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sailormoonandme · 3 years

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Where to start with Sailor Moon?

From time to time I’ve seen people ask about how to get into Sailor Moon or how they might introduce it to someone else.

As such I’ve made this to (hopefully) help people out.

Introduction

So first of all you should know that the official name for the over all franchise is ‘Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon’. This can (and has) been translated a few ways, but the current official name is ‘Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon’. Basically everything connected with Sailor Moon carries this full official name, but for the purposes of this post I’m just going to shorten things to ‘Sailor Moon’.

Moving on, there are in fact different versions of the Sailor Moon story, even putting aside the various attempts at translating the story into different languages. Each version is best viewed as its own entity, sort of how there have been various versions of Sherlock Holmes that exist independently of one another.

For the sake of simplicity, I’m going to mostly keep this post to the original Japanese iterations of Sailor Moon, albeit from the point of view of an English speaking audience member.*

The main versions of the Sailor Moon story are as follows:

1) The Manga

The manga iteration of Sailor Moon began around late 1991/early 1992. It includes around 50 chapters, a handful of side stories and a prequel manga of sorts called Codename: Sailor-V. There have been several different English translations of this material over the years. However, my personal recommendation would be to experience the story through the ‘Eternal Editions’. These are easily available in print and digitally. As of this writing Codename: Sailor-V is scheduled to be collected in at some point in 2021, thus collecting all the manga stories.

2) The 1992 anime

This is the most famous iteration of Sailor Moon and loosely adapts the manga to the point where it is its own entity. It spans 200 episodes across five seasons, with each season being given its own subtitle. E.g. season 2 is referred to as ‘Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon R’. Additionally there were a handful of shorts and specials connected with the anime and three films. I have already compiled a watch list for the show that I hope will help you navigate everything.

Like the manga, there have been multiple efforts to subtitle the show into English, particular among fan subbing circles. However, the easiest way to watch the show with English subs is to do so via a streaming service (last I checked it was available on Hulu and Crunchyroll) or to purchase the DVDs and Blu-rays from Viz Media, although you can also purchase them digitally on Amazon.com too.

3) The musicals

On and off since 1993 there have been stage musicals produced for Sailor Moon. If you ever see the term ‘Sera Myu’ being used by fans (or even official sources) understand that it’s shorthand for these musicals.

The musicals are based chiefly upon the manga and the original anime, although with some original embellishments here and there. The degree to which a musical cuts closer to the manga, or the anime or does something all its own varies from one production to another. I’m not very well read up on the musicals I must admit, but it is to my understanding that each production exists independently from one another beyond at times carrying over cast and staff members. In essence there is no particular order you need to watch the musicals in. However, if you want more info on the musicals see the below EDIT, which is more well informed than I am.

To my knowledge, (which is limited in this particular case) all the musicals have been filmed but there has never been any kind of official English release for them. There have however been fan subbed efforts made for all of them.

4) The 2003 live action TV show

In fan circles this show is referred to as ‘Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon’ or ‘Pretty Guardian’ or ‘PGSM’. This is because it was the first piece of Sailor Moon media to bear that particular English translation of ‘Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon’. Basically if you see ‘Pretty Guardian’ or ‘PGSM’, understand it is referencing this show.

The show exclusively adapts the ‘Dark Kingdom’ storyline, the first storyline in every version of Sailor Moon. The show was made in a similar vein to shows like Kamen Rider or Super Sentai and the latter’s American adaptation, Power Rangers. However, it also incorporates elements of Japanese soap opera dramas too, original elements that were never in any version of Sailor Moon beforehand and many different spins on the plot points that had been covered before.

To my knowledge, like Sera Myu, no official English release for this show exists, but English fansubs are out there somewhere. If you manage to find the show then you should watch the various episodes and specials in their original broadcast order. For this Wikipedia is your friend.

5) Sailor Moon Crystal

Sporadically since 2014 a new Sailor Moon anime has been in production. This new anime cuts much closer to the original manga (although it still makes some changes ) than any other version of Sailor Moon. As of this writing, the show has yet to be completed and still has material from the manga left to adapt. The show is available to watch with English subtitles from the same sources as the original 1992 anime, including DVDs and Blu-Rays from Viz Media.

Like the original anime, Crystal’s story arcs and seasons have gone under different names. The first two seasons/arcs are officially just called ‘Sailor Moon Crystal’, whilst the third is explicitly titled ‘Sailor Moon Crystal Season III’. In place of a fourth season two films, Sailor Moon: Eternal Part 1 and Part 2, were produced. As of this writing, the Eternal films have yet to have any kind of English release. To make your life easier, watch this show in the order of the original air/release dates. Just remember the Eternal films are to be viewed after Season III.

Which version should you start with?

Whilst that is how the franchise breaks down, it is not the order a Sailor Moon newbie should try experiencing it in.

My personal recommendation would be to begin with the original 1992 anime and then move on to any of the other versions from there. This is because the original anime is aimed at a younger audience and was incredibly influential on basically every other version of the story.

However, if 200 episodes or more is too intimidating for you, then simply check out the manga. It’s far shorter, skewed a bit older and tells a concise and complete story.

And if you are still apprehensive then I’d highly recommend watching the first Sailor Moon film, Sailor Moon R The Movie. This is a very good film unto itself but it is a microcosm of the characters and themes that define the franchise as a whole. If you dislike this Sailor Moon just isn’t for you.

P.S. If you are simply dead set against subtitles then you should know the original 1992 anime and Crystal have in fact been dubbed into English by Viz Media. In fact, the first four seasons of the original anime, along with the first three films, have two English dubs, variously produced by DiC, Cloverway and Pioneer. These dubs were made in the 1990s and early 2000s and are currently not legally available anywhere.

*Things get more complicated when we consider that even in Japan there have been updated and altered versions of the Sailor Moon manga, anime, etc. We aren’t going to worry about that in this post though. They exist and maybe someday you might be inclined to check them out, but you know...baby steps...

EDIT #1: The following information comes from https://euribear.tumblr.com/

Just something I want to add on about the Sailor Moon Musicals.

If you see a musical with the word Kaiteiban (revision) at the end of the name, that means it’s a revised version of the previous musical. Things added or taken away, different cast members at times, etc.

Also, there are three musicals (technically four) that have a continuous storyline. Starring Miyuki Kanbe as Sailor Moon, Last Dracul, Transylvania no Mori (and its Kaiteiban), and Death Vulcan should be viewed in order.

The Bandai era of musicals were from 1993 to 2005.

The Nelke musicals started in 2014 and there was one each year for five years. One musical for each arc of the manga.

There are also the NogiMyu. These are musicals that solely focus on the Dark Kingdom arc and they star various members of the pop idol group Nogizazaka46.

There were two teams of cast members for the inner senshi for both years, 2018 and 2019. The same story overall, just different actresses.

There was also Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon The Super Live. My personal favorite, this was a musical performed only a few times. A couple of days in Japan in 2018 and then once in Paris in 2019 and then in Washington D.C. and later in NYC. I got to see this in person on one of the three showings in NYC. A dream come true. Unfortunately, this was never recorded, though they did release an instrumental musical album of the show.

#Sailor Moon #pretty soldier sailor moon #pretty guardian sailor moon #bishojo senshi sailor moon #bishoujo senshi sailor moon #Sailor Moon Crystal #PGSM #SeraMyu #Sera Myu #naoko takeuchi #Toei Animation

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skyllion-oc-archive · 3 years

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Hi its me your mutual and i am tentatively coming out of hiding to finally ask about your OCs if thats cool! Jaxon is my favorite so far, best characters are intergalactic world destroyers. I was wondering the reasons behind choosing their names? and if any of them owns any pets? Jaxon reads to me as someone who would own a lizard.

HI MUTUAL :DDDD Yes I welcome all questions! Good choice Jaxon is one of my favorites too

Okay, we're going to have to travel back to that weird first iteration for this. Jaxon was closer to an actual eldritch god back then (the whole mass of tentacles ordeal), Robin was a secret government agent, Holmes was their former partner, Charles was a literal shadow being, and Bailey was a not-vampire and Charles' actual body. Yes it was weird.

Robin was chosen because Jay was their original name, and after faking their death to go live with Jaxon, I was like "uh gender neutral name similar to Jay. Blue jay. That's a bird. Robin is a bird. Robin." Jay is actually her middle name now in this version!

I'm pretty sure Jaxon was chosen because I liked the name Jackson, but I wanted to spell it as Jaxon because X is meant to symbolize the unknown.

Holmes was supposed to be a one-off character. He was supposed to be in one scene. Oops! I made an entire character based off of him. Part of this one-off scene was a joke about "No shit, Sherlock" and he replied "Actually, my name is Holmes". He had a few other names, the only one I remember being Sebastian. I chose this one because he's a merman and I really liked the song "Gay Pirates" by Cosmo Jarvis (TW for rape, violence, and homophobia).

Not much reasoning for Bailey. It was a gender neutral name and cute. Did you know Bailey means bailiff or berry clearing? I just looked that up. It has nothing to do with her but the name itself fits her

Charles used to be Reese. I only found that out recently because it didn't stick at all. I then changed to Charlie, but I already have an informal OC named Charlie (they're a little round birb who's constantly grumpy and done with everyone's antics) so I decided on Charles.

Adrienne was taken from an old OC from a scrapped project. His name was Adrian but I decided on the feminine form for Adrienne. It's a cool name.

For Etienne I wanted an E name and ended up looking at French names. Etienne means crown or garland which fits because he was a king. It was a bonus that it went with Adrienne.

Shiko's name is made of the kanji for death (死) and child (子). He's supposed to be a bit of an edgy dude and I knew I wanted to have a name I could use the kanji for death in. That's the writing he chose; the original is 史壷 (the kanji for history and jar).

Neil is a reference to Neil Cicierega. He's a truck, Neil Cicierega sang Two Trucks, boom his name is Neil

Kami is just spelled in hiragana as opposed to kanji. I chose it because God, but kami can also mean hair or paper. She also has a couple different names and I remember one had "ka" and "mi" in it. I'm thinking she derived Kami from that since the name isn't an associated kanji

None of them officially own pets yet but I love the idea of Jaxon having a lizard! I also think Holmes would have a cat that would quickly become Bailey's after he moves in because said cat became attached to her :3 Etienne would have a St. Bernard and Neil would have a rat

#skyllions ocs #my ocs #original character #original characters #r&rwg #h&r!#jaxon #robin whitfield #holmes adamson #bailey gupta #charles #adrienne #etienne #shiko fujita #neil martinez #kami #oc asks #anon

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heraldofzaun · 3 years

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✌ ✔ ✘ for the mun memes?

Roleplay related mun memes!

✌ : Fondest role-play memory, between muses?

