauty show. “I mean, you’re pretty scary when you go all furry, but also, you sort of just look like a big lanky puppy, because it’s just you, you know? This is someone else! Who is she! She's so cool!”

Arlo sighs and turns around to fix whatever Tina’s ruined with her foundation, and throws himself back into dolling her up. Thankfully, the actual festival’s not for a while yet. She complained about the unnecessarily early start when Arlo suggested the time, but now she’s glad he’s such a persnickety prick about scheduling. “I had a lot of fun with it,” he admits, shrugging his shoulders. “The original script notes said to get, y’know, sort of silly with it, but I wasn’t a big fan of that angle for a character like her. Yeah, I wanted to be campy, but not in the way…” He purses his lips. “Okay, well, Nate probably knows this, but a lot of classical ballets that have a female villains do this thing with them that I hate.” He frowns deeply, patting at Tina’s chin with gentle ferocity. “ An evil female character is supposed to be sort of… sort of a cautionary tale, I guess? Like your typical bitter spinster crone, the old hag, or the wicked stepsisters, things like that. So they’ll specifically cast a male dancer and put them in bright, gaudy facepaint and garish costumes that are supposed to be cartoonish and ugly, that you're supposed to find funny, to show you that this character is bad because she’s indelicate and mannish, and that’s why she’s evil.”

His mouth twists around the words, and he looks up, back at the vampires, leaving Tina a moment to really appreciate that Arlo’s comfortable enough with them to do what he’s only ever really done with her—which is ramble about something he’s passionate about. It’s always fun to watch. He turns back to her, and she just wishes his hands weren’t occupied, because he’s a big hand-talker otherwise. “I got the role because the professor thought it would be funny to stick me in a role like that, being so tall and, y’know,” he gestures vaguely to his faded old band tee and dark jeans, the thick leather cuff around his wrist. Tina doesn’t see what he really means, seeing as he looks cozy and content right now, but she gets what he’s going for. “He was expecting me to be awkward about it. The big, tough guy doing drag as the creepy crone caricature.” He huffs. “I talked with Demi about it, and we decided to say fuck that.” He sits up straighter, tilts up his chin, and looks down his nose at Tina.

She peers up at him, wide-eyed, and suddenly wonders if this is how Demi felt, playing Aurora when Carabosse looked down her nose at her like an insect under her heel.

“I thought Carabosse deserved better,” Arlo says fiercely. “If I was going to be a villain, I was going to be a damned good villain. I was going to tower over all the delicate, dainty little princesses and fairies, and I was going to be fierce. Professor Dacey wanted Aurora, and Candide, and Florine to be the epitome of sweet, delicate femininity, the ideal damsel in any classical show. Carabosse is supposed to be the complete opposite. You’re supposed to root against her, not want to be her. She’s a threat to the idea of womanhood, of the ideal feminine. She’s bold and selfish and she takes what she wants. I leaned into that. I even danced en pointe for parts of it, even though Carabosse isn't supposed to, and between the rehearsals and the actual performance, I thought my feet were gonna fall off, but it was worth it.”

Arlo smiles, and Tina is thrilled by the wickedness of it. She thinks she even sees just a hint of fang. Arlo’s been so careful about showing his teeth, ever since he told her what happened to him, why he disappeared for so long, so it's somehow special for him to feel like he can show her even a hint of what he’s become.

“Professor Dacey was pissed, afterwards, of course,” Arlo laughs, but there’s an edge to it. He seems to shrink. From Arlo to Carabosse to Arlo again. He looks down at his hands as they work on Tina more than at her face. “He didn’t, y’know, say anything he could have gotten fired over, but he did rail about being left out of planning and the budget and all that rot. Got even madder when Demi pointed out we’d spent our own money on the costumes. I think if he was tall enough to look down on me, he would have.” He snorts, a bitter curl to his mouth. Tina thinks of it painted bold, dark purple, thinks of how it would look with those teeth behind it. She wonders if he’d let her do his makeup for the festival. She’s not nearly as good at details as he is, but she’s no slouch either.

“You should have let me put raw fish in his hubcaps,” Tina mutters, just to make Arlo laugh. It works, and she beams at him.

“Would have been a waste of fish,” he mumbles, sucking his teeth. He finally picks up a bright eyeshadow palette and starts waffling over colors. He’s quiet while he deliberates, but after a while, he sighs. “I liked being Carabosse,” he says, like it’s a secret. Like he’s trying very hard not to be ashamed.

“I wish I could have seen it,” Adam says, almost dreamily. Tina could scream. “I— We could have, I mean. All of us. In solidarity.”

“Smooth,” Felix whispers.

“I’m sure it was a phenomenal performance,” Nate adds helpfully. He’s taken the album from Felix to flip through to some of Arlo’s other shows. “The passion you have for your characters shines through in just photos. It’s quite impressive.”

