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awkwardgtace · 3 months

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What are the differences between Guardian Au and original au for Melody and Kyrie? How did they meet, their dynamic, and are the guardians supposed to fight against a bigger threat?

got this ask at the perfect time since i just finished the game i was playing tonight :D

I wrote out a thing then decide to go down the list and do major differences at the end.

So how did they meet:

Melody made a comment about Kyrie's eyes being blue when she was near him on a school campus one day (probably college). He heard her and asked if that was a good thing. Started horrible embarrassment for Melody and a lot of attempts from Kyrie to convince her to give him a chance. (lots of self doubt when it comes to people with Melody.)

Siren's song AU Has their first meeting as a story, but something to bring up with it is that Melody at that point was extremely isolated. Her voice had put her and her family in danger. She couldn't risk being seen by anyone because her creepy manager could possibly find her. It took a while for her to accept that she didn't put everyone she cared about in danger just be letting them close, but that fear puts a lot of strain on how she and Kyrie interact at first. (and after he grows considering the aftermath of when she was controlled by the stones.)

Their Dynamic:

Guardian AU has a pretty fluffy dynamic compared to most others. Both Melody and Kyrie have a history of being around guardians and are suuuper used to it. Melody kind of has a blind faith in Kyrie. She genuinely doesn't believe he'd be capable of hurting her. The thing is hoping that faith never gets proved wrong. Kyrie has the same kind of trust, but he usually shows that in the mer au too. He trusts her because she trusts him. He just sees a lot less focus on her own safety he never noticed when they were the same size. It was easy to see her as brave and confident when he wasn't aware how small she looked to any and every guardian. Their relationship is more open too. Easier for them to admit their struggles most of the time. I'd say guardian AU has a much healthier relationship the mer AU

Mer AU has a much more struggle heavy dynamic. Breaking through a lot of pain and issues each has faced. A lot of mutual healing for traumas they faced. Kyrie has the biggest complex about his size in mer au. A lot more obvious hate in this one for him and his size. Melody slowly shows him that isn't true. Melody is convinced she's bad luck. That it's her fault Caprice had to stop doing sports, that if she'd listened she wouldn't be isolated how she is. Even blames herself for Kyrie and what he'll be later. Kyrie does a lot to teach her that she isn't and that she's allowed to be happy with the people around her. Their happy moments show a lot of the trust they build together. Kind of glimpses to what the guardian au relationship already has.

Guardian AU Why guardians exist?

I have had a document in the works for a lore drop like mafia au and I'm stuck on the dumbest part of it (spoilers it's the name for smallest guardian class. something, titan, colossus. I'll figure it out eventually though ideas are welcome. Genuinely considering giant rn lol)

Anyway, yes they exist to defend against bigger threats. Evolutionary protection for humans on a planet that had threats. Basically humans are small, but the planet isn't. There's environments that match each public class of guardians. Originally guardians would be pure defense against predators, which is the origin of the name lol. Then when there was enough they would go get necessities from the larger environments. Evolutionary need has kept the guardians popping up, but it's still kind of just a common ancestor trait so the government haven't found a way to tell if someone will be one. Just locked it to a general age range it can happen.

Kyrie is literally just in an extremely populated city where guardians do pop up frequently. The goal being to stop any from causing trouble while growing or if the 'wrong' person grows. Especially with the changes to memory that could encourage some people to see the average human as something lesser. Generally the days of pure protection have passed, but that still holds the main focus of most of their jobs.

Now the differences in the relationships for siren's song and guardian au melody and kyrie:

Biggest is Melody's blind faith. She doesn't have that in the siren's song universe, but she could after enough time which might be relevant to something I'm working on

Kyrie's comfort in his relationship with Melody is a difference too. He's a lot more confident as Melody's partner in siren's song since he has that promise of 'destined' backing him. There's no one better for her, but guardian au has a lot more insecurities about staying once he grew. Especially since most of the time relationships between a guardian and the average human only works when the guardian can take the medicine without pain.

Time of their relationships is different too. Melody and Kyrie for guardian au had already been to a point of living together before she went away for work. Basically the size difference was viewed as an added roadbump to an established relationship rather than a uphill battle to starting one.

Melody and Kyrie are different in the two universes too. Guardian!Melody is a lot more well adjusted. She has her traumas and struggles, but not to such an extreme. This Melody has friends and people to rely on outside her brother and Kyrie. People who support her and her choices that lets her feel confident enough to have the blind faith in Kyrie. Siren'sSong!Melody is extremely isolated. She has online friends, but keeps them at arms length. A strict distance is kept so they don't know enough to find her past. She could open up, but she doesn't know how. By the time she does, most of her life focuses on merfolk and she can't tell humans. Guardian!Kyrie had a much more normal life too. He wasn't abandoned or treated badly, his parents were pretty decent. Until he became a guardian, but that's another story. For the most part he's formed his own push to isolate himself out of fear of people seeing him as a monster. That's something he'll work on now that Melody is with him again. He can be talked out of spirals about his own actions and what he might have done by accident or on purpose. Siren'sSong!Kyrie is terrified of hurting anyone. Even by accident. He'd run and never return if he thought he hurt Melody. It's harder to convince him that he's worthy of the trust others have for him. In a way he's much more cowardly than the other versions of him. It's all because he's been told so much how he's a danger. He's fiercer at the same time. Much more willing to be the monster than his guardian au counterpart.

Mostly the difference is just in them and their comfort with each other. I def rambled again lol. But it's a lot of just established relationship and relatively healthy lives versus new relationship and heaps of trauma. I think I covered all I could, but if there's anything you wanted to know I missed just send another ask <3

#awkwardanswers #oc lore #oc: melody #oc: kyrie #long post #lore dump #lots of stuff on these two #def helps i currently have one piece prepped to post and another wip about them right now #in said aus too lol #ty for the ask as always <3 <3 <3 <3

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cyvonix · 22 days

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Cyv Reads Homestuck - Act 4 Wrapup

... So I just finished Act 4.

Ummm..... How do I put this ... ....

I genuinely do not know how to put into words the intense feeling of excitement and satisfaction I am feeling. But I guess I'll try.

Let's just get it out of the way right away, best end of act animation yet, like hands down. The level of artistry, the dynamism of the camera and the animations, the excellent Toby Fox track, (I see now that bro knew how to use a recurring motif even before Undertale) it was just perfection. What an incredible way to finish off an incredible section of this story.

I'm going to hold off on going in depth into things like theories and predictions, because I feel I do plenty of that on my smaller liveblog posts and frankly it's getting so complex that if I were to lay them all out in a sufficient manner this post would be entirely too long for my liking. I would like to talk about some of what this act made me feel, however.

Something that was present in small doses previously but in Act 4 has been fully assimilated is the elevated way that everything is presented. Cinematic, I suppose, is one of the words I could use to describe it. But I feel it's more than that. It feels as though the team who put this together - obviously Hussie, for the greater proportion, but also those he worked with - had, by this point, entirely gotten a grasp on how to tell a compelling narrative with this particular format. The obtuse references and forum humor have been stripped back and toned down, not to the point where they are gone entirely, but enough that everything feels a bit more accessible, existing more as a part of its DNA, rather than its backbone. Instead, that space is filled with more authentic and illuminating characterization than we've seen at any part of the story so far.

In the way that a voice actor may settle into their role after a few seasons, by this point Hussie has mastered his already impressive knack for writing the unique voices of these characters and letting them just kinda bounce off of each other in ways that, despite being entirely silly and in the context of a science fiction epic, just feel so real, dude. Like, fuck, I love these characters. I didn't feel that way until this act, really. Sure, they had many funny and charismatic moments in the past, and I've gradually warmed up to them over time. But in this act, the veil (lol) really gets pulled away more than it has before, and what gets revealed is genuine connections between these friends, friends that are snarky and sarcastic and snippy with each other, but friends who care about each other, and are interesting, passionate people. Even the trolls, who could have easily remained joke characters and nothing more for this entire act without basically any issue, have been treated with the dignity of allowing more than one aspect of their personalities to peek through, surely to be explored further later in the story. For fucks sake, the faceless adults, only seen from the context of the kids before this point, have even begun to receive some genuinely compelling revelations. I love these characters. All of them.

The lore/world aspects of Act 4, as I mentioned, are far too complicated for me to fully get into here. But what I will say is that this part of the comic has fully sold the grand scale of the overarching narrative. Whether its the greater knowledge brought forth by the trolls, or the ability of the animations to showcase how many moving parts are at play here, things have been set up with an astonishing amount of style. Getting further glimpses into this strange system of planets has been beautiful and fascinating, and the twists and turns in the development of Jack Noir as our apparent main protagonist have been enticing. Jack is certainly intimidating, and ruthless to boot, so the story has done a great job of setting up a looming threat to build toward, especially taking into account the ominous revelation of The Reckoning. On top of this, the time fuckery has hit an all time high, but despite that, its integration into the story has felt more natural than ever, and maybe it's just me getting used to this bullshit, but it's honestly starting to feel easier to wrap my head around. And even if not, it's extremely fun to watch pan out.

All this said, I remain super excited to continue. Again, if you enjoy hearing what I have to say about any of this, whether you're an old fan or maybe even joining me for your own first time, please, talk to me about it! Lemme know what you think, or what you thought, about all this crazy shit. I absolutely love having discussions and hearing from people who are veterans to this world compared to me. It makes my day to see that someone can reinvigorate their interest in this through my experience. I gotta go to bed (writing this at like 3 am) but man I wanna start Act 5, and of course will post more updates when I do. TTYL <3

#cyv reads homestuck #act 4 #homestuck #homestuck liveblog #homestuck spoilers #homestuck act 4

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scottxlogan · 1 year

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Hello. Other anon inspired me to come out of the shadows as well to send an ask. Love your blog and scogan stuff. Thank you for posting ❤

I was wondering if you had any recommendations on where to start in the comics concerning Scott and just the x men in general? I enjoy the movies, but I want to know more about him via the comics. I feel it would help me write him better in fanfic (also give me more scenarios to write him in lol!). Also could you suggest ones where he interacts with certain members like Logan, Jean, Ororo, Warren, etc? I feel like that would help write better scogan and his other relationships better as well.

Apologies if this a big ask! Comics come be pretty nerve-wracking to get into (especially when their are bad writers involved and you don't know to avoid them).....

Thank you so much!!!

First of all anon thank you so very much for reaching out! You have no idea how much this warms my heart to see people asking about Scogan as a lot of the time fandom can be pretty quiet so thank you for your kind words! I'm so happy that you enjoy the content on here. My archive is full of Scogan goodies from the movies, comics, etc. and if you ever want to look around at some of it in some down time, you can look directly by going here and it will direct you to everything I have tagged Scogan (warning it's a lot lol)

That being said in terms of comics obviously I can see how it is just overwhelming in general. These are in no particular order as I'm going off the top of my head on this, but they are worth reading if you are looking for Cyclops related stuff.

The recs I'll give you under the cut here:

Cyclops/Scott related comics: X-Men Origins: Cyclops (2010) This is a one shot that gives you a brief overview of Scott's life leading up to him arriving at the school with Charles. Various comics have kind of changed around his story every now and then, but I think this is a nice one shot to get you started on seeing a glimpse of young Scott.

X-Men: First Class (2007) I personally haven't read this one in full although I have seen panels from it, but it centers around the original first class crew (Scott, Jean, Warren, Hank, Bobby) and it seems to be a comic people enjoy. It would give you a glimpse of the team dynamics in the early years and how they interacted with one another.

All New X-Men (2012?) by Bendis. Now I'm not going to lie this one is a mixed bag for me because I absolutely hate a lot of what goes on in this time period, but the reason why I mention it is because adult version of Hank has basically decided to get revenge on adult version of Scott for the events leading up to Schism/AvX (more on that later) so he comes up with a brilliant plan to bring the teenage versions of the X-Men into the future to I guess see what they adult versions have done. I personally feel like he did it to be a jerk and torture Scott, but in the same breath it does establish time displayed teenage Scott learning about the future ahead of him in leading into the Cyclops solo below where he goes on space adventures with his estranged dad, which given that he's a kid out of time you may need to read this one to understand why Scott from the past is hanging out in the future.

Cyclops (2014) teenage Scott gets to hang around with his space pirate dad and bond. It's fun, probably doesn't stick as it goes on in canon since eventually (spolier alert) the teens get sent back to their time to right the wrongs that took place, but at least it gives Scott the opportunity to spend time with his dad and live a little more than he did at the school with Charles.

X-Men: Marvels Snapshots Vol 1 1 This one is a one shot that really just features a young Scott who idolizes and finds hope in admiring Reed Richards. It's a great read and gives you a glimpse into young Scott's mind again to really explore his teenage years for a snapshot if you will.