Hmm... I generally have a really hard time picking a “favorite” of anything, because I find it difficult to concretely rank things like that. So I’ll just give a few.

I’ve really enjoyed a lot of the writing between myself and a friend who played Orianna and Corin. This was mostly offsite, though, so I can’t show you it. But we had this modern AU where Viktor was a newer employee at Corin’s prosthesis lab, and it was really nice to write a more settled-down/normal Viktor with a supportive group of coworkers.

We also wrote a good deal of Creator AU content, which I still think of fondly even though I think I’ve tired myself out on Creator for a while. It was great fun to write just a real shithead of a Viktor... I think my favorite scene from there is him and my friend’s OC having some real good villain-hero banter, although Viktor - even as a power-hungry militaristic megalomaniac - still is not great at banter.

I’ve also greatly enjoyed writing with @sheriff-caitlyn over the past year! Again, mostly offsite, but bits of it creep onto tumblr upon occasion. (Ever wonder why Viktor’s been exchanging the occasional gift with her?) I think my favorite here is Caitlyn giving Viktor a small lavender plant (their backstory is long and complicated, but all you have to know is that they care for each other very much even though neither of them can be seen in the other’s city-state) to take care of, because he appreciated that she brought him dried lavender on one of the times she snuck over to visit him. She has a matching plant and it’s just very... It gets me in my heart, y’know. Viktor does his best to keep it healthy.

✔ : What drew you to the character you currently play? What types of characters are you generally drawn to?

I’ve been an unrepentant Viktor fan since about 2014, which means that yes, I did play him when Augment: Death was a thing. (I stopped playing before they removed his Hex Core from the game and gave him that VFX update that I find horrid, so I can’t say that I’ve played all iterations of Viktor... But I played the ones that I liked, so.)

I think I liked him at the outset for a couple of reasons, although it’s been a while... I’m not sure if I have him to thank for my love of sci-fi, or if I liked it before and it’s just increased ever since. But a lot of the stuff in his 2014 lore resonated with me, for better or for worse, and I also just thought his design was fascinating. I didn’t write him at the time - well, I briefly wrote his Full Machine counterpart about a year down the line - and I’m kind of glad I didn’t. I think it’s only in these past few years that I’ve been able to write him with the complexity and gravity he deserves.

I think I tend to like a variety of characters, although the ones I write are a subset of that? I’m not too great at self-analysis in this case, but I think I tend to like characters with a lot of internal conflict and struggle or characters who are perceived in vastly different ways by the various people around them. Sci-fi and fantasy elements are also a big win. (Maybe “tortured/flawed/struggling idealist” would be a good descriptor for some of the characters?) Also villains, sometimes. Also autistic-coded/relatable characters. I’ll include a non-comprehensive of characters I like below, and bold the ones I’m currently trying to write.

Viktor, Jayce, Caitlyn, Orianna, Blitzcrank, Annie, Janna (these last two are a case of I Can Fix Them Disease so they’re pretty AU), I have a few other League characters I like but this list is long already, Anarky from DC Comics, I have mixed feelings about the Riddler’s recent portrayals but I like Hush-era, Reformed PI, and BTAS Riddler, Clara from Pathologic (the first one, haven’t played 2) but also Daniil and Artemy to a lesser extent, Doctor Doom but when in a competent writer’s hands (I like Triumph and Torment), R. Daneel Olivaw (and Lije Baley) from Asimov’s Robots series, Erik from Phantom of the Opera (the original book), Sherlock Holmes (original stories and Jeremy Brett’s performances, Elementary is growing on me quite rapidly as well), Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin from the original Man from U.N.C.L.E. TV show not the reboot, Spock, Data, Odo, Garak, and Julian Bashir from various flavors of Star Trek.

There’s more but I feel like this probably gives you a nice and clear insight into my psyche, so I’m going to stop now.

✘ : Any head canons you’d like to imply on your character but know they wouldn’t fit?

I don't think so? Whether this is because I try to limit myself to realistic speculations about Viktor or because I just apply anything to him, I don't know.

I guess I have a few edge-case headcanons that don't really show up often, like Viktor being a competent artist but solely for technology or repetitive patterns. He can sketch prosthesis concepts and draw blueprints just fine, but can't really draw anything... alive. (Without it looking more like an anatomical text drawing than anything else, that is.)

#anonymous #filled prompt | a glimpse into the mind

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zerochanges · 4 years

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2019 Year End Review - Anime Side

This is the second half of my Favorites list for 2019. If you wanna see my video game picks then refer to the prior blog entry.

This year had tons of wonderful and great animes, and really reminded me again why I love the medium so much. While my game play time did suffer quite a bit this year I was mostly able to keep up with every anime season of 2019 and really soak up as many shows as I could. There aren't really any major rules to my list other than avoiding long-running anime a la Black Clover or Pokémon and the like. The only reason for this is so I can focus on the seasonal shows that may get swept away with the passage of time. If I included all the never ending shonen animes I love this freaking list would be crowded to the brim with it after all.

So without further ado, let’s check out some great anime.

Ahiru no Sora

The main character Sora Kurumatani is an incredibly short high school freshmen with dreams of joining his school’s basketball team. Unfortunately the school’s basketball club is comprised entirely of dangerous delinquents who have all taken over the club and use it as their hang-out because of the school’s policy that every student has to join a club. Undeterred Sora tries his best to get into the club and stand up against the delinquents who run it, and maybe just hopefully help them turn over a new leaf and become actual basketball players in the process.

This has been a pretty fun sports anime, that also veers somewhat into the “yanki” genre of manga and anime too with tons of fist fights, blood, and beat-downs in-between the times the characters do play b-ball. The series really gives off a lot of 90’s anime vibes despite its more modern aesthetic (a great opening theme from the Pillows certainly helps in that regard too) and I’ve been having tons of fun with this one each week. It is scheduled to run for a total of 4 cours so it’s taking its time and really establishing the entire cast so well. And watching Sentai’s dubcast of the anime has been delightful too, I love they really ran with the delinquent characters and aren’t afraid to swear up a storm and drop F-bombs regularly, it’s just tons of fun to listen to.

Astra Lost in Space

The newest series from Shonen Jump alum Kenta Shinohara, Astra Lost in Space is just what you would expect from the creator of SKET Dance: a hilarious romp through space with a great group of characters that all carry heavy emotional baggage. The series really does remind me tons of SKET Dance, except set in outer space instead of high school, and I am all for it. I laughed, I cried, and I racked my brain behind the main mystery of the series. Just who stranded these kids in space, and why did they want them dead?

The mystery element is perhaps the most unique twist on Astra that sets it apart from most of Shinohara’s earlier works in Jump, and while no Sherlock Holmes or anything, it is still fairly a fun component of the series that pushes the adventures of the young crew of the Astra beyond just being episodic romps. Definitely recommended for anyone who enjoys comedy and space travel stories.

BEM

The newest entry in the long running Humanoid Monster Bem (Yokai Ningen Bem) franchise that started life in 1968 during the yokai boom largely created by GeGeGe no Kitaro’s huge success. The series has definitely played second fiddle to its clear influence Kitaro, but is a fairly beloved franchise that has still gotten multiple iterations of its own.

What largely separates Bem from Kitaro is its more science fiction based monsters over the old fashion folklore creepies from Kitaro, and the three protagonists of the series: Bem, Belo, and Bela. These three “humanoid monsters” appear almost human enough but are still freaks in a conventional sense and do not fit into society. Despite being shunned by humans they still choose to protect humanity from other monster attacks in hopes that one day if they do enough good deeds they can be reborn as human too and finally fit in.

This newest series places a lot of narrative focus on the titular Bem, the leader of the group, who honestly was never all that fleshed out in part iterations and sometimes even played second fiddle to the younger member of the trio Belo who probably connected to the younger audience more. This really separates Bem from pasts series as it’s a lot darker and more mature. I would really love to analyze all the animes at some point in the future.

Boogiepop and Others

The previous Boogiepop anime series from over 20 years ago now, Boogiepop Phantom, is one of the all time great A E S T H E T I C animes, with absolutely chilling horror, downright mystifying and confusing plots, and a heep ton of gore. It’s one of my favorites and it’s also entirely non-canon to the original light novels and is instead a stand alone original anime series. So how does the actual adaptation of the Boogiepop books far then? They’re all right.

Boogiepop and Others lacks much of the aesthetic nature of the original Phantom series, and keeps a tone that is more consistent to its source material. It’s a series that starts a lot slower and is much more down-to-earth in the beginning before revealing all its pieces and getting into the supernatural aspects. Once it gets going however I found I really enjoyed this more accurate Boogiepop adaptation. Shingo Natsume is a fantastic director and the anime is incredibly gorgeous with his adept work on the series, and the general atmosphere is strange and creepy, and fairy creative without ever going full on horror anime.

The Demon Girl Next Door (Machikado Mazoku)

When I read the initial synopsis for this anime; “a young girl wakes up to discover she inherited demon powers and must now fight against magical girls in order for her clan to be lifted from its curse” I almost downright dismissed it and passed on it because I thought it was being played straight. However I gave the first episode a shot out of curiosity and quickly discovered it was actually a comedy series. A huge spoof on the Magical Girl genre if you will. And a damn good one.

What really separates Machikado Mazoku from the rest of the millions of Magical Girl comedies is how sincere its protagonist is and how low stakes the relative series turns out. Yuko, or Shadow Priestess Yuko, or Shamiko for short (a nickname she despises) is such an airhead and klutz. She can’t accomplish anything and instead of fighting magical girls she ends up befriending the only two she meets. This is such a relaxing and fun series and most people probably missed it because of the Hidive exclusive streaming rights.

Dr. Stone

Dr. Stone was always one of the newer Shonen Jump hits I was curious about but never got around to reading--largely thanks to my rule to not touch anything in Jump until I am certain it won’t be axed. So many bad memories. So many manga I loved dying. Ah-hum, excuse me then. Anyways I heard incredible things about the series, especially from one friend in particular and once it got an anime announcement I was so excited. TMS did a fantastic job adapting everything as far as I can tell too, and the anime has been wonderful.

Perhaps the most impressive thing to me about the series so far is how it isn’t reliant on battles or typical power scaling escalations like a lot of Jump titles are known for. Instead this is a fun adventure series, that largely focuses on science and the power of friendship and I can really get behind that.

Fire Force (En'en no Shouboutai)

Fire Force came on the scene and dazzled everybody early on in its run with amazing production values and insane fight choreography and animation but as the series went on it got a sort of reputation for being fairly bland and not nearly as gorgeous as when it started. And I kind of hate that. I actually thought the series has looked great throughout its entire run--sure maybe some episodes aren’t action packed exploding set pieces, but the general direction and story-boarding in the show is always beautiful and great looking. There’s an expert eye on the lighting, and each scene flows into each other wonderfully. I also greatly respect and love the slower and more somber pace of the episodes--it really lets all the drama soak in, and you get a feeling that this world the characters live in is not great; it’s fairly suffocating actually, even without all the fires.

