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#And they talk the same way too
shima-draws · 1 year
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SO I just finished binging all of Romantic Killer bc it came up in my recommended. And oh my god I loved it so much;;
There’s definitely mixed reviews about it WHICH IS FAIR bc the premise is about a girl named Anzu who isn’t interested in romantic relationships but she then gets pushed into typical dating sim situations with Really Cute Boys in an effort to like. Force her into a relationship. And obv this kinda comes off as arophobic. But the fact that she so stubbornly refuses to partake and tries so hard to veer away from those situations makes it so fucking funny, especially when she rejects the boys with faces like this
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And it turns out it’s really just a show about found family and overcoming trauma and developing healthy friendships with people and UGH. UGHHH it’s so good.
I actually adore Riri lmao they’re SUCH a little shit and I very much enjoy insanely chaotic characters like that. And we start off thinking okay wow this person’s kind of an asshole for forcing a girl to get a boyfriend by taking away her cat, her favorite hobby and her favorite snack, but then we find out OH, they’re just a cog in a corporate machine and they don’t really have much of a choice about it. And we slowly see Riri actually gain true affection for Anzu, and see how much they come to care about her as a person rather than just as a test subject, to the point of them actually breaking the rules of their contract just to make sure she’s safe. AND NOT JUST HER. They make sure the people she’s associated with are safe too, even if it risks them getting in Big Trouble with their boss. AND the fact that they canonically go by they/them pronouns but can ALSO transform into a boy or a girl depending on their preference, and they playfully flirt with Anzu in both forms?? It’s so good. Also thinking about the effort that Anzu goes through to make sure Riri gets to stick around;; like even tho she’d never admit it. She’s come to care for them too in some very strange way lol
And Junta;; the fact that Anzu is actually so concerned about him possibly being brainwashed into the position of childhood friend? Like she doesn’t immediately push him away or shut him down, she actually cares about him as a person and wants him to find happiness and wants to get him out of the situation she thinks he’s in. But then she finds out oh wait he actually IS a childhood friend. And he’s such a good boy. I love love LOVE how they handle the love triangle aspect in this, because obviously yes there’s a bit of jealousy, but not enough for things to get petty between him and Kazuki. They actually treat each other with respect and regard each other as friends and are kinda rooting for the other in their own way. Kind of “may the best man win” sort of thing. There’s no toxicity, there’s no classic “fighting over the female love interest” trope, they actually genuinely like each other after a bit of awkwardness enough to feel comfortable with living together and living with Anzu. They’re SO fucking sweet god dammit //shakes fists
(Honestly tho I really wish we got more episodes focused on Junta. Bc he really seemed like more of a background character and made the whole “love triangle” aspect not feel as prominent. Which is fine I guess?? But I felt so bad for him lmao)
And Kazuki 😭 My beloved. My poor sweet boy who deserves the world and everything in it. Just the build up. The subtle hints of his trauma that pop up every now and then. And when it all comes together you’re like oh!! Ohhh. THAT’S why he acts so aloof and cold all the time. THAT’S why he doesn’t like being the center of female attention. THAT’S why he gets distressed at things that, at first, seem so insignificant. THAT’S why he got attached to Anzu so quickly. And I love the way they handle his trauma, how they don’t make it seem any less important or alarming just because he’s a guy. And how Anzu’s there for him through everything 🤧 How she’s the person to pull him out of the darkness, how she stands up for him time and time again, how she just KNOWS when he’s uncomfortable and steps in to protect him. She ends up caring about him so much despite how they were set up to encounter initially. And he cares about her so much too. And I just 🥺 I care them
Also the fact how everyone came to help Kazuki when they found out what was going on. No judgement, no “you’re making this up”, no “isn’t this your fault to begin with?” They all just step in without even hesitating and support him through his trauma and immediately go “Okay we’ve got a problem so here’s our gameplan.” SEE. IT’S REALLY ABOUT THE FOUND FAMILY,
And one of my favorite things. Riri 🤝 Hijiri using their influence and power to protect both Anzu and Kazuki despite the risks to their reputation and social standing
OH AND I wanted to mention. I love that all of the classic romantic tropes i.e. something happening to your cute neighbor’s apartment so that they’re forced to live with you while it gets sorted out--those are generally really cheesy and make huge plot holes and don’t make ANY sense in the narrative. But that’s the thing about RK, they make it funny, yeah your cute boy neighbor’s apartment flooded bc we need him to come live with you. We did it with magic. Yes your childhood friend is living with you now bc we had a weirdo break into your apartment--with magic. So now he feels like he needs to stay with you and protect you. Yes you got hit by a car with a really rich boy inside and now he’s interested in you. We also did this with magic. Everything that would be regarded as a “coincidence” and is a badly written plot point just to push two characters together is actually explained through the hilarious concept of magic and I LOVE that it’s so fucking funny
Honestly this show is really up to interpretation too which I like a lot? Some people think hey yeah, maybe Anzu will end up with someone. Others say you know what the message here is that friendship is the most important thing and sometimes platonic relationships are better than romantic ones. The ending is pretty ambiguous so it could really go in any direction.
