I was going to add other aspects to this, such as the ending of Hazbin and the Lostbelts from the same game I'll be discussing, but then I realized I wrote a ton about just this one section.

So, the one aside I'll note is: I switched over to Quobuz some months ago, but Spotify still made a wrapped for me and it said my "listening age" is 82. I don't know if what is an average, because none of my top 5 artists were even from 80 years ago, but if you average out Holst and Nightwish... perhaps?

As Fate/Extella Link did get me to go back to Fate/Grand Order:

The final part of the first plot arc I had was a bit underwhelming, but everything after that? Some of these plot lines deserve far more than to be locked behind the first whole arc of a gatcha game.

First off: Salem. Yes, that Salem. Likely the most famous material about Salem, Massachusetts is The Crucible, a play from the McCarthy Era meant to connect the hysteria of the witch hunts to McCarthyism. It is effective at that, but it also focuses more on personal drama. For example, it makes Abigail, who was a child historically, into a fully grown adulteress. It also avoids focusing on some of the major underlying factors behind the witch hunts, many of which were inherently misogynistic.

To that end, this gatcha game with an ample amount of fanservice actually does... a better job at portraying the overall picture?? Sure, a fair amount of Fate material already proved their merit in writing, particularly Fate/Zero, but try to explain this being an optional chapter of a gatcha game.

Which starts out with an anomaly of unknown proportions originating in Salem that could nonetheless impact the future of the world. Da Vinci and Sherlock Holmes coming up with the brilliant idea to send a group of servants into the village. These servants are given instructions to be pretend to be traveling theatre trope. The plays are written directly by Shakespeare and Hans Christian Anderson while they were drunk the night before.

... and the servants (translation: effectively familiars who take on the forms of historical/mythic figures) they send are: Mata Hari, Charles-Henri Sanson, Robin Hood, and Nezha. Circe accidentally shows up.

And, if that doesn't sound like the beginning of some truly unhinged crackfic that could be either phenomenally shitty or brilliant, then I don't know what does.

Yet, there is some logic behind it as most servants would be incapable of keeping a low profile. Hell, many are divine or monarchs with 0 concern with any such things. They directly call out how puritans would be fundamentally opposed to plays to begin with - and they are at first, so the first one they pick is a biblical story - and starting out as obvious outsiders is less of a hurdle than attempting to blend in more.

The puritans are also, accurately, offended by: the servants showing skin, their outfits having color, and Sanson being French.


( A ton of spoilers follow )

Sometime in the future (possibly? likely?): why the Lostbelt where Ivan the Terrible is a giant mammoth and Anastasia (the famous Romanov girl, not Ivan's wife who is also confusingly named Anastasia) is running around with ice magic is actually a realistic tale of survival and the lengths humans will go to for it.

Even though

if I were to make an impromptu soundtrack for it, inspired by the random songs I kept on getting stuck in my head it during it would be:

Ice Ice Baby - Vanilla Ice
Mother Russia - Iron Maiden
The Ballad of Billy the Kid - Billy Joel
Rock Me Amadeus - Falco
Let it Go - Frozen, but pretend it's sung by Anastasia (I'm sorry yet not sorry)
Twinkle Twinkle Little Star (although this one is... in the actual game)

Although perhaps that insane combination of things doesn't seem quite so random after everything else I just wrote.

So, I lied. Another brief fandom post first:

Wednesday not only brought us Hazbin Hotel, but the first episode of the TWST anime. As I already play the game, I wasn't as excited for that, but... it was certainly entertaining. People are definitely going to think this is some absurd theatrical BL given the presentation, but... oh well, close enough.

But I bring it up because it was worth it entirely for English Dub Rook. This is regrettably a twitter link as it's the only version I can find, but all I can say to this is "beaute, 100 points!. That's not at all what I was expecting out of Matthew Mercer when I heard he was voicing Rook.

Amazon only releases two new episodes as a time, so I'm going to skip over most of that until we have more info, but... While this is my least favorite song in terms of the music itself, it's by far the funniest of the bunch so far. I felt awful for Pentious. Year-round Christmas rom-coms and sugar everywhere?! Are we sure THIS isn't hell instead?!



Best line: "Do you have enriched uranium?"