“You should have gone pro,” Tina mutters. “You’d be a household name by now.”

Arlo snorts and bops her with the brush. How many bops is that now? She’s certainly on a roll today. “And who’d keep you in line back here?” he teases.

Tina squints up at him and sticks out her tongue. “Like you’ve ever even tried to keep me in line, you big softie. You love the chaos, just admit it.”

“I’ll admit you to the hospital when you do something stupid and get yourself hurt again, how about that?”

They bicker like children back and forth while Arlo finishes her makeup, a wash of pink, purple, and blue eyeshadow and matching lipstick, overlaid with a lustrous sparkle to her cheekbones and a cute little black heart-shaped beauty mark under one eye. Felix gets a bi flag heart to match her eyeshadow around one eye, and then the rest is a sort of confetti splash of sparkly stars and hearts in every color. Even Nate goes for the bi eyeshadow (Bi-shadow? She should have been saying that this whole time!), making him, Tina, and Felix a matching set, and Mason consents to a very simple pan flag on his cheek. Tina suspects Adam only allows the eyeshadow treatment so he can have Arlo cup his face all tenderly, but she keeps the thought (mostly) to herself. He looks good in pastels, she thinks when she sees the finished blue, pink, and white.

Arlo draws a little heart under his eye too. The heart in Tina's chest almost explodes with warmth.

And then Arlo disappears into the bathroom, leaving the rest of them to entertain themselves while he gets ready on his own. They go through the album some more, and Tina tells them all about her favorite shows, because she went to every single one she could manage, and got Arlo’s school friends to send her videos of the ones she couldn’t. Tina Poname is Arlo Priestley’s number one fan, and that will never change. Not even now that she's got some competition.

When Arlo comes out of the bathroom, they all look up in sync, and he stands there, shifting anxiously from foot to foot under the attention, and lifts his hands in a stilted shrug. “So?” he asks, smiling nervously. He’s changed clothes, too. Tight pants, big boots, a mesh-sleeved black shirt underneath his patch-and-pin-covered denim vest. His wrists jingle with chunky bracelets, and his hair is braided neatly over one shoulder. But his makeup is what really steals the show. That insanely sharp cat-eye, of course, but one eye is done up in blue, pink, and white, and the other in yellow, white, purple, and black. He smiles timidly. “I, uh, I couldn’t really decide on just one,” he says, sticking his gloved hands into the pockets of his vest. “I’m, um, I’m not sure which one’s really right for me yet, I guess?” He shrugs again, and Tina watches delightedly as Adam stands up slowly, his eyes on Arlo with such an awed intensity she wonders if he even remembers there’s other people in the room. Arlo keeps babbling as he approaches, the words tumbling nervously from his black-painted lips. “I sort of like matching with you, Adam, and I know they’re both fine, but I—”

Adam grabs him by the lapels of his jacket, yanks him down to his level, and silences him with a kiss. Tina throws her arms up in the air with an impulsive shriek of “WOO!” that Felix echoes even louder. They high-five over Mason’s head, and he looks like he wants to throw them both out the window. Nate sits by with a pleasant little smile, which only fades when he takes note of the clock.

Adam and Arlo are still kissing, Arlo’s hands cupped around the vampire’s cheeks and Adam clinging to his vest like he'll drown if he lets go. Tina thinks she might see a hint of tongue when Nate loudly clears his throat.

They break apart with an indecent smacking noise, and Tina yelps out a sharp laugh when she sees Arlo’s black lipstick smeared all around Adam’s mouth.

Nate crosses his arms and smiles dryly at them. “Why don’t you two go fix your faces,” he suggests. “The rest of us will make sure the car is packed for the festival.”

“Um, yes. You— We—” Arlo fumbles for a bit, touching his smeared lips, his eyes just a bit dazed. He and Adam look at each other, and then flee for the bathroom together.

Tina’s never been more excited for a festival in her life.

#the wayhaven chronicles #wayhavensummer #pride in wayhaven #tina poname #adam du mortain #a du mortain #felix hauville #f hauville #specialist agent mason #specialist agent m #nate sewell #n sewell #oc: arlo priestley #pidge writes #HELLO I AM FINISHING THIS AT 3:30 AM #I HAVE MY FIRST DAY OF MY NEW JOB TOMORROW #WISH ME LUCK #this turned out WAY longer than i meant it to but god was it fun #i hope you guys like it as much as i liked writing it #arlo playin w gender expression via ballet is my everything #the costume designs for carabosse can be SO GOOD #but some of them are SO BAD #ballet is like that #its very uuuuh traditional wrt its aesthetics and gender roles #and arlo and his friends were all like 'but what if not' #anyway title is v last minute bc *shrug* #tina gets to be the lilac fairy #i did so much reserach into this ballet y'all #the only thing i didnt do was watch the whole thing #tho i DID find it on yt so i could later....