As far as the plot goes, well I suppose that is more subjective; I certainly cannot argue that it is a wholly original story with groundbreaking characters, but I will argue that for what it is it works well and is enjoyable. The cast is fun and interesting, and all have great chemistry with each other, especially Shinra and Arthur who easily carry a lot of the show with their constant bickering despite being allies. I am really happy to see it getting a second season next year.

Fruits Basket (2019)

This is the second adaptation of the popular shoujo manga and a very accurate one at that. Pretty much any fan of the series will easily tell you how the original 2001 anime infamously upset the creator so much because of the changes it made from its source material (both big and small) that she denied any attempts at a sequel. It is definitely no surprise that this anime plays its cards incredibly loyal to its source material and it works great because of it since the source material is so good too.

Watching Fruits Basket again was like talking to an old long lost friend. It was such an enjoyable series to have back in my life and hearing Funimation’s almost entire original cast reprise their roles, even Laura Bailey as the protagonist Tohru, was just magical. This is very much a healing series and every episode felt like a weight was being lifted from my soul. I can’t wait for the future seasons, and I love they are going to adapt the entire manga this time!

Gundam Build Divers Re:rise

Another new year, another new Gundam Build series. These entries have really started to become a regular part of Bandai’s release schedule and I am not complaining. Re:rise is a semi sequel of sorts to last year’s Build Divers, a show I put on my favorites list a year ago too. Despite this you thankfully do not need to watch the previous show to fully understand Re:rise, as it is largely just set in the same world and instead has its own original characters and disconnected plot.

And what a plot it is! Re:rise’s plot is fantastic, and its characters are so much fun with great chemistry. Re:rise’s cast is the oldest group of protagonists we’ve really seen in a Build series which gives it a much more mature tone than all the previous entries, with higher stakes that mean more than they ever have in a Build series. This show honestly on par with the main Gundam series at times and it drew me in so much. I loved every episode and want more, and hate that it ended up being split cour and we have to wait! The last two episodes of Re:rise particularly are huge gut punches that push the show beyond all expectations and really stick with you. This might just be my love for Gundam but this was easily one of the best animes I watched all year.

Gundam The Origin: Advent of the Red Comet

So is this cheating? Technically speaking Advent of the Red Comet is just the original Gundam The Origin OVA series (2015-2018) sliced into a 13 episode TV show format. And I watched most of the OVA back when it was released already too (I still needed to catch the two Loum Arc episodes before this came out though). But goddamn, rewatching all of Origin again in TV show format was so excellent. So I don’t care! This was one of my favorite shows to catch each week, and don’t at me. YAS’ contributions on the Gundam universe simply cannot be overstated, and his work with Origin was so excellent and talented that it gives the entire series a feeling of true cinematic sophistication--something the original cast and crew all desperately wanted when they first created Gundam!

Also, it gave us the greatest Opening theme of the year and honored the 40th year anniversary of the legendary franchise while doing so. You can’t beat that.

Kemono Michi - Rise Up

In this isekai parody series the protagonist Genzo is a pro wrestler and animal lover aficionado summoned to another world to save it from the Demon King. When told that in order to do so he would have to slaughter countless magical beast he refuses and german suplexes the very princess who summoned him! There’s no way Genzo will ever harm any animal, they are far too precious. Trapped in a fantasy world Genzo makes the best of it by capturing and training all the magical beast and opening up a pet shop so they can find their forever homes. Even more hijinx ensure.

Kemono Michi is notable for being a new series by the creator of the beloved Konosuba, and it both shows and doesn’t show. Kemono Michi is another isekai parody series but it’s largely its own thing and a lot of humor is pretty different from what you would expect from Konosuba. People coming into the show looking for more Konosuba will probably be disappointed but for anyone just looking for a good laugh and don’t mind how different it really is they will have tons of fun. Genzo and crew are hilarious and the series’ genuine disinterest in the classic save the fantasy world plot is really refreshing. Sure the Demon King is out there slaughtering millions, but that’s not Genzo’s problem, somebody else can get on it, he’s busy trying to run a pet shop of his dreams.

Unfortunately said pet shop only sells the typical JRPG monsters you encounter and not real animals …

Miss Caretaker of Sunohara-sou

So this might be another cheat as Sunohara-sou did indeed originally air in 2018 however it was locked up in streaming prison and nobody could legally watch it until this year thanks to Funimation’s newest deal with Bibibili. I ended up really enjoying it this year and watched every episode back-to-back with Fruits Basket. As I mentioned earlier Fruits Basket is a healing kind of show and I felt the same for Sunohara-sou. It was a really relaxing and cute show that made me super comfortable and chilled out before I had to go in to work for my worst shift of the week. .

MIX Meisei Story

Mix is the newest anime adaptation from the legendary manga-ka Mitsuru Adachi and also a sort of sequel to his seminal work Touch (1981-1986). Set thirty years after Touch and with a largely different cast of characters but still in the same town that Touch took place in, this series is fairly easy for anyone to get into but also extra rewarding for long time fans who will pick up on more smaller things that while not important are there in the background.

The brotherly relationship between Touma and Souma is what drives the core of the series and much like the twin protagonists of Touch Tatsuya and Kazuya their ambitions to make it to Koushien and play in the Nationals and love for baseball is unmatched. Touma and Souma aren’t just rehashes of the original two protagonists and by in large this has to do with Mix not incorporating a certain major plot twist Touch is famous for but I will refrain from talking about. With all that said you get a lot more interaction with these brothers than the original series and it is simply delightful.

Mix brings in the classic great character writing, and sense of youth that Adachi is always known for, and he is a true master at writing high school romance and sports manga by this point. It’s been an actual decade since his last anime Cross Game and the wait was worth it. Man, now I just need a Season 2!

Mob Psycho 100 II

MOB IS BACK!!! Need I really say more? The entire staff that worked on Mob is phenomenal, and really Bones is showing the best of the industry with both seasons of this series. But what lies at the core of Mob even more so than the amazing and unique art style and fluid animation is the wonderful character driven writing of indie writer ONE who started his career online and not with a major publisher. ONE is a master at not just comedy but characters. Watching all our best boys grow and learn in Mob has caused me to literally cry. Just the first episode of this season has shown how much Mob has grown as a person and how he is maturing. Mob you’re becoming cooler and cooler every episode, you little adorable awkward dork.

One Punch-Man Season 2

Man, OPM2 was thoroughly destroyed when it came out earlier this year. I largely definitely understood why though as the production of this season is such a major downgrade in every regard to the amazing work the crew did on the first season and it seems shifting from Madhouse to JC Staff really did harm the series in the long run. I didn’t even bother when it aired in Japanese because of that and have only just recently started to watch it after it got dubbed and put on Toonami. And I have to say … it really isn’t that bad.

Maybe the dub version is using the more finished home video release footage over the original TV airing but I don’t think it’s really at a level of horror story (if anything look at Arifureta from this year too). Is it worse than Season One? Yup. Does that fact suck? Oh yeah. But the same heart is present from the original series in this season. I am surprised how badly it went because I am really loving this. ONE is such a talented writer and seeing his work animated never disappoints, I guess.

Outburst Dreamer Boys (Chuubyou Gekihatsu Boy)

This is another fairly funny series that seemed to fly under everyone’s radar and I assume that yet again the main culprit for this is because of the Hidive exclusive streaming. It’s a shame the platform is easily missed by so many considering its plethora of great content and tons of exclusives it’s been snagging up lately. *ah-hum* I promised I was not paid for that shill just now, sorry.

Anyways, this is a comedy about a young girl Mizuki Hijiri who just transferred into a new school. All she wants is a normal high school experience but she is unfortunately adopted by the local Hero Club at the school more or less. Now the Hero Club is nothing more than a bunch of chunni boys going around doing all sorts of crazy and hilarious things and hijinks ensue. This is a fairly straight forward premise but largely carried by just how funny the characters are. It’s nice simple laughs that lead to feel good conclusions at the end of almost every episode.

The Promised Neverland

Everything I said about Dr. Stone I can pretty much repeat about Neverland as well. I was so impressed with this series although it started off fairly simple it really grew into something far more sinister and ambitious. The ending of the season I did not see coming, and the creative team behind the manga’s bravery to move past the status quo instead of just milking it for all it is worth is applause worthy. Really looking forward to the next season. Speaking of--if you don’t mind the tangent--this must just be the year of Shonen Jump or something, though, am I right? Dr. Stone, Neverland, Astra, wow Shueisha really is killing it this year.

The Quintessential Quintuplets (Go-Toubun no Hanayome)

On the surface the Quints (as fans call it) is nothing more than a basic cut and dry harem set up where one guy has to tutor five beautiful girls who all just happened to be sisters. Like damn I think I might have played this game in high school and it was naughty! But Quints is surprisingly deep and a lot more than just that. It’s by no means a masterpiece in anime romance story telling but I was thoroughly blown away by how restrained it really was and how well written each of the heroines are. This is a really cute series that’s just easy to watch and appreciate it for its simplistic but well crafted story.

Radiant (Season 2)

Radiant is back and is having a much better start than the first season ever did a year prior. This current season has had significantly less filler and is much closer to the manga in its story which makes for an improved viewing experience and is noticeably a lot more mature now. The original season of Radiant struggled with how much filler and changes to the plot and characters it piled on in its early run. That really made the series seem more cliche and simple than it really is and because of that it had a lot of difficulty in finding an audience early on who may have (rightfully so) dismissed it based on those early fumbles. Early Radiant anime somewhat reminds me of the start of the Black Clover anime in this regard, actually.

It wasn’t until the first season moved on to one of the earlier big picture story arcs in Rumbletown that it really started to come together and let the source material shine through. Seeing season 2 maintain this relatively same quality since its very first episode is promising. The character interaction is much improved, and Seth’s journey only gets more complicated from this point on in the story as he learns more about nemeses, magic, and his own past. It’s a great battle manga finally given some real justice with its anime and I really have been digging season 2.

RobiHachi

RobiHachi is Diet Space Dandy and in a world where Space Dandy is only 26 episodes and that’s it, that’s a good thing! We need more Space Dandy!!!

While not even close to the animation powerhouse of Dandy, or the experimental nature of how it changed directors constantly, RobiHachi is very close in the same sort of style and humor of Dandy. It’s essentially a buddy series where two men Robby and Hatchi end up on a voyage through space together and get into all kinds of crazy adventures along the way. It’s a nice little series that helps fill in the void that Space Dandy left after it ended in 2014.