Similar energy to how, one day at work, they gave us free tumblrs and a giant sticker pack we could decorate it with. The problem is it was some motivation pack, as you can see from some remaining here.

I found one that was stuck in there saying "pick your poison." They later gave us a pop-science-pack and I managed to complete it into something truly beautiful:



... I'm guessing the 80s neon poison one was meant to be some "vibes" thing, but clearly, taking it literally is better. Plus, tying it back to TWST, poison is 100% pomefiore approved! Their housewarden is even picked by who can brew the most potent poison. It's science!

The groovy plants one is just one I already had and added to the bottom.

Finally, I may have done something ridiculous and wrote an ACOTAR fic. And posted it on AO3.

The thing is, it's a satire with none of the actual characters in it. I'm guessing I should be a little relieved that fandom is cluttered, so no one left hate comments about how I mocked chapter 55. On the other hand, I'm a little disappointed I'm not getting hate comments.

After getting pre-banned from that romantasy book club, I kind of expect it! (Apparently my specific crime, aside from just general ill fit, was once describing Twilight as a "repressed Mormon woman's wetdream.")

For context: Chapter 55 is a famous/infamous chapter of repeated sex between Rhysand and Feyre. Somehow, he causes earthquakes when he orgasms. It's meant to show their love is just... that strong, but... really? Earthquakes have consequences, you know!

Awhile back, after finishing all 3 of the main books, I also wrote a lengthy substack post about that series in the same form of insane booktok "hidden takes." It's over there because I also shared it on a discord I'm on, but it covers quite a bit of why I approach this series the way I do. ... and, of course, some Lucien defense as I still kept on latching onto him as the moral linchpin who deserves nothing that happens to him.

I have wondered what would happen if I post it on the ACOTAR subreddit, but... it might be labeled "self-promotion" anyway unless I just copy and paste it. I imagine I'd just get banned, although reddit seems saner than most places about romantasy.

I've been meaning to do most a fandom and a personal post, so doing the former first now that I have time today...

I probably shouldn't be as hyped for the new season of Hazbin Hotel as I am. I rarely get excited for upcoming things in general, as I temper my expectations too much, but everything they've released so far just has me awaiting the first two episode tomorrow!

This is the song/video they dropped early, and holy hell. One of the more legitimate, although rarer, reasons people sometimes hate this show is due to how it started as an indie anime and no longer is now that amazon owns it, but... you can't argue with how that amazon budget allows for falling glass ceiling rain.



... and the chant in the background.

This still-frame in particular. Completely unsubtle, but gorgeous:



It's basically a villain song, which once again has me wondering why so many other media have abandoned such routes.

( Read more... )

During their autumn sale, Fate/Extella Link was extremely cheap on Steam, so I went ahead and bought it. It somehow re-ignited my interest in Fate as a whole, after I hit a wall in F/GO some years ago + they haven't really put out anything else not related to F/GO.

The original Fate/Extra is almost a bridge between the serious melodrama that was Fate/Stay Night and a more normal RPG-type game, albeit with one of the worst battle systems known to man that is nonetheless still technically functional. The fact it got the attention it did despite the gameplay is testament to the strength of its characters more than anything else.

Fate/Extella then became a Musou-style game, which actually worked better than the rock-paper-scissors RPG hell of the previous one. It has the virtue of being at the top of my list of "Games I'd Never Want to Try to Explain to Someone Unfamiliar with Anime." By that point, it's a sequel to a spin-off of a game that started as an eroge VN game. While it's long since abandoned that angle (which I suspect was mainly because it was the style at the time/sex sells), you can still see the influences of everything that came before it.

( Spoilers for both Extella games )

I also played/finished a compelling indie game called Wycthwood. Considering I'm always threatening to run off and become swamp hag when I'm older, how could I resist a game that lets me live out my future dreams?!

Truly though, it has some fun potion mechanics, and some compelling retellings of fairytales that are repurposed as bosses representative of human vices. The leech and 3 pigs chapters were... surprisingly dark for a so-called "cozy" game. It's one of those relatively-short-yet-memorable indie genre titles.

What do you do when you have a week off because you were meant to go on vacation but instead ended up with covid?

Read even more of this tripe and play Metaphor: ReFantazio, I guess.