[misterghostfrog]

Oh number 3 with jmart pls 👀

So it took me a bit to come up with smtnh for this! but I think it was pretty good. Warning it is. Not edited.

3. A breathy demand: “Kiss me” - and what the other person does to respond. (CW; ALCOHOL USE/MENTION. them bein smashed is the ficlet im sorry)

They’re both drunk, and this is probably all a terrible idea.

It’s not technically either of their faults If you’re arguing semantics, Tim is the one who decided to continue the birthdays-in-the-archives tradition by celebrating ‘Jonny magnet’s’ centennial something. It was more an excuse to bring a bottle of wine into the archives- which didn’t get drunk because Jon had made it clear that while employee birthdays were somewhat acceptable for a small glass. In no way would he condone making up holidays.

It wasn’t actually to celebrate Jonah magnus of course. Things had been so tense with Prentiss looming and Martin living in the archives. Martin thinks he was just trying to lighten the mood.

It did sort-of work though. Mostly because he brought cookies too, and convinced Jon to let them play music over the course of the workday. Which, in comparison to alcohol on the clock was minor enough for Jon to simply ignore. 

Which, now that Martin thinks about it, might have been the point.

But, regardless of the purpose. There was a rather large bottle of wine left in the archives. And Martin didn’t intend to drink it, not in a million years. Tannins and all that. And he certainly never dreamed Jon would touch it. But...

He had a nightmare, the usual fare. And went for a nighttime wander, extinguisher in hand, just- just to be sure. And stumbled on Jon still hard at work at... three o-clock in the morning. A new record for sure.

Jon had been annoyed. And then... sympathetic. A new side to him that still didn’t hesitate to make Martin's incredibly traitorous heart skip in his chest. Jon offered to walk with him, if only for both of their peace of mind.

First they’d stumbled on the bottle, shoved in a cupboard in the breakroom. Then they’d stumbled on the worms. Somewhere on the counter by the fridge. Then the worms were a shriveled pile of filth and foam. And Jon had said the words ‘Fuck it’ out loud, opened the bottle, taken a swig, and offered it to Martin. And Martin, apparently out of his mind. Had taken it.

They’d moved to document storage, away from the worms. Found a good spot on the floor to empty the bottle between the two of them. And they were just... talking. Even getting along quite well, actually.

He’d caught a few glimpses of Jon when he’s not shuffling around as ‘mister-archivist-whos-going-to-staple-these-ancient-documents-no-i-will-not-take-criticism-get-back-to-work’. Particularly after Prentiss. And he’s seen more since, in the little moments after everyone else has gone home. Little jokes, laughter. A wry complaint about the archives themselves. Just... stuff.

But now he’s laughing, loud and openly at something Martin’s said. Martin’s laughing too, and his stomach hurts from it. He can’t even quite tell what they’re laughing about, but he’s leaning into Jon's side and can feel Jon's hand on his bicep as he tries to keep himself upright.

“Good lord Martin,” he says, and Martin can hear the effort to keep his voice steady through the wine “If Elias heard you say that- I think he’d have a heart attack on the spot”

Martin snorts.

“Look, if he wanted to worry less about sources of- of ignition in the archives. He would have- he- he would have put in the bloody CO2 by now” He waves an imaginary lighter in the air “It’s just- it’s um- it’s just motivation. To get us all not killed by a- a bloody worm woman.”

Jon starts laughing again. Loud and raucous. Martin’s not sure he even laughs like that sober. He laughs with him, too. And somehow finds himself pressed even closer into Jon as they both collapse in on their own laughter.

And then the laughter dies down, leaving them both breathless and giggling.

Jon looks up at him, he’s smiling and Martin can feel his own woozy grin prying at his cheeks. He’s almost dizzy from laughing- actually that’s probably the alcohol. He’s never had a good tolerance for it. He’s definitely drunk.

It’s takes him a moment to notice they’re both staring, neither of them have said anything. They’re just looking at each other. It’s quite funny actually, grinning like idiots over absolutely nothing.

Martin giggles. It comes out somewhere between a snort and a hiccup.

Jon's expression changes, he looks almost... perplexed. He tilts his head, ever so slightly.

“Kiss me.” He says, voice hoarse and out of breath from laughter. 

Martin blinks. Not sure if it’s meant as a demand or a request. Not that he actually minds either way. Jon has leaned ever so slightly closer, and he’s looking at Martin with a strange intensity that his hazy mind isn’t sure what to do with.

They’re both drunk, and this is probably a terrible idea. And if Martin were sober he would say as much, probably shuffle Jon off to sleep it off until he’s back in his right mind. 

