#i remember back in my original run being so emotionally attached to ed and being suuuuuper normal about his dynamic w/ edd | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

doubledyke · 9 months

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i think ed and double dee have a special bond that we see some of in the show, but in my head of course it goes deeper. for example, i really like the scene in "to sir with ed" when ed is over at double dee's house late at night and they're just hangin out. it's one of my favorite little scenes because i feel like it gives a brief but interesting view into their friendship outside of the trio's dynamic.

we can pretty safely assume that ed's parents don't give a shit about him and frankly don't want to be around him, hence the removal of the basement staircase at least once. they're (mostly his mom) so blinded by their detestation for their son that they forgot they'd need to do laundry at some point. and you guys know what i think of dee's parents. they don't give a shit about him outside of how good or bad he makes them look.

i think the two really connect because of their lack of caring parents and for being kids who spend a lot of time alone, and are probably comfortable with/used to solitude, but crave the company of another person. i imagine that on a lot of summer nights when the boys are parting ways, eddy goes home and does whatever he does. but the other two go to edd's house to hang out until they're ready to go to bed. ed's parents wouldn't notice he's gone and edd's parents rarely come home before midnight.

their time together consists of science experiments where edd gets to teach his friend about things he thinks are cool. whether or not ed absorbs the knowledge is another story. they build models together, and watch gory horror movies while critiquing the practical effects. edd gets his hands on a taped surgical procedure and they watch between handfuls of popcorn. i think they'd also enjoy doing their own thing while in the same room; ed drawing while dee is studying or compulsively organizing, etc. i wonder if they ever make fun of eddy behind his back... 🤔

in the show, i see ed being somewhat of a protector of dee. he doesn't process a lot of the things dee says or does, but cares nonetheless and sometimes anticipates things that might upset his delicate friend. whereas with double dee, he takes on an almost parental/motherly role for ed. he tries to guide and teach him, but also wishes to keep his innocence intact as much as possible. he's also sensitive to his friend's feelings and reactions, though he might not really understand them. i could see him wanting to mentor ed in things like hygiene and other basic life skills that his parents neglected. he's not very successful in his efforts though.

ed and dee do, of course, get on each other's nerves for similar reasons. ed doesn't always want to learn about quantum mechanics and the clinical quality of dee's house creeps him out, in a bad way. a little filth would really liven up the place. double dee really wishes ed would take a shower - why, he'd even provide the hypoallergenic soap! he also struggles with ed's one track thinking and tendency to (unintentionally?) disrupt and destroy. one thing i find hilarious in the show is that most of the time when dee is frustrated with ed, he calls on eddy to handle it. there's something interesting about that, but i'm not fully prepared to delve into that right now lmao. maybe it's because double dee doesn't know how to get ed to change behavior barring physical force and he's not comfortable doing that (aside from the band-aid method). but eddy'll do it! i imagine ed's response to being upset with dee would be to utterly zone out and forget about it entirely in five minutes. but he might also purposely continue to piss him off for shits n giggles. he secretly wants to see double dee's "dark side" really badly.

anyway, those are just some thoughts and hcs i had the momentary mental energy to gather in one place. nothing revolutionary, but fun to share nonetheless. thanks for reading!

#i think there's a lot more that could be said but my brain is absolutely fried as usual #i remember back in my original run being so emotionally attached to ed and being suuuuuper normal about his dynamic w/ edd #ed edd n eddy #eene #text

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ginjointsintheworld · 3 years

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this is not a new or original thought but I feel like one of the reasons we might be so attached to leyren is because of lauren's character development? I went back to watch some episodes from s1 and s2 and seeing lauren's lowest lows really makes me appreciate her highs so much more. Like her progression over the 4 seasons is the best among all of the NA characters imo. rewatching that episode w iggy where she finally talks about her family, and you can just feel how hurt and broken she feels+

+ and then next to that, seeing her all lovey and happy with leyla in s3 and s4... idk it just does something to my heart and I never want it to stop!

oh i definitely think that's a big part of it and why like i've said before, watching the entire show gives their relationship an even deeper impact. i don't think that, with the exception of max, we've seen a character on NA be rubbed emotionally raw and exposed as lauren has. between watching her spiral into addiction to diving into her traumatic childhood to rehab to the ambulance crash literally going through a goddamn windshield to major reconstructive leg surgery and the resulting pain to PT to the Ligon bullshit it was basically 2 seasons straight of lauren getting thrown headfirst into confronting every ugly demon and deep, dark, fears she had via a giant helping of brand new traumatizing life event. there's a reason janet said in an interview that there's a running joke among the crew that lauren's been through the most turmoil. just watching a supercut of lauren's s1&2 moments is probably emotionally exhausting.