Anyway I have so much more to say but. Just watch Romantic Killer it’s really good thanks bye
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(Trigger warnings include sexual harassment/assault, stalking, panic attacks/PTSD, and attempted murder, so please take care while watching <3)
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inkskinned · 1 year
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the thing is there's like, a point of oversaturation for everything, and it's why so many things get dropped after a few minutes. and we act like millennials or gen z kids "have short attention spans" but... that's not quite it. it's more like - we did like it. you just ruined it.
capitalism sees product A having moderate success, and then everything has to come out with their "own version" of product A (which is often exactly the same). and they dump extreme amounts of money and environmental waste into each horrible simulacrum they trot out each season.
now it's not just tiktokkers making videos; it's that instagram and even fucking tumblr both think you want live feeds and video-first programming. and it helps them, because videos are easier to sneak native ads into. the books coming out all have to have 78 buzzwords in them for SEO, or otherwise they don't get published. they are making a live-action remake of moana. i haven't googled it, but there's probably another marvel or starwars something coming out, no matter when you're reading this post.
and we are like "hi, this clone of project A completely misses the point of the original. it is soulless and colorless and miserable." and the company nods and says "yes totally. here is a different clone, but special." and we look at clone 2 and we say "nope, this one is still flat and bad, y'all" and they're like "no, totally, we hear you," and then they make another clone but this time it's, like, a joyless prequel. and by the time they've successfully rolled out "clone 89", the market is incredibly oversaturated, and the consumer is blamed because the company isn't turning a profit.
and like - take even something digital like the tumblr "live streaming" function i just mentioned. that has to take up server space and some amount of carbon footprint; just so this brokenass blue hellsite can roll out a feature that literally none of its userbase actually wants. the thing that's the kicker here: even something that doesn't have a physical production plant still impacts the environment.
and it all just feels like it's rolling out of control because like, you watch companies pour hundreds of thousands of dollars into a remake of a remake of something nobody wants anymore and you're like, not able to afford eggs anymore. and you tell the company that really what you want is a good story about survival and they say "okay so you mean a YA white protagonist has some kind of 'spicy' love triangle" and you're like - hey man i think you're misunderstanding the point of storytelling but they've already printed 76 versions of "city of blood and magic" and "queen of diamond rule" and spent literally millions of dollars on the movie "Candy Crush Killer: Coming to Eat You".
it's like being stuck in a room with a clown that keeps telling the same joke over and over but it's worse every time. and that would be fine but he keeps fucking charging you 6.99. and you keep being like "no, i know it made me laugh the first time, but that's because it was different and new" and the clown is just aggressively sitting there saying "well! plenty of people like my jokes! the reason you're bored of this is because maybe there's something wrong with you!"