Scott/Logan related recs: Let me preface this by saying I will not get to cover everything, but some of these are great with some memorable moments with Scott as a leader with his team and him and Logan doing what they do best working together: Astonishing X-Men (by Joss Whedon) While I know Joss Whedon has a lot of problematic things going on, this comic was my very FIRST comic I picked up and I'm so glad I did. It's a great display of Scott as a leader. He's with Emma Frost at this point in time in a romance, but the team dynamics and the story really showcase how good Scott can be when he's running the show and taking his team to victory. This is a really good comic and there's a lot of snark, banter, superhero costumes and more. I enjoyed this run and it was my first introduction to Scott/Emma (which I was glad it happened here because I might have felt differently had I seen the origin of it first, but thankfully it's a good comic with action/adventure and Scott being a bad ass in leading his team. Prelude to Schism: Now let me start this by saying that I absolutely HATE, HATE, HATE what Marvel did in Schism (which a lot of people dub Scott and Logan's divorce arc), but...to deny that there is a silver lining in some of these subtle moments in the calm before the storm would be a shame. It's a mini-series where it explores the dynamic of Scott's relationship with those closest to him from Charles, to Magneto, to Emma and Logan. It's a really good read and you get some great Scott/Logan moments in it. They were so solid together by the time this mini was over that you should've known they were going to wind up in a bad place in the not so distant future. X-Men Schism (aka the bitter divorce that was so out of character for Logan it hurts) This series really makes me want to scream at Logan. I love him, but it felt like a cash grab to split the team into two so they could sell two different comics with Logan leading one team and Scott leading the other, which of course they did, but for all it's faults the very first issue of this with Scott and Logan is WONDERFUL. You really get a sense of what they are to each other and it's really good with Logan being there for Scott in what he needs to do. It rapidly goes down hill as they reach a breaking point, but that first issue...it's pretty good. A lot of people would recommend the Dark Phoenix saga as well as that's the big one they do and mess up in the films, but that's entirely up to you. I have much more to say, but I'll have to put it in another post since I write too much lol (To be continued here...)

#scogan #wolverine #cyclops #scott summers #james howlett #logan #x-men #comics #xmen comics #comic recs

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dragontamerno3 · 3 minutes

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DS9 S2 E8 - Necessary Evil

Not sure how I feel about this episode, tbh, and it some ways that makes me feel like a grump lol. A lot of it was good but there were some moments that were lacking that kinda made the rest feel like a dud.

I'll start with Rom. I just said I wanted to see more of where he starts his own story and this wasn't necessarily it, I know, but I do appreciate how much they're showing he's smarter than most folks give him credit for. And each time Rom was on screen this time around I actually enjoyed it, unlike basically every other episode. Rom was absolutely the highlight of this episode. I'm looking forward to more of THIS Rom.

I also really liked the glimpse into the past that we got to see and how Odo got his name. I liked how we got to see how he met Kira and how their relationship started. I know I'm jumping ahead a bit but at this moment I'm kinda mad that they supposedly hook up later cause I really do enjoy the best buds dynamic they have and wish more shows would just let a man and a woman be best buds.

It was kinda neat to see the origins of "Constable" as well.

Another thing I enjoyed was how Odo misjudged Kira and thought she was cleared of the murder and how she managed to lie to him all those years and he was actually surprised by it. And then how he accepted it without issue. She's his ride or die and I think he's hers, or at least Jadzia and Odo are hers lol

What I didn't have any interest in was the main plot of this. It was fine, I guess, but it really and truly just felt like it was the train that was going to get us from A to B and nothing more. Yes that's how stories work but this wasn't as... immersive? Dunno how to explain it beyond this episode was railroady and I didn't enjoy that part.

It didn't feel like there were actually any consequences. Quark was shot, sure, and maybe when this came out I might have been worried about his safety, but honestly I just wasn't. Nothing about it felt urgent. It didn't even grab my attention in a "I know he'll survive but HOW does he do it" kinda way. A couple episodes ago when Jadzia lost her symbiote I knew she'd get it back but I was actually very interested to see how they got there. In this episode I just wanted to hang out in the past and nothing from the present mattered.

6.5/10, it's saved from a flat 6 because of Kira and Odo's interactions and Roms smarts

#star trek #star trek ds9 #ds9 #star trek deep space nine #watchalong #kira nerys #odo ds9

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papers4me · 3 years

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Fruits Basket Manga Review , ch 110

The writer doesn’t need to rush to akito (antagonist) & give us quick background exposition & escalate her mentality to the exploding moment, simply cuz tohru (the protagonist) isn’t emotionally in her most vulnerable moment yet. Tohru’s issues will be presented deeper with each pov chapter she’ll have. So what should the writer do now?

This is a connected plot, meaning the emotions belonging to the previous chapter are still lingering & needs to be dealt with. There is no stupid laughing & cooking or even dumber momentarily amnesia. Nope! There is this:

-The Art of Writing Slow-Burns: (Lingering Emotions:)

Last time kyo hugged tohru thro the sheets. sth he wouldn’t do if it weren’t for the heartbreaking moment of tohru’s tears & the reason behind them. Why wouldn he do it? cuz he believes he’s the reason of her pain & is setting his mind on leaving her & being imprisoned as a punishment. He wouldn’t do it cuz he loves her but he did it cuz he loves her. why? cuz love is illogical. Kyo’s heart moved him effortlessly to embrace her & “ his tenderness covered her pain” as the writer put it at the end of ch109.

Last time tohru hugged kyo thro the sheets, sth she wouldn’t do if it weren’t for the comfort of his warmth enveloping her loneliness & providing safety & a home. A home can a person. Why wouldn she do it? cuz Tohru is someone who hides pain behind a smile, someone who thinks she’s ugly & unlovable cuz she’s grieving still after all this time. She’s thinks she’s a burden. But here she confessed to kyo unprompted or advised by anybody. He only asked a fleeting question. but tohru cant hide who she is friom him anymore. Still, he accepted her & tenderly held her thro the sheets & she threw her body at him, she initiated the hug.

The sheet hig is the biggest emotional moment between kyo/tohru yet. It altered how they feel for each other cuz in that moment tohru’s mask fell & kyo was the most honest with himself emotionally. That’s not sth you move from with the stupid ED song. They both try to carry out normally afterwards cuz they live together after all. The slightest touch brings..... sexual tension!!! it was so bad poor yuki left the house running!!!!!!!!

The writer cleverly escalates the sexual tension as they awkwardly try to find a talking topic, then dissolves it a bit when kto asks if tohru wants to go out together & where, then escalates it when tohru suggests buying eggs cuz she’s awkward, then dissolves it when kyo grumpily agrees but this is just grocery shopping” not a fun going out”, the escalates it when tohru said she’s happy for just bring together with him regardless of the location & kyo looses it! sexual tension explodes!

The target of the slow-burn isn’t the characters... the target is the audience! the writer plays with their emotions & cleverly puts the audience in a place where they desperately want these two idiots together but still remember why they aren’t! that’s very important. Having the readers cheer for a romantic relationship includes the readers understanding the obstacles ahead & how big they are & still cheer. If the obstacles are meh~ the readers will find the couple unrealistic, if the obstacles are so big & the couples emotions aren't buildup properly, then the couple themselves will feel meh~. Glad kyoru survived such writing mistakes both manga & anime ( anime hurt their characters more than their relationship).

-Yuki wants to move on from the unofficial son third wheeling his mom & her man:

The writer jokes abt yuki admitting he felt as a son watching his mon & her bf. I love tha this joke becuz it cleverly addresses the following points:

it is cleverly weaved in with the kyoru incident from last chapter. Sth happen & yuki doesn't know what is & doesn't want to! Yuki represents the audience I talked abt in the slow-burn point above. He is us. He’ll cheer for them to be together & will be so frustrated when they can’t. It adds to yuki confronting kyo at the climax!!! You see in the anime kyo/yuki stopped interacting much in se03. Then tada~~ big fight when it’s a must! & can’t be escaped... Here we still have kyo/yuki moments despite each boy moving away from his issues being the fault of the other. Basically better writing.....

The writer cleverly used this to address that yuki still feels like tohru’s son sometimes despite being more independent now, which is natural as you cant switch ur feelings with a button. But also the writer doesnt stay in this moment long & use it to build the next moment.. yuki/Aya , yuki/machi & aya/mine.... sadly all there dynamics are shortened in the anime like kyoru’s.

-I don’t think yuki/Aya moment suffered much from the cuts, the entire school parents meeting ep us enough to reconcile the brothers. Aya defended yuki that day & so did yuki. He completely accepted him & stood up to him in front of the mom.

- More aya/mine would’ve been good to see & I would’ve preferred it to yuki/motoko moments in the anime that served nothing. but aya/mine too are stand alone story. They’re the most alike couple in a healthy way. Aya is the guy who protected his woman the most. simply cuz he’s the snake. snakes are secretive. he kept her to himself, even from yuki!!! impressive.

- What I lament from the cut of this mini yuki adventure?

1- This: ( yuki’s facial expressions) This is sth the anime fears, either cuz (a) pretty yuki is 100% pretty all the time, so no expressiveness cuz it leads to showing eyebrows & hiding them under layers of hair is the A.B.C of pretty characters... (b) Yuki in the anime is a prince 98% of the time, except with kyo (they got rid of this in se03 & give them one honest/ugly moment together) & with kakeru (one tiny moment in se03 in match’’s focus ep & then quickly back to prince yuki!)..., ugh!!!!!! I hate how yuki is prince thro & thro in the anime!!that’s why they couldn’t get rid of any motoko content!!! he’s a prince there... heck! school girls float after him the graduation ceremony... what’s up with that!! lol.

2-. This: ( machi with the toy that tohru/kisa/kagura/momiji & kiro like! so cute!!! also, foreshadowing yuki’s future chosen extended family! (his bro & his wife), (yuki & his wife) & best friend/his brother in law! Also, yuki is so himself! no glitters, no bubbles & no pretending anger! <3

Side Notes:

The lovely @mizzraynelly made notice kto’s speech in ch109 abt not vising his mom’s grave! Even tho it’s such a minor line, it’s one of the biggest cuts that foreshadow the accumulation of kyo’s guilt towards his mom. Kyo’s thing is guilt towards ppl he loves & fear of hurting them, by keeping this feeling alive in readers’ minds, the writer is making sure that the climax will hurt like sharp knives cuz the readers are on the same wave liength as kyo!!! epic buildup consists of tiny subtle pieces!

Luckily, kyoru as a ship felt so strong in both manga & anime despite the later cutting half of their moments. Why? cuz the chosen cuts didnt affects the romantic relationship...no... the cuts affects the characters’ own personal struggle... most precisely tohru. Kyo’s own character struggles had better luck in the anime despite the cuts, simply cuz (a) was drawn with very expressive emotions & the anime team lingered on them in his scenes. (b) His character design as a whole was very expressive, the anime team didnt give him constant wide eyes like tohru & didn’t fear expr4essivness will affect for his “beauty “ like yuki. (c) kyo was given one ep per season for his issues which altho not much but way better than tohru (d) most important: kyo’s issues are very universal & very relatable” feeling guilt, mistakes & choosing wrong. That’s sth we all do!!! Tohru’s thing is grieve: this is very personal & most ppl experience it differently.

I love kyo’s oufit!!! we have a hint of this moment in se03, ep 10 when yuki was fighting kyo... but they made yuki see them shopping as opposed of him seeing them being sexually charged!

I’m so mad this kyoru moment is cut!!!!!! tohru as a woman with pending sexual emotions is so refreshing & underrated in the trope of “ girl saves guys”. Also, it contradicts the pure mom image that’s been suffocating her since se01 ep 1!!!!! oh now i know why it’s cut... That’s why! momma tohru is so pure for such things & only when it’s the last two eps, then will allow her to be a woman choosing to live away with her man by her own desire! Why the anime only allow things ti happen when there’s no escape!!! I’ve always felt tohru/kyo is the type of couple to be expressive emotionally & sexually with each other based on seeing that ALL of their romantic interaction involves body language & I’m so happy there’s a canon proof so early before the future glimpse in finale!!!!!!

I liked the aya-story, but it felt like the typical “ lesson of the day” formula, so I didnt analyze it much, but I enjoyed the brotherly interaction so much!! It had a gold mine of yuki being himself & so nit a prince! Im so happy I saw it! <3.

Every time yuki looked expressive is a happy moment for me!

#Fruits Basket #anime only #fruits basket manga #manga review #manga spoilers #sleepy paper #ch 110

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daz4i · 3 years

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if you're up to it later (i really do hope you get good sleep!) please do an analysis on akaashi? thank you in any situation cause the last one was fun to read !