But he’s not, he’s drunk. And sleep deprived. And a little hopeless.

So he obliges, or tries to.

He misses the mark somewhat, hitting the edge of Jon's lips with his own. Jon snorts, and Martin laughs. And then Jon tilts his head up to Meet Martin's lips properly.

It only lasts a moment. Because Jon's nose bumps into Martins, and Martin starts to giggle again. And then Jon starts to laugh, pulling back and burying his face in Martin's shoulder. Martin wraps an arm around him in turn, only partly because the room begins to spin again and he worries he’ll fall the rest of the way to the floor. And they laugh until they’re breathless again.

Martin leans down and buries his face in Jon's neck. He’s warm, and smells like dust. Which might just be from when he laid down on the floor earlier, who knows how often it gets cleaned.

He feels something move against his shoulder. And then warm lips brush his jaw before Jon's head falls back, nestling once again into his shoulder.

He presses a small absent kiss to Jon's collar in turn. Jon hums.

Tomorrow, he’s probably going to face the consequences of this interaction. And probably need to ask Jon, well. Why, and what the hell just happened actually. But... for the time being it’s just. Nice.

Eventually they end up on the floor, though Martin isn’t sure how. Jon's head still tucked into his shoulder, laying on top of his arm that’s wrapped around bony shoulders.

They fall asleep like that. Tangled up on the floor, an empty wine bottle sitting on the floor nearby. Jon, in his work clothes. Martin in his pajama pants. Both primed and ready for a hangover in the morning. And somehow comfortable all the same.

#tma #the magnus archives #jmart #jonmartin #jonathan sims #martin blackwood #alcohol #alcohol mention #ghostly scribble #ghostly scribbles #Anonymous

[ordinaryschmuck]

What I Thought About "Eda's Requiem" from The Owl House

Salutations, random people on the internet who certainly won’t read this! I am an Ordinary Schmuck. I write stories and reviews and draw comics and cartoons.

...

...

...HOW IS SEASON TWO SO GOOD?! WE'VE HAD SEVEN EPISODES SO FAR, AND EACH ONE OF THEM WAS A HIT!

Take "Eda's Requiem," for example. It's yet another episode where I have NOTHING bad to say about it! That's two weeks in a row where that happened! HOW DOES THIS HAPPEN?!

HOW!

HOW!

...But anyways, "Eda's Requiem." It's another fantastic episode, and I'm about to dive into explaining how and why. Just keep in mind, it's gonna require spoilers to do so, so be wary of that as you keep reading.

Now, let's review, shall we?

WHAT I LIKED

Eda’s Checklist and Grom Photo: Within the first second, "Eda's Requiem" perfectly sets up Eda's central conflict in the episode. Despite spending years being on her own and looking after herself, she now has two kids that she's constantly caring over. Eda can try all she wants to say that she doesn't care, and I bet she has in the past. But given the hard work she's putting into getting King and Luz what they need and having a grom photo of the three of them together pinned in her mirror, it's pretty clear that those two knuckleheads wormed their way into her heart and are never getting out.

Eda’s Worried About King and Luz Leaving: And thus, that's precisely why something like this bothers her so much. Eda inadvertently adopted two rambunctious rapscallions (Yeah, I know. I'll get to it), so the idea of them not being around her anymore is going to be terrifying. That is a situation most parents, especially mothers, can identify with. It’s called empty nest syndrome and it proves just how much Eda loves Luz and King that she can't stand the thought of her babies leaving the nest. It's yet another well-made, wholesome, found-family moment that this series continues to excel at each week, making me extra excited for more like it to come...while also readying myself for heartbreak when one of them eventually does leave Eda.

Eda and Raine’s Music: Ok, I don't know the exact instruments that were played during this episode, but I also don't care because it was all (for lack of a better term) music to my ears. Every time Eda and Raine played resulted in melodies that are so beautiful and filled with so much emotion and feeling that I'm honestly tempted to listen to them again, multiple times, on repeat. Shows rarely do that for me, as background music doesn't always draw me in as much as lyrical songs do. Usually, it takes something so extraordinarily composed to give me the desire to listen again, and that's the case here. So huge congrats to Brad Breek for doing so. Seriously, the man's been killing it this season.

Eda’s Bard Magic Causing Things to Turn to Ash: This was assuredly a surprise side-effect of the curse. The fact that Eda can sort of do magic at all was its own shock. To then reveal that a specific type can do dangerous things to people and environments is...Well, it definitely brings up its own fair share of questions. Like, how can she do this? Will she do it again, one day? And are there other types of spells that can be negatively affected by Eda's curse? We don't get answers for any of these questions, and odds are, we never will. But that's alright with me. Because if a show makes me consider these many possibilities after a brief amount of time, it is a show that has to be doing something right. Even if I don't get the answers I want, the fact that it caused such a reaction makes me less willing to care.