Run with the Wind (Kaze ga Tsuyoku Fuiteiru)

Run with the Wind, based off a novel of the same name is a series about a disheveled track and field team trying to run the Hakone Ekiden, a world famous (or infamous) race that is extremely grueling and has destroyed many young athlete and potential Olympic runners sports careers in the past. Despite all this team leader Haiji pursues his dream of racing down this grueling track and will stop at nothing to run it, even if he has to make an Olympic quality team out of rejects and losers. He often butts heads with protagonist Kakeru who views the world very differently from Haiji and thinks he needs to accept reality already and give up this pipe-dream.

Run with the Wind is utterly fantastic, and a show so many people slept on. I honestly don’t even know why! Because it’s about running, I guess? Really, there is no excuse! What are all of you guys doing missing this show?! What separates it from a ton of the other sports anime peers is a few things, on the surface level there is the University setting and older cast. All the characters are young adults, and plenty of them are 20-somethings at the phase of their lives where they need to find their first real career and figure out how to live. But at the heat of Run with the Wind is a far more serious dialogue about being an adult and facing reality vs pursuing your dreams and what the limit of hard work should mean. This is far more than just a series about running. It’s about the weight of the dreams we all carry with us and the weight of the friendship and bounds we all form. And what weight we should carry and what we should let go.

This was an incredibly emotional and impactful anime series and I am super happy to see it receiving an upcoming dub next year from Sentai, it deserves it!

Senryu Girl

This series of short 12-minute episodes was one of the most adorable series in 2019 and always managed to make me smile. Senryu Girl stars Nanako, a girl who because of her incredible shy and introverted nature never speaks and only communicates through senryu poetry she writes. Nanaka hangs out with Eiji, a local delinquent that most of the school fears but is in fact a huge softie and a major fan of poetry--he even belongs to the same poetry club as Nanaka. Together the two write poetry with each other, go on dates, and get into all sorts of adorable situations.

True Cooking Master Boy (Shin Chuka Ichiban!)

In this semi-remake, semi-continuation of the classic 1997 Cooking Master Boy anime we follow the youngest super chef in all of China Liu Mao Xing, as he takes on the dark Underground Cooking Society who seek to control the entire world through their cooking and beat them at their own game.

I think this series is best described as Food Wars!/Shokugeki no Soma but instead of being incredibly horny it’s a martial arts film. I didn’t really follow the original anime series but definitely plan to get around to finding it after watching this newest series. I really enjoyed all the cooking battles that have been shown and the characters are all excellent.

Vinland Saga

Vinland Saga is an artistic marvel and this anime adaptation fully lives up to its legendary manga’s reputation.

Every episode of Vinlad was so damn compelling, and this feels like what the previous Berserk series should have always been like instead of the infamously janky CGI animation and knife to the page cutting scripts it got. Vinland is such an emotionally powerful series that can be carried by its own characters alone even during long stretches of episodes that lack the adrenaline fueled action fests for the eyes that it has. Honestly the less said about Vinalnd the better, as it’s an experience you should go into fresh without knowing too much about it. But oh boy, I am still reeling for that finale, it was downright terrifying and therapeutic.

This is easily a major highlight of the anime industry in 2019.

Wasteful Days of High School Girls (Joshi Kousei no Mudazukai)

I’m starting to notice a pattern where I talk about comedies a lot, but I guess that just is my taste in entertainment, huh? This series is also another pattern too, the Hidive exclusive nobody watched. I know, I know, let’s just get on with a few words about the show.

Wasteful Days is downright the most hilarious anime of 2019. I guess I ended up saving the best for last, as every episode would have tears rolling down my eyes from laughing too hard. The basic premise of a classroom full of a bunch of weirdos is super uninteresting, and on the surface if you read the description it doesn’t sound like anything special but don’t be fooled. The whole damn series is constantly hilarious and ludicrous. There isn’t a single minute of screen time where you aren’t falling over and laughing at the stuff happening on the screen.

Welcome to Demon School Iruma-kun!

While not as funny as Wasteful Days, Iruma-kun is also another great comedy of the year, and I would be remiss not to mention. The series has a more fantastical element what with it being a demon school in the Netherworld, and poor Iruma, the only human boy in the school is trying his hardest to not stand out and get eaten by all the demons but he just can’t stop being incredible at everything in the demon curriculum somehow. This is a great little funny series, and the dub made by Curnchyroll is equally hilarious. I really recommend it especially for anyone who is a fan of Disgaea.

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leafenclaw · 5 years

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Tag your 10 favorite characters of all time

They can be from every book/movie/TV show/Video game, then tag 10 people.

Tagged by @jamlocked, thank you! :D

But also, oh god. XD

Early on as I was making that list, I encountered three problems: 1 - Most of my favourite characters of all time are actually variations on a single character archetype, with a whole damn lot of them even wearing the same name (or similar enough lol). 2 - Most of the ones that don’t fall under this category are from the same 2-3 source material, unless... 3 - ... they’re from sources that I cannot in good conscience recommend anymore, like for example books from MZ Bradley or OS Card that were extremely significant and shaped who I am, but considering what their authors turned out to be, enough said lol.

So instead of a “my favourites of all time” list, I just picked characters that made a significant and lasting impact on me, even if they didn’t turn out to be my absolute favourite from their media source. I hope that’s okay!

Cut for length, because as usual I got chatty.

In no particular order, aside perhaps for the first two:

1 - Jamie Moriarty from Elementary. My everything. <3 She’s made of... honestly, pretty much all the archetypes I inevitably fall for, male or female, but somehow she rises above the sum of her parts and I cannot even start expressing how much she means to me. Other characters in the same general type would be of course all the Moriartys, Magneto, Gellert Grindelwald, Red John, Alice Morgan, etc. A lot of those characters are heavily defined by their sky-high intelligence and deviousness, but more importantly by the shapes they leave behind when they aren’t on screen/on the pages or when they’re hiding behind masks and facets that never encompass them as a whole, and by the way they always make a extremely lasting impact on the protagonist. When it’s a TV show or a movie, the use of camera language (lighting, colour schemes, camera plans, etc.) around them is always tightly defined and significant, and when it comes to literature, the same effect is applied through metaphors and symbolism. It makes the layers to those characters absolutely endless and when it comes to storytelling, it’s the one thing that’s guaranteed to hook me straight away. (Jamie is also obviously my favourite from her source material, even though Sherlock comes high in second place, and Watson a close third. And I also have a baffling soft spot for Joshua Vikner that probably deserves a mention lol.)

2 - Vegeta from Dragon Ball. Started a genocidal alien who regularly committed mass murder, ended a devoted, self-sacrificial husband and father of two (three if you count his son from the future). Still the best redemption arc I’ve ever seen (and probably will ever see) in any kind of media ever. (He is also -by far- my favourite from his source material.)

3 - Luna Lovegood from Harry Potter. My fae child <3 Literally the only female character I ever identified with in that whole series. People close to me still regularly tell me I channel her lol. (Favourite from her source material: it’s a toss between Gellert Grindelwald and Severus Snape.)

4 - Jareth from Labyrinth. My (other) fae asshole child found in a trash bin lol. Love of my life before I was 10, kept me sane and believing in magic when I most needed to. I learned contact juggling because of him. (He is my fave, although I love Sarah even when she’s being a dramatic whiny teen.)

5 - Rebecca Anderson from The Mentalist. I have a strong and everlasting love for pretty much all characters in TM, but this one extremely minor character made a chilling impact on me by the fact she’s exactly who I would have turned out to be had I not made one tiny little change at a crucial point in my life. So she makes the list if only for that. (My fave TM character is Lisbon, but the way she acts and reacts baffles me on a daily basis. I understand and identify with Jane much better. Fighting hard in third place would be Lorelei Martins and Madeleine Hightower, I think, but I truly love them all and by this point it’s just nuances.)

6 - Erik from Phantom of the Opera. This one stabbed me with a spoon and ate my heart out lol. I care a lot more for the original Leroux version than the Broadway/movie version, but the absolute top iteration of this character is written by Susan Kay in the pastiche Phantom and I bet every serious PotO fan will agree. (He is -by far- my fave, with the Daroga a distant second.)

7 - Eurus Holmes from BBC Sherlock. This one took me completely by surprise. One of the shittiest character arcs I’ve ever seen, and yet. She’s the one that pulled me out of the meta mindset I had been stuck into since season 2 and gutted me like a fish before I had time to realise what happened. (Jim and Irene share the top spot for their source material, but all three Holmes siblings are fighting for third place.)

8 - Hans from Frozen. The one character that made me realise the storytelling & camera language studies paid off lol (”wtf Disney doesn’t design its princes that way, there’s something off about him!”). I genuinely hated him right off the bat when I saw that movie because he made my gut twist with so many red flags, but the moment he revealed himself as a villain things clicked into place and now I love him lol (I’m so predictable xD). He shares the “hiding behind smoke & mirrors & facets of himself” with the Moriarty archetype, which makes him fascinating to watch and analyse, and for that alone I hope to see more of him in Frozen 2 because I never get enough of that kind of character. (Elsa used to be my favourite, but lately there’s been a disconnect. I’m not sure if I just out-grew her or if it’s a depression thing. As for Hans, it’s a strange kind of love/hate/fascination thing that I couldn’t define.)

9 - Clarice Starling from Silence of the Lambs. For the sole reason that her fascination for Hannibal and the pull that makes her come back even though she knows he’s terrible for her mental health made me feel seen, and also validated my own fascination and love for villains, which people around me always found strange. (Obviously, my fave is Hannibal. I wish the recent show about him wasn’t so gore. Can’t watch it because I’m too sensitive to on-screen violence and body horror.)

10 - Laure/Mickaël from Tomboy This one is a little harder to explain, and to be honest I’m not sure I really want to. That movie is... questionable lol but maybe you’ll have an idea why that character made such an impact on me if you saw it. (Or maybe not. It’s okay.)

Runner-ups: Link from A Link to the Past, Sheik/Zelda from Ocarina of Time, Jake from The Dark Tower, Scotty Valens from Cold Case, Scar from The Lion King, Billy Elliot from Billy Elliot, Arya Stark from ASOIAF, Garraty from The Long Walk, L from Death Note, and many many others.

I have exactly 10 followers, one of them tagged me, and I tagged 5 of you earlier on something else so I’m not going to harass you people further. XD Steal this if you want to!

#random #writing #I'm not exactly sure how to tag this #I didn't plan on having a 'personal' tag #and I forgot to create an 'answer to tags' tag #¯\_(ツ)_/¯#oh well lol

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enemyofperfect · 6 years

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favorite female & nb characters!

All right, last week @maculategiraffe tagged me for this delightful meme, and now I’m finally getting around to it! I’m going to follow her excellent example in not merely listing but also rhapsodizing somewhat about each of my faves.

Rules: Name your top ten favorite female or nonbinary characters from different fandoms. Tag ten people.