(sorry this took so long to answer aaaa ;v; thank you for your patience!)

thank you for this ask omg…… i love akaashi so much so i am absolutely down :D it’ll be probably way shorter than atsumu’s tho bc his place in the story is a bit more minor, esp post timeskip

once again big manga spoilers warning (mostly chapters 327-337 that i highly recommend reading both to understand what i’m talking about and simply bc they’re just wonderful imo)!!!!

so, if i mentioned his place in the story, i’ll start with that once again, just to establish necessary roles and what it means about what we know about him as a character!

akaashi is a p minor character, unfortunately. however! he and fukurodani as a whole do have this interesting role - they’re never an actual enemy for karasuno, so their arcs are way shorter, but they are characters that show up often enough to need to establish personality for some of them and story for their group as a whole, and i think furudate did this nicely by focusing mostly on bokuto and akaashi and giving a lot of insight to their dynamic specifically!

sooooo they’re not an enemy, but they do return, yeah got that. what role do they serve though? i’d say bokuto is obviously a mentor character (that changes at some point but yeah), but what does that make akaashi?

honestly, when it comes to the protags, he’s more of a supporting character, there to fill some gaps and give breaks from the main story. maybe serving a minor mentor role by helping out in the third gym arc, but he doesn’t actually do any mentoring tbh? not that it’s a bad thing!

i guess you could. you could. you c. akaashi is. you can say that akaashi is. akaashi is- he’s the protagonist of his own world-------

^fr tho, that’s p much his role imo? like, in fukurodani’s arcs, especially the mujinazaka match (which i think is their longest and imo deepest arc for them??), akaashi is the closest thing the story has for a protagonist. we see his thoughts, his feelings, his flashbacks. like damn even bokuto’s flashbacks are like 80% from akaashi’s eyes (he also has another temporary minor role i will elaborate on later).

while we don’t get to see a lot of his psych, this structure does allow us to dive a bit more deeply into the amount we do get.

and what we see is, and i say this with all the love i can muster, a mess™.

like, there’s a reason he highkey breaks down in the mujinazaka match. his mind works,, so much?? we got glimpses into that before, but they were mostly humorous and just shed light on his dynamic with bokuto rather than a lot about akaashi’s personality (it did show that he’s the worried type, puts a lot of care into making sure his team is okay, and does so in an orderly manner like how he numbers bokuto’s weaknesses, for example. basically that he’s 1 very caring 2 willing to take responsibility over other people for their own well being).

this match did show us some more: he’s insecure, he’s overthinking, he feels a heightened sense of responsibility - way more than we’ve seen before that - and guilt due to that. he’s more determined than we’ve seen him be before, probably because of that sense of responsibility (the whole “this is a match we definitely can’t lose” thing is honestly mostly him putting immense amounts of needless pressure on himself, and bokuto justifiably calls him out on that both during and after that match).

akaashi is very logical, but he tends to get lost in his own head and drown in that same logic. that’s why he’s thinking ahead, and planning so many different scenarios and how they’ll happen, but this is why he eventually falls - things don’t go as he plans. he even calls himself out on it when he’s eventually benched, with the whole “the unthinkable happened, i felt as though i controlled bokuto-san”, which tbh i think is so good for him and why i think this arc is also akaashi’s personal character arc that helps him eventually learn and change

also, as i promised, i think his other minor role in the story is to serve - along with other setters in the story - as a mirror to kageyama

specifically because of his insecurities, his whole “i’m not as good as kageyama or atsumu” inner monologue, and because kageyama on the other hand thinks super highly of akaashi and sees him as this setter he needs to live up to, and one he gets jealous of hinata for practicing with (man this sentence was hard to phrase).

unfortunately, though the timeskip i dunno if we really get to see much of akaashi’s character develop or seeing other sides of him, but we do see he’s still as analytical as before, but that instead of trying to force bokuto into terms he can personally understand, he just goes with bokuto’s personal logic (tbh at this pace i’d need to write a whole separate analysis on their dynamic specifically lol), which i think shows he became at least a bit looser and a bit more okay with being,, less in control than before, in a fittingly subtle way!

thanks for coming to my ted talk. stan akaashi

#haikyuu!!#akaashi keiji #character analysis #dan rambles #these are fun to write tbh 👀 i'd love to do more if people are interested!#this one specifically might be lowkey messy bc i did write it in two parts technically sorry!!!#dontsmileatstrangers

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murasaki-murasame · 4 years

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Thoughts on Fruits Basket 2019 2nd Season Ep22 [”That’s Not What I Want”]:

This week, we get a continuation of The Mom-Zonening [tm] as emotional revelations and development heat up, and the we get closer and closer to the final act of the story.

Thoughts under the cut.

Continuing with the usual pace of the anime, this episode covered chapters 86 and 87. Next week should just cover the next two chapters to finish off the Cinderella arc, and then we’ll have to see what they plan to do with the last two episodes of season 2 to wrap things up.

In a lot of ways this was basically a transition episode, covering the rest of the Yuki backstory content, and beginning the Cinderella arc. Which kinda makes it a bit awkward to talk about, since the majority of the Yuki backstory stuff happened last week already, lol.

It was still a really good episode, though, and having multiple things going on with it helps it be more dynamic than an episode singularly focused on one topic, even if it makes it less neat and tidy to talk about.

And on the other hand this episode had all sorts of set-up in general for future plot points and character development, so that’s also a lot of stuff that I’ll just wait to talk about until the story gets to it. Like how we got even more foreshadowing about Kyo having known Kyoko when he was a kid.

Anyway, while the last episode focused really heavily on Yuki’s childhood, and showing how he became the sort of person he is now, this one focused more on him explaining his current state of mind, and how he feels about Tohru. Basically the gist of it is that he’s mom-zoning her, but basically he just found himself latching onto her emotionally because he’d never experienced the sort of unconditional love and support that he specifically associated with the image of a mother because of how his own mother was so neglectful and distant with him. And he feels pretty strongly about the idea that being in a romantic relationship with someone who he has that sort of specific emotional bond with would make him feel lonely, because it’d mainly be about him being on the receiving end of all the emotional support in the relationship, while he more or less puts Tohru on a pedestal.

The idea of him not wanting an ‘unequal’ relationship based largely around one-way emotional support ends up being one of my nitpicks with where things end up with him later in the story, but I’ll get into that when it’s relevant, lol.

He also straight up spells out how a lot of his previous flirting with Tohru was just him overcompensating, and doing what he felt socially obligated to do, and in a lot of ways I kinda feel like the author tries to have her cake and eat it too when it comes to Yuki’s princely nature, but it’s nice to have it laid out so clearly that he was just faking it.

We also get one of our first good glimpses at how Yuki’s character development is slowly changing his relationship with Kyo, and how he’s becoming way more apathetic about their whole conflict now that he’s done all his soul-searching and acknowledged at least most of why he dislikes Kyo so much, whereas Kyo hasn’t really started examining his own feelings and emotional complexes, and it’s pretty obvious how much he really doesn’t like how Yuki responding to his anger with apathy forces him to acknowledge how forced their whole rivalry is.

It also really goes to show how little they each know about each other, in spite of technically being family members who’ve known each other since they were kids. Kyo genuinely believes in his mental image of what Yuki’s life is like, and it’s hard to blame him, when so much of Yuki’s childhood trauma happened behind the scenes, and he never really opened up about it to anyone until literally just now.

Basically this is the start of Yuki switching into ‘I have decided that I’m gonna stop giving a shit about all this nonsense’ mode, and it’s probably my favourite part of his whole arc, lol.

And on the topic of Kyo, a lot of his scenes in this episode are there to start heavily setting up for all the character development and spotlight he’s going to be getting from now on. I know a lot of people have been complaining about Yuki getting so much focus for basically this whole season, while Kyo’s been left relatively ignored, but this is pretty much officially where things start switching more over to Kyo. The material season 2 covers is pretty Yuki-focused in general, but season 3 is going to be much more focused on Kyo [and Tohru], so that’ll be nice.

Also, the scene with him thinking back to Kyoko makes me think even more that it’d probably work really well to end season 2 with her whole backstory arc. I don’t think that arc really gets into her meeting Kyo, but I think it’d still be a fitting place to end the season.

#murasaki rambles #fruits basket #I'm just joking about the mom-zone stuff I just think it's really funny lol

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hirazuki · 3 years

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Ooo I'm curious about your hot takes on the Inuyasha reboot after reading your tags 👀

Ahaha, where to start XD Idk if they are hot takes, but here are my thoughts in bullet point form for coherency, I couldn’t figure out how else to organize them. Under a cut, as usual, because it got lengthy... as usual :D

We are 13 episodes in, and I still have no idea wtf is going on or what the series is actually about. And yes, I’m aware that we didn’t know of Naraku’s existence or of the overarching plot until at least episode 16 of that series either and Inuyasha was still very episodic in nature at that early point too, but here’s the thing: Inuyasha did not build upon a pre-existing series. For better or for worse, Yashahime has certain expectations to live up to that the original anime didn’t, by virtue of its being a sequel. Unfair? Maybe, but tough; that’s what happens when you make a sequel. Additionally, despite us not knowing The Main Plot™ of Inuyasha until later, the basic framework for it was laid out clearly by... episode 2? I think? Find and collect the Shikon Jewel shards. Boom, done. Were there distractions or fillers? Sure, but you never got the sense that the characters simply up and forgot about the shards. Even in fillers, the shards often made some kind of appearance. With Yashahime, there’s like three potential storylines going on: 1. The most obvious: most of our main cast from the OG is missing; where are they? Apparently no one in-story cares! :D Inuyasha, who’s that lol. I’m all for a sequel focusing on the new generation with cameos of the old crew; after all, they already had their own series. But this is like... no one cares about them? No one talks about them? And the more characters go about not mentioning them, the stronger their absence is felt. Like, for instance, Kaede knows Moroha is InuKag’s daughter. Moroha grew up on her own, doesn’t know her parents. Kaede doesn’t mention them to Moroha, doesn’t even spare a passing thought about them for the audience’s benefit, Moroha doesn’t ask. Kagome’s family in the present day meet Moroha, recognize her as Kagome’s daughter and... say nothing??? Souta shows Towa Kagome and Inuyasha’s old photos, but doesn’t say a word to Moroha?! Like. It makes no sense. By people not even acknowledging their existence, it makes the fact that they are nowhere to be found even weirder. Also the new gen girls don’t care about their parents or finding out who they were/are... like, okay, it would maybe be in character for one or two of them, but all three don’t give a fuck??? 2. Kirinmaru/the rainbow pearls: Idk how familiar you are with the story, but similar deal with Naraku and the shards here. Kirinmaru is being set up as the villain, still a mysterious figure; our new gen trio is supposed to collect the rainbow pearls that... some of his henchmen have? Or he is after them? Or is that Riku? Unclear. ANYWAY the new gen girls often forget all about the pearls’ existence :D 3. Setsuna’s memories: Setsuna’s dreams have been stolen by the dream butterfly and they need to get them back, because without her dreams she has no memories and is unable to sleep. Cool! Finally a solid, easy-to-follow plot line! Except wait! Towa, who supposedly made it her goal to get Setsuna’s sleep back, forgets all about it! All the time! Like, none of them make an effort to look into this other than being like “oh yeah, know anything about the dream butterfly?” to random folks every now and then. The Inugang back in the day was putting some grad school level research towards their goals, just saying. It just feels like everything’s all wishy-washy and there’s nothing really solid tying the series together. People just remember shit exists when it’s convenient.

Character development is MIA. I’m not expecting ground-breaking char dev in 13 episodes (though I do know 12 episode series that were phenomenal in that regard), but like... I do expect the series to focus on building the dynamics between the main three characters. So far, the series is more focused on teasing the audience with glimpses and promises of the OG cast instead. The creators are using nostalgia and bait (esp of a certain pairing) to drive interest in the series, rather than developing the new characters as fully-fledged characters for their own sakes.

Moroha is was the only thing I actually liked about the series. She is a little spitfire and you can somehow instantly see both Inuyasha and Kagome in her, while she also remains very uniquely herself; I have never seen such a successfully developed main pairing child in any series. She featured quite prominently in the first few episodes -- and unlike both her parents, she’s got a great memory and knowledge of lore -- where she balanced funny moments with badass fighting moments and being the token supernatural encyclopedia. It was great! And then... they’ve like... forgotten her. She’s been left behind so many times by the twins. She’s the butt of every joke. She’s become the type of comic relief that’s, well, insulting. More like a buffoon than anything else. And it’s basically all for the sake of giving the floor to Towa :/

Setsuna is okay. Not offensive, but unremarkable. She’s got her dad’s personality but like way toned down due to her different growing up circumstances, which is nice, but like... I feel she isn’t given any room to grow or breathe or anything. She’s also basically there as a device to enhance Towa’s development.