so to see her stumble out of that odyssey of trials and tribulations, bruised, battered but better for it and land on steady ground in s3 and finally, finally get smacked with something good for once in the form of the unstoppable force that is leyla shinwari, literally kicking down her ED doors and figuratively flipping all her chairs and tables in the best ways? unbelievably satisfying payoff. i always like to think back to s1 when lauren was talking with the dean of medicine about the situation with floyd and he told her to "run towards love, you'll never regret it" and how she instead introduced floyd to evie. i think a part of her knew that whatever it was with floyd, it wasn't love and the feelings weren't enough to overcome her fears or risk being vulnerable again. so to remember that and compare it to the unrestrained way she opened herself to the relationship with leyla, even at times when leyla was holding her at arms length, it never made her waver. then to see her vulnerability yield this intimate relationship she always told herself she wasn't capable of and being so happy and content in it AHHHH!!!!!!

lauren and leyla connect and compliment each other so well and the depth and tenderness of their relationship, the growth that lauren has shown in it, is why i'll lowkey be bitter if this goes down in flames for them. in terms of lauren's character journey this should be one of the final goals, one of the pillars of her complete arc, instead of just a stepping stone to the next thing. that's not to say that they as a couple and lauren as a character can never have struggles again. but what were all the hardships she's endured and learned from for if not to recognize and fight for this relationship that means so much to her and not shy from the hard work it takes to nurture and grow it through the good times and bad times and everything in between.

#anon #asks #me: i'm fine the story will unfold how it unfolds #also me: AND ANOTHER THING THEY'RE FUCKING SOULMATES YOU F O O L S

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bonnieisaway · 4 years

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A Stupidly Long Critique of Saiki K: Reawakened

A Fuckton Of Spoilers Ahead

So I went and watched the new season/continuation of Saiki K today on Netflix and.

Boy, do I have some words.

Spoilers under the cut!

Alright. So as I’ve said, today, (Dec 30th) Netflix decided to rip The Disastrous Life Of Saiki K out of Funimation’s hands and make their own continuation- Saiki K Reawakened. A 6 episode continuation and ending to our beloved show, that’s been hyped up for weeks now.

..Except, it doesn’t really feel that way.

The first episode, (Three Men, A Little Girl, A Police Officer, And A Dog) first of all struck me with this- they no longer had opening/ending theme songs. I posted about it earlier but this made me really upset. The op/ed songs are one of my favorite parts of the anime. Youth Isn’t So Cruel is a beautiful song, The Most Favorable! is hyper active and just a fun listen, Silent Prisoner is bad ass, and Put Your Hands Up always put a smile on my face, and that’s just the opening. But Netflix decided to take away the songs and it’s upsetting. I would’ve been happy even if they just re-used an old opening, because I was expecting something and it was really disappointing.

The episode itself was a bit upsetting itself. I like watch things in order, but the chapter this episode is based off of is literally like the 10th chapter of the manga. I can’t find the exact one at the moment but I remember it was early on (hence, Nendo and Kaido arguing about which one of them is Saiki’s friend and such.) Even then- I went in expecting 6 episodes about his powers reawakening, not “Here’s 5 episodes of chapters we skipped and then we’re gonna mention the powers being reawakened.”

That’s probably one of my biggest problems with Reawakened. It’s just makeup work.

I think it would’ve been better if they put these episodes either in the places they belong or in the Season 3 category under the original show. They didn’t deserve all this hype for filler.

Another thing I missed was that usually, after the ending song in every episode, there’d be a small narration by Saiki of what would come next week. Those were also super funny and I missed that. I feel like Reawakened was a bad fanfiction Netflix wrote which just killed the original work. I thought Reawakened was gonna be a bad ass, slow escalation of Saiki’s powers cranking themselves back up to what they were before the ending of Season 2. And it kind of disappointed.

That isn’t to say Reawakened didn’t have it’s few funny moments. I think the “useless powers” bit actually made me pee a bit.

But it was only of a few. Most moments felt out of character, or out of place, and the bit with the whole “teacher with a 10-year-anniversary-Jump’ was excruciating to sit through. I did like Saiki’s little smile at the end though. It felt like Saiki’s few expressions that make my heart scream ‘uwu’ were the one thing keeping me watching the show.