I think Joss Carter held first place on my list for a similar meme a while back, but I can’t help it, I still love her. She didn’t bend. Her entire life story was of repeatedly colliding with unjust and broken systems, from the US Army to her own marriage, and refusing to accept their failings. Of course, since this was Person of Interest, her workarounds weren’t always legal, but Taraji P Henson always made me believe that it was in service of some higher standard, some blazing better world that was yet to be. She always snarked with the best of them, too.

Kate Reed of the short-lived USA series Fairly Legal was just as tenacious but far less organized, a female counterpart to countless male protagonists who break every rule and social norm, but with a disarming smile, so of course they end up winning in the end. She starts the series out grieving, half-divorced, and having just launched on a major career shift, but she's as undaunted by her own pain as she is by any other obstacle, determined to slip past or scrabble over top it in order to find the happy ending she knows is almost within reach, and that’s what makes her unforgettable, for me.

Ann Leckie’s Imperial Radch trilogy is populated almost entirely by nonbinary characters, most of whom are human, but as much as I love Breq’s stoic relentless Breqness, for this meme I’m going to list Mercy of Kalr, the spaceship who saw Breq and wanted her for a captain -- even though no one asks ships their opinions about these things -- and combines all of the virtues of ships (polite, restrained, tactically passive-aggressive) and, ultimately, of citizens as well. My favorite cinnamon roll ever to fly through space, by far.

Annalise Keating of How to Get Away with Murder is a terrible person, and I love her desperately. She’s manipulative, compassionate, vulnerable, implacable. She juggles a dozen disasters at any given time and keeps more of them up in the air than anyone else ever could. She gets to ignore repeated warnings and give voice to her outrage and, despite being a black woman in America, still win. She is the center about which the show revolves and without which it could not possibly exist. And it doesn’t hurt any that she’s also proof that Viola Davis deserves every damn award.

Eleanor Shellstrop is an asshole, plain and simple. She might or might not be the first to admit it, but if she wasn’t, she would defiantly agree just to make sure the first person realized that noticing that pretty obvious fact didn’t give them any kind of hold over her. She’s selfish. The only reason she even tries to change is to avoid punishment. But she does change. I love her because she loves herself, and because Kristen Bell is kind of a genius, and because of the genuinely beautiful things The Good Place says through her progress. She’s fantastic.

Do I even need to speak in praise of Joan Watson? She, along with a refreshingly empathetic iteration of Sherlock Holmes, is what makes Elementary Elementary. I love that she’s both principled and pragmatic, that she’s compassionate and dispassionate at once. I love how many times she’s reinvented herself, and how driven she is, no matter what she does, to do it well. I admit I’m a little confused about why the show has decided to give her an adoption storyline, but at the same time, I love every single thing about it so far. I love that the life she lives is exactly her own.

Faris Nallaneen is the protagonist of Caroline Stevermer’s novel A College of Magics, and she breaks my heart. Heir to a small Ruritanian polity and sent by her wicked uncle to the titular college, she is sardonic, iron-willed, passionately devoted to her people -- and living in a world that is so much bigger and more terrible than she is, and which she will fight with everything she has in her to save what is hers to defend. Looking only at its outline, her story could have easily been silly or slight. It is neither of those things, and she’s strong enough to bear it -- even though, at the same time, she is so young.

Sulla Pinsky of O Human Star is even younger, and as a humanoid robot in a world whose human population is still adjusting to the existence of artificial intelligence, she’s got her own share of struggles. Making friends after a life lived in secret, for example. Or deciding which secrets to keep for fear of being rejected, and which to share so that she can be loved as who she really is. She’s by turns enthusiastic and shy, skittish and utterly brave. She has that wisdom of youth that sees what is wrong in the world and meets it with unflagging hope. I love her so much.

Kel Cheris of Yoon Ha Lee’s Machineries of Empire series... what do I even say about Cheris? Absurdly brave, but that’s Kel for you. Absolutely brilliant at math, but it’s not like the story gives concrete examples, or like I could have appreciated them if it had. She’s kind to robot servitors. She’s kind to the ghost that takes up residence in her mind. I could say that she does her best in a world of terrible cruelties, and that’s true, but I also feel like that’s missing the point in some strange way; hers isn’t really the kind of story you can tie up in an inspirational bow. But I love that she is kind.

And then there’s Murderbot, of The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells, who is probably the most relatable of any of these characters. I’ve only read the first novella so far, but Murderbot leaves a hell of an impression: part bot, part organic, and 100% socially anxious media fan. Why do these humans keep wanting to talk? Why does plot keep getting in the way of binge watching the best drama of all time, Sanctuary Moon? Murderbot is intensely awkward, chronically cranky, occasionally heroic, and really doesn’t want you to take that last as an excuse to try and interact. I could not ask for more in a protagonist.

I’m going to skip the tagging step because I’ve worn myself out with how much I love all of these amazing fictional people, but please, if you’d like to play, consider yourself tagged! I love hearing about people’s faves!

#please don't hold me to this list #it's not like there are so few amazing characters #that i can review them all in search for the best #these are ten favorites of mine #not my ten favorites #if you see what i mean #meme #long post #books #maculategiraffe

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gizzwhizz · 6 years

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Rules: name your top ten favorite characters from ten different fandoms and tag ten people.

Tagged by @ghostoftheyear

1) Prompto Argentum from Final Fantasy XV. Not only is he one half of my OTP (Promnis) but I really do see so much of myself in him. Hiding behind smiles and self deprecating jokes all the time. I also just really identify with the core lesson of his character: you are so much more than where you came from.

2) Kurama from Yu Yu Hakusho. My first ever fandom and the one that got me into writing fanfics. Kurama is smart but compassionate, capable of ruthlessness and cool deductions but far more human than he appears (or is expected to be). Also my first fandom crush (figures it was the most feminine guy in the show lol).

3) Hobbits. Just any hobbit. Bilbo, Frodo, Sam, Merry, Pippin. I love them all. I reread those books over and over as a kid and I actually very rarely reread books so that's saying something. I love their nature: easygoing but prepared to fight if need be.

4) Sherlock Holmes. Listen. I am a crazy Holmsian. There is so much brain space wasted on useless Sherlock Holmes trivia. And I love almost every iteration/adaptation of it--except, surprisingly, "Sherlock." I'm sorry but Holmes is not a sociopath. Bipolar and a drug addict, most likely, but a sociopath is an entirely different thing and he is not that. If you want a "modern" version I actually much prefer the American version "Elementary." That Holmes feels much closer to the mark. (Also did you know that House, M.D. is secretly a Sherlock Holmes adaptation? I could go on all day...no really.)

5) Bones McCoy from Star Trek TOS. He's that special surely southern that cares so much underneath it all. And his love/hate relationship with Spock on the show is just the best. Any scene with the three of them on the bridge makes me instantly smile. Speaking of which...

6) Spock from Star Trek TOS (I know, same fandom, but I couldn't choose). A child of two very different worlds, but unlike Kurama he hasn't really seemed to figure out how to balance it very well, trying to reject his human side as much as possible. The episodes where he faces issues of bigotry and self discovery are some of my all time favorites.

7) Pidge from Voltron. I loved Pidge from the start but the fact that (spoilers) her gender reveal didn't change her character in any way OR the way that other characters relate to her makes me love her even more. She's determined, intelligent, and 100% her own person and I love her so much for that.

8) Makoto from Persona 5. I feel like Makoto may very well be one of the most complicated characters in that game. She goes from being almost a spy to one of the "good guys" without compromising her integrity. She sets out from the start to do what she feels is right, and that objective evolves as she learns more about the world. She also speaks to me on a personal level: the overachiever who's "soul" is a rebel biker? Hell yeah!

9) Fallout 4 female protagonists. Okay, this feels like cheating a bit, but hear me out. When I played Fallout 4 I created a very specific character to portray called Hildy Sinclair. Hildly was a typical 50's style housewife who braved the wasteland to find her son and became a warrior along the way. She was also obsessed with the Silver Spirit and cosplayed him at every opportunity, spouting classic lines at her enemies as she mowed them down. I put well over 100 hours into crafting her story and it was one of the most rewarding gaming experiences of my life, even if she is a character I made up. I hope you live the rest of your life comfortably with your robotic son, Hildy. ♡

10) Sans from Undertale. It's really hard to pick just one character from Undertale, but I think it has to be him. His relationship with his brother is just precious and in a good/neutral run he's an unexpectedly heartfelt friend to the protagonist. And on a genocide run you realize that not only has he lost everything, but that he's probably the only other character other than you and Flowey who realizes this has all happened before...which is horrifyingly sad. Also that boss fight...definitely one of my crowning achievements in gaming has been defeating Sans. No bones about it.

Ten people, oh man. Uhhhhh, I'll tag @sunshineandsnark27 @sayura21 @strawberryflats @spitfirerose @prompto-cam @d-zombiedragon @ignis-sassentia @ham-for-ham-sandwich @dirtyhecker @cndrow

#getting to know whizz #tagged

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girlbookwrm · 6 years

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fave line fridayyyy!

yes i will keep doing this until i die maybe. NaNo is going well and I’m definitely Not procrastinating by rereading old fic favorites that’s ridiculous.

I’m taking a departure from my usual stucky programming with this but honestly, if you have even a passing interest in any kind of Sherlock Holmes content and you haven’t read the works of Wordstrings/Katie Forsythe, what are you doing with your life?

This little gem is from All the Best and Brightest Creatures and it might not be the most incandescently beautiful line in the fic (there are many choices) it sticks with me for being a very succinct description of what I love about every iteration of Holmes and Watson

But watching them, John resting his hand lightly against Holder's pudgy wrist as he takes his pulse and then assures him that it's fine, everything's fine, Sherlock becomes aware that he never wants to investigate a case again in the absence of this very small person with the very large presence.

#fave line friday #look I do non marvel things sometimes #u can't stop me

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bakerstreetbabble · 10 years

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A.V. Club article compares Elementary and Sherlock

The article below is from The A.V. Club website. It's a very insightful comparison of Elementary and Sherlock, and even though I still lean towards Sherlock in my affections, the author raises some excellent points. I've mentioned on this blog before that it took me a little while to warm up to Jonny Lee Miller's portrayal of Holmes, but I do think he brings his own unique twist to the role. Cumberbatch is still my favorite, but Miller is a close second.

You can read the article at its original home here.