Towa... oy. I tried to like her, I really did, but she just doesn’t work for me. They set her up having a very Kurosaki Ichigo type deal with beating up bullies and getting into trouble at school and shit -- I’m fine with that. That’s cool. Esp if it’s linked to not feeling like she fits in bc she’s a hanyou? Awesome. Except once she travels back in time to the feudal era it’s all “Oh killing is bad you shouldn’t kill people” and “even though they attacked me I can’t possibly hurt them” and “you need to empathize and talk things out” and “friendship is magic” and shit. It feels like she had a personality transplant, it literally makes no sense. Her design is totally nonsensical too -- out of everyone at her school, she’s the only one dressed in a bright white suit? Do protags not wear the school uniform? Someone should tell Kagome lmao. She’s a pro at hand to hand, and she can absorb demons’ powers and fling them back at them like a personified Tessaiga, and she has a lightsaber sword, and she’s immune to miasma, and -- like... you get it. It’s too much. It’s way too OP for the type of universe that Inuyasha/Yashahime is set in. She’s hanyou for fuck’s sake; remember all the training Inuyasha had to go through? When he couldn’t lift his sword? When his sword attacked him? Sango, Miroku, Kagome, even Sesshomaru all had trouble with their weapons and had to work to become stronger. But Towa? Nope. Towa is straight out of the Yas Queen/Girl Boss manual, so she gets a free pass on everything.

UGH they are doing the VLD/bad writing thing where things happen (like, BIG THINGS) and none of the characters actually react to them. Or stuff happens and there are no consequences. No one ever talks about anything. It’s wild.

Everyone has amnesia!! :D People either don’t know or don’t remember anything or anyone. People who absolutely should know things all of a sudden magically don’t know them. Like, Kohaku -- traveled with an undead priestess, spent years in the company of demons, traveled with Sesshomaru... and yet had NO CLUE that Setsuna is Sesshomaru’s daughter or that she is hanyou, despite her living and working with his team of demon slayers all this time. Like... how, man. How. And Kaede! Don’t get me started. Since when does she perpetuate random demon-boogeyman type stories as facts? Demon children will kill each other in the nest so that only the strongest one will survive, therefore Setsuna must have killed Towa when they were infants. O_O What are they, sharks? Has she been hanging out with Kisame? Wtf?? And she’s speaking about Sess’s kids as though she doesn’t know him or anything about him, when she has had Rin under her roof all these years. It just makes. no. sense.

Things that happened in the original series are happening again now! Because that’s the best we’ve got, recycled plot elements wooo! No, but really, characters that died or things that were resolved in Inuyasha keep coming back. Why? What was the purpose of bringing back Kinka and Ginka? To have a foil for Towa and Setsuna as twins? Someone please tell Sunrise they can just create new characters. Like, it’s one thing to have call backs to the original or cameos, references, whatever. But like... this is entire (dead) characters and interactions.

No one knows how long it’s been since the original series ended. Fans initially heard 20 years from promo material, then “over 15″ and “10 years since” in-series regarding two different events, and now in a future episode summary we’ve gotten 18 years since Hosenki II gave Inuyasha the black pearl. But like, which black pearl? Because the one in Inuyasha’s eye doesn’t exist anymore, but Hosenki II had told Inuyasha that it would take 100 years for him to produce one. So, are we retconning that or where the fuck did it come from? Also, this doesn’t help one bit, it just confuses things even more. Back to the point, though, we have no coherent timeline or real frame of reference whatsoever, and I’m betting it’s in large part to keep the mystery of who is Sesshomaru’s wife going, as it keeps Rin’s age very vague. Everything is vague and mysterious in Yashahime, to the point where no one knows what’s going on, in fandom or in-story even. It’s kinda like how too much plot twist/shock reveal ruins a story, too much mystery does the same. It’s insane that both shippers and antis of that ship can lay equal claim that the “18 years since” announcement works in their favor.

tl;dr: Idk man, Yashahime is a clusterfuck of a series. Even if the mother of Sess’s twins is either of the characters I ship him with, I will still not like the series. There’s no saving this writing. Every episode feels like this:

#baked-hylian #i've been wanting to rant for a while about this series thanks for enabling me! :D #i'm actually not upset about this sequel which is amazing; i thought for sure it would impact my love for the OG but nope!#it is so wild and out there that my brain literally cannot comprehend it as part of the same material #i'm just watching it out of the kind of morbid curiosity you'd watch a horrifying experiment with #and watching the fandom drama too ofc #popcorn in hand #so it's a win-win all around ¯\_(ツ)_/¯#talk: yh

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razberryyum · 5 years

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Why I love the Phoenix Mountain Hunt: an essay

(with novel spoilers)

Ok, firstly, the beautiful WangXian elephant in the room: I honestly never expected us to get the blindfolded kiss scene or anything close to that, though I was hoping for at least a mild hint at it involving Wei Wuxian being blindfolded and Lan Wangji at least somewhere nearby before they fade to black or cut- away, but I think what they gave us instead was just as awesome since it completely captured the spirit of the stolen kiss. For me at least, that blindfold scene was essentially LWJ being so overwhelmed by his feelings for WWX that he actually broke probably every moral code he’s lived by to uncharacteristically act upon his urges, pretty much taking advantage of WWX in his self-imposed vulnerable condition (although, how WWX could ever mistaken LWJ for being a female cultivationist, even if she’s especially arduous and STRONG, is beyond me…I mean, who has he SEEN at the hunt that would even fit that bill??? I probably could write a whole other essay just to figure this one out). With the “confession” scene we got instead, it feels like we basically got everything we wanted from the blindfolded kiss scene except without the actually kiss…which is pretty damn fine, all things considered. LWJ still was so overwhelmed by his feelings for WWX that he uncharacteristically almost demanded of WWX what his status in his life is and then pretty much eagerly pledged his continued devotion to him. To make things better, WWX was the one who came up with the word 知己 (more on that later) to describe how he felt about LWJ…which is actually a step up from how it was in the novel, where WWX, although aware of LWJ’s existence all of the time, mostly seemed to just enjoy teasing him for his own amusement. They definitely weren’t at the point where WWX would refer to him as a soulmate for life (and my God does it take a while to even get to anywhere near that point…not complaining but just…all the mostly one-sided pining on LWJ’s part in the novel hurt me).

I actually loved how the confession scene began with WWX immediately happy from seeing LWJ passing by and instinctively wanting to call out to him, only stopping himself because he remembered the talk he and big bro Lan Xichen had…which was not in the novel, completely original to the drama. I loved that change since that talk the two future bro-in-laws had just made me love LXC even more and also informed us further of just how much LXC is aware of his little bro’s feelings for WWX. But then LWJ was finally the one to spot WWX first and as he heads towards him, WWX has just the most heart-meltingly soft expression:

Like he’s so relieved and just happy that LWJ realized he’s there on his own so now they can finally converse. And then of course the conversation they have…so meaningful.

Now, tbh, for most of my life I thought the word 知己 actually just meant “dearest friend”, which would’ve been good enough already considering they can’t straight out say anything more intimate than that, but then upon finding out that the word can also mean “soulmate”, I was of course overjoyed. And considering the emotions involved in that scene and the way the two wonderful actors played it, along with the beautiful WangXian score coming in and their lingering looks, I don’t doubt that both LWJ and WWX did mean “soulmate”, especially considering how more developed their relationship was already by that point, thanks to the changes in the live action.

What I also love about the Phoenix Mt Hunt in terms of WangXian is just how WWX-focused LWJ was. It’s like he couldn’t take his eyes off of WWX the majority of the time, and he was constantly concerned for him. Other than the cute ribbon exchange at the beginning and the aforementioned conversation scene, my other favorite WangXian moment between them was when LWJ held WWX back while they were in hiding behind the tree, eavesdropping on Shijie and Jin Zixuan:

…because of the expression on LWJ’s face. It’s obvious he sees through Jin Zixuan’s facade, that the Jin dork is actually already crushing on Shijie, hence LWJ’s almost smile in that moment while trying to pull WWX back from ruining the two future lovebird’s alone time…

It felt like the reason LWJ understood JZX’s feelings was because he too was trying to hide his true feelings from the one he is enamored with.

And then of course there’s all the physical contact between WWX and LWJ…

Another reason I love the Phoenix Mt Hunt is because of Shijie, Jiang Yanli. I don’t post much about anyone else other than WangXian because Tumblr freaks out on me when I post about something more than once or twice a day so I have to pick and choose my loves, but I pretty much loved Shijie the moment she appeared in the live action. They could not have chosen a sweeter, more loving looking person to play her. I was already a fan of her character right from the get-go, but when she stood up for her little bro, WWX and her sect, I just about burst out crying cuz I was so damn proud of her. I wanted to reach into the screen and just hug her so much. She was simply amazing in that scene, the actress and the character, and I felt like we saw some of Madame Yu in her.

I’m still not very convinced that JZX deserves her, cuz he’s still kinda a dick to WWX, but if that’s the man she wants, who am I to deprive her of anything. Give her the world, please, cuz Shijie deserves it.

Oh and this moment, I really appreciated as well:

That look of utter fear on WWX’s face…which I feel wasn’t just due to the fact that he was worried for his Shijie’s safety, but because he knew there was no way he could protect her due to his condition. Bless LWJ again of course for coming to his rescue…which actually makes me wonder why he hasn’t said anything to WWX about his golden core considering it’s pretty obvious he knows something’s up. It’s actually still driving me a little crazy that LWJ continues to keep that to himself even though he clearly knows or is at least suspicious enough that he’s constantly coming to WWX’s rescue…during the Sunshot Campaign and now even at the hunt.

I also love of course how LWJ seems to be in constant fear that WWX would just lose it completely and then do something irreversible…which, of course we know that he eventually will, sadly, but my heart just ached on behalf of LWJ and the non-stop concern he must’ve been feeling for WWX like 24/7. I mean, leading up to the hunt, we know he was breaking sect rules to look up ways to help WWX, while WWX on the other hand got to enjoy life in Lotus Pier. All of it just makes LWJ’s words to his big bro, where he talks about wanting to just hide WWX away, that much more heart-breaking. It was already poignant in the novel knowing that he would even want to do something like that (after what happened with his parents) just to keep WWX safe, but somehow it felt worse in the live action because of all the build up to that moment, where we see how almost desperate he is to keep WWX on the right path and safe.

Lastly (omg, this thing is already 3 pages long), what I also appreciated about the Phoenix Mt Hunt is the stuff that happens to Jin Guangyao. First off, against my better judgment, every time he pops up with LXC, I can’t help but smile cuz it IS so damn cute how the two of them are like always attached at the hip…they just appeared together here…like, I guess they just ditched their crabby older bro to wander off together?…lol.

And then, when you see just how shitty Madame Jin and even that ass-weasel Jin Zixun treats JGY despite the fact that he’s basically helping them run their freaking sect now, really makes a good case for why he doesn’t feel any love for his so-called family, even before we find out his history. Not that that justifies what he does, especially considering how much he hurts those we do love, but we can see the Jins really don’t make a good case for themselves. Not to mention, at the start of the hunt, with how they use the probably innocent Wen members for archery targets, the line between the Jins and the Wens became really blurred, despite the Lanling Jin’s more angelic looking outfits. Again, I don’t get a chance to talk about this enough, but part of the reason I love Mo Dao Zu Shi/The Untamed is that surrounding the beautiful love story between WWX and LWJ there is a legit fascinating story about the world of cultivation, the sects and families within it, which is populated by characters that are just as interesting and dynamic as our two protagonists. I think the Phoenix Mt Hunt really highlights this fact by giving us a glimpse into all these different aspects of the two main stories at play in one event…and not to mention, WWX just looked cool AF doing all that stuff with a blindfold on…which is why I love the hunt so much.

Thank you for reading my thesis. I will continue to work hard to earn my doctorate degree in MDZS/The Untamed.

#The Untamed #陈情令 #CQL #Mo Dao Zu Shi #WangXian #MDZS #Phoenix Mountain Hunt #episode 25 #novel spoilers #Wei Ying Wei Wuxian #Lan Zhan Lan Wangji #Jiang Yanli #Jin Zixuan #XuanLi #Lan Xichen #Jin Guangyao #XiYao #Long post

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melodrqmas · 6 years

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This isn’t a call out post or anything but my back literally aches just thinking about the mental gymnastics it must take to see what happened in season five with Memori and to write it off as toxic, while still shipping Murphy/Raven.

Tl;dr: the biggest problem for me in this fandom, is not in fact the relationship between Murphy and Raven, but the fandom appreciation and oversimplification, along with the hypocrisy that comes with it.

Far be it for me, as an able bodied person, or anybody for that matter to tell anyone that it’s wrong or gross to ship Mur/ven. In fact, ship whoever the hell you want, regardless of their past, I don’t care. Murphy is not abusive towards Raven. Abuse implies that it is a continuous violence (either physical or emotional) is occurring repeatedly, which it is not. Thus, the relationship between the two is not “toxic” (as much as I hate the word) for that reason in itself. There’s been healing and forgiveness and they are even at a point where they can joke about what’s happened between them. I’m not saying they should, but more than once, much to my dismay, has Murphy made a few quips about her leg and Raven was visibly amused. She could get together with him if she so pleased, nobody in canon would bat an eye.

