sleepysaur

How does one go about getting back into fandom when they hate the toxicity associated with sites like Tumblr and Twitter and refuse to wade back into that mess? I just kinda faded out of fandom but I do miss it. Dreamwidth community stuff mostly only seems to have exchanges and bangs and shit from what I can tell, which are nice, but not really what I'm looking for.

Is it gonna come down to waiting until hopefully fandom culture shifts toward my preferences in a few years? I sure hope not. Or rather, I do hope fandom shifts enough away from dogpiling people for ships and whump that it's seen as unusual when it happens. But I also hope I don't have to wait years to enjoy fandom again.

I really liked it. Second half of this anime was far better than the first half, but by now I'm interested enough that I'm considering looking for the manga so I don't have to wait for the next season to continue the story.

Bakugo got way more interesting toward the end, even if some of it I was spoiled on. I think the thing I'm most interested in right now is "where does Bakugou go from here??"

And since I'm now through... it's time to discuss OPs!!

Since there's some good quality here, it's hard to pick the best OP, so let's start with the worst one instead: OP4, Odd Future. It's not bad or anything, and it did grow on me a bit, but it just feels kind of... off. Maybe someone more knowledgeable than me could explain what I'm picking up on there. I'm not sure myself.

The next-worst one is OP2, Peace Sign. I like the song a whole lot! I could listen to it for days at a time! Actually, I kind of did for a while after I finished the sports festival arc. So yeah, great song there. I just don't think the visuals are as good. It spends too much time on characters stretching, I think. There are a few little things I like about it though, like how it's dark and shadowed from the clouds when we first see Todoroki stretching but then they blow past and he's in the sun.

Next worst, right in the middle, is OP5, Make My Story. Which I want to have higher, except I like the other two so much as well. The song is a real bop, the whole sequence feels really dynamic, I love the shot of Yoarashi, and the shot of Aoyama's navel laser, and that shot of Endeavor that cuts to a shot of Todoroki, and the one with All Might that zooms out to show Bakugo and Midoriya... okay, why did I put this below the other two again? Oh, right, purely personal preferences. There are a couple things I dislike because I just don't like them even though there's nothing inherently wrong with them. For example, that close-up of Uraraka and her facial expression and body language. Blargh, that specific form of communicating "cutesy" you see a bunch in anime is something I don't like looking at, even if cute in general is fine with me. See? Stupid personal preference.

As for the last two... well, I'd put OP1 (The Day) over OP3 (Sora ni Utaeba), but I need to talk about them together because one of my favorite things about OP3 is in comparison to OP1. So in OP1, you have Midoriya looking at All Might's back in awe and reaching toward him. This is how he feels about the ideal All Might represents: he wants to be a great hero who saves people with a smile just like All Might, but it feels impossible. And that is all that All Might is to Midoriya before everything. A symbol of his dreams, something incredible and unreachable. To reach out to All Might is to reach for something you can't actually grasp. That All Might faces away from Midoriya, only slowly turning toward him, emphasizes that distance between what Midoriya dreams of and what he actually has. Of course, that All Might is turning toward Midoriya at all is huge: this means All Might isn't quite so unreachable after all. But to even be able to reach him is so incredible that you can't help but see it as a BIG DEAL.

But then in OP3, things are different. This time, All Might comes to Midoriya himself. This time they face each other. That's meaningful enough if you're still only looking at All Might as a symbol, but this time around, All Might is also a person. A person who acknowledges Midoriya, whose smile grows when he sees him. And Midoriya doesn't look at All Might in awe this time, but instead he familiarly smiles the way you would when a loved one drops by. And this time, instead of Midoriya reaching out for the impossible, he and All Might both extend their arms and take each others' hands in a gesture of strength and power, as Midoriya's arm shines with One For All. It's very appropriate for the growth Midoriya goes through at this stage of the story, and UGGHHHHH I could fangirl about the first fifteen seconds of this OP all day! Oh, I also really like the song choice. And the color blue. And there's a shot where Tsu drops in out of nowhere and something about that shot is very appealing to me... but those first fifteen seconds!! swoon

As for OP1? Yeah, there's a lot of good stuff in there. Great song of course, but I think my favorite part is the bit with the focus on the notebooks. The part where they're flashing on screen, yes, but also that quick moment right before we see young Bakugo and young Midoriya. That flash where you see the notebooks raining down, timed perfectly with the music... perfection! Actually, that's a lot of what works so well about this OP: the music and visuals match up so amazingly well, even compared to the other OPs. I am incapable of listening to this song without imagining this OP. The other songs I can listen to without imagining their accompanying visuals, but not this one! They're too closely linked. That's what gives OP1 the top spot, for me.

I may think about the EDs at some point too, but for now I'm just gonna stick with "ED1 and ED5 are the best EDs."