It’s Elementary, Sherlock: How the CBS procedural surpassed the BBC drama Zack Handlen Jan 20, 2014 • 12AM The announcement that CBS would air a modern adaptation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s most famous character was met with a certain amount of skepticism. This was understandable. The world was not exactly hurting for new versions of Sherlock Holmes, and any attempt to tell more stories about the influential icon smacked less of creative inspiration than of a desire to attract audiences with something almost, but not exactly, the same as something they already liked. Even more damningly, there was already a modern adaptation of Sherlock Holmes on the air: BBC One’s Sherlock, starring Benedict Cumberbatch as the World’s Greatest Detective, alongside Martin Freeman as His Guy Watson. Debuting in 2010, two years before Elementary’s premiere, the series created by Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss arguably filled any conceivable Holmes-shaped hole in viewers’ lives. Surely another take on the iconic character from creator Robert Doherty would be a disappointing, pale copy by comparison. He’d even turned Watson into a woman. The absolute nerve.

Hopefully the skeptics gave Elementary enough benefit of the doubt to watch a few episodes. Turning John into Joan (and casting Lucy Liu in the role) wasn’t just a gimmick, but rather the central part of a commitment to finding a new take on the Holmesian mythology. Over the course of its first season and a half, the series has defined itself as a thoughtful, sharp, warm investigation into the central characters’ history, relationships, and philosophy. There’s a wholly unexpected, and entirely welcome, vitality to Elementary at its best, a sense of new ground being uncovered rather than old ground being re-trod—and while it’s not perfect, it does more than simply justify its existence. By now, the antisocial genius who solves crimes without being able to understand people is a trope so old it reads like a Mad Lib waiting for the latest iteration of proper noun/verb/adjective. But Doherty and his writers have found new life in the concept by creating an antisocial genius who is more than a cartoon. In doing so, they’ve given us a new, but still recognizable, Sherlock Holmes (Jonny Lee Miller), one who is in many ways superior to his Cumberbatchian counterpart.

The major objection to Elementary before it debuted was its apparent superfluity, but that objection no longer holds water; there’s something gratifying in knowing that for once, the cynical (and sensible) reaction to the news that two different networks were developing the same source material was proven false. While Sherlock’s playful style and Tumblr-friendly leads have their pleasures, the show also has some significant flaws, flaws that Elementary, in its low-key, airs-on-CBS-so-we-all-assume-it’s-for-old-people way, has largely avoided. Shocking as it may be, considering their relative positions in the pop culture zeitgeist, Elementary is a fundamentally better series, with a richer supporting cast, a more consistently rewarding structure, and a far more compelling perspective on its protagonist.

Sherlock’s episodic design is both one of its great strengths and its biggest weaknesses. British television seasons (or series; we’ll stick to “seasons” here to avoid a bad comedy routine) are typically shorter than American ones, but Sherlock takes this to the extreme, with only three episodes per season, each running roughly 90 minutes. On the plus side, this allows for greater dramatic builds, as movie-length stories are allowed to play out without needing to break into smaller, 45-minute chunks. But the limited episode number makes for a severe shortage of distinct mysteries. By and large, each Sherlock entry keeps its focus on a single plotline, and while the best episodes have enough twists and turns to keep that line from dragging, there’s little of the comforting regularity that Doyle’s fiction generally delivered. The few Holmes novels aside, the detective’s main presence was in short fiction, and its familiar routines work best in the aggregate. By limiting the characters’ exposure, the BBC series puts substantially more focus on big moments and iconic surprises, often to its detriment. And in those cases when a mystery fails to live up to snuff (like, say, “The Blind Banker,” with its dimly racist Orientalism, or “The Hounds of Baskerville,” which comes perilously close to Scooby-Doo territory), it means a third of a season’s worth of plotting wasted.

Operating under the traditional American television model, Elementary is allowed more room to breathe. With only a season and a half under its belt, the show has put out nearly 40 episodes; and while not every one of those episodes is a classic, it matters significantly less when a particular adventure fails to live up to expectations. Each episode of Sherlock must be, by the show’s design, an event. This leads to episodes that are wildly dramatic but often lacking in substance, relying on flashy twists and excessive (if frequently effective) emotional manipulation to reach audiences. In contrast, Elementary, with its stolid procedural approach and more conventional pacing, gains strength from allowing character responses in situations to develop naturally over time. Season-long mysteries can fade into the background when necessary, offering the chance for steadier pacing, and far more consistent world building.

This leads to another area in which Elementary is superior to Sherlock: the depth and variety of its supporting cast. Six episodes in, Sherlock has its two leads, and they are unquestionably the strongest figures in the series. That isn’t in itself a complaint; Sherlock and Watson are necessarily the focus of their own stories, and if Cumberbatch and Freeman didn’t work so well together, there wouldn’t be a show. The problem is that the two men don’t exist in a vacuum, and while there is a supporting ensemble surrounding them, that ensemble exists largely to offer straight lines for Sherlock to bounce off of. Mrs. Hudson (Una Stubbs), Molly Hooper (Louise Brealey), and DI Lestrade (Rupert Graves) are likable figures, but they have little selves beyond their relationships with the leads. Even Mycroft, Sherlock’s brother (played by show co-creator Mark Gatiss), who operates in the highest echelons of British government, is largely a distant observer who steps in when a plot needs instigating or resolving. It’s not necessary for every character to have a rich inner life, but apart from the actors’ game efforts, it’s often hard to detect if these people have any lives at all. This limits the writers’ options; outside of guest stars, the only character pairing to generate reliable dramatic energy is Sherlock and John, and the need to find ways to keep them vital together is already showing signs of strain at the start of the show’s third season.

Elementary fares much better. People like Captain Thomas Gregson (Aidan Quinn) and Detective Marcus Bell (Jon Michael Hill) didn’t arrive on the scene fully fleshed out, but over the course of the show’s run, they’ve developed into more than just exposition delivery devices. Gregson’s home life was the subject of at least one storyline, and his occasional issues with Holmes’ methods make him more than just a good-natured doof relying on an outsider to do his job for him; this season, Bell was injured in the line of duty as a direct result of Holmes’ carelessness, and his recovery has become a small but important running storyline. Elementary’s Mycroft (Rhys Ifan) has a complicated relationship with Sherlock that suggests resentments and affection lingering beneath the surface, and Alfredo Llamaso (Ato Essandoh), Sherlock’s AA sponsor, helps keep the detective’s addiction problems a relevant part of the series.

Even Elementary’s take on Watson is more complex and interesting. The Sherlock version is perfectly acceptable: Freeman is well cast, and does a fine job of switching between outrage, awkward double takes, and astonishment. But it was established in the first episode that Watson’s war experience (he served as an army doctor in Afghanistan) had deeply affected him, and this has been largely forgotten, outside of the occasional tossed-off bit of dialogue. Though he’s given the dignity of outside work and occasional love interests, Watson’s main job is to react to Sherlock. As Joan Watson, on the other hand, Lucy Liu gives life to one of the stronger female roles on network television, a former surgeon turned sober companion who first meets Sherlock when his father hires her to help him go (and stay) drug-free. Over the course of the first season, Watson helped bring balance and perspective into Holmes’s world, while he, in turn, offered her a glimpse of the challenges and gratification of investigative work. It’s an equal partnership that allows Watson agency and standing without diminishing Holmes’ gifts.

The best development of Elementary’s first season is also one that requires a bit of spoiling; if you haven’t seen the season, and have avoided learning about it, feel free to skip this paragraph. For both TV versions of Holmes, it was inevitable that Moriarty would eventually come into play. Despite appearing only briefly in Doyle’s stories (and basically having been created so the author could have an excuse to kill off his most famous creation), the evil professor has long been a key figure in Holmesian lore. On Sherlock, Moriarty (Andrew Scott) was a bratty, petulant psychopath, a twisted mirror version of Sherlock’s own childish self-regard. All well and good, but there’s nothing particularly innovative about this take, and the showdown between hero and villain, for all the fireworks surrounding it, was never much in doubt. Elementary, however, decided to combine Moriarity with another of piece of the mythology: Irene “The Woman” Adler. On Sherlock, Adler is a dominatrix who briefly defeats Holmes before her emotions get the better of her (a twist that manages the neat trick of being even less progressive than the Victorian-era short story which inspired it). But the Adler to Miller’s Holmes is a former lover whom he initially believes to have been murdered; her death sent him to drug addiction, which in turn led to his arrangement in New York with Joan Watson. The twist being that Adler isn’t dead, and is, in fact, the mysterious “Moriarty” whom Sherlock spends most of the first season tracking down. The idea of Sherlock being infatuated with his criminal counterpart (and apparent intellectual match), feelings which don’t disappear even when he helps turn her over to the police, offers tremendous opportunities going forward, and, in retrospect, seems like the most natural idea in the world. Who else would a man obsessed with solving crime fall in love with?

The key difference between Sherlock and Elementary comes down to the way each show treats its protagonist. Everything in Sherlock revolves around Sherlock. He is the series’ sole reason for existing, and the dynamic remains frozen in amber. Sherlock will do something outrageous, everyone will gasp, but then he’ll solve a crime or offer a token gesture of commiseration, and everyone will move on. It gets old, because the show simultaneously wants its audience to be shocked by Sherlock’s behavior, and charmed by his roguish self-regard and evident brilliance, without much variation. Elementary takes a broader view. As Sherlock, Miller is often standoffish and arrogant, but he exists in a world that refuses to let him off the hook for his mistakes or his behavior; better still, he recognizes his failings, and is clearly working toward addressing them. This doesn’t mean the series is about “fixing” Holmes, or even that the character is inherently broken, but it allows for the possibility of growth and change. On Sherlock, Holmes is constantly bemoaning that he’s surrounded by idiots, and it’s hard to argue his point. On Elementary, Holmes is engaged in the slow, painful process of accepting that those “idiots” might have something to teach him. The former has its moments, but the latter makes for better television and more rewarding art.

#BBC Sherlock #CBS Elementary #Sherlock Holmes

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sclfmastery · 6 years

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Mun Questions Meme - 3, 4, 5, 11, 23, 26 & 29.

Do you have a favorite AU?My entire blog at this point is an AU, lol. It’s kind of a necessity because I’m committed to this particular iteration of the Master (wonderful as they are in all their faces) and in canon it’s heavily implied that he’s regenerated into Missy by the end of The Doctor Falls. So in the sense that I have AU’s, they are literally all at least canon-divergent after the end of Series Ten. I think my favorite AU’s are those in which he survived Missy’s stabbing and reconciled with the Thirteenth Doctor some time after her own regeneration. Both Simm and Missy have shown us that the Master is capable of contrition and redemption; that combined with the fact that Thirteen has regained the hopefulness that the Doctor lost for several faces tell me that it’s an ideal combination for a real Thoschei reconciliation. Simm has seem the future, has seen his own stupidity, and knows the choices Missy is willing to make on the Doctor’s behalf. With some soul-searching he’d realize that’s what he, too, wants: his friend back. And Thirteen is surely contrite for Twelve’s misguided attempts to “rehabilitate” Missy. They’d both be willing to listen to each other now.