That in itself, is grounds for the fandom wide rule of “ship and let ship”. Shipping is taken way too seriously as it is. It’s cool to vibe with a dynamic, want them together romantically and even prefer them over a currently canon relationship (I’ll touch on this a bit later). The amount of interaction between these two is certainly enough grounds for a solid ship; I guarantee you are not alone and that there are plenty of transformative works for you to get your fix (some of my all-time favourite fanfics have Murphy and Raven as the main pairing). I personally don’t see it, but I’m not here to tell you what you are seeing on screen isn’t romance and you’re all delusional. I might have used to be that way, but I decided that I was a part of the problem I’m now trying to address. Like I said, fandom experience is so much more pleasant when you stop giving a shit about who disagrees with you (but if you asked I could redirect you in the ways of some A+ meta, debunking why a certain line/glance between the two, was not in fact code for “I love you. Have my children.” I digress.)

So we’re settled then. Mur/ven is not a toxic relationship, I’m baring it out because I don’t want to step on any toes in their tag, not because it disgusts me to even spell it out (if it did, I’d think of a not-so clever nickname like the rest of this fandom loves to do). A part of me, and I don’t think I’m alone on this, will always be unsettled at the idea of Raven cozying up to the person who disabled her; I hate the Shaw/Murphy/Raven cave scene a hell of a lot. But the relationship is not toxic, and it wouldn’t be even if they did hook up. I can’t use that as an argument. Fandom culture tends to label things they don’t like as unhealthy and toxic.

And that’s where I’m going with this. Memori.

I’m going to be the first person to admit where they were said to be within those last months on the Ring was Not a Good Place for a relationship of that magnitude. They were together over 5 and a half years, these problems could have been brewing for ages. In fact, I’ll even argue they have. 4x08-4x12 established their extreme codependence (”your home is with me” used to be a big favourite of mine but it has since left a more sour taste in my mouth), and 4x13 set up Emori’s enthusiasm about space contrasted against Murphy’s disdain subtly, but effectively. Both key factors in this big messy breakup.

But this notion that (M)Emori (because, misogyny.) is toxic has been around since 4x07, ever since she “put” fake!Baylis in the radiation chamber, under the pretext that “she’s a bad influence on Murphy”(uhhhhhh, lol..?). What happened previously to this same episode, you ask? Well, it was the climax to our new angsty, enemies-to-friends-to-hopefully-lovers! I’m not even going to pretend like this ship is baseless, because I do get it. They have history, baggage and their relationship is so! compelling! And it doesn’t hurt that Murphy and Raven are both very attractive and have excellent chemistry. What gets to me, though, are these manufactured, fandom wide mentalities, that make out one female character to be the villain, in order to boost another female character/ship, when the narrative is clearly showing us she’s not quite in the wrong.

You may not like Emori, her relationship with Murphy might not resonate with you. That’s okay. But throwing around big words such as abusive and toxic is not right. Memori are too on and off for you? Okay! I get that. There were a few missteps in their arc this season. That doesn’t make it inherently unhealthy, though. Emori “only wants Murphy when he’s healthy and happy”? That’s complete and utter bullshit. Point to me in the script where she’s ever said that. Interpretation is one thing, but don’t ignore canon when it’s right in front of you (that flies in fanfic; not meta). Because, as far as I’m concerned, she did not just drop him the minute his mental illness caught up to him. She says in 5.06, 24 minutes and 48 seconds in, that Murphy “pushed her away again, and again, and again.” So, clearly, she made efforts to help him and love him, but he was unable to accept it, thus causing a painful split for the both of them. The fucking thesis statement in Jasper and Octavia’s arcs have been “you can’t save someone who doesn’t want to be saved.” Tell me how this is any different.

Can you imagine how hard this was on Emori? The one person who she thought she could rely and depend on, turn on her when she was at her peak, without fully being able to explain it himself? You’ve heard all of the defence for Murphy, so I’ll spare you all of the sympathies about his mental illness, because I do love him and I want him to get better. But notice how there’s not a single person calling his behaviour towards her toxic. No one’s boycotting Memori because of how he mistreated her. You did not need flashbacks to see how he would berate her, (ha! actually that all goes away because she snapped at him and said something that hurt :( his :( feelings :(, right?) in front of everyone, how he was jealous. And we only got a tiny glimpse of that, a few minute segment. I’m proud of her from stepping away from that situation. She’s not the toxic-partner here, in fact, that’s the fucking opposite of toxic. That’s self-care. So rare is it on TV that we see this kind of positive representation, that loving yourself is more important than loving your SO. It’s raw, messy and real.

And of course, fandom has ruined it.

Basically, moral of the story is as follows: Murphy and Raven have come such a long way, have overcome their issues and are now in a place where the majority of the fandom can ship them guilt-free. Who would’ve thought two seasons ago, huh? So, why is Memori so “toxic” and to the point of no return in regards to their relationship, despite that clearly not what canon is trying to portray?

#good and fresh hot take i thought up of in class today #the 100 #the 100 meta #memori #john murphy #emori #raven reyes

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whateverisbeautiful · 6 years

Text

Richonne in Retrospect

#9: The Co-Parenting (3x12)

Y’all. 😭 This moment is like our first glimpse of Rick and Michonne co-parenting Carl. 😭 And it’s so sweet (and now super emotional) that they give off such family vibes in this episode.

So after Michonne reminds Rick that the mat did in-fact say “welcome”, 😋 Carl tells Rick he wants to go get a crib for Judith.

I feel like there’s a lot of moments in this episode that cement why Carl is beyond his years, because even for him to think of getting something practical for Judith lets you know he takes on part of the responsibility of raising her, especially considering his dad understandably wasn’t exactly in the best state when the baby was first born.

And of course he’s still a kid tho, so Rick is about to shut the request down cuz he’s not about to have Carl just go run and grab something by himself. But Carl tries again at convincing him and you can tell “no” is not an answer Carl has any intention of taking.

It’s def not a coincidence that Michonne would be brought along on this trip with just Rick and Carl and that she’s getting to see firsthand their family dynamic and personal insight into Rick trying to navigate being a single dad.

Now knowing Richonne was planned around this time, this is clearly to position her as a future Grimes family member.

And this future Grimes family member smoothly steps into the conversation when she casually tells Carl if he’s getting a crib he’s going to need the box. Carl says what and then Michonne repeats that the crib box will probably be heavy. I love that this line is a subtle way to let us know Michonne had a child.

And then she says, “You are getting a crib right?” And I love that she’s just talking to Carl like a person and not a little kid cuz she already knows he’d respond better to that than any remote babying.

And Carl, thinking he’s grown, says “That’s what I said”. Lol. And so then Michonne sort of leans in Rick’s direction to tell him she’ll go with Carl.

I love this cuz it’s such a perfect way to handle it. Like in one fell swoop she was able to let Rick know she would look out for his kid while also helping Carl’s case for getting to go. Look at her already strengthening the family. 🙌🏾

And this made me think about that deleted scene from the season 7 finale where she spoke life into both of them and it’s just sweet that this season 3 episode lays the foundation for that moment seasons later.

(Side note: If I thought that finale deleted scene should have been included in the original cut before, I really really think it should have been included now. Like how was a moment between Carl and his parents cut? I don’t understand.🤦🏽‍♀️)

And I love Rick’s look after she tells him she’ll go with Carl. Like that look just says he’s thinking “Are the three of us kind of operating like a beautiful family right now?” (Lol these are the kinds of direct quotes from the character’s minds that you can get exclusively here. #extra😋)

So then he stands up and he clearly likes the offer cuz he tells Carl, “Right there. That’s the deal”. And honestly it’s adorable cuz one; he seems pretty happy that Michonne was able to find this happy medium and two; he’s co-signing with his soon-to-be co-parent. Here for it. 🙌🏾😊

I love the mom and dad vibes given off in this scene and in this episode. And also I’m seriously going to miss story lines with the three of them. 😭 There always so good and I wish we would have gotten a lot more.

Rick co-signing with Michonne here is big cuz, if it wasn’t clear before, this confirms that Rick trusts Michonne. 💯

He knows he can trust her with his son, which is a really serious thing to trust someone with, especially in their world.

And it’s also like, since Rick knows Michonne is a safe person for Carl to be around, maybe Rick also likes this plan cuz he’s thinking Carl can spend this time with her and then give Rick the scoop on what vibe he gets from her. Which we sort of see happen when he later asks if everything’s okay with her. But I’m getting ahead of myself. 😋

Basically, it’s a big deal that Rick would let the most special person in his life (apart from Judith) go with Michonne without him there to supervise and that he so confidently agreed to let her go with him. Y’all, Homeboy trusted her before he even realized he trusted her. 👌🏽

He’s still a cautious dad tho cuz he still tells Carl to holler if he gets into any trouble. But like Carl’s with the Queen so he’ll be fine. 😌

It low key should have been the opposite, where they tell Rick to holler if he gets into trouble since he was about to be left alone with Clear-mode Morgan lol. 😂

And then we have that quick moment of Rick and those wandering eyes lol cuz he def quickly checks Michonne out before she leaves. We all see you, ‪Slick Rick‬. 😋

Again, I think it suggests that R&M are supposed to be in the phase where they’re more aware, not fully aware, but more aware of their attraction.

Also, in this episode we get this phenomenal performance between Lennie James and Andrew Lincoln. Like anytime I see this episode, the performances are just as captivating as the first time and this is legit me after I watch their scenes in this episode, every time lol...

And one thing from Morgan and Rick’s interaction that’s now made me super emotional is the moment when Morgan asks Rick if his boy is dead and Rick says no and then Morgan says, “He will be.” And he later tells Rick that him and his boy will be torn apart by teeth or bullets. 😥

It’s depressing cuz that’s literally what the engine of this show was. Rick keeping Carl alive. No matter who made Rick feel like Carl wouldn’t make it be it Shane, Morgan, or even Lori in season 2, Rick was determined to keep Carl alive and create a new world for him. Against all odds, he was going to raise his son to be an ultimate survivor.

That’s literally the show at it’s core and what we were most rooting for and the one W Rick was supposed to get, at least from my perspective. We wouldn’t have anything else story-wise had it not been for Rick’s determination to find his son since Day One. But now that driving force and that hope is being unjustly ripped away. 😔

Plus, when Morgan updates Rick on how he lost his son he says that his walker wife was standing right in front of Duane and Duane had a gun aimed at her but he couldn’t do it. And while the circumstances were very different, I feel like this was meant to parallel Carl and demonstrate why he’s a different type of kid because when the time came to take out his own mom he had the strength to do it.

I feel like this, amongst many things, suggested that Carl had what it took to beat this world, so I’ll never understand why all of that has now been taken away. 😥

But on a lighter note, the thing I love most about “Clear”, both when I first watched it and now, is that it lays the foundation for the best friendship on the show, in my humble opinion.

Because there’s been a lot of good friendships depicted in this series but the bond between Carl and Michonne really is something special. 👏🏽😊

I’m glad Rick let Michonne and Carl go on this little one-on-one venture cuz by the end of it not only would Michonne and Carl begin their path to becoming mother and son but their bond would play a huge part in Richonne as well.

I love Carl and Michonne’s story line in “Clear” and that it continues on with this theme of Rick and Michonne co-parenting. Cuz Carl tells Michonne she doesn’t have to go with him but she reminds him, “I told your dad I’ll help you”.

Watching this stuff in retrospect I keep thinking about moments that come later, like in 7x5 when Carl is trying to convince Michonne that they shouldn’t just sit and take this oppression from Negan (cuz that’s who Carl’s character is but I guess season 8 didn’t get the memo 👀) and Michonne says, “Your dad thinks differently.” And I love that by that point she’s without a doubt Carl’s mom and when she refers to his dad she’s also referring to her man. 🙌🏾

As they’re walking to get the crib, Carl thinks he’s slick and tries to pull one over on Michonne by asking her to take care of a walker while he runs off.

...But see this ain’t Lori. So you aren’t running off on Michonne. 😂 She catches up to him and again talks to him like the little grown boy he is. And she realizes that Carl has walked past the baby place to which Carl vaguely admits that he has something else on his agenda.

(Side note: Seeing how little Carl is here and how little his voice is really makes me realize how much we watched this kid grow up. 😭)

I really love that quick moment of Carl looking into the restaurant and then thinking he’s just about to waltz in and then Michonne silently shutting that down with a quickness. She’s def a mom, y’all. Cuz that was a signature mom move lol.

And then the next scene of them is Carl walking away cuz he knew not to push it with her and just run in the restaurant.

As they’re walking away it will always be so funny that in their little talk he says, “You don’t know me. You don’t know my dad.” Like just wait, Carl. She will. ☺️

And low key she knows them even here in “Clear” cuz as I mentioned before, I always got this vibe that Michonne understood Rick and Carl on a deeper level, even at the beginning.

Carl tries to reiterate his dad’s words when he says the only reason she’s here is cuz they have the same enemy and problem and that’s it, which is tough cuz Homegirl’s just trying to help.