In Episode 3, (New Teacher with an Outstanding Feature), I personally felt like Iguchi’s existence was a dead horse they kept beating with a stick every time they called him a pervert. He just genuinely made me uncomfortable and felt like a bad forced joke.

On the contrary, Hii felt like a great addition. I think they should’ve added her in the original two seasons in the first place, where she was supposed to be. I didn’t know till the other day that she came in way earlier. She’s a lovable unlucky klutz and she produced some genuinely funny moments. (Though, that whole ‘what happened last time’ bit kinda hurt my soul.) Episode 4 was one of my favorites just because of her. It felt like she brung back what Netflix stripped away from the original anime.

Before I get to the big money maker, episode 6- I have to point out the elephant in the room.

The fucking English dub.

I figured out that I could turn it on at some point during the episode with the useless abilities so I turned it on. I had heard the trailer with Saiki’s..new VA… but I figured he’d grow on me along with the rest of the cast.

Oh my god I was so wrong.

All I heard was Kuniharu’s and Saiki’s voice and genuinely, I nearly threw up. I’ve never had such an urge to slam my head into a brick wall until I heard the voices. I can’t even say much else because I didn’t and still do not have the willpower to sit through the English dub. It’s just.. so.. bad. I can’t stand it. I know that we can’t have the original English cast back because Funimation copyright yadda yadda I get it. But good lord. I can’t stand Saiki’s voice actor. The sarcasm sounds forced, the pauses are uncomfortable, and it just..hurts. The original one felt fluent, and just organic. The English dub made me, in short, want to blow my brains out.

That aside- episode 6. Saiki Kusuo gets his motha’ fuckin powers back.

I had my hopes low when I started this episode out of fear since some of the others literally just made me want to gag myself.

But episode 6… (muwah.) A masterpiece. No anime is perfect but oh my god.

I loved how Saiki kept forgetting he couldn’t use his powers. Call it weird but the way he’s kind of a tsundere in the sense of lying to himself that he doesn’t like any of this and would be much better off without them is one of my favorite things. And it’s even better when he runs out of lies and has to face it. And even then- as his powers slowly integrate back, I about died. It was so funny, with Tortisuka holding his shoulder when he went invisible and Saiki using that as a way out of it, or hearing others thoughts and thinking of it as an auditory hallucination. I didn’t like how the thoughts sounded distant and kind of echo-ey compared to when they were easy to hear before, but that might just be me.

Also? This scene right here? Where all of his friends protect him and he’s upset because he had to be protected? I started bawling. Maybe it’s because Aunt Flo’s in town and I have an unhealthy emotional attachment to Saiki, but it just hurt so bad watching him upset like that. And on a personal level, I felt where he was coming from. I don’t cry much at movies or TV or anime but good grief, I was crying in the club.

The whole meteorite heading to destroy Japan had me in a bit of shock. I saw the cryptic advertisements hyping Reawakened but I almost forgot about them and even then a meteorite didn’t seem dire until it seemed like Saiki had no say in anything.

As the climax builds and Saiki hears his friends panic-

-also featuring the best line uttered by Akechi ever- but even as Saiko says “I need to get my friends to the bunker aswell!” (which, holy shit, I didn’t care for Saiko but that got me to tear up?) I was losing my mind. After so much disappointment and just agony from this continuation- this had to be the best scene there. It’s hard to describe. It’s just so much emotion.

And then it happens.

The ever tsundere-lying-to-himself Kusuo accepts that he’s a psychic who doesn’t mind his disastrous friends sometimes. What a way to end the anime. Call it a cliche beginning-is-the-end but I’ve never been happier to hear those Japanese words. I’ve never loved an ending so much. It emotionally hurt and was hell, but I loved it. This has been my stupidly long criticism of Reawakened!

So, tl;dr, Reawakened had it’s hard weak points but I’ll be damned if I didn’t love the ending. We love my favorite boyo, Saiki Kusuo. Also I’d die for Hii. Goodnight.

edit: recently i noticed that Saiki's eyes compared to everyone elses doesnt have detail (no pupil/shine etc) except for that epic ending scene with Saiki and I jsut- HOLY FUCK here's a gifnthat kinda shows my point- his eyes transition from normal to detailed

#Saiki kusuo #saiki k reawakened #saiki kusuo no psi nan #saiki k #critisism #i dont know how this got so long

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iownmywiiulegit · 5 years

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Metroid Prime 4: #1- The Lay of the Land

This is the beginning of documentation representing my journey through the Metroid franchise by Nintendo. First, a warning: This next little bit is a flashback that leads up to now.