Raine Whispers: Hey, would you look at that. Another fun, interesting, and compelling character added to the list of this shows' other fun, interesting, and compelling characters...how is this series so good at this!?

Joking aside, Raine's pretty good. I like Raine. They could have been this super serious leader who lost all their fun after years apart from Eda, but I'm glad that they're not. There are moments when Raine takes their job as leader of the BATs seriously, as one would, but I still prefer the fact that they kept a jovial nature despite how grim their situation is. It's an admirable trait to have, and it avoids the trope of making leader characters boring just because they're the ones who have to take things seriously.

Oh, and also, Raine's Disney's first non-binary character who has a stake in the plot. This is a tremendous deal, as you don't usually see that many non-binary characters in children's animation, let alone ones that hold importance to the story. So it's pretty cool for the writers to feature Raine, as it helps several kids feel as though they're finally seen and respected. And the fact that Disney of all companies gave the thumbs up is even more impressive. I hear people say that Dana Terrace should have pitched The Owl House to more progressive networks to avoid pushback, and while I absolutely see your point, I'll have to respectfully disagree. Disney is the largest entertainment industry of all time, so if you want to make LGBTQA+ representation normalized, you gotta stop making splashes and start making waves. Because if the same company that made three racist cats in the span of a few years manages to say that being gay is a-ok, then you know there's something wrong with you. Yes, Disney ended up screwing over the show anyway. But for that one moment, when kids felt pride after seeing a character like Raine, then, in the end, it's kind of worth it.

Also, if you're still having issues with more representation like this popping up in kids' shows, then allow me to redirect you to the complaint department.

...I made that post earlier today for this bit. YOU HAVE BETTER APPRECIATED IT!

Day of Unity is meant to be a Secret: At least, that's what I got when Raine stumbled over their own words. So if it's true, then I wonder why? Why does Belos want to keep the most critical change in the Boiling Isles a secret? Does he want to make it a surprise for his grateful subjects, or does he not want to spread worry and fear amongst the wild witches? It has to be something big if he doesn't want his followers to even say the words "Day of Unity." Whatever reason he has, we most likely won't know until the future. A future that I grow more and more afraid of each week.

Hooty Eating Echo Mouse: My heart sank in that brief moment when I thought that Hooty intensely screwed Luz over in getting back home. But looking back...it is pretty funny.

Just the suddenness of Hooty eating the poor creature that Luz desperately tried to earn its trust is priceless in how shocking it was. And also, Luz's expression.

That was the look of a young girl who immediately shoved her hand down an owl demon's throat the second the scene cut away. The Owl House may not always be a hit in the comedy department, but scenes like this prove that when it's funny, it is hilarious.

Luz and King Entering the Grand Prix: Not much to discuss here. It's just a cute subplot that adds frivolity to the intensity of what's going on through Eda and Raine's story. But I will say that I love how both stories occasionally interconnect with each other through the many moments of Eda being worried about King wanting to leave to find his father and avoiding any conversation about it. It helps both plotlines feel like they belong together, without being something like "Through the Looking Glass Ruins," whereas both stories could have been in their own episode. Which is neat.

How Bard Magic Works: I really love how this season is diving into how the other magic types work. More specifically, the ones that seem a little vague. I mean, stuff like healing, potions, and plants are easy to figure out, but what does it mean when a witch's talents are construction, beast keeping, and bard magic? We've been getting a lot of clearing up lately, with bard magic looking like a witch can control their environments and enemies through the power of music. Which is fair. Music is pretty powerful in the metaphorical sense, and I actually love that it's powerful in the literal sense when in the Boiling Isles.

The BATs: Not much to comment on these three either. The BATs have the potential to have an entertaining dynamic, but they do very little in this episode that I can't say much other than I hope they make a return in the future. But I will make this claim: Amber is my favorite. I'm sorry, but her screaming "You're not our mom!" to then go, "Bye, mommy Eda" is just too precious for me not to love.

I'm a simple man who falls for cute s**t. Leave me alone.

Raeda (RainexEda): Well, EdaxCamila, you were a fun crack ship while it lasted, but I'm afraid that this is now goodbye. The current canon has provided an incredibly adorable and believable relationship that I would be a monster not to support with my whole bi-heart. It's been real.

Ok, back in serious mode: I love these two together. Eda and Raine are grown-ups, and they still act all flustered near each other as if they were still Luz and Amity's age. It's definitive proof that you're never too old to get flustered near a crush, and seeing them interact adds a sense of wholesomeness when seeing them together as well as heartbreak when they're forced apart. Plus, we get confirmation that Eda's LGBTQA+! Whether she's bi, pan, or whatever, now that we know Eda can catch feelings for someone like Raine, it's yet another case that The Owl House is the most important series to the community. Because having the main character be queer is fantastic in its own right. But having the same apply to the motherly mentor figure? That's is an extra bit of normalization that anybody would be willing to appreciate.