But rather than give up, she allows her actions to show she cares and that she’s here for more than just “having the same problems”.

I love that when Carl says, “You can’t stop me” she levels with him and tells him, “Psst. I can’t stop you, but you can’t stop me from helping you”. It’s just a really sweet way for her to show Carl, he’s not going to push her away that easily. (And also one of the many illustrations that Michonne always be knowing what to say 👏🏽👸🏾)

Also she’s honestly such a strong person when I think about it cuz it can’t be easy to be around this young boy who’s a reminder that she won’t get to see her own son grow up to be this age, but instead she doesn’t push away, she allows herself to help this kid. And she’s perseverant cuz Carl was pretty determined to push her away.

There’s so many subtle hints that Michonne is a mom cuz when they’re in the restaurant and a large group of walkers come at them she immediately makes sure that Carl runs in front of her. And then when they make it out, I love that when Carl is adamant to go back for that picture she lays down the law and let’s him know she’ll help him get it if he stops playing games. Issa mom. 😋

And of course she goes back inside and retrieves his family picture with ease. Cuz 👸🏾.

It’s very symbolic that she’s involved in getting this picture of the first Grimes family considering she will be apart of the 2.0 family.

It’s like she’s both handing Carl a piece of his past while also forming this bond with him that will make her an integral part of his future.

And while it’ll be a while before Carl’s fully aware that Michonne is his second mom, it’s like this moment is saying you can still love and respect your mom while being open to a new mother figure in your life.

It’s sweet that Carl seems to be genuinely appreciative when Michonne gets him that photo. And when he says he didn’t want Judith to forget what his mom looks like. *cue internal and eternal tears* It’s precious. 😭

This moment where Carl switches from angry to kind, really reminds you that this is a little kid who has been through a whole lot and so any of that tough exterior he has seems like it comes from just trying to make it, but at his core he is still a kid. And I love that Michonne was able to reach that inner kid in Carl.

And then Michonne also gets the famous rainbow cat and I love that it’s this seemingly small moment that does a nice job of showing us a new more playful side of her personality.

And Carl’s little smile when he sees that she got that cat. ☺️ She’s definitely won him over.

Like it’s really cool that in these interactions between Carl and Michonne we’re literally watching the making of a mom and son. 😊

It’s just all and all a great moment that makes me wish we had more of these little moments that develop all the quirks and traits of the characters as people as well as the bonds they have.

Also watching this back, I love knowing that this cat is going to come up seasons later when Rick and Michonne finally realize they’re in love with each other. 🙌🏾😊

For Rick to have taken note of this rainbow cat and not forget about it all that time later, must mean she was on his radar quite a bit. Here for it. 🙌🏾

Michonne tells Carl she just couldn’t leave the cat behind but what I really appreciate is that there was something in Michonne, Carl, and Rick that made them feel they just couldn’t leave each other behind either.

This episode is great for a lot of reasons but especially because this is when Carl and Michonne’s precious friendship took root and I love that their bond would only get stronger from here. 👌🏽😊

#richonne #richonne family #richonne fandom #twd #the walking dead #michonne #michonne grimes #rick grimes #carl grimes #grimes 2.0 #not my gifs

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maiji · 6 years

Photo

Process and wip images for A House That Holds Long Limbs (Part 4)

Previous process and wip documentation: Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3

Read the pages for part 4 here (full complete version will be linked from YYH North Bound master post)

This is a rare glimpse into how I tackle action scenes!! It’s rare because I rarely do it. Action is honestly one of the hardest things for me to draw, and as I’m sure I’ve said here many times before, I have the utmost respect for shounen manga artists whose works are steeped in them. It’s a really impressive skill to be able to do it well - to create a cinematic, dynamic sense of motion that doesn’t dissolve into visual confusion and incomprehensibleness.

This was as interesting for me to document my thought process as it hopefully is for you to read and discover what the heck was going on in my head (a big honking mess, that’s what). There was much screaming and crying while working on this hahaha.

Aside from Hokushin’s beautiful face (lmao), Part 4 is packed with things I don’t usually draw. Specifically: action, things taking place in the dark, and corpses. For things taking place in the dark, I heavily referenced the dark room rounds from the tournament for Genkai’s successor in volume 4, because it involves action and Togashi used practically zero screentones in it and I didn’t want to either. For the dead rokurokubi, I looked up photos of skulls and drew on my memory of various horror comics I’ve read, like Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service. (At one point I also googled photos of rotting skulls, but TBH I didn’t really want to spend a lot of time looking at detailed photographic references of corpse and decomposing bodies for obvious reasons, especially as I usually work on these comics late at night before I go to bed. The last thing I need is for images to get stuck in my brain when I’m sleeping.)

The rest of this post focuses mainly on action and redrawing things.

Script

The original script for this section actually ran a little further in the story than what’s shown here, but in order to convey the sequence effectively, I ended up stretching a number of key moments out and have booted the later ones to be completed for Part 5.

Thumbnails

In the thumbnails above, you’ll notice quite a few are redraws of the same page as I struggle - pages 31-33 repeat immediately in the rows after, page 37 was attempted three times, etc.

Page count growth

A script of 8 pages turned into 10 pages at the thumbnail stage, and then ultimately netted out at 12 pages in the final version that was posted. As you can see, effective action sequences generally take me more pages than I think they will. With an exception (documented below).

Thumbnailing/storyboarding things out should theoretically minimize the page count creep! But because I tend to treat my thumbnails as such a loose stage (to avoid later disappointment when I can’t recreate it as nicely in the final page), I rush through them. Unfortunately, action sequences require me to think a lot more carefully through the scene as a director - staging the shot and the experience of the motion and coordinating people’s limbs and all the items in the scene more carefully and whatnot than, say, just a couple of heads talking. So inevitably, when I rush to get ahead to the finished pages, that’s when I realize it doesn’t flow as well as I was imagining (or not really imagining it).

As a result, the actual “live” pages turn into constant mental checks and runthroughs of the panels, realizing it’s not flowing as well as I’d like, and restarting. By restarting I mean mentally reenvisioning the sequence, sometimes quickly doodling alternate thumbnails (I didn’t bother in this case, so I have no alternate examples from after I started redrawing), and erasing and redrawing and adding pages. I guess I could probably avoid this if I just stop and put more time into thinking through the thumbnails… but it seems like I end up revising no matter what. So, constant juggling forever.

The evolution of the key action sequence

In my head, the main sequence was:

Hokushin lands.

He gets up and feels something in the dark.

He discovers the rokurokubi corpse.

He turns around to discover a swarm of hands in the dark!

Ahhh hands!! Ahhhh!!

Then he gets sealed and stringed up. End action sequence, back to people standing - or hanging out, I guess - and talking.

I roughed out my panels and pencils for all the pages following my thumbnails instead of doing one page at a time, because I’m impatient and also tend to think of all the pages as a wholistic narrative and then drilling down to the details on each page (big to small perspective).

As I went back over each page and detailing the base pencil art more, I began noticing more issues with the flow of the action and the pagination. Things started really shifting and changing at point 4. Here’s essentially how my thinking played out as I drew:

He turns around to discover a swarm of hands in the dark! - WAIT he just sees the corpse and then turns around? I should have him sense something is behind him first to get you more into his head and experience. OK, insert another panel of him sensing and whatever. THEN he can turn around. This is also good because I can erase the panel where he’s turning around and give the first panel a bit more room so I can draw more of his body in the first one and make his startled falling back motion a bit clearer.

HANDS!! AHHH HANDS!! - Wait, I have hands coming from BEHIND him and don’t effectively show that before they just appear to grab his hair. Which I suppose they do, but when I review panel flow it seems jarring, like a poorly directed cut and something was missing. Let’s try adding some hands behind him in the panel where he looks shocked. Never mind, this looks dumb and he looks dumb and basically seems even more like an afterthought. Ooh, better idea: let’s have him dodge the first wave of hands. That’ll be kinda cool and more interesting. And then he can land and be like OH SHIT MORE HANDS FROM EVERY DIRECTION

Ahhh hands!! Ahhhh!! - Hmm, maybe I should add a page here to better capture his dodge sequence. So the panels will be hands, dodge, and then the next page is he lands, then he realizes there are more hands behind him. How crouched down should he be? I guess in the later pages I basically drew him in a practically fully upright position… eh.. Working this out...

*starts drawing extra page* … Mmm, thinking about this again, no. It stretches things out too much. Now it feels like he lands, the new page adds an extra pause that could be interpreted unconsciously as he thinks he’s ok, then he gets attacked by hands from behind. But that’s ridiculous because he’s a rokurokubi, he KNOWS the hands can come back around or whatever, and he’s a good and cautious fighter, the extra pause doesn’t seem to fit. Thinking this through, basically I need it to feel faster - he lands (typed “he hands” there first time around haha), and he doesn’t have a chance to react again before it turns out hands are coming from all directions. So, I’ll keep it to the one original page and draw the reaction to the sound of the hands coming from everywhere. Done. (one of the few instances where I reduce page count in an action sequence)

Oh yeah, I forgot about his arms and legs getting sealed. Er, add another page. OK done.

For comparison, below are photos of the pencils for pages 35 and 36 before the above process:

... and after:

Redraws

I generally try to avoid redrawing an entire image/page from scratch if I don’t have to. Even if I don’t like the overall drawing, I’m still terrified of effing up the parts that turned out OK the first time around. However, sometimes you gotta know when to cut your losses and start anew and save yourself time and grief (I’m definitely still learning how to know lol). I do have a few strategies to ease my mind - I often take photos of something before I proceed to the next step or change direction (which is where many of these wip photos come from). This helps calm me down because at least now I have a reference for what it was before I took the leap of faith to move forward. Another option is to just leave it and draw on a completely new blank page.

Page 37, where Hokushin is getting his head pulled back by the hands, was an incredibly rare instance of the pencils for a page turning out almost exactly how I wanted on the first try, so I was loathe to redraw or adjust it. This means I basically forced myself to shuffle things before and after to accommodate not having to change it.

On the flipside, page 40, where the shot backs away so you can see Hokushin tied up with the hands, is one I full-on redrew from scratch. I was having a hard time with his pose and how all the hands were wrapped around him and how everything was actually working. I wasn’t happy with the drawing the first time around, but inked it anyways to see if I would like it better the next morning (sometimes this works, to wait and look at it with a distanced frame of mind). Spoiler, I didn’t lol. However, the process of inking the entire thing helped me better hone in on what parts I liked and didn’t like, so when I sketched it out again I was better able to adjust.

This photo shows the original (with the words REDRAW :/ at the bottom), a sketch I did trying to figure out his posture and where all the hands were/how the wrapping actually worked, and then the pencils of the redraw.

Final miscellaneous things

The end page of Part 4 is once again a last minute addition that resulted because I was facing a blank page (again!) after adding the page where Hokushin gets his arms and legs sealed. I changed the spoken line multiple times. First it was a line that’s been pushed to the upcoming part 5, then it was the “You certainly found my “treasure room” quickly” (that’s on the previous page). In the end, I just wrote a completely new line for it. It seemed to work better with the panel and closing off this part at a good point.

Last but not least, I somehow broke my pen inking this part lmao. Fortunately it’s a Muji pen so I only broke the tip off the cartridge somehow, probably in my intense scribbling/shading at some point. It’s not super clear in the photo but if you look closely at the point you’ll see this thin line coming out of the tip of the pen - it was this metal filament that basically scratched the paper without any ink coming out. I had to make an emergency run to two Mujis, neither of which had the black refills, so I ended up just buying two pens with similar thicknesses. Worst case scenario, I would have just inked with my blue cartridge, since the scanning would turn everything black and white anyways... the original pages would have just looked weird.

Phew! Hopefully it worked out and isn’t a totally incoherent mess!