When Nintendo first mentioned that Metroid Prime 4 was in development I thought man, I really should beat the first Metroid Prime. Back in the days before the Wii I worked my Metroid Prime all the way up to the Ridley battle and then set it down for a few years. I got into different games like Soul Calibur II and Tales of Symphonia. Soul Calibur was a great bro bonding game and I still think it is. The next few years were spent focusing on college and then I bought a Wii. I thought the Gamecube was obsolete at this point since my Wii could play Gamecube games, but man was I wrong. Buying the Wii U proved this to me. I wanted to play all discs on one system but I couldn’t do that. I wanted (and still want) purity with my consoles. This resulted in my going hard into my Gamecube again and getting the hardware peripherals that made it stand on par with the Wii, if not debatably better. I bought the digital component cable for a wildly discounted price on eBay, and the Gameboy player and disc. I got super lucky in finding the component cables at the price I found them at and I think the seller was in a pinch because it WAS around the holidays and I was just randomly checking the listings and was like “holy crap.” No bidding, just buy it now. Can’t say, won’t say. It was also around this time that Nintendo announced that they were starting development for Metroid Prime all over from scratch. Hearing this news felt like hearing a referee pistol. If Nintendo was going to give me a fair warning that shit was getting real about Metroid Prime 4, then it’s up to me to get on the ball and meet Nintendo and Retro Studios in stride. My instincts told me to go beat my original Metroid Prime file, finally. My hardware was excellent and Nintendo sent the official signal; let’s go.

Turning on Metroid Prime for the first time in years with my original save file still intact, I expected to me extremely rusty at the controls and traversing the landscape. Surprisingly it came back fairly quickly and before I knew it I was blasting different colored Metroids away no problem. What I didn’t realize was exactly how close I was to actually beating the game. The final boss was all I had to defeat. Really? 17 years just for that? If my memory serves me correctly, I simply just didn’t want the game to end. I do that. Leave books unfinished, leave movies before the end, compose music and leave the ending open, and I don’t know why. I want time to soak into the experience and really savor it. Perhaps I’m not so much a voracious consumer of entertainment but rather an appreciative connoisseur. Back in 2004, I remember being at a drummer’s house that I was in drum corps with, and he was a stupid competitive type that turned everything into a pissing contest. Once he found out that I had gotten all the way up to Ridley or something he set out to beat that game asap. It was when he was at the final boss that I got my first glimpse of the future 15 years later. Damn.

Anyway, I beat Prime but I still have this amazing fully loaded Gamecube that has the OEM digital component cable, and Gameboy Advance player. My next move was obvious. I wasn’t done with the original Metroid Prime yet, not by a long shot! If you’re a fan of Metroid, you love finding secrets and collecting all de tings. To get the full original Metroid Prime experience, I had to play and beat Metroid Fusion for the Gameboy Advance. I eBay-ed it up asap. It’s kinda funny- Fusion showed up in the mail right on the day or day after I beat Prime. Pretty cool.

Getting into Metroid Fusion was something I wasn’t ready for but always wanted. It was Super Metroid that turned me into a fan. The music, the beautiful colors, the crunchy explosions, and the search really got me looking in every nook and cranny in each level. I wanted more and Fusion was it but I didn’t have a Gameboy Advance and wasn’t going to shell out even more money if I wasn’t going hard into games back then. At that time I was so into music and rocking harder than life could offer that I just could not afford to allocate money toward a handheld that still was not backlit. Fuck that. When I saw pictures of Fusion all I could think was that it was Super Metroid 2. After playing it, man, was I right about that.

Metroid Fusion is so amazing. I love 2D Metroid-style games. Hell, I spent a large part of 2018 playing through the indie game A Robot Named Fight on Steam and currently have a thoroughly played but not beaten Axiom Verge save file on my Wii U. Again, Nintendo gave the signal and I had to run with it so here we are. What I love about Fusion is quite a few things. I love the graphics. The colors are so vibrant and all the sprites look lively. Even though the Gameboy Advance’s resolution is apparent on a 480p screen, it still plays amazingly. The controls are tight and intuitive. I did get lost a lot and backtracked often to find that random wall that needed to be blown through to progress to the next area. I love how the security levels kept me from progressing just enough to experience the game unfold before me. Oh man, I loved hiding from SA-X. What a cool addition. I swore a lot at the spider boss because it took me the most tries to defeat. It was somewhere around that point where I thought that this game wasn’t for amateur platform players. You really had to have a handle on things to get any further. The moment Fusion Stole my heart was in chapter 11, at Plant Core X.