Unique Guard Designs: Not many fans are going to appreciate this, primarily compared to everything else this episode does perfectly. For me, I actually like that you see a few Coven Guards looking differently from the others, as it helps make them less like clones and makes it seem like anybody of any body type could be a part of the coven.

Gus Looking Uninterested when Presenting Grand Prix with his Dad: I am positive that you didn't notice this (I didn't even notice it until someone else pointed it out), but there's something to dissect here. It hints that perhaps Gus isn't as interested in his father's field of work as one might think. If he did, he would look a lot less bored and much more excited to be helping Perry Porter present the race. It could just be the race itself, but judging from Gus' expression, it really seems like the kid would prefer to be anywhere but there. And why would he have that reaction to a race that his best friend is competing in? To me, this seems like an inkling of what Gus' relationship with Perry could be, which may not actually get time to shine, what with how little wiggle room the series has now (Thanks Disney). Regardless, it is interesting to notice, and it will certainly have fans thinking for a while.

Bump Being Smug of Luz Being in the Lead: That's it. Principal Bump looking smug as his human student is beating the students of his rivals is yet another moment that proves why Bump is easily the best cartoon principal.

Darius: First of all, this guy is f**king fabulous, and I love him. *Snaps*

Second, he is definitive proof that you do NOT want to f**k around with Coven Leaders. Lilith may have had her intimidating moments, but none of them compare to the guy who can turn himself into an abomination monster where only magic that hasn't existed before can take him down. It's genuinely scary to see Darius lose control, and I fear for the day when Luz inevitably ends up in his crosshairs.

With that said, Darius' still a ton of fun! He may be threatening, but he's just a flamboyant guy that hates the idea of getting his outfit the tiniest bit dirty. And I love that. I love that these Coven Heads have actual personalities instead of being generically evil. I consider it preferable to make villains entertaining rather than blatantly scary as I'll remember the personalities first and the villainous acts last.

Eberwolf: But this one's my favorite. I told you: I'm a simple man who gets easily swayed by cute s**t. And Eber? I mean, just look at her:

She's just a cute widdle rascal! I just want to pinch her cheeks, give her a belly rub, and--

...Eberwolf is not a cute widdle rascal. She is a strong, independent woman, and I will respect her as such from this moment forward...lest I feel her wrath.

That is all. Let's move on.

Eda and Raine Attempting a Final Performance: This was the best scene of the episode. It looked gorgeous, it shows the dedication Eda and Raine have for stopping Belos, and it says so much through so little. Go back and look at how Eda and Raine regard one another when performing Eda's requiem. Through their expressions and a few short words, you know they understand that if they complete the song/spell, they probably won't make it in the end. And yet, they don't care. They both know bad stuff will happen if Belos wins, so Eda and Raine put everything to the side, both their feelings for one another and the people they leave behind if it means putting an end to a tyrant. That level of dedication...Words can't fully describe how powerful that is.

Raine Sacrificing Themselves Instead: But in the end, Raine can't do it. Not when they know the life that Eda has and the people she'll be leaving behind. It's an extra bit of nobleness to the character seeing that Raine refuses to take away a woman from two kids who need her the most. A tad bit selfish, sure, knowing what Belos has planned. But when it comes to love, the romantic, familial, or platonic, the best decisions aren't always the logical ones.

Eda Crying: Luz crying tears me up, but seeing Eda cry is a whole different level of heartbreak. Like Lilith, Eda has her emotions locked up tight, with the closest she came to weeping were those two tears in "Young Blood, Old Souls." In "Eda's Requiem," she cries but almost quickly stops herself. As if she knows that doing so isn't going to save Raine. That is...even worse than seeing Luz break down after losing Eda. The fact that Eda refuses to give herself time to mourn losing someone she loved is tragic because crying is the most natural way of showing grief. Turning that off isn't healthy, and seeing her do it with little resistance is sad to me. It's sad to see a character I love can easily shut off all emotions despite how badly she may want to embrace them. It's one of those moments that, again, by doing so little, it shows so much.

“No one watches Crystal Balls anymore. It’s all about streaming.”: Oof. Even I felt that burn towards cable.

King’s Message: King's message was the pick-me-up I needed after the heart-wrenching sadness this episode put me through a few minutes ago. Seeing King say who he is and listing all the things he loves is nothing short of adorable. On top of that, I adore that Eda willingly recorded the whole thing. She may not want King to leave, but that doesn't mean she'll sabotage the one thing he wants. Especially not after Raine gave up everything so Eda could be with her kids. The opening scene may prove how much Eda cares about a rascal like King, but this heartwarmingly sweet moment reveals just how far she'll go to make him happy.