#yu yu hakusho #comics #fanart #hokushin #wip #process #drawings #yyh north bound #art by maiji/mary huang #action sequences #redrawing #art supplies

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beardcore-blog · 4 years

Text

the day the horses drink from the trough

PRESS PLAY

lizzo SOULMATE

**********

one of the great myths in the NEO american empire of the misled is "the forever man".

this myth is literally crammed down the throats of the tiniest children in much the same way that people shove cornmeal down the throats of ducks and geese and cows to make them taste sweeter while killing them softly, lol.

the princess syndrome is so out of control now that any sense of an actual republic is long gone. but "the forever man" myth hasn’t changed.

young children are still taught that they must become parents, and i think we all know that parenting is one of the most BASIC TOOLS that the usurers can use to create loan debt. parenting is a very thankless job as well, so you get debt slavery and sht hours and there’s that baby that you can’t get rid of… or maybe you like your kid. lucky kid!!! but even though you like that kid, you will NOT be there in every moment and they will be neglected and abandoned to fate. so pray that your little one becomes a real princess or a true knight.

i’m not sure what the male dynamic is because little boys are so weaponized to create hostility that they always go for the swords and the guns to wreak havoc. nice work, parents!!!! way to create fake gender separation. pat yourself on the back for that one.

but we all got stuck with the breakage and wreckage of the "love that never dies" obligation to seek and find. i was oppressed by it as a child. it actually seemed like the coolest thing about the western dogma from religion — faith and love and unionizing.

of course, my strange and "briefly but permanently" mangled childhood proves how easy it is to destroy a child in really a mere matter of seconds. way to go, mom!!!

so naturally i have been weirdly taken with aldous huxley’s beautiful utopian dream that does not actually take place in his bitter and sad criticism of "the jews" (not to be confused with the jewish people in the same way that radical islamists are not a reflection of true path of the muslim journey — i note this because anti-semitism at that time in europe post wwi was at an all time high with printing criticism and outrage. anti-semitism was like a genre in a modern day bookstore it was so popular and had so many writings. picture that cowboy western section and the science fiction section and then the anti-semetic section.), fascist/idealistic germans and the north american noble savage.

all of that was a bitter pill for me. i literally was physically ill through sections of the book. it was a visceral experience that went beyond reading. it was an education.

but on the sidelines of the book was this curtain that had been pulled back on monumental ideas. it was like we were on the willy wonka factory tour and we’re in that massive cathedral of candy with an eternally churning chocolate fountain that sucks up agustus gloop and swooshes him away. and right at the moment every single person on the tour starts to formulate the actual "dangers" involved in this strange sugary fantasyscape.

but i was ready for the camera to ditch the sugarland phenomenon. i wanted to see where augustus gloop had gone and just how deep did this playland of machinery and artificial replication go. i was ready for a different kind of tour of the factory. talk about a psychotic dystopia…

plus, in huxley’s world, the glimpses that we get are very grown up and cool. they are not the childlike entrapping of a story for kids. it’s older, it’s stabilized. people of all people get along as one through class separatism. and a history of fulfillment through separation. we are told that each caste is trained to be content with their occupation in life and some are even dumbed down with alcohol in the birthing jars.

and this was an inceptive vision of the dawning corporate heirarchy/caste system of order/need. we are starting to experience its arrival. but in the novel, these were birth classes. everyone was born into their position.

further, these "corporatized classes" were arranged with the "controllers" and/or philosopher kings at the top and the class system below it with the alphas at the top of the class system. the alphas were all male and they were NOT clones. the betas are the female member of the caste which the alphas belong to in the novel and are NOT clones. but all the other caste systems were bred and manufactured to maintain different aspects of the system’s needs. they were all clones.

throughout the novel huxley continuously promotes the virtues of the THREE FOUNDATIONS for a great society:

identity, community, stability

and huxley presented ideas that blatantly/openly stated how evil it was to separate kids from self discovery and liberty and that by not allowing them to explore each others bodies and touch one another we were creating a repressed/suppressed curiosity that would grow like a monster inside the child — a childish expression that is encouraged through taboo.

and that’s pretty bold philosophy.

further, and logically, he presented a society that wasn’t afraid of children never having parents but rather, cherished the idea of each one growing up protected and looked over by people who loved their job of caring for little ones and they didn’t abuse them or prohibit the kids from discovery themselves.

and each one was genetically crafted and modified to fit perfectly into their role within the greater whole. this was the utopia. the novel, however, skitters all over the place like a drunken car crash. the passengers are not reflective of the society. instead they are are a TRINITY list of the "unusual suspects", the "anti-society types" through no real fault of their own, the anomalies, those who didn’t fit in — as explored through the sexual relationships of one woman. she bangs all of them.

which is weird because you never hear anyone talk about that. so my version™ would put her into the HERO BOX™ of the what used to be called a PROTAGONIST — see how lost we are?!??! a hero and a protagonist are not the same thing. and a soldier and a hero are not the same thing. unless you literally change the meaning of the word. a hero is someone who accomplishes a series of strange feats/tasks or labors. a soldier is someone who is willing to kill in exchange for commodities/livelihood.

take it up with the dictionary. i’m not making this up.

PRESS PLAY FOR MORE GOOD FUN from GALANTIS

anyway, the "star" of this series™ is not a hero because there is no such thing as heroes in BRAVE NEW WORLD. the mantra of IDENTITY, COMMUNITY, STABILITY is so deep that the society requires no heroes, no vigilantes, no protectorates, no nuclear arms.

and it would be the same story but it would be seen through her world and the experiences she was having simultaneously during the novel. like the film about jesus’ younger brother Agape who was away at college when jesus was a killed™ and the netflix film series™ would dive away from the very tiny blip of interest huxley’s novel provides.

not that it isn’t a great novel, it’s just that huxley was an intellectual surgeon and his storytelling feels very sterile, but the magnificent visions of the future that he is able to relay through description and attention to detail is brilliant even if it’s not the best writing.

and it is this world that is the skeleton of his novel. and the skeleton needs to be studied.

he’s given us the foundations and he’s created his own maps and he’s acutely aware of the beauty of the new mexican landscape and topography.

so instantly we know he’s got a crush on the noble savage whereas, personally, i’m more interested in hanging out with a beta and seeing what her best expectations are like in this fantastical land™. and the story was kind of about a beta in a very backward kind of way. and it was also about two types of failed alphas and then a hippie jesus guy from the "reservations".

but the novel does some time skipping and the tour doesn’t really take us much further than that disturbing garden that the the tour creeps up on.

aldous kind of magically skips from age four to the adults, so that’s a bit too fast on the timeline for me — where’s the COMMUNITY?!?!?! he picks up on this concept later in his book ISLAND — but i still kind of agree with him that really little kids should be allowed to discover each other physically and without the judgement parents impose and overimpose so fast. we are mistaken in sexualizing this curiosity. we make it rapey. we use our adult minds to be like "OH!!! RAPE, my baby’s a rapist", or "oh no, that little baby boy played with another little boy".

aldous suggested that this form of exploration was essential to humans understanding and experiencing themselves EARLY ON without the sexual element being present or worse, present and mature. further, that this exploration would lead toward a differnt developmental attitude which would in turn allow a society to bypass future rape and sexual misconduct breaches.

but his ideas were too radical for people in his time. they still are. considering what a powerful novel it is, when it was written and the brilliant ideas that are tossed around like a juggler who is bouncing balls and torches and chain saws of the walls of a racquetball court while teaching you squash at the same time, it doesn’t get much play.

he was, after all, such a BRIT who had been notoriously kicked out of his social life circle in england for writing hilarious tell-all novels about the people closest to him. so they’d given him the outcast card and he’d fled (as fast as a mostly blind man with a lesbian wife can flee) to new mexico in the post wwi era, near the future site of the u.s. secret city/laboratory, los alamos. and from there, hollywood by 1932, i think.

what a great story he lived as well, not just tripping out on acid as he died, but also his first wife hunting beautiful women for the two of them to share, and the screenplays, the vast library of single print editions by other famous poets and playwrights and novelists sent to him for his approval. and then his second wife, the beautiful violinist who escape that terrible canyon fire that obliterated all those never-to-be-written-again books, all those manuscripts, all those precious writings that vanished beneath the terrible heat. and she, taking only her Stradivarius, walking out knowing everything would burn. letting go. giving it up to the fire.

forever people.

we wish.

but there is no forever man. there is no living jesus. all things die.

and true love is more like paying attnention. like that nun says in "lady bird". true love isn’t sexual. true love may not even know itself. true love might just be paying attention and feeling joy? the joy of paying attention.

and i know how much we all long to feel joy when paying attention. and in an age of POST-DISTRACTION awakenings, isn’t it time you told your daughters that marriage is an OPTION. that having kids is an OPTION. that giving up your life to fulfill some fake darwinian NONSENSE is an OPTION.

but so is living your own life and having no one else that you’ve created. and so is fighting for new models of PROCREATION that don’t involve failing parents, parents that never wanted kids and people who can’t afford kids.

parents are most often the worst thing about kids. so don’t be afraid to tell your kids that you failed and how. maybe they even remember it and have blamed themselves.

and if all you can give your son is a gun or a truck or a logic game, you’re definitely part of the problem. it’s vastly unfair to use gender foolishness to masculinize a child. it distorts the idea of masculinity like a mental disorder in the same manner that physical sexual abuse destroys young children. they are both attacks against the child’s being.

we do our best to protect kids against the predators of the body, but we do very little protect our children from the predators of the mind and the consumer usurers who are taking the kids earlier and earlier.

who knows, maybe one day the movie of the book will be made. we live in a perfect time for it to just skip straight away from the book and into the BRAVE NEW WORLD right after the visitors on the tour see where the little kids are intermingling without any kind of ADULT IMPOSED intrusions.

the great thing about the BRAVE NEW WORLD was that the rapey issue had been addressed and fully considered. the society was developed around the understandings of sexual co-mingling without parentalizing adults.

since most of humanity ALLEGEDLY has a very low intellectual focus & MOST people don’t actively seek to better and improve their intelligence — this is not my fact, it’s how "they" talk about the 99%ers — it is easy to distract the general populace with "material gain" greed games and after life myths and unfulfillable promises like the forever man.

even now, fully ready to fall asleep again after being "awake" for so fking long, even now i still want the person i thought of to be my forever man.

i want him so bad. but he was never that man in real life. he was never the fake version of him that was presented. and that’s what kills me the most. i supported the lies without knowing it. i felt misled and bushwacked. not victimized, just super aware that i had participated in the set-up and had no grounds for complaint. i spent my liberty and freedom of time and it was gone. and he felt stronger and freer (which is good and i’m glad of that).

but in the process we burned through each other and the lies and the falsehoods and the deceptions and the weaknesses all became exposed and destroyed in the fire. he was never the forever man in the first place. and that’s the rub. the forever man isn’t a person. there is no forever man.

in that moment the forever man became a concept for me, a trap that so many others fall into as well. and then we fall out of it. a lot of people return to it, but that’s usually because they can’t see the permanent break.

so now, suddenly, there was this permanent break and it was known to both of us.

granted, at first i found this confusing. naively, i had always assumed the permanent break was already there. didn’t everyone know this intuitively? i hadn’t realize that this wasn’t a universal understanding. but, i only say this because i learned it from people who are born alone. they say it over and over again.

i was born a twin and i don’t think that the "born alone" perspective is "all there is" as much as it is "all that most people have access to, therefore"…

but i learned about the "permanent break" from people born alone. twins are generally super optimistic. and i’m guessing on this because i can imagine a family that takes joy in their twins and understands that they might be a little different. my parents made a permanent break with me. an unrecoverable intentional break.

and then, through a long process of hop-scotch education through the west coast public and private christian schools in north and south california, voila! aware of humans and how they formulate their kindnesses and their goodnesses.

so when i heard about the permanent break thing AT THIS STAGE IN THE GAME, i was a bit taken about. it was one of those horrible realizations where your mind goes all bird’s eye view and geomapping and speeds through all manner of timelines and conjugations and starts the "murder board" with the new thread.

you can visually see the wasted time as chunks of LIFE. tetris LIFE chunks filled with remembrances just "disappearing" the value of memories instantly. a radical cross-platform devaluation of emotional assets. worse than zero. worse than no memories at all.

and that’s when you realize that a rug has been pulled out from under you and your grand designs. it’s the dreadfulness of false manifestations, the celebrants of what you thought was genuine were really bound up in a bottomless sadness and a burning flame with their own downward spiral dance.

it’s that startling and irreversible moment when you realize that your eyes and your heart and the assurances of another had been used quite shamelessly to proliferate a bizarre and untrue fantasy.

and worse, it was TRULY the revelation that i had wanted but not with a ghost!!! not with a dancing apparition! not the hollow man!!! oh fk, not the hollow man!!

and so now i’m doomed to still want the forever man that i had created with my expectations and then with my desires and then was slowly filleted by…

or maybe it was more like the sides of my neck were slashed open to make gills. because i do feel lucky. the charade could have taken longer and bigger chunks of my life. and i had a great time in the delusion and i liked working for a relationship.

sometimes the process of aging is a vinting metaphor and sometimes it’s a venting metaphor. sometimes it’s all about the air and the breath.

either way, it wasn’t my first relationship and it gave me an opportunity to see whether or not relationshipping was even in accordance with my nature and liberty. could i be happy without unionizing?

and the answer is yes. or, at least, it’s a great position to be in.

there is a freedom to participate in life that comes from being a part of it without being forced to protect offspring and develop those kinds of natural enmities against your "greatest predator", men. that’s a lovely start to things. almost as fun as the fake "virigin" girl claiming it’s god’s baby. or worse, everyone forgetting that "god’s baby" meant bastard offspring.

PRESS PLAY for some louder harder better from galantis

whatever, it doesn’t matter, i feel lucky to have had a forever man and to be able to write a more complicated story of "royal romance" than the childish ones we tell other people’s children and even our own children.

the corporatized children’s engineering factories are already in their late pre-testing phases.

