"Wash me clean again before I pull myself beneath the waves" A Series of Small Offerings - III/11 - day31

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They write this off as Nadeko simply being unlucky because "she just so happened to be killing snakes in that specific shrine", but I really think she did it purposefully because she wanted the curse her classmate placed on her activated as a way of self-harming and placing herself into the love interest/damsel in distress role to be saved by Araragi.

It is so much fun watching Roseanna M. White be Catholic.

For one thing, she tells you cool history stuff about Christmas music.

moon server coworkers "mama gijinkas"

i made this in the one hour in which i was convinced that 10H = Mama (which is also why her outfit doesn't match the real one at all i didn't know of the new title screen yet) and thought about the other two (carrier doesnt pass the vibe check) and now i love them and am devastated that mama is just the pod...

I guess in this version of the story there is a whole bunch of H Units with 10H and they are much more involved with what Mama is doing in the Cage (as in the Mamas are their 'avatars' so to speak, that was how I had imagined it). 10H still has no real interest in what she's doing but everybody thinks she does which is why she was chosen as the leader of the group. xH is the oldest of the three, nobody has ever seen her work but the numbers say she does her job better than yH who is somehow both the dumbest and the smartest of them at the same time.

See you everywhere, now that you’re gone (Patreon)

a bit insane to know there's people out there who think i'm hot shit tbh. you know i'm a pathetic cringefail loser who literally can't do anything, right?? please raise your standards 😔💔

so, uh... netflix avatar certainly is a show, huh? i just finished episode 1 and i'm gonna ramble on about it below. blacklist "#len watches natla" or "natla spoilers" if you either don't wanna see this shit or you don't want spoilers.

fair warning that i was relatively neutral going into the show, but episode 1 was... hmm. i'm still struggling to formulate words on it. i didn't love it, but it wasn't shyamalan levels of bad by any means. i'm gonna hop right into episode 2 after this post bc i've heard the pilot and the finale are the weakest episodes and i genuinely wanna give it a fair chance before i cast judgment.

so, they open with the air nomad genocide. i knew this going in, but it certainly sets a Tone, a Tone that does NOT feel like avatar. like, i understand they wanted to elevate the level of maturity a bit and make things more serious, but was it rlly necessary to see a shit ton of air nomads get fireballed to death, culminating in gyatso getting burned alive trying to protect a room of children, who also presumably get incinerated?? they didn't show that part, instead doing a hard cut to katara waterbending a century later (resulting in EXTREME whiplash for me), but them violently dying is the only way that ends.

also, minor quibble: the firebending looked normal to me, but the general who killed gyatso said smthn like "you might have beaten me any other day, but today we have the power of the comet!" but their bending doesn't look very different from zuko's bending later? it's a little more flamey ig, but in s3 when ozai gets juiced up the motherfucker is out here destroying whole forests from his airship.

onto the acting. gordon cormier's portrayal felt a little too rehearsed and theatrical rather than natural, but he's a kid and acting is hard so i'm def gonna cut him some slack, and he does seem pretty happy and earnest, even if his delivery is a bit forced. kiawentiio tarbell is pretty good, but her dialogue left a bit to be desired, which isn't on her and i'll complain about later. ian ousley gave the best performance imo, tho ymmv bc ik there's some controversy around his heritage that i don't feel i have the right to get into due to tribal registration being a complex topic, blood quantum being awful, and me being white. gran gran was barely there and just exposited everywhere in a weird callback to the og intro, so i don't really feel like she's that important even tho i liked her casting. uncle iroh... i'm not sure. he wasn't too prevalent, which is understandable this early on. i liked paul sun-hyung lee's warmth, but don't have much to say otherwise yet. and then there's dallas james liu. i think his acting was pretty solid, at least on the level of dev patel's performance (which i swear is a compliment bc he was the only good part of shyamalan's dumpster fire of a film imo). i think the issue i have with the performance is down to the writing, which i guess i'll get into now bc it's my biggest issue with episode 1.

the dialogue flow was mid, and there was a bit of info dumping from gyatso in his scene with aang which i found distracting. speaking of info dumping, gran gran was just kinda there to explain the last hundred yrs to aang and then have zero interactions with her grandchildren before they flew off, which was dumb.

still on the topic of writing: i mentioned the tone set by the opener, and i think that's bad, but it also fucked up the pacing by not starting at the same point the og did. by the end of the episode they shoehorned in the trip to the southern air temple with like 11 mins left (i checked) and so that made aang's grief triggering the avatar state feel rushed. i also thought the flashback to gyatso's earlier dialogue when aang saw his corpse was unnecessary. like bitch, i watched that 30 mins ago, i remember it fine! by the end, aang seemed waaaay more driven than he did in s1 of the original, almost as self-confident as he was in s3. like, he accepted being the avatar real quick. i'm pretty sure he'll display a bit more uncertainty later in the season (at least, i hope he does), but that still felt off to me.