#this was much longer i had to cut it down for legibility#but i do want to say i am aware this post doesnt touch on human rights violations as a result of fast fashion#that is because it deserves its own post with a completely different tone#i am an environmental educator#so that's what i know the most about. it wouldn't be appropriate of me to mention off-hand the real and legitimate suffering#that people are going through#without doing my research and providing real ways to help#this is a vent post about a thing i'm watching happen; not a call to action. it would be INCREDIBLY demeaning#to all those affected by the fast fashion industry to pretend that a post like this could speak to their suffering#unfortunately one of the horrible things about latestage capitalism as an activist is that SO many things are linked to this#and i WANT to talk about all of them but it would be a book in its own right. in fact there ARE books about each level of this#and i encourage you to seek them out and read them!!! i am not an expert on that i am just a person on tumblr doing my favorite activity#(complaining)#and it's like - this is the individual versus the industry problem again right because im blaming myself#for being an expert on environmental disaster (which is fucking important) but not knowing EVERYTHING about fast fashion#i'm blaming myself for not covering the many layers of this incredibly complicated problem im pointing out#rather than being like. yeah so actually the fault here lies with the billion dollar industries actually.#my failure to be able to condense an incredibly immense problem that is BOOK-LENGTH into a single text post that i post for free#is not in ANY fucking way the same amount of harm as. you know. the ACTUAL COMPANIES doing this ACTUAL THING for ACTUAL MONEY.#anyway im gonna go donate money while i'm thinking about it. maybe you can too. we can both just agree - well i fuckin tried didn't i#which is more than their CEOs can say
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egophiliac · 2 months
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CROWLEY SSR THOUGHTS
there is zero basis for this, but I can't get this thought of my head
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I don't know why I decided to draw it this way
#art#twisted wonderland#twisted wonderland spoilers#twisted wonderland episode 7 spoilers#twisted wonderland book 7 spoilers#(these will be relevant in a moment)#this isn't going to happen. but WHAT IF.#anyway i didn't get him (damnit birdman come home) so i had to look up his story#and let me tell you friends my findings were SHOCKING#crowley canonically likes vegetables which means that the crowley is revaan theory = BUSTED#crowley is sailor venus = CONFIRMED#(i know 'whip of love' is a saying but that's where my mind always goes)#DISCLAIMER: this is (mostly) a joke please continue to hold whatever theories and headcanons you want#but look. c'mon. look over here at this whiteboard i've covered in red yarn.#revaan being a picky eater has come up multiple times and there is an entire whole bit about how much he hated jerky and refused to eat it#and now they've made a point of talking about how crowley will eat almost anything and loOoOoves wild game meat especially#it's SO stupid but i can't help but read way too much into it#(this is tumblr if you don't want to see incredibly stupid overanalysis of anime guys then why are you HERE)#and i gotta hold on to something because otherwise whenever malleus and crowley are onscreen together i just keep going 'same hair color...#unless this is like. some kind of deep cover thing.#lilia doesn't recognize him because he saw him eat a green bean once and revaan would NEVER#crowley's secret is safe for another day#(serious hat on: i do think they're probably connected in some way)#(but there's something deeper going on that we're just not clued into yet that will hopefully explain things)#man forget revaan what if crowley whips off his mask and it turns out he was meleanor this whole time#wait hold on meleanor loves jerky. IT ALL FITS...
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24bughours · 1 month
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Mini comic i drew the first panel of literal months ago and decided to finish in one sitting
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After this incident early in their friendship, Undyne would find out that
1. BOTH of the skeleton brothers can break the laws of physics, and 90% of the time its in really mundane ways
2. She IS still buffer than Papyrus, she was just shocked he had any "muscle mass" at all
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karmicpunishment · 9 months
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atsushi starts taking some college classes and meets some friends and one turns out to be one of kunikidas former students
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ruporas · 1 year
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lonely
[ID: A limited palette of green and pink, Vashwood comic. The first page serves as a prologue. The first panel shows Vash speaking to someone off screen while Wolfwood is lingering behind him. A black arrow is drawn pointing at him. In the second panel, Vash is buying donuts in the distance while Wolfwood is once again in view, lingering. and the black arrow is drawn pointing at him. In the third panel, Vash is leaving a cubicle and turning towards his right with a slightly peeved expression. He sees Wolfwood, leaning against the cubicle, waiting for him, and with the black arrow drawn, pointing at him, implicating the consistent hovering of Wolfwood’s presence during Vash’s everyday. At the bottom of the page, they’re drawn out of panel with Vash turning to Wolfwood and saying with an irritated expression, “You’re really following me everywhere, huh?” Wolfwood responds, “What, you got a problem?” Vash responds without hesitation, “Yeah, kinda...”
The second page starts with a new day. In the first panel, Vash is seen alone, weighing apples in his hands at a mart, with crowds passing behind him. In the second panel, he turns to his right and starts to say, “Hey, Wolfwood...” In the third panel, he’s startled from seeing a stranger, whom he’d accidentally called out to when he was expecting to see Wolfwood. He says, “Oh, you’re not him. Sorry!” In the fourth panel, the stranger walks off and Vash muses, “Right, he said he had something to do today...”