There's a lot to be said about how hollow, nonsensical, or unintentionally hilarious the plot is, but I want to focus on two specific aspects:

Gaslight, Gatekeep, Girlboss or How to Turn Your Protagonist Into An Avatar of Greed

( Warning for discussion of sexual assault and stupid plot points. )

I'm honestly only critical of this because it is the best selling novel of the past decade. It's packaged as feminism, and I often hear about how the second book handles trauma. Instead, one of my antagonists is now golden-brown haired and believes she's entitled to the world after escaping a relationship. The setting and context is so different that no one will notice, so shh.

This has also been in my mind a lot whenever they mention wings:



This would all be fine if it were just treated as stupid porn. I need to stop reading/watching things that I don't even like, lol.

I need to get romantasy out of my head.

The problem is I now have to hear about it often at work.

I ended up going back and trying to read ACOTAR; it's surprisingly readable after Fourth Wing in the sense that it's better written. Still, I wouldn't recommend it unless you are actively into that genre.

More importantly, I am now firmly of the opinion this genre is isekai for adult western women. It is the exact same formula: Normal person, who is nonetheless ~special~, is taken elsewhere, given immense powers, and has a love interest completely devoted to them with little effort on their behalf. 100% wish-fulfillment fast food media.

The thing is, people never talk about Sword Art Online as if it's actually good literature. A portion of the fans of romantasy are aware that this is junk food and will say as such, but then I personally get to hear raving about Fourth Wing while I'm trying to not bury my face in my hands because I have lab gloves on and that would be a safety violation.

Although I'm perma-banned from the bookclub, they talk about it enough that I've picked up a lot of that.

For it's part, isekai quickly ended up devolving into parody, deconstruction, and absurd niche situations. I'm curious how something similar would look for romantasy, but the cravat there is the opposite gender roles make it more complicated.

As such-- It's fascinating to me how these two genres mirror each other in how they apply the gendered archetypes with the roles flipped. These roles are ancient: They go back not just to Beauty and the Beast, but ancient Greek mythology, with Cupid and Psyche, but particularly the story of Persephone and Hades which this crowd is particularly obsessed with. When I was a child, I was shown 7 brides for 7 brothers as fun, harmless movie, and that one is based of the rape of the Sabine Women, a Roman mythos repackaged for the 1950s.

I suspect this is this is not innate, but more like an Ouroboros eating it's own tail. These stories can be see as a reclamation by rewriting the emotional stakes and focusing on female desire rather than only her subjugation. These are often stories which are strictly patriarchal, with Beauty and the Beast being written to prepare women for arranged marriages.

I fear it could almost reinforce the idea some regressionists have that women want to be controlled and will automatically fall for many with a chiseled jawline and a dominant aura. There seems to be little actual evidence that is what women desire in reality; for one, numerous people do not find these stories appealing at all. My assumption is this is due to the lifetime, if not centuries, of romanticization of captivity media. Often in these, the heroine holds his heart hostage in return, being the only individual he confides in. Sometimes, she can even be his "weakness," as having bonds wcan be framed as something for an antagonist to exploit if she gets captured again and used against him. This gives her an intimate power on top of her active powers she's usually granted magically. Still, this is always done within the context of script written by her captor, or more accurately, these ancient archetypes.

And none of that is inherently wrong. It’s fantasy, and honestly, partially just porn. It's a medium that allows for the exploration of these themes in a safe place, and what is embraced in fiction can be vastly different from real life. Presumably, most readers can separate these two concepts.

Still, these are often written poorly while being promoted in every bookstore and library out there. I went to check out a book from the library, and a pile of Maas books were stacked next to the self-checkout machines for people to grab on their way out. Many of the non-Maas romantasy stories seem to be inspired of the men ACOTAR, and thus, the Ouroboros continues to devour itself.

This makes me hungry for a deconstruction, but at the same time, it would be need to strike at the heart of these concepts.


And so, just an attempt to try to map it onto what isekai has done:

( This is honestly just rambling at this point )


For it's own part, ACOTAR deserves it's own section here:
The plot of the first book is seriously Beauty and the Beast with more masks and less fur, there's even a curse Tamlin is under that he must fall in love with a human woman or be doomed.

However, the execution is maddening. Instead of telling her any of this, they devise a whole plot involving making her think she's being held for a crime she committed against fae kind. She's a bit of a dumbass, so she never questions why she's getting better treatment than the lower fae servants despite being a prisoner. Or way, for her crimes, she's living in a luxury suit and eating dinner with the high fae.