BUT, a bit of forewarning to those who would be wise when it matters, i was punished for my childish expectations. i lost everything i gave. and i lost the time it took to give it. there was no reward. no dividends. no happy ever after. it was just business in the end.

and the whole time i had believed my eyes and my ears and listened and had tried to hold up the "we". but it was hard. there was permanent breakage from the start, not the end. he was full of grief and loss. he was too needy. but i thought he was consciously aware of all these things.

so when we were dating, i thought he knew about the permanent break. he was so far away from everybody. he was deep in the valley of the permanent break trying to find his way to sea-level. like a crushed flashcard on the side of the road in death valley.

in that there was the permanent break. we were choosing to try to have a relationship despite the permanent break that existed between people. he had come to me and plied me with the tale of his sister’s suicide. he pulled me into his sorrow spiral because i had told him several months before she killed herself that he should come out to her. she was a lesbian and felt entirely alone in the world and i begged him to reach out to her and share with her that he was gay.

but he didn’t. he had this way of never doing anything i suggested and then blaming me later about "advice" that he would get when he had come back to ask for "advice" after not doing what i had suggested after being asked. it was all a bit dislocating for me

and i give him credit for being clear and levelheaded about it in the end, but he couldn’t undo the damage that i was doing to myself for being such a fking fool.

no version of "sorry, i used you" or "let’s be friends" would ever replace the amount of time he took from my life while the veneer of his "forever man" status diminished in front of me until finally it occurred to me to ask him on the phone one day, long after we’d broken up if his current boyfriend was okay with these calls. i asked because it had also dawned on me that he’d specifically asked me to give him a call and do check-ins every couple of weeks, "are you allowed to talk to me? is your man okay with that?"

and he admitted that they had agreed that he wouldn’t call me. at which point i was like, "oh, i see, so this is like cheating. great, gotta go, man. i just wish you’d be honest. and free. you know that’s what i always wanted for you. i told you that over and over."

and we’ve never connected since. such a drag. and this is the danger of relationships.

you can lose years of your life, but even more important, you can lose WINDOWS of your life.

the years are just time, but the windows are specific ages where wonderful and amazing things can happen that cannot happen during other windows of your life.

besides, relationships TAX you. they TRULY add surcharges and time-penalties to your existence. there will no end of speed bumps and dependency is anti-liberty at its core, so the struggle to be free cannot be achieved unless all parties of the relationship are unionized. and that’s business contracting, which is an artifice. grammatically speaking, relationships are duty bound and come with obligatory submissions of personal liberty.

who’d sign up for that?

as if that isn’t enough, relationships will steal your experiences and replace them SHARED memories. and on the surface this sounds great. but that depends on the how the shared memories end up affecting the relationship.

shared memories are indeed precious and the best ones are the ones that you cherish. but after a separation, the best memories are the ones that work as triggers for your sorrow or anger or grief or devastation. the best memories become the worst.

i knew a woman in grad school who had come out as a lesbian. her name was ceebs. and she was a quirky writer with an irish background and we we’re both from san diego where her dad had been police chief or something along those lines. and she’d grown up repressing a lot of stuff. i’d done the same thing until i decided that living a lie was so ordinary and that NO ONE in the whole history of western writing had ever said, "just be a liar. lie to everybody. tell them what they want to hear. then lie about that later."

she used to often say that the thing you really liked about a person and were drawn to about them would become the thing you ended up resenting them for and perhaps even disliking about them.

so it sucks if you hear a bunch of lies up front and then they unravel around you to become the thing you end up resenting. that’s a tough one. and the irony is that lying never ends. it just keeps reinventing itself.

on the other hand, in total fairness, ALL western literature has been littered with the ruins of people’s lies and the horrible effect that lying had on so many people’s lives. and not inadvertently, heaven becomes this place where the lies are all put back together in front of you.

contemporary christianity became so zealous it started to formulate this notion (an entirely post-television & televangelistic fantasy) about how you’d stand in judgement and your entire life would be played back to you. and you thought andy warhol’s film "SLEEP" was long and boring:

"John Giorno has said Warhol asked him to star in Sleep over Memorial Day Weekend in 1963, when the two retreated to the countryside and Warhol spent the night watching Giorno sleep. “I looked over and there was Andy in the bed next to me, his head propped up on his arm, wide-eyed from speed, looking at me,” Giorno later relayed. "

born a twin, i think my big one wish would be that i DO get to this illusory JUDGEMENT ZONE where god and his posse replay my life to see if i was good enough to get in the the party called heaven.

but, typical me, i could give a sht about the party called heaven. i want access to my unknown life. i want to watch my birth and everything after like a fking drone camera that i can move around and zoom in or rewind. i want to see what happened to me when i was left unattended. i want to see the things i already have been told happened and then re-lied to about it.

i have the cobwebs of all these weird myths that humans create in order to justify PARENTHOOD.

we don’t need parents. science and the bible have proven that parents are unnecessary and obsolete.

unfortunately pedophiles and religious structures/foundations/corporations and "neo colonist governments" will want to self-protect against this accord.

they want you debt-enslaved with college loans, home loans, bundled family plan phones and car loans.

but that won’t pay for the loans after the entire shipping and distributing INTERCONTINENTAL economy lays off all the drivers and starts running AUTOKAR in a color-coded lane that only AUTOKAR (pilotless vehicle) can use.

that’s a lot of truckers nationwide all hopped on speed and suddenly without jobs?? is this part of the MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN strategy? shall we name that condition/state right now?

maybe we could call it THE AUTOKAR METH SHADOW.

so keep your eyes open. maybe it will never, ever, ever, ever happen.

or, give that "new utopia glimpse" a try. read huxley’s book BRAVE NEW WORLD. it’s a deeply fascinating look into miranda’s query: "O, wonder! How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world, That has such people in’t! (5.1.215-218) — the tempest

happy birthday. i hope you’re free and happy.

Posted by torbakhopper on 2007-04-03 17:03:24

Tagged: , like horses waiting for the gates to open , tulip , macro , flower , torbakhopper , scott , richard , photographer

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murasaki-murasame · 4 years

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Thoughts on Fruits Basket 2019 2nd Season Ep24 [”Here You Are“]:

Even though this wasn’t as comedy-focused as last week’s episode, things continue to be relatively chill and relaxed.

Just because there’s still one more episode left of this season and we’re almost exactly two thirds of the way into the overall story doesn’t mean things won’t suddenly and drastically change next week, right? :)))

Anyway, thoughts under the cut.

I mentioned this last week since the next episode preview confirmed it, but they really did skip the whole Kyoko backstory arc, in order to jump straight ahead and adapt chapters 94 and 95 in this episode.

I still think this will work out fine in the end, though. It’s pretty obvious at this point how they’re going to end season 2, and it’ll be appropriately climactic. They’ll probably just revisit Kyoko’s backstory later on when it comes up again, which will hopefully flow nicely and not feel too much like a lengthy detour in the story or anything.

Either way, this episode continues the recent focus on Yuki and Yuki-related plot points by being about Machi, and then the New Years stuff.

In spite of the fact that I’m really not a fan of the Yuki/Machi ship, I honestly still really like Machi as a character, and the first half of this episode where we get our first proper look into her thoughts and her life really go to show why. My whole family and upbringing situation was very different to hers, but her whole depressed mood and how it impacts her self-perception and how she carries herself in general is one of the more relatable parts of the whole series. The art and cinematography in her scenes was also really good at getting across the whole mood of the scene.

But ultimately I still feel like as a character she suffers too much from coming into focus way too late in the story, at almost the exact same time that other plot stuff starts kicking into high gear and there’s no time to really focus on her anymore, so she gets a handful of very concentrated, heavy moments to establish her entire character arc and her relationship with Yuki, and compared to the more long-form storytelling that the rest of the series displays, it just ends up feeling kinda artificial. And even though I do really like her as a character, and I do relate a lot to her, her and Kakeru’s whole backstory almost feels like a parody of Fruits Basket as a whole, and the fact that it’s delivered so quickly and barely delved into doesn’t really help that impression. Like I said last time, Kakeru at least benefits a lot from having been woven into the story a lot since a fair while ago, whereas for a variety of reasons Machi has largely been kept in the background until this episode.

I wasn’t really planning to go into full detail just yet about why I don’t like Yuki and Machi’s relationship [which is a more or less separate issue to Machi’s character in and of itself and how she’s handled in the story], but I think this episode alone pretty much summed it all up, especially going by how people are already reacting to it.

Basically I just really don’t like how aggressively the story wants you to realize how Yuki and Machi’s whole relationship is basically just a parallel to Tohru and Yuki’s relationship. It’s so heavy-handed that it just takes me out of the story, and the fact that they’re intentionally drawing that comparison feels like it actively goes against a big part of what Yuki’s recent development has been about.

When Yuki was opening up to Kakeru about all his feelings toward Tohru, he made it clear that he actively disliked the idea of that sort of dynamic developing into a romance, because it was so fundamentally unbalanced and one-sided that it would make him feel even more lonely. He didn’t want to be on the receiving end of a mostly one-sided flow of emotional support, so I just can’t help but dislike how it feels like his relationship with Machi is almost exactly the same thing, but this time it’s Yuki who’s providing the support.

It’s not like Machi doesn’t provide anything for Yuki emotionally, but it’s also not like Yuki didn’t provide anything emotionally for Tohru either. It was just a *mostly* one-sided and unbalanced dynamic, and I feel like the same thing applies here.

I just feel like, going by his own whole speech about his feelings and what type of relationship he wants, I’d want him to get a romantic partner who he feels more ‘equal’ with, in a sense. Someone who doesn’t just receive his support, or who just treats him normally, but someone who pushes him to be a better person, and forces him outside of his comfort zone in a way that helps him grow.

Basically this is just an elaborate way of me saying that I ship him and Kakeru, lol.

And honestly I don’t even dislike the core concept of Yuki and Machi’s relationship, I just don’t like that it goes in a romantic direction, since it feels like it happens with the exact same reasoning as why Yuki said he didn’t want a romantic relationship with Tohru. I really do like the idea of him being able to grow enough as a person to help someone else [even if the story really isn’t subtle about how Machi is almost exactly like how Yuki used to be, lol], but I’d just prefer that to play out in a more platonic way.

Plus, from a slightly different angle, I also don’t really like the idea of Machi getting into a romantic relationship where it feels like she’s mostly just on the receiving end of emotional support, for basically the same reasons why Yuki said he didn’t want that for himself. I think she also deserves better than that.

But to be honest an unavoidable part of the whole problem is also just that we barely even get to see what their relationship is actually like in practice, and we pretty much just see the part where it’s like ‘wow, they’re JUST LIKE how Tohru and Yuki used to be!’, and we just have to kinda guess at how things play out for them after that. Which is yet another reason why I think she really suffers from being focused on so late into the story, lol. It’s entirely possible that if we actually got to see how their relationship evolved I’d be more on board with it, but we only see a fairly small portion of it in the end, so that’s what I’m basing all my thoughts on.

[Also there’s the whole separate but related topic of how I still think it’s disappointing how Yuki’s whole struggle about feeling unable to love Tohru romantically, and feeling socially obligated to perform normative heterosexuality with her is just followed up by him finding a different girl to have as a love interest, but I could make another whole post about that so whatever]

ANYWAY, that was a whole bunch of opinions I’ve been sitting on for a long time now, lol. Even though I kinda don’t care much about Yuki as a character in a vacuum, I feel very strongly about the way his character arc plays out, and all the writing surrounding him.

That aside, the rest of the episode was just about the New Years banquet and getting some glimpses at most of the zodiac members to start setting the scene for the final third of the story. The transition between the two halves of the episode felt super abrupt and jarring, and you could really tell that it was jumping from one chapter of the manga to the next, but still, I liked the second half a lot.

There’s a lot of different moments with different characters, but I really liked seeing more of Tohru and Kyo. By this point it’s really obvious how they’re settling into a comfortable groove with each other, even if they aren’t exactly open about their feelings yet. I think it’s really neat to see how their relationship has slowly but surely been changing and progressing across the course of this season, without them even being entirely aware of it. This season as a whole might have been largely Yuki-focused, but Tohru and Kyo have come a long way with their relationship since the end of season 1.

Also, I think this is literally the only time we’re gonna see Ritsu in season 2 outside of the OP/EDs, which is kinda depressing, lol. I really hope they can come up with some original content in season 3 to give him some screen-time, but at this point I’m not getting my hopes up.

And even though this episode is mostly pretty laid back, the scene with Yuki and Akito really does set up for the next episode, and how things in general are about to come to a head and fall apart.

I’m curious to see exactly where they end the next episode, since they might decide to end it only partway into chapter 97, instead of going all the way to the end. But at this point I think they’re probably gonna go all the way up to that big cliffhanger, and we’re all just gonna have to wait like 6+ months for the anime to continue from that, lol. If they go that far with the next episode, then I’m definitely curious to see how anime-only people react to it, for better or worse.

#murasaki rambles #fruits basket #I really need to stop writing these at like 5am

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