The third page begins with a close up of Vash's miffed expression, the continuation of Vash's thoughts, "Now that he's not here, this is just like how I used to be, but... It feels lonely somehow. Oh well, I'll see him again tonight, like always." In the second panel, it shows Vash walking through the marketplace crowd, alone. In the third panel, the door panel is a close up of the door opening with a peek of Vash's head. He says, "Wolfwood!" In the fourth panel, Vash is holding a bag of food with a bright smile and says, "Are you hungry? I got you something to eat today!"
The fourth page begins with a shot of the room, two beds being highlighted, one of them being made properly with the blanket draped over the bed and the other with the blanket folded and pillow sitting on top of it. There's no sign of Wolfwood. The second panel shows Vash with a disappointed look as he thinks, "He's still not here?" The third panel shows Vash putting the bag of food on the table. Stapled to the paper bag is the receipt with a written note "For Wolfwood." Vash's thoughts continue "He does like to stay out so, I guess there's no reason to worry..." The fourth panel shows Vash sitting his bed somberly with his thoughts continued, "It's not any of my business anyway..."
The fifth page starts with a close up his blank expression as he looks downwards, thinking, "Even if he left completely... That'd be understandable and better for him. I'll just travel alone again... like before... Huh?" The next panel shows Vash's composure break, tears welling up in his eyes suddenly, as he didn't expect to cry. He starts to sob, putting his hands to his face to quiet himself and wipe at his tears, as he says, "Ugh... Dammit... I miss h..." The last panel shows Vash leaning over into his hands, still crying, and in the back, the door swings wide open with a bam as Wolfwood walks through with the punisher swung behind him. He shouts, "SPIKEY! You in here?!"
The sixth page starts with Wolfwood confused, looking at Vash and Vash looks back, just as confused, with tears in his eyes and snot out of his nose. Wolfwood starts saying, "Ah? You..." No longer in panels, at the bottom of the page, Wolfwood takes the Punisher off of himself and starts to walk towards Vash, continuing with slight concern, "What's wrong with you? Did something happen?" Vash, hurriedly begins to wipe at his tears, denying immediately, "No! No, I'm fine! Nothing happened!"
The seventh page, Vash points towards the table, with a hand still wiping at his tears and he smiles as he says, "I uh got you food. On the table." Wolfwood looks towards to the table and responds, "Oh. I was getting hungry, thanks." He turns his head back to Vash immediately after with an uncertain expression, knowing the other wasn't responding to his concern, and says, "But, I know you're an idiot with this stuff, so I'm reminding you again. Don't brush it off if it's an issue, alright?"
The eight page, Vash's tears have dried and he looks to Wolfwood with a soft smile and responds, "Yeah. It's okay though..." A panel at the center shows a side view of Vash approaching Wolfwood. At the bottom of the page, with no panel, is a close up shot of Vash's hand, holding onto the edge of Wolfwood's jacket sleeve, as he says, "Because you're here now. Wolfwood."
The final page is a back shot of both of them standing next to each other, Wolfwood's head tilted slightly to the left, not fully believing Vash as he says, "That doesn't answer anything, Spikey." Vash responds, "There's no need to talk about it! You should enjoy your food. Let's have a drink too?" Wolfwood responds, "Tsk, tsk. Fine, yeah. I could use one." END ID]
#vashwood#vash the stampede#nicholas d wolfwood#trigun#trigun maximum#but onto this comic... i think and talk a LOT about vash's loneliness bc trigun is just. kind of central on that for a good while! esp in#the original manga he was alone for a good portion of it and he tends to keep others away like how he ran away from meryl and milly when#they tried to tag along. and he was kind of bothered when he realized ww was following him around Too. at the core even though he loves#humans and he loves deeply the people he does know -- he isnt really much of a people person and i think thats been the case since he was#young considering his initial doubts towards humans... with the exception of kids bc kids dont give him moral conflicts. so suddenly#here comes wolfwood!!! his guide. someone TRULY affixed to him until he has to get to knives. someone who isnt budging and someone whos#really good at following him around and even seems like he goes like 5 steps ahead to make sure vash doesnt run on him#in one way its - i don't want you to follow me bc i don't want to burden you and i don't want you to kill the people i want to save.#in another way its - i like this companionship. i like waking up to you and i like ending the way with you. i like talking to someone who#knows my world. i like being in your space and sometimes i enjoy talking about our day#theyre just living together. like. roadtrip buddies or theyre also under the same roof because they're going everywhere together.#trimax they mainly spend their mornings together and if they had personal business attend the other person would usually know and itd only#be during the midday. anyway bc of this kind of companionship i figure that vash eventually grew accustom to it and he really. cant go back#to the kind of loneliness from before. it's harder to imagine and it'd be harder to withstand. esp after 2 years with lina and her grandma.#ruporas art
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justsalpals · 6 months
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you ever have a scenario so engraved into the walls of your mind that you are forced to draw it on your phone despite never having done an art in your life?