Stay tuned for more thoughts, this time more fandom-related! You wanna know how I feel about the SHIPS? Well I can tell you how I feel about the ships! But not until later.

So I got through My Hero Academia season 2 recently, and I'm thinking about it a bit before I move on to season 3.

It is certainly an example of a show where "it gets better" applies. Not that it was BAD early on, exactly, but it took a while for it to get really good. It wasn't something where I was all, "oh boy I have GOT to watch the next episode!" for a long time. It took me a while to just get through season 1. I got more interested when we hit the sports festival, and the hype grew from there.

Character-wise... Midoriya is a great protag and I love him. I also really like Iida, and I've been pretty sure for a while that if I got into shipping for this fandom I'd be shipping those two. It's not one of the juggernaut ships, but after looking at AO3 it seems popular enough. I really like Tsu too. She's not as major a character so the show delivering a good story about her internship was a nice surprise. And of course I love All Might. How can you not love All Might?

I unfortunately got a bit spoiled on season 3. I have a pretty good idea of what's coming. I'm sad because I would have liked to see something like that 100% spoiler-free. Getting spoiled on this when I did made aspects of late season 2 very interesting to think about, especially regarding some of Bakugo's words and actions... but I'd rather this be stuff I'd pick up on during a rewatch, not the first time around. Sigh. Too late for that, unfortunately.

I quit Tumblr. For good. I can't take it anymore.

This may well be one of the greatest decisions I have made for a long time.

I am... reading a bunch of books, mostly, but after getting through a couple of those I'm also ready to slowly start getting into My Hero Academia! Like, literally about to watch the first episode! What will I think of it? Only one way to find out!

(I was gonna do the whole song, but this is a hard one to write parody lyrics for)

That's great, it starts with a campaign,
Harassment and anon hate
And users always throwing shade

Slaves to algorithms, watch your fandom schism
Site serves its own needs
Folks won't curate own feeds
Complaining at porn, ships, gore, no, all
The hammer starts to ban 'er
Whether pure or not, tagged or not
No more on the app store, speeding up the content ban
With female nipples no more and a worthless bot
Right wing US government looking
FOSTA/SESTA breathing down your neck

Post by post, users baffled, blamed, silenced, flagged
Look at that art gone, fine then
Run to, Pillowfort, Mastodon, even Newgrounds,
It'll do, save yourself, serve yourself
Sites serve their own needs, no backups guaranteed
But we've got Archive of Our Own in the right, right
That idiotic, catastrophic, dying site, ignites
Feeling pretty psyched

It's the end of Tumblr as we know it
It's the end of Tumblr as we know it
It's the end of Tumblr as we know it and I feel fine

I've done a bit of Smash in spare time. World of Light is a fun adventure mode, I'm glad they added it. I'm not very good at Smash but I'm trying to do as few of these challenges on Easy as possible.

Did you get the new Smash? Got any favorite characters to use?

Move is tomorrow. Not much more I can do right now, so I think I'm gonna mess around and try to find stuff on here.

AFTER the move... well, Smash will take priority, but I might go ahead and watch My Hero Academia! I've been scared to as a Tumblr user, since I ship Dash/Danny over in Danny Phantom phandom land, and I saw enough posts to figure out shipping a bully/victim ship makes you Bad and Problematic and Okay To Harass in Purity Tumblr's MHA fandom, but I'm not doing fandom there anymore so who cares if it turns out I want to ship the BAD ship?

I might not even ship it. Who knows? Not me. I haven't seen any of it yet after all. But I MIGHT.

A crosspost from Tumblr. Written in October 2015 for the Danny Phantom Ectober event.

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The Box Ghost slowly flew over Amity Park’s warehouse district in search of his next haunt. His favorite warehouse had recently been closed and cleaned out, much to his disappointment. He needed to find a new haunt, filled with just as many wonderful boxes as his old one.

As he looked over the warehouses below, something caught his eye. Something wonderful. Something that, given his current lack of a proper warehouse haunt, he was sorely lacking.

There, in the middle of the main road, was a plain-looking cardboard box.
( Read more... )

A crosspost from Tumblr. Written in October 2015 for the Danny Phantom Ectober event.

---

Mayor Montez stood as straight as he could behind the town hall podium. It was still hard for him to believe he was dealing with ghosts, of all things, but the strangeness of it all wasn’t worth worrying about. What was important was dealing with the situation as it was, in such a way that the voters would appreciate it and reward his efforts.

“Citizens of Amity Park,” he began. “I thank you for coming to this town hall during these frightening times. It is vital that we all work together and not lose hope. If we succeed at that much, we are certain to make it through this trial.” The crowd smiled and applauded. Good, Montez thought. They believed him, which meant they had faith in him, which meant they still liked him enough for reelection in the next voting cycle. Probably.
( Read more... )