King’s Dad Reveal: ...ok, I'll be honest, I did not think we'd get that reveal this soon. Dumb of me to say, considering the number of times I've said that these writers don't waste time getting to the s**t, I know. But still, it's pretty cool knowing that King's dad is alive and well, added with the fact that we've got a fair idea of what he looks like. At this point, it's only a matter of time before we see him figure out where the Clawthorne residence is and witness the tear-jerking moments that will follow.

King Changing his Name to King Clawthorne: Not the official adoption I was expecting Eda to make...but DANG IT, is it still diabetes-inducing levels of sweetness!

Personally, I feel like the main reason why Eda breaks down this time is not only because she shouldn't be worried about King leaving her life, but also because Raine's sacrifice wasn't in vain. Her kids really do need Eda because no matter how far apart they'll be, she will always be a part of their life...dang it, I'm going to cry too!

What those Coven patches really do: Well...that was horrifying to see.

...Writers, if you kill off the best non-binary character in animation (it's a short list, I know), we are going to have PROBLEMS!

IN CONCLUSION

"Eda's Requiem" is--surprise surprise--another A+. The emotions hit hard, the representation hits harder, Raine is a fantastic addition to the cast, and it was all surprisingly cute at times. Season Two is currently on a hot streak, constantly winning with every episode that's come out so far. When a bad episode does eventually show up (IT'S GONNA HAPPEN!), I'll be sure to sing my requiem then. For now, I'm just gonna enjoy the ride.

#the owl house #the owl house season 2 #the owl house reviews #eda clawthorne #raine whispers #raeda #king of demons #toh darius #toh eberwolf #what i thought about

[annetteblog]

Intro & My take on KM

Hi!

I’m new around here so it’s supposed to be (not so short) introduction, since I don’t know how to start a blog heh. I hope to sprinkle my 0.5 cents into the KM conversation and maybe to bring a new perspective from someone, who is not a part of the typical English-speaking West.

Who /the hell/ Am I?  

(please, consider it to be said with NJ’s voice from Intro: Persona :D)

I was born in Siberia (it’s in the Asian part of Russia), currently live in the European part of the country while studying at a Uni (European in terms of geography, not in terms of everything else i’m definitely not shading rn lolllll). English is not my first language, I’ve just kind of learnt it to some extent. Due to this it takes me more time to write a post; and I may (and will) make some grammatical & other mistakes. Plus I’m lazy AND busy with Uni, so I won’t even promise to be consistent in posting smth lol. But I thought I need more practice in terms of writing in English, so here I am, actually scribbling something. This feels weird, because I’ve been around stan Tumblr since 2015, but never ever interacted, just read.

How I ended up around Jikook/Kookmin (and BTS) & My (long&messy) take on this matter

Although I had heard of BTS before, I became an Army only in October 2018. I had kinda avoided them, because you know... boybands.... sing songs about romantic love and how they love girls.......... (+I had been around Twitter when 1D been at their peak and I remember a quite toxic community of fans, whom always had scared me). Shortly, hello stereotypes. Obviously, after I got engaged I felt terribly sorry that I had been sleeping on them, but what is done cannot be undone. 

Someone I knew back then reposted one of their MVs and I, during my sad hours of procrastination, decided to watch it. Then I saw their live performance with the same song. And I thought “wow these guys can sing and dance and the music is kinda cool, i need to check this out maybe??” 

Then a funny thing happened. One of the next videos I watched (the same person had it added to their page) was a 2016 BangtanBomb where JM and JK practiced their Coming of Age dance. 

Do you know this moment with Gina from the 1st episode of Brooklyn 9-9:

Well, that was precisely me after I watched it. I don’t even know how to explain this, it was kind of a gut feeling? Whatever you call it, I started to get suspicious and couldn’t even explain to myself why. /actually now a do have questions to this vid and the main one - why does everyone cringe that much? if it’s a girly choreo than they had done some “girly” moves before. why is there such strong reaction??/

I started to get deeper and went to some ru-shipper communities. Shipping culture among Russian speaking fans is... well, weird to some extent, but I maybe address this topic some time later. You need to consider that (as far as you probably know) Russia is quite homophonic country and sadly is not the greatest place for LGBTQ+ community at the moment. The non-frienly influential attitudes hanging in the society + the general shippers’ weirdness = the result is not that nice honestly. 

I struggled for some time in order to find more mature people (not just in terms of age but in general sanity), failed, ended up with some EXTREMELY toxic ru-fans of TK, which was/is the most popular pairing here, spent among them like 15 minutes and ran away horrified. After that I didn’t even try to engage with shippers or believers or whatever of any pair and just decided to enjoy the music and the content (which is a great idea, highly recommend!)