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martyrbat · 4 months
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my secret confession is i think a lot of current art in comics is pretty but sometimes way too glossy and lifeless... it kinda feels like a sticker sheet where they just swap out generic stock poses that they have on hand for that character rather than the art being reflective of the actual story and moment the character is currently in
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chronically-unlucky · 3 months
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Listen, Listen I know it’s a common saying but this is a show with angels
Alastor what do you mean clipped your wings? Alastor? Alastor, open up I have questions. Open the door Alastor.
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I know this is just a silly bad quality random screencap of a screencap that I found on facebook lol, BUT it's a succinct enough image to easily describe the concept in a quick/accessible way hopefully :
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(and of course, feel free to elaborate in tags, etc.! (especially elaborating about other senses as well.. can you "hear" in your mind just as well as you can "see"? taste? etc.) It's an interesting topic to me, as someone who's like a 4.5 at MOST lol. I'm curious what option will be the most common :0c )
#tumblr polls#hrmm... a little poll perhaps.. about a subject I find interesting.. since this image came across my facebook today#still really not feeling that well. no longer shaking violently and such but I still feel weird and weak much more than usual#They did say my markers for like infection or inflammation were elevated but that they werent sure of the cause so hopefully#it's nothing too serious. they did also say a lot of different things can cause that thing to be higher than normal but didn't go into spec#fics of what. maybe some of them are relatively benign or something. I still havent felt much back to normal since#I got really sick that one time though. I feel fine on and off but then little bouts of feeling weird and sick happen. hrmmm#ANYWAY.. looking for small ways to be productive. such as little doodles on evil ipad or editing game videos#or posting polls or cat pictures or some other like not very labor intensive things#I WISH I COULD FOCUS on writing HHRGGhh... I need to finish my game.. it would be so freeing.. a project that's been looming#over my head for like 5 years even though througouht that 5yrs I've probably spent a total of 3 months working on it lo.. ANYWAY#I still partially really cannot beleive that people CAN see stuff in their heads. There's always part of me that's thinking like. well mayb#e everyone DOES see the same exact thing but we just describe/conceptualize it so differently that we think we're talking about#different things when we're really not. But I have been assured by people I've talked to about it that they can GENUINELY really see#stuff in their heads like as vivid as an actual picture in real life or something. And the other senses are neat too. Like for exmaple I#can hear in my head much better than I can see imagery. I still CANNOT hear vividly like as if I were listening to actual music out loud..#but I think it's developed more than my sight. AND interesting how this varies the creative process. a friend I was talking to on the phone#said they write by literally just watching stuff play before them like a movie. where my process is COMPLETELY different. AND that affects#the content/what details we focus on as well as our individual styles of writing have differences that can be traced back to that.. hrmm
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scificrows · 8 months
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Okay, my brain refuses to think about anything other than Murderbot, so I looked at every use of the word "friend[s]" in TMBD and... created some pie charts. Normal human activities.
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Some Thoughts™ I had while putting this together (under the cut):
In All Systems Red, Murderbot notes that the PresAux crew are all close friends (twice! and goes on to explain their internal relationships which I think is very cute). This is pretty much the only use of 'friends' in ASR, except for when Murderbot says that SecUnits can't be friends with each other.
It seems that this may be one of the first times Murderbot has ever really been around a group of friends before? Murderbot notes that this is not the norm for its contracts and admits that the fact that they are all friends and the way they interact with each other make it actually enjoy that contract (before!!!! the hostile attack, so it already enjoys this contract before they start seeing it as a person etc ghghhhh). [Inference: Friendship seems enjoyable.]