In Metroid Other M, there were oftentimes feelings of isolation and maybe even mild claustrophobia. The same could even go for the final boss in Metroid Prime. There’s something really gross-but-in-a-cool-way about destroying a slimy bug hive in a dark triple sub basement, especially if you have to spelunking your way to perform the extermination. In Fusion, it’s sooo different, but the feeling is eerily similar in a way that I absolutely love. When I first experience Plant Core X, I didn’t think I would be emotionally attached to my character. I didn’t think I was Samus. But then I kept getting dragged into the poisonous flower swamp that released deadly spores into the air in a wide horizontal sine wave pattern. The music was minimal and just a little quieter than the rest of the game. I kept trying to jump out of the swamp but I couldn’t get out. It frustrated me because it interrupted my flow. I felt helpless and that my situation was serious, even over my head. I was suffocating. I felt connected to Samus and like I had entered an extremely deadly area. If Samus is an exterminator, this place was ground zero for the cause of everything in Fusion. Don’t get me wrong- all the other bosses are vital to making up the game but at Plant Core X, Samus gets into deep shit. Imagine that you’re stuck in a poisonous swamp or quicksand and you keep trying to jump out but the sludge keeps pulling you back in. Now imagine all that while the air around you is raining poisonous dandelion seeds. There’s no way you can’t get hit or sucked into the swamp. What an amazing experience. I couldn’t believe what I was feeling. Here’s a YouTube link to this experience but it’s not me playing. Whoever played in this video did way better than me but I think you can get an idea of what I’m talking about. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=347poZRrbrQ

Just last week I beat Fusion but didn’t do so well in collecting all the little things in the game. The final boss was cool and well drawn for the time period and hardware imho. My main goal was to unlock the original NES Metroid in my copy of Metroid Prime on the Gamecube. Since I have a Gameboy Advance that my dad found on a school bus and no kids claimed, I used it to link up to my cube with the Fusion cart and unlocked Metroid.

That brings us to the current moment. Today I figured out how to save my original Metroid game on the Gamecube. This was a little confusing because the Gamecube controller doesn’t have a select button like the original NES. Instead it’s the Z button. To save while you’re playing the game, you need a second controller, just like in the original Legend of Zelda, and while paused push UP and A to initiate the save screen without dying.

I can’t wait to get into it. When the original Metroid screen comes up on my HDTV in a somewhat aliased 480p widescreen picture, I am immediately in a time warp. Since I never played the original Metroid as a kid, my only memories of that game are from looking at strategy guides that didn’t show you everything. I didn’t think much of it then because Mario was it. I used to watch the title screen to Zelda II: The Adventure of Link over and over again as a kid and look into the stars on the screen and just wonder endlessly about anything. It cast a spell over me or something; I was captivated. With Metroid, the original, it is now happening again. The game is brand new to me and I couldn’t give a care to anything modern as far as gaming and technology if I tried. The stars in the background, the blinking letters of METROID, the fairly quick opening sequence loop- all of this shows me that I’ve never grown up from being a kid after all. I’m still the same after all these years. The world can only help me build character and deep down I’m just the same kid that gets filled with endless wonder when 8 bit Nintendo does it’s thing. Amazing.

For a current side note, I’d like to add that in Fusion, you can hear sound effects that are similar to those in the Virtual Boy’s Galactic Pinball. Although the composer for Fusion was not the same as Galactic Pinball, Galactic Pinball’s composer was the same for Super Metroid and Mike Tyson’s Punch Out: Kenji Yamamoto. You can hear similarities everywhere like Yamamoto was consulted often. And if you’re not aware, Galactic Pinball does have a miniature Metroid space shooter game as a bonus easter egg on one of the tables. I like to think that only the hardcore Nintendo fans know this.

Anyway. I’ll report back as soon as more progress is made with the original Metroid. In the meantime, here is my most recent Twitter post with a pic documenting where things are at.

https://twitter.com/VeryBadTim/status/1100219464585490434

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