After a couple of days I discovered that JK makes videos. I love video, films and visual art so I immediately found them on YT, saw the titles with names of different cities from all over the world and was like “Oh that must be so cool, he’s visited so many outstanding places I’ve never been to, so I really need to watch it! I shall enjoy some beautyyy”. Then I clicked on GCFt.

Well, what can I say. I did enjoy some beauty, but not the type I had initially anticipated. The biggest clickbait in my entire life. JK should be proud of himself.

                                       /as I said - the beauty/

I had already known Troy back then and I known the song’s lyrics so it would not be an underestimation to say - the video just blew my mind. I was like - hold on is this real? seriously?? no really really????? he manage to get away with something THAT obvious?????? dude how

As a person who edited videos AND is not a native English speaker, I don’t buy the explanation “oh he mustve didnt get the lyrics lmao”. You just don’t do that. You don’t. DON’T. You google and translate every shit you don’t understand, every word and idiom you’ve never encountered, because otherwise the possibility of an epic failure is very likely. You wouldn’t want to give your mum a video as a birthday present and then discover that you used a song with WAP-ish lyrics, right? (well maybe that would be okay in your family, I don’t judge, but that’s not the case for people I know). So don’t you dare to degrade JK’s intellectual capacities; such assumption is really offensive. He is a smart boii, he knows exactly what he’s doing in terms of his art.

So I was shocked, but decided to look for the context - maybe I missed some previous events regarding this Tokyo thing (another great idea - always check the context). Well, apparently I didn’t, because the whole narrative with the trip for two, lovely selfies etc. made my poor brain lowkey explode. (I still don’t buy the rings theory thing though)

But I didn’t give up lol! I’m a bit stubborn and it’s very hard to convince me in anything, so I decided to search for more context, more of their interactions, moreeee. Remember, the late October 2018, there were no swan lakes, RB, and even MMA18 hadn’t happened yet. 

This time I ended up watching content in more or less consistent way, and when I saw all of these scenes with affectionate JM and a cool badass i-don’t-care-about-anyone-i’m-a-manly-man-with-no-feelings-whatsoever JK, I just hysterically laughed. 

Homophobic Russia, remember? I recognized this. Growing up here being LGBT myself, taught me the same type behaviour during my high school days. When a girl I kinda liked but didn’t what to admit it to myself was nice to me or (oh god) flirted with me, I did something similar. It’s like a huge panic mode. Being an introvert doesn’t help either. The funniest thing is that you may not entirely realise what exactly is going on in terms of your own feelings, especially at that age (16-18ish). In my personal case, I thought I liked her but as a friend, only later to realise that well not as a friend oops :DDD The second thing (already not so funny) is that you actually consciously or unconsciously try to avoid the subject as much as possible, as long as possible and pretend that nothing is going on. We’re just bros. Stop doing this stupid gayish thing and don’t look at me like that, you’re annoying. If you ever do this again I (gently) kick you. I’m straighter than a straight line in my math textbook. IDK, but probably that’s your brain is somehow trying to protect you. Again, in my case&position I knew that the consequences for any non-straight person being outed would be bad (TW not to the point of being killed bad, but to the point of being excluded from a big part of society). So for me it was a mixture of the internalized homophobia + lack of self reflection + just being a bit emotionally slow + very! straight community around. Shit happens, I was a teenager and made my share of mistakes, but that experience helps me to recognize the same pattern of behaviour up to this day.   

So coming back to KM, because the post is already waaay too long and I just ramble. It’s been 2+ years for me being a part of this fandom, and what can I say... Things become more intense and eventful with every year passing by ;) Funny how I felt that vibe from the 2016 dance practice video. Seeing the Black Swan performance a week ago almost had me choked, no joking. They are amazing.

                                                    Pure Art

However, and I would like to emphasize that, I do not incline that KM are 100% romantically involved and/or gay or whatever. I tend to treat people with respect and not to make too much assumptions about their private life. That’s not my business. However, I’m also not a fan of heteronormativity, so I’m just sitting here and observe everything that’s going on putting some distance and not forgetting being generally polite and critical thinking. But if they are just straightest besties please give them an Oscar before Grammy

Anyways, I hope this blog won’t kick the bucket from the very start and I will post something every now and then. You can always ask me questions about some BTS/Jikook related stuff or something about Russia and a Russian view on mass culture topics, since I’m pretty sure some of you have very stereotypical view of what is going on here :) However, do note that I’ve never been to America or Europe, therefore I may not be aware of something verrrry obvious to you or just have a completely different experience. 

P.S.  And yeah, I’m used to say Jikook, since it’s the name which is used much more frequently in Russian.  i like it better and what will u do haha

#jikook #kookmin #what am i even doing here #i'm gonna regret this #long post