The first character that calls Murderbot its friend is ART in Artificial Condition. Murderbot immediately refutes this (and then goes on to call ART its friend to its clients for the rest of the book). [Inference: Maybe ART is Murderbot's friend. And maybe that is... agreeable]
Rogue Protocol has more than twice as many instances of the word 'friend' as any of the other novellas. Why? Miki. Friendship and its implications for non-humans are a central theme because Miki is friends with everyone. Murderbot initially scoffs at the notion that Miki and Miki's humans are friends. At the end of the book, after witnessing how desperately Don Abene tried to stop Miki from trying to save them, and her grief after its death, Murderbot has to admit that she had in fact been Miki's friend. [Inference: Humans can be friends with bots and can sincerely care about them]
In Exit Strategy, Murderbot tentatively uses the word "friends" for its humans for the first time (several times actually). It questions whether it can actually call them its friends or not and later realizes that it had been afraid what admitting that the humans are its friends would do to it. At the end of the book, Mensah tells Murderbot the PresAux crew are its friends, which is the first time a human has directly said that to it (at least on-page). [Inference: Humans can and want to be Murderbot's friends]
In Network Effect, Murderbot seems to be more habituated to the word 'friend', confidently calling ART and Ratthi its friends, like it is no longer just trying the concept on unsure if it fits. There are many instances in which other characters refer to MB as ART's friend or the other way around and Murderbot's humans refer to Murderbot as their friend several times. Generally, there seems to be less hesitancy, because yes, all of them are Murderbot's friends, why wouldn't they be. [Inference: SecUnits can have friends. This SecUnit has friends. They care about it a lot.]
Conclusion: The Murderbot Diaries tell the story of a construct that does not seem to consider the possibility of friendship for itself and is fine with that - until it accidentally starts caring a little too much and suddenly more and more people annex it as a friend (ew) to the point where it can no longer deny that this is happening and has to begrudgingly admit that yes, it has friends now and maybe that is actually not a bad thing.
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nellasbookplanet · 7 months
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The more time I sink into andromeda, the more I suspect the biggest reason it ultimately failed commercially was because of the massive tonal shift I've already mentioned, and how there was probably a pretty big chunk of original trilogy players who simply no longer fit as a demographic, while the game failed to reach the people who might’ve enjoyed it.
The original trilogy, much as I love it, feels a little bit like a wishfulfillment power fantasy for a very obvious demographic. Almost all women are overtly sexy in design and the f/f relationship in the first game seems to be written along the guidelines of 'what would a straight man find hot'; you play as someone cool and confident and powerful, the most specialest human ever, and maybe you aren’t always respected but YOU and the NARRATIVE always know you're right and you get to be rude to and sometimes punch/murder people who disagree with you so it’s fine. The game then salvages all this by means of genuinely well-written characters and arcs, really cool sci-fi tech and lore, a fantastic story, and meaningful and hard-hitting choices and consequences (which also allow and often encourage you to steer away from that exact macho ideal).
Enter andromeda. Instead of being a super powerful supersoldier from the start, you're the kid of one. You barely know what you're doing. Everyone doubts you, including yourself. You don’t get the assuredness of knowing you are Right and Cool that you have as Shepard. You don’t demand that same respect. And I'm sure there are a lot of people who hated that.
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toastchus · 6 months
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super self indulgent art🫶🏼
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skyppl-e · 2 months
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oh yeah.... im making aus now.... florist au but al haitham is a part time employee at the plant nursery tighnari owns and kaveh keeps running into him
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eddiezpaghetti · 4 months
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Okay, so my experience with Stranger Things is a weird one.
I didn't care when it first came out, started to watch it out of "might as well" in 2020, wasn't interested in it enough to make it past S2, forgot about it outside of going "oh, hey, cool, there's a lesbian in it now, I guess," in S3, got really annoyed when "Running Up That Hill" got popular from it because it was a song I listened to on fucking loop after one of my best friends died in high school and I fully expected its appearance in the show to ignore the whole survivor's guilt theme of the song (and was very happy to learn later that it did the exact opposite of ignoring the lyrics), saw people drawing Eddie, suddenly got a lot more interested, watched just the fourth season like a fucking psychopath because I was seriously only there for Eddie, then got interested enough to start the show over properly, having mostly forgotten what I did watch of the show before.