The hilarious part is the twist is that it's not true love magic in the fairytale sense, so all of that was pointless! It's instead literal trials of love, administrated by a malevolent fae queen. For some reason, whenever the heroine fails one of them, it's Tamlin's emissary Lucien, not Tamlin himself, who gets tortured. By that I mean he's literally physically tortured, because sure, why not!

As there's no magic love involved, they could've devised a plan where they didn't even need her to actually fall in love. Lucien - as he's the only standout character in this and deserves better - could've been teaching her how to act so they could pull off fooling the whole thing. The plot could've been sabotage and gathering information on how to pass the trials considering the stakes are "or else the whole Spring Court is doomed to be my slaves for eternity." There's a different type of subversion!

Honestly would've been hilarious if, in the core plot, she feel in love with Lucien since he's normally the one actually helping her and literally bleeding here anyway. All of that plotting and withholding information, and so she falls for the assistant! It's kind of crazy that didn't happen to begin with, but then, Lucien is allowed to be funny, something forbidden by these love interests for whatever reason.

Also, guess how many female fae of note there are in this book? Just the main antagonist!

Sure, there's a random servant woman, but she has no real role in the plot. Hm. Empowerment!

All that aside, I will say Fourth Wing is the tamest of all of these I've read, as Xaden (Xader? Xmen? Xanax? I can't be bothered) still has that controlling edge, but it's far less severe in comparison. Also, she's not kidnapped by him.

Now for more positive media I do actually like:

Re: Zero starting Life in Another Genre

Re: Zero is finally reaching season 4 in the anime, which means arc 6. This is so far my favorite one in the text, so I'm excited to see what the anime will do with this particular mindfuck. Each arc follows a slightly different set of main characters, sometimes with Emilia not even present in the cases of 3 and 7, and to compare the two more psychological arcs so far:

Arc 4: Subaru, Emilia, Beatrice, Otto, Garfield, Ram, Roswaal, Echidna
Arc 6: Subaru, Emilia, Julius, Ram, possessedfoxscarf!Anastasia, Beatrice, Meili, Shaula, one of the 3 fragments of Gluttony

As you can see, I consider it my favorite despite how my favorite character isn't even core in it! And it has Shaula, who is admittedly somewhat annoying, but also easy to ignore when reading it in any case.

It deals heavily with memory, death, and often combines the two in fascinating ways. One of the more interesting fantasy concepts it introduces, without giving too much way, are the "Books of the Dead." These chronicle anyone who has ever lived and died, and if you read them, it temporarily places you into their life and into their psyche. This, however, has massive impacts on the reader as it can make it difficult to separate their own self from what they absorbed within the book.

Less seriously, I was laughing because, almost immediately after this announcement, they did this:



Now, this looks far more like a low risks school-based otome than an isekai! Much less one known for it's brutality!

This is smart on their behalf, because while Rem largely made the series it's money, I'm convinced the author is a massive troll and kept on her comatose on purpose afterward. ( Cut for a brief spoiler from arc 7 )

So, Arc 6 doesn't have Rem yet, and it doesn't really focus much on Emilia's relationship to Subaru either like Arc 4 did. What does it have? A significant focus on Julius, who undergoes a character arc involving addressing his own insecurities and repressed emotions due to living as a knight who shut such concepts down. It also, due to the level of history in the tower, makes him address the true history of the country he has dedicated himself to. Turns out, history taught to students if often embellished and cuts out the negative parts, how realistic!

And Julius has hilarious become a fujo magnet, something I'm going to guess male-based isekai generally don't have. I will say he is the starting point of when the series fully takes off, as prior to that I was uncertain what it's intentions were. Then, Subaru decides, due to Julius being the polite and elegant person he always is, that he must be a rival for Emilia. Now, this is frankly ridiculous even by first impressions, but the resulting aftermath ends in a duel where Julius easily defeats Subaru without lifting a finger and humiliates the whole Emilia Camp. (Important lore note: These camps are actually political factions and Julius belongs to the capitalist Anastasia's) After that, Emilia effectively tells Subaru to get lost because he's embarrassing them and keeps on trying to force his emotions on her despite how she doesn't even know what he's talking about, which rightfully feels invasive.