my biggest complaint about the writing is zuko. i KNOW he's a brat, i am well aware of that as a lifelong zuko girlie, but was him trying to kill sokka necessary??? he was literally about to throw a fireball at him when he was lying defeated in the snow before aang stepped in. he also commanded his soldiers to burn the village to the ground at one point. i understand he's a villain and that they're attempting to corner the Prestige TV market here, so they've decided to make him grittier. i don't like it, though. in the cartoon, zuko is driven in his awful quest, but he's also honorable - in the village he nods his head in agreement when aang asks if he'll leave the village alone if aang goes with him. that little moment showed his honor, his true honor, peeking through. also in the cartoon, he's really bad at finding the avatar despite being very skilled in combat. i don't know how they're gonna have him show up very much in this season if he's gonna be more of a ruthless asshole tbh.

overall, i'm left just kinda confused with the tone and character writing of the show. i'm going to watch the whole season because it's only 8 episodes and i genuinely hope it improves somewhat, but i'd give it either a 6 or a 6.5/10, i can't quite decide.

gonna ride 'til i can't no more

[ALT ID: A digital painting of a man on horseback leaning down to kiss a man riding a red motorcycle.]

If ur waiting on a reply from me (and i know a couple of folks are rn) thank u for ur patience in waiting. I'm working on typing things up but today is just. idk how to put it but i keep winding up grumpy and my replies i feel are suffering for it. Pls know i do wanna chat and exchange ideas, I'm just trying to make sure the Grumpasaurus Rex side of my brain that's v loud today isn't mucking them up before i send them 🫂🫂❤️❤️

WHAT THE HECK :0

I hate being poor 🤣

my favorite thing about kazjun is how we dont know anything about it other than they banged at one point to make jin

debating booking a dentist appointment with a private practice that's got really good reviews that keep mentioning the dentists being really understanding and gentle with patients that have anxiety.

I'm still not sure we can even handle an appointment but at the same time it feels like our wisdom teeth are getting increasingly painful and I'm scared something's gotten infected

I've only got 4 episodes left in season 4 of ML, and I'm feeling like this show is going through a bit of an identity crisis. It started as a simple monster-of-the-week superhero show with small hints at plot here and there, but now in season 4 it really feels like they're trying to focus a LOT more on the plot aspects and it's kind of collapsing in on itself lol

I understand it's not uncommon for modern cartoons to start with a simple premise and then start building up a plot later on, but with Ladybug, it feels like they want to have a big story but aren't willing to break away from the base formula of the show. Which is kind of an issue, because the base formula includes having a character press the "revert everything to the status quo" button; aka, if anything of consequence happens, it doesn't actually matter because it'll always be fixed/reversed by the end of the episode. There's essentially little to no plot development , because the forumla literally does not allow for it.

Ladybug doesnt need to have a huge overarching storyline (I honestly enjoyed it more when they weren't so focused on the plot), but it just feels kinda lame for them to dangle all of these different plot threads in front of the audience only to immediately say "just kidding!" and then pretend they never happened. It can come off as very fanfiction-y at times (Oblivio and Chat Blanc come to mind), and they've done the identity reveal fakeout so many times now that when it actually happens, I'm not sure I'm gonna have much of a reaction other than "finally lol". Their lack of dedication to letting anything change in the status quo is SUPER obvious with Chloe.

Chloe has a full redemption arc set up in seasons 2&3 (making her sympathetic, giving her a sad backstory that explains why she is the way she is, making her have moments of lucidation where she admits she's a bad person), only to have her turn evil in the season 3 finale because... she's the mean girl. I'm not even saying Chloe HAD to be redeemed; the idea of having an antagonist try to redeem themselves, only for them to fall even farther, is super enticing to me! The problem is, the show very clearly set up a normal redemption story, and then just changed its mind last second because "she's the Mean one". It's really jarring!

Its like the show has all of these ideas for dramatic storylines, but instead of picking one plotline and focusing on that, they just decided to do all of them and have none of them matter lol

have so far staunchly avoided the topic of palestinian apartheid around my 70 year old liberal jewish father (who kibbutz-ed in israel in his young adulthood) and my 66 year old moderate-democrat christian mother but I'm going to visit them tonight and man I don't think I can avoid it forever!! wish me luck...