And let me tell you something from the perspective of someone who started with the complete fourth season, who wasn't there from the start, who wasn't tainted by ship goggles or this internal battle of hope and despair, who wasn't theorizing about what the painting could be or expecting Mike and Will to kiss when Volume 2 happened or rooting for Mike and Eleven's relationship to go down in flames or whatever the fuck. Just someone who went blind into Season 4.
It's really fucking obvious that Will and Mike are gonna be endgame.
Like holy fuck. It's so fucking blatant I don't even know why people are nervous.
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No sane fucking person would shoot this scene this way if they wanted the audience to care about El and Mike as a couple. Despite being all blurry in the background, Will's reaction to what's happening here is smackdab in the fucking middle, clearly showing that the important part is what's going through his head here. What he's feeling. It's like the opposite of that scene from Kingdom Hearts II where Sora and Riku reunite and Kairi just fucking vanishes into the aether while it's happening because, despite the fact that she was standing between them when the scene began, she doesn't matter to the scene, so she's just kind of gone when the camera angle changes. Will could have been behind one of their heads, or so far in the distance he blends in with the background, but he's not. He's so obvious that despite being massively blurred out, he's still the first goddamn thing you look at. What, you think that's an accident? You think he's in the middle of this dramatic fucking scene because of a mistake? He basically has a big flashing neon arrow pointing at him with "THIS IS THE POINT" being screamed through a megaphone.
And then this?
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They're paired up like they're taking fucking prom pictures. Each one of these pairs is so fucking close to one another and so fucking far from everyone else. It's not, "Oh, they're standing vaguely near each other in a group shot," it's fucking Noah's Ark out here. Again, there's no way to take this as an accident. It's not just a framing issue. If they wanted to make the shot look balanced while still not hiding anyone else behind El, they would have scattered people around much more naturally. Even if they wanted to keep Nancy with Jonathan and Hopper with Joyce, there's so much room on that hill for three people to stand on El's left and three on her right. But they didn't do that. They put Mike and Will together on purpose in the most obvious way possible.
Like I get that coming up with crackpot theories is fun in and of itself and I'm not blaming anyone for having fun. I totally get the appeal of arguing a point and reaching for every stupid little thing to pull into it because it's like a game, okay? I've done that. But if you're trying to actually convince someone (whether it's someone who wants to believe or someone who's pissed at the very idea that Mike and Will could be in love), stay away from blue and yellow lights, stay away from costume design, stay away from the existence of closets in backgrounds. And don't worry about whether Mike's gay or bi when he's in love with Will either way. I'll give you a little tip about persuasion: You're only as strong as your weakest argument. Even if you've got strong stuff in there, too, the person you're trying to convince is going to dismiss anything you say as complete insanity the second you start going on an entire tangent about the shape of a character's fucking pocket.
Sometimes, clothes are just clothes. Sometimes, there's a closet in the background because it helps establish that a character is in a bedroom. Sometimes, blue and yellow are just a couple of colors that look nice together. And sure, it might be set designers and costume designers and cinematographers smirking and winking at the audience from behind the camera. But if the show was just those things, instead of those things in the context of everything else, they wouldn't be saying anything of note.
But this?
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This tells a story all on its own. Someone with no context can look at this and automatically assume that each paired person is standing with someone they care about deeply, seeking comfort as they watch some sort of disaster unfold. And yeah, romantic couples usually come in twos, and we live in an amatonormative society, so that's going to be the first association anyone makes seeing a bunch of people paired off.
It's the same reason you look at this
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And go, "Oh..."
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"Those two are probably a couple."
And I genuinely don't understand how people could have watched S4 Vol. 2 and gotten scared. Because as someone who went in with no investment whatsoever, I just looked at these two--
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--and went, "Oh, those two are a couple. Good for them." And I moved on. Shut up about the trees for five seconds and just see the forest for what it is.
Oh, and if you're still nervous? Little thing from a storyteller here: You don't leave a hanging thread like "Will confessed his romantic feelings for Mike by projecting them onto El, but Mike either didn't understand or at least didn't say he understood," without coming back to that later. That's Chekov's gun hanging on the wall, babes. It's gonna fire at some point. If Mike was going to reject Will's feelings, if they weren't relevant, they would have had that discussion in Argyle's van. There'd be no reason to leave you in suspense.
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slttygeto · 8 days
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welcome back gojo satoru
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