Everything after that forces him to grow as a person, and I was almost internally cheering at the end of season 1 when Subaru ends up having to join up with Julius, and even lets him borrow his eyesight. This wasn't for shipping reasons, but just the sheer amount of change it displayed combined with the "fuck you" it was to the toxic type of archetype of the rival guy who exists to make the protagonist look better in these things.

But that + rivals to allies + how Julius literally fights with rainbow lights and internally seems to like Reinhard as an idol to multiple degrees makes it easy to see how he's fujo bait.



And I do agree this one would be shocking for that reason!

It also occurs to me that, none of this will be helped in this arc by how Julius is under a similar condition to those swallowed by the White Whale in Arc 3. (i.e. the infamous "Who is Rem?" memes at the time) As such, Subaru is the only one who remembers him.

I've long given up looking at the reactions to the anime as it goes on, so I am a little curious how the Rem obsessed people have been taking all of this, but... it's probably the same as NGE fans obsessed with Rei who ignore all other context and prefer to think Kaworu doesn't exist.

Ngl, I would play that ridiculous otome game. I'm sure it would have some hidden darkness in there somewhere. (I note that Ferris is includes as Ferris, and given a trans flag colored phone? Well, that one is a completely different landmine. I keep on wondering how close we are to Brisket pt II. Both given a lore reason for why they're female-presenting, but also... Ferris canonly wishes in front of a mirror to be a girl every day and gets quite upset if you use the dead name. Things I just file under cultural differences. More importantly, who let Otto bring his dragon to school?! ... and I guess just ignore how Subaru is the only one of these characters who should still be in school, lol, they're adults.)

Finally, the song I am obsessed with at the moment:



"House of the Rising Sun," contrary to the rest of this post and what it might sound like, has nothing to do with Japan. It's actually an American (English?) folk song of sorts, of unknown origin. The Animal produced the most popular version of it, but honestly... I like this one more, the voice of the female vocalist is incredibly powerful!

And now for the final film, and I can hopefully put this to rest. This series truly can't survive when it's not aiming for child-level stories contained with an environment she's already familiar with.


Fantastic Beasts and the Secrets of Dumbledore: Now Actually Gay!

( Read more... )

There is one positive to all of this: Somehow, this has inspired me to start writing more. I got inspired to create my own world with both kelpies and technology, and somehow find it much easier to write than the material I've wanted to write before.

First a word on how this all started:

I believe I've mentioned before that I have a coworker who has a particular focus on sorting us all into Harry Potter houses. To this point, she believes the Pottermore quiz, as vague as it is, to be the ultimate decision maker.

Depending on which questions I get, it gives me either Ravenclaw or Slytherin, and I was henceforth forced into Slytherin because "we have too many Ravenclaws." I objected to this as, although I have no problem with fanon Slytherin, canon Slytherin is in many ways the exact opposite of me, and there's not a single Slytherin I actually like. The response to this is always "but Snape!" ... you mean the judgmental slime ball who spends the majority of the books harassing a child over something his father, someone the child never knew, did?

From the start, this made me not the most fond of this set-up. Worse, we had a non-binary coworker who openly objected to Rowling, and their trans bf once tried to explain to this individual in detail how this can reinforce certain ideas, promote her work which generates money for her, as well as make trans individuals feel unwelcome. She didn't really seem to engage in this all that seriously, and now just adds a cravat that Rowling sucks.

This thankfully died down some, due largely to this individual going to maternity leave, but then it recently came back to light due to some newer coworkers who weren't part of the last wave of forced-housing mechanics.

That non-binary coworker quit out of stress some time back, but at one point afterward I did try to make the argument that, if we get a trans coworker, it might seem unwelcoming to them. (Or like we just have bad taste or make people assume stereotypes, like do I want people to assume I'm some kind of ladder-climbing magic racist? No.) I did reflect on this, as I felt like I might be that person they warn you about, being over-sensitive and considering people who may exist in the future to the point of ruining the moment, but then... I personally consider myself agender and was never part of these discussions. More recently, JK Rowling also decided to attack asexual people, and she has begun to paint gay men who support the larger LGBT+ movement - as opposed to the LGB only movement - as pedophiles, so I've had quite enough of this.