Name one thing you don’t like about your character.I don’t like his limitless capacity for cruelty. Which often makes it difficult to write him, considering it’s such an enormous part of his mature character. But again, the ability to crush his enemies (and friends) and the CHOICE not to, are such a compelling challenge for a writer, that I keep coming back for more.

Name one thing you love about your character.His persistence, and his resilience. His defiance. His certitude that his path is right (which on the flip side can be a reckless arrogance), even if he must tread it alone. His strength of resolve. He is a lion, brutal though he may be.

What one character you’ve thought of RPing but haven’t yet?Oh there are several, LOL. But I’m notorious for multi-tasking past my limits, and having, as a friend recently told me (god, I cringed) “fickle” muses. So I’m trying to limit myself from making still more blogs. For some reason, having a multimuse has never worked for me; I like to fixate singularly on a character, and make sideblogs for weaker or rarer muses. So unless I want literally like 15 blogs...lol.... Anyway the characters I’ve thought of rping. Rhys Griffiths from The Catch is the most recent urge, and he still hasn’t gone away. John Simm plays him, too, but he’s so similar to the Simm Master (with several notable differences, including a way more laid-back, lazy disposition) that despite him being a delightful disaster (my kind of character LOL), I decided instead to make a Mob Boss AU (Rhys is an English mob boss who hands the title over to his sister in favor of working with his best friend, a con man, as a consultant to the FBI). I dunno, I may cave in, aside the fact that the show only lasted 2 seasons and the fandom is nonexistent. Other characters: Sebastian Moran and Irene Adler from Sherlock Holmes. I’ve played Sebastian before, for years, but since I ship him with Jim Moriarty and I have a Jim blog, I’m still hoping someone else’s Sebastian will show up on the regular (and also be of age...cause...yeah I won’t do nsfw threads with minors. EVER.) Irene is like a huge thorn in my side because original books Irene is a goddess but nobody, except maybe the Jeremy Brett series Irene and the Rachel McAdams Irene, has ever portrayed her anywhere close to book canon. So I’m like “FINE, I’ll just do it!” lmao. I’m still seriously considering her.

What fandom do you like but have never interacted with?I can’t think of any honestly. If I like a fandom I pretty much intrepidly dive in. That’s exactly my problem lmfao.

Name one thing about your character(s) that no one knows about.This is also challenging because I LOVE sharing headcanons lmfao. Maybe this: He really liked being a woman before (yeah, I headcanon that Missy isn’t the first Time Lady Master, because it makes zero sense in a nonbinary gender-liberated society???) and looming a child. He would actually like to be a woman again, and even to try old-fashioned pre-looming pregnancy, but he’s very leery of regenerating, because he has ambivalent feelings about becoming Missy (much as he adores and worships her, lol) given his last experience with her. So likely nothing will ever come of this.

If your character(s) were paint colors, what would their paint color names be? (Go silly if you want!)

Black hole; smoldering red resentment; belly fire; absent night; LOL. Terrifying variations on red and black.

#headcanons #intergalacticstarlight

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thedoctornumber11 · 7 years

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NAME YOUR 10 FAVORITE CHARACTERS FROM BOOKS, MOVIES, OR TV SERIES, THEN TAG 10 FRIENDS.

The Doctor (all of them, although obviously Eleven is my favorite), Doctor Who

Data, Star Trek TNG

Wonder Woman DC Comics (Lynda Carter is best version of Wonder Woman.)

Rey, Star Wars

Tommy Oliver, Power Rangers

Spider-Man, Marvel Comics

Sherlock Holmes, All iterations but Cumberbatch

Harry Potter, Harry Potter

Korra, Legend of Korra

Seto Kaiba, Yu-Gi-Oh!

Honorable Mentions: Literally any character from Firefly/Serenity. They were only not mentioned because I couldn’t pick one. Beth from the Walking Dead would also be mentioned but there wasn’t enough space. Amy Pond and River Song would also be on the list. Batman, Captain America, Natasha Romanoff, Supergirl, The Flash and Captain Picard from Star Trek TNG would be on the list as well but I didn’t want to mention too many characters from the same fandom. I’d be set if this was a top 20 or top 30.

Tagged by: @amongdeadthings

Tagging: @desiredoverkills @askthegirldetective @missclarasoufflegirl @nettle-rain @amazingxamazon @notacyclonefan @stillgoodpeople @leila-dawson @schwartzkatz @jokesallaround and anyone else who wants to do it! Just say I tagged you!

#This is in no particular order btw

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lodelss · 4 years

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Samuel Ashworth| Longreads | September 2019 | 13 minutes (3,389 words)

Senators Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Marco Rubio (R-FL) are nestled in one another’s arms, sweat glistening on their muscled chests. They kiss softly and tenderly. It’s the middle of the night in a hotel somewhere on the campaign trail, and they are in love.

“So, if you were an animal, which would you be?” asks Ted.

“Let me think,” says Marco. “A manatee.”

Welcome, friends, to the glorious world of congressional fan fiction. If you’ve always associated fan fiction with the kind of people who hand-sew their own Star Trek jumpsuits, think again. Since going online in the late ’90s, fan fiction — a fan-created spinoff (sometimes way, way off) of an already-existing pop culture presence — has exploded. Its protagonists range from fictional, like Han Solo, to real, like Ariana Grande or members of the British Parliament. Published stories, which can range from a few hundred words to a few hundred thousand, number in the tens of millions, and boast an immense readership. The genre also remains one of the few resolutely not-for-profit corners of the internet: Since the work often involves trademarked intellectual property, fair use rules forbid fanfic authors from making money off their writing, unless they change all recognizable details, as E.L. James did with her BDSM Twilight fanfic story, Fifty Shades of Grey. Stories about congress fall under the penumbra of “Real-person fiction,” which isn’t bound by copyright laws in the same way.

For as long as people have been telling stories, people have been telling stories about those stories. It’s a basic human impulse: The Greeks wrote fan fiction about the Trojan War; the Chinese wrote it during the Ming Dynasty; the Spaniards wrote it about Don Quixote; the Victorians about Sherlock Holmes. Typically, we date its modern iteration from the late ’60s, when Star Trek fans began to circulate mimeographed zines full of their own adventures aboard the USS Enterprise. It was the punctuating backslash in “Spock/Kirk” that created the genre for stories which literalize unspoken sexual tension between same-sex characters: slashfic.

While not all fan fiction is erotic or romantic, a lot of it is. Pop culture mega-properties like Harry Potter or the TV show Supernatural have the biggest constituencies, but niche fandoms abound (for example, there is even one — mercifully chaste — story devoted to my favorite podcast, NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour). One growing niche is political fan fiction; the influential fanfic site Archive of Our Own (AO3), with more than 2 million users, has a thousand stories dealing with 21st-century American politicians alone.

Fanfic is inherently delightfully goofy, but it’s also worth taking seriously. Fandom has become one of the driving forces of American pop culture. When provoked, fans can rescue a TV show like Brooklyn 99 or One Day at a Time from cancellation, or they can kill a project in its infancy, as numerous young adult novelists have found. Even though fan fiction is necessarily noncommercial, the world of fandom is an economic behemoth, and with economic power, inevitably, comes political power — whether it’s wanted or not.

Most political fanfic features world leaders: AO3 features dozens of erotic romances between Emmanuel Macron and Justin Trudeau, or David Cameron and a rotating harem of male British MPs, while the past two years have seen a proliferation of meme-ready “Trump/Shrek” slashfic. Sample line: “Donald Trump was building a wall. No, not to keep out the Mexicans. He built it around his heart, to keep anyone from getting there and breaking it like Shrek did.”

But since the 2016 election, as American political engagement has boomed — the 2018 midterms had the highest voter turnout percentage for any midterm in 104 years — fan fiction scholars have noted a spike in stories featuring the U.S. Congress. What makes this boomlet strange is that at its core, fan fiction “is about genuinely liking a person,” says Dr. Amber Davisson, coauthor of Politics for the Love of Fandom: Fan-Based Citizenship in a Digital World. And historically, well, not many people like Congress. As of August of this year, the institution’s average Gallup approval rating was 17 percent — somehow an improvement over the first half of this decade.

And yet, the more I spoke to authors, the more congressional fan fiction began to make perfect sense as a response to our high-strung political moment. To Ehren Hatten, a prolific fanfic author living in Austin, Texas, people gravitate to fanfic because it’s “writing something you want to see.” During the Obama administration, Hatten wrote a series of stories modeled on the “Hetalia” universe — a Japanese webcomic turned manga and anime series featuring nations personified as broadly stereotypical characters (France, for instance, hits on every woman who crosses his path). In her tale, the embodiment of America storms onto the floor of Congress and delivers a scorching tirade against the Affordable Care Act, which he calls an unconstitutional attack on the “will of the people.” The law, he warns direly, will bring about another Civil War — and a justified one at that.

Even though fan fiction is necessarily noncommercial, the world of fandom is an economic behemoth, and with economic power, inevitably, comes political power — whether it’s wanted or not.

“I was trying to point out how wrong and out of touch Congress has been for years,” Hatten told me. What she wrote was mostly “a way for me to get ideas out of my head,” but at the same time, she was annoyed by other Hetalia-based fan works “that would portray things like America being a superfan of Obama.” In the climax of her story, America triumphantly punches Obama in the face.

Similarly, Amanda Savitt, an ACA supporter, said writing fan fiction “made me feel like I had a little bit of control.” In her story, Steve Rogers is divorced from his role as Captain America’s alter ego and is now a young diabetic art student. (This is typical of the “alternate universe” genre of fanfic, which takes characters from one world and reimagines them in another, often with completely different characteristics. One such story features Rand Paul as a high school goth tormented by/in love with rich bully Donald Trump.) Afraid the Republican Party will kill the ACA and take away his access to health care, Steve and his best friend Bucky Barnes decide to marry so Steve can secure health insurance. Eventually, Steve and Bucky attend a town hall led by a Paul Ryan–esque figure. Steve delivers a scorching tirade against the repeal of the ACA. In the climax of her story, Steve triumphantly punches the Paul Ryan–esque figure in the face.

For many political fanfic writers, this catharsis is the main point of the exercise — to blow off steam. While William Wordsworth defined poetry as “the spontaneous overflow of emotion recollected in tranquility,” fan fiction omits the tranquility part, which may explain the sheer ferocity of a lot of the eroticism. One author in Alaska who wrote a story about Mitch McConnell (R-KY) having intense and almost feral sex with Paul Ryan (R-WI 1) after failing to repeal Obamacare told me they banged the whole thing in an hour when they were feeling ground-down and angry.

***

Somewhere in Washington, rain is pouring outside as a young person curls up under a blanket with their girlfriend, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY 14). Suddenly, a blackout ripples across the city, plunging them into darkness.