As such, I objected subtly this time, and when it was suggested we "bring the board back," I pointed out that not many people are really into Harry Potter, but since it did increase engagement, we have some AtLA fans and that might be less uneven since we, as a science lab, do have a lot of Ravenclaws.

As there are several people who adore AtLA, this was received positively by just about everyone but that person, and now we have an AtLA board. I somehow went from Slytherin to an Air Nomad. Not sure how that is possible, haha, but we all agreed that, not only is this board more even, but it reflects the people who got each one surprisingly well.

... but, I guess the way I suggested that could be seen as either Air gentle suggestion or Slyth manipulation depending on how you want to look at it!

Random aside, but it's kind of funny that Air Nomads are vegetarians, and the 3 of us who limit our consumption of meat to various degrees all got assigned air. And that was of the only 3/4 of us who got it!

I won't lie, I am honestly thrilled that it worked, as every single time we went back to the Hogwarts houses, I tensed up in dread. Whereas, in Avatar: The Last Airbender, every single group has heroes and villains, and it's more about ideology and how you approach different situations and problems than the base and weirdly inconsistent traits in Harry Potter.

Still, I decided to see if the films focusing on adults, outside of all this hogwarts house nonsense, were less frustrating.

All of this is relevant because it highlights two of the core problems that have always existed within Harry Potter's writing:

( A note about the series and Rowling as a whole before getting into the 2nd movie )

What was the purpose of that long write-up? It's because it's highly relevant for the next part, as these problems are amped up to 11 in Fantastic Beasts. It becomes apparent none of this is a fluke.


Fantastic Beasts and the Crimes of Wizard Hitler

If the first movie was merely mediocre, this one is a complete mess.

( Read more... )

I was going to include the final movie in this one as well, until I realized just how long this has already gotten. Oops, I am good at ranting about Harry Potter.

This has been a sad week.

Apollo was never the healthiest cat. He nearly died on multiple occasions, and at one point needed surgery to save his life. In recent years, he's had elevated kidney levels, as a result of the previous urinary issues damaging them, and questionable thyroid results. He was only 10, but sometimes had difficulty jumping and would use his claws to climb up on many things.

My mom often "joked" that he had already used up 8 of his nine lives, as she was always surprised he was still alive.

Still, he was often active and alert. He was consistently sweet, always being next to me when I was feeling ill and usually wanting pets and cuddles above all else. He was more dog-like in some of his typical behavior, as he was warm and friendly. He would never hide when not feeling well, and even at the end stayed in the living room instead of hiding. During one of his urinary incidents, I feel like he went up to me and meowed "help me!" as he seemed to understand humans could fix it, even if he was terrified the vet.

I remember when he was a kitten and used to play tag with humans by running back and forth happily.

They said he had fluid built up in his lungs which can be caused by pneumonia. It isn't 100% certain though, as there can be other causes of that. I ran She kept on reassuring me that "cats hide it really well." I would guess that, combined with the toll the past issues took on his body, he couldn't fight it off.

I took him to the regular vet a day before, and then ran a blood test on him to determine why he wasn't eating. I got a call back the next day saying the tests had too low of a yield to be read, and they needed me to bring him in to draw more blood, but by that point he had already passed. I did run him to med vet that morning, but some point between when I picked him up and when I got there, he was gone. Considering the noise he made when I picked him up and how his legs were already stiff, I almost wonder if he took his final breaths then.

He was such a lap cat that the world feels emptier, and so many tiny things feel wrong. I'm used to him waking me up every morning to try to get food earlier. I'm used to him jumping up next to me to curl up and sleep next to my pillow every night. I'm used to him sitting on my lap or trying to grab attention when I'm at the computer by walking on the keyboard.

He would often try to join in video games, and made some interesting choices during FFXIV trials and raids for me.

I wouldn't say Abra was close to him, but they got along and would often play with each other. Abra has been meowing sadly as if looking for him, and I found him sniffing the spot on my bed where he always slept.



RIP Apollo, a sweet, beautiful cat who suffered too much in this life. Hopefully he's at peace.

( Some photo spam )

The end at last. I can't believe I managed to do all of this without ragequitting at having to resize too many screencaps!

( Read more... )



Annnd that's it. Almost. This version came with an interlude called "The Eternal Calm" so I'll post final thoughts + that short in another post.