“Don’t be afraid,” she whispers. “I’m here.”

Yet for all the rage that has soaked into our political rhetoric lately, stories wherein characters physically attack politicians are rarer than you might think. Instead, most congressional fan fiction, even the really out-there stuff, is all about the romance. In one story, Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA 12) get intimate after a spirited game of one-on-one basketball. In another, Paul Ryan and former Rep. Aaron Schock (R-IL 18) long for each other from across the House floor. The exception to this rule is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, whose stories, so far, are loving but pointedly nonsexual. This has much to do with the fact that fanfic authors are overwhelmingly female, making sites like AO3 something of a refuge from the male gaze. “When the media reports on AOC and ‘girlifies her,’” Davisson explains, “they’re diminishing her. … [Her fans] care about her as a person.”

All of which brings us to Rubio and Cruz nuzzling, flushed with the thrill of new love and discussing their spirit animals. There are no fewer than 24 separate stories under the “Crubio” tag on AO3, but one of the first, “Fifty Shades of Red,” was written in 2016 by two high schoolers, who asked, not unreasonably, to remain anonymous in this article.

“Fifty Shades of Red” runs over 15,000 words long and chronicles a sweet but relentlessly raunchy (a phrase that could capture fan fiction at its core) senatorial affair, culminating in the two men admitting their love on a debate stage. They then exit stage right to apologize to their wives — who, in a classically Shakespearean twist, have also fallen in love with each other. “Our first taste of politics was Trump,” said one of the young writers, who collectively published the story under the nom de fan MikeRotch. “So it was kind of fun to turn the shitshow that was that election and make it into something more funny, and try to imagine that there’s something else inside these men aside from terrible policies and homophobia.”

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Both writers describe themselves as left-leaning and queer, and their story began as a dare during a sleepover. “We were just spiteful,” they said, but as they kept going, something unexpected happened. They became profoundly attached to their characters — Cruz as the gruff, masculine daddy, and Rubio as the besotted, timid younger man. A narrative which began as pure raunch turned into Cruz tenderly reading his favorite W.S. Merwin poem to Rubio, and Rubio confessing that “every day, I wake up questioning everything. Who I am. Who I want to be. Who I should be.” Their farce evolved into a real romance, fueled by an empathy that the authors never expected to feel for two men representing everything they loathed. That empathy stayed with them even after the story was written, and many of the other writers who wrote their own Crubio slashfic preserved it in their stories, too. On March 15, 2016, when Marco Rubio dropped out of the race for the GOP nomination, one of the MikeRotch authors called the other, crying.

Fan fiction is no different from any other kind of fiction: Empathy is its fuel, its AllSpark, its galvanic jolt. Without the writer’s willingness to probe the motivations of each character, good or evil, the story will not go. The plot will sit there, limp as wet cereal, and convince no one. This is why so much overtly political fiction is lousy: Instead of empathizing, the writer sets out to convince and condemn. The story groans under its own seriousness. But resonating fan fiction revels in humanizing its villains — there are 33,995 works on AO3 wherein Harry Potter hooks up with his nemesis Draco Malfoy. “I think there are a few reasons for that,” Savitt told me, “one of which is the fact that in popular media, unfortunately, villains tend to be queer-coded.” Just look at Disney: Ursula from The Little Mermaid was deliberately patterned on the immortal drag queen Divine. In Sleeping Beauty, Maleficent’s magical powers are just an outlet for her overflowing top energy. Male villains from Jafar to Hades to Scar (the Jeremy Irons version, not Chiwetel Ejiofor’s butch performance) are heavy-lidded, louche, effete. In fan fiction, authors have the power to overwrite that coding, to rethink the knee-jerk contempt we’re supposed to feel for these characters and depict them instead with an empathy the source material rarely affords.

This empathy makes congressional fan fiction remarkable in a political reality so divided that empathy isn’t just rare, it’s almost impossible. According to “The Perception Gap,” a 2019 study from the nonprofit group More In Common, the more politically engaged an American citizen is, the more likely they are to be wildly misinformed about the other side. Democrats flail around trying to divine the humors of the Trump voters, and Republicans believe that half of all Democrats are ashamed to be American.

Fan fiction is no different from any other kind of fiction: Empathy is its fuel, its AllSpark, its galvanic jolt.

Fanfic authors, on the other hand, tend to delve into objective research about characters and their worlds. Most stories about congresspeople feature direct quotes from speeches (in “Fifty Shades of Red” Cruz makes Rubio read one of his speeches while they have sex — something the authors spent “an embarrassing amount of time” researching), nuanced conversations about policy, and often, strikingly honest presentations of the villains’ arguments. In Ehren Hatten’s stories, Democrats assail America’s embodiment with real talking points (uninsured people “drain the system when they end up in the emergency room”). America has his answers ready, of course, but Hatten’s congresspeople are far from straw men. “I’ve been called a bigot and a racist more times than I really thought possible,” Hatten told me. “However, I still feel humans in general want to remember that the people they disagree with are still human and not some creature from the black lagoon. At least that’s my hope.”

That hope — the hope that maybe some of it isn’t fictional — is what drives people to write stories about Congress. Authors who write humanizing stories about politicians “are hoping in some sense that they are that human,” says Anne Jamison, an assistant professor of English at the University of Utah. If you can imagine a world where all Mitch McConnell needs is the love of a good man, or one where Susan Collins has a backbone, then you can convince yourself that maybe, just maybe, it could be true.

***

On the senate floor, senators are voting on whether or not to end the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees. Dean Heller (R-NV) weeps in the strong embrace of Mark Warner (D-VA), torn between his desire for moderation and his fear of a primary challenge.

“Be brave!” Warner urges him. Heller sniffles into a handkerchief.

Ten years ago, it might have seemed ludicrous to think that people would be penning heroic epics about members of the U.S. Congress. But troubled times are fertile soil for heroes. In Bertolt Brecht’s play The Life of Galileo, Galileo says, “Unhappy is the land that needs a hero.” Judging by our recent cultural diet, we live in an unhappy land. In the movies, heroes flourish: The Avengers, Star Wars, The Fast and the Furious. These blockbusting franchises depend upon the absolute, indisputable goodness of the hero’s quest (and, in the case of The Fast and the Furious franchise, the limitless redeemability of villains). Meanwhile, we’re living in the new golden age of television, which derives its popular and intellectual voltage from daring us to fall in love with charismatic antiheroes: Game of Thrones, Fleabag, Breaking Bad, Mad Men, Succession. The West Wing is dead, long live Veep.

In our fiercely divided time, the politicians we agree with aren’t just leaders, they’re held up as saviors. It’s not enough to just support them; we want to love them. We’re fans of them. This distinction is crucial: “Fandom is perverse,” says Davisson. “I mean that in the best possible way. Fandom is about love, and love is seldom a rational thing.” Rather, love is blind, jealous, obsessive. What it really wants is more — more access, more story, more flesh, more time. More content.

As Davisson points out, “we’re very aware that everything we’re seeing is being produced. A lot of [fan fiction] is about wanting to see behind the curtain. [People] want to see that these politicians that they see on TV have real passion — something genuine.” It is this perceived sense of genuineness which gives us permission to trust — and therefore permission to love. And increasingly, the savviest politicians — like movie studios and TV networks — are learning how to operate the levers of that love.

Much of Donald Trump’s appeal as a politician is the way he offers completely transparent, un-stage-managed access to his inner thoughts. Being a fan of Trump is probably delightful, even addictive. At all hours of the day — or in the dead of night — his fans have access to his unfiltered inner monologue, stripped not only of the political calculus with which virtually every other politician speaks, but of any inhibition or caution whatsoever. In essence, Trump is a fountain of glittering content; he is pure fan service. He is the triumph of quantity over quality. And his fans are hammered drunk with love.

Few politicians have understood popular love better than Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, whose Instagram feed offers fans an unprecedented level of access to a politician’s personal life. From her first days in Washington, she has created a self-produced reality show. She brings followers (that word is significant here) into the madcap world of a freshman congresswoman. She takes them on trips up to her roof garden where she asks for advice on how to harvest her spinach plants, and she offers long, thoughtful reflections about shifting from a bartender’s salary to a congresswoman’s (she can now afford oat milk). She is perhaps the most relatable politician in the country. In addition to the tender, puppy-love-like stories about her on AO3, there is also a comic book, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the Freshman Force. The cover features her in a gleaming suffragette-white pantsuit, standing astride the prone form of a red elephant, holding her phone in one hand and beckoning the reader to join her with the other. “New party,” she says, “who dis?”

The politicians we agree with aren’t just leaders, they’re held up as saviors. It’s not enough to just support them; we want to love them. We’re fans of them.

Drawing an equivalence between AOC and Trump is common to the point of cliché, and to do so ignores a crucial distinction between them: the nature of their fandoms. Fandom, at its best, is what patriotism should look like — loyal, welcoming, but not infinitely forgiving. Good fandom, according to Ashley Hinck, an assistant professor at Xavier University, “will hold you accountable.” But at its worst, fandom looks like patriotism at its most toxic: hostile to outsiders, utterly entitled, deaf to criticism. And increasingly, it’s getting harder to tell the difference.

On any given day in America, the president might signal-boost a doctored video of Nancy Pelosi. Theories floated on Fox News find their way into White House policy. Tweets intended as parody are accepted as legitimate. An echo chamber of commentators swiftly warp political developments whose audience does not care if they are accurate, so long as they are angry. In this world, the fear that fictional narratives — even those meant as jokes — can overwhelm the actual facts is well-founded. But for better or for worse, we are in an age of political fandom, and there’s no going back.

“We’ve entered a world in which fan identities matter,” says Hinck. “And if we underestimate fandom — and the importance of fan identities — it’s dangerous.” According to Hinck, the old demographics are outdated. The political world populated by easily targeted union members and soccer moms and Rockefeller Republicans is gone, and it is not coming back. The internet has broken the old molds of identity, and now we are gluing the shards back together into shapes that fit us better. “People are looking for new sources of belonging,” says Hinck. “People are members of these fan communities in the millions. These are huge voting blocs.”

“That’s true,” agrees Amber Davisson, but she points out that “the day you organize fandom, you destroy it. Creative work exists at the margins because they’re exploring the thing we don’t want to talk about. Fans need to exist at the margin because they need to push the rest of us. There will always be people pushing at the edges. And sometimes people pushing at the edges win.”

* * *

Samuel Ashworth is a regular contributor to the Washington Post Magazine, and his fiction, essays, and criticism have appeared in Hazlitt, Eater, NYLON, Barrelhouse, Catapult, the Times Literary Supplement, and the Rumpus. He is currently working on a novel about the life and death of a chef, told through his autopsy.

Editor: Katie Kosma Fact-Checker: Samantha Schuyler Copyeditor: Jacob Z. Gross

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