picori | Network

In The World is Dancing, the setting is beautifully realized, the animation is excellent, and the writing is... serviceable. I'm going to keep watching this for the history lessons and the lovely dance scenes, but it's not going be one of my top picks of the year.

Jaadugar: A Witch in Mongolia, though, is the complete package. It's another great setting, combined with a unique art style, and it may not get as auteur-y as The World is Dancing but the script is an order of magnitude better. This one will probably be on the list on the best things I've seen this year. (Not on my Hugo ballot, though, since this is straight historical drama, no actual witchcraft.)

Sparks of Tomorrow got picked up by Netflix, which I don't currently subscribe to.

Recommendations from Iwamoto-senpai turns out to be about bishōnen with flower-themed supernatural powers, so already not my thing. Bishōnen who are allegedly in middle school, though the title character looks and acts like he's about 30. Plus the school is run by the military, this is a few years before Japan kicks off WWII in Asia by invading Manchuria, and the writer seems quite enthusiastic about the characters getting into uniform and using their abilities for the greater glory of the increasingly militarized state so nope nope nope nope nope.

Red River is actually in Anatolia, not Mesopotamia, but still, an interesting and unusual setting. It's a question of whether it can become the grand sword-and-sandals epic that the OP promises before I get too annoyed by the heroine who has to repeat every new piece of information back in her internal voice, distracted by the off-brand Vivaldi incidental music, or driven away by the "misdemeanor assault is the first step on the road to true love" school of romance writing. I'll try one more episode.

The Ghost in the Shell is almost a period piece too, being a re-adaptation starting from the beginning of the manga and tearing away the '90s cyberpunk vibe to return it to the look and feel of the 1980s. And it does an excellent job. I'm not sure I ever saw all of the first movie; I only recognized one scene in the remake, but like the new version of that scene much better. It really reminded me a lot of Patlabor, which shouldn't be surprising since they're of a similar vintage.

Other things there were moments that reminded me of that were more surprising: The Italian Job and The Wolves of Willoughby Chase.

Saga of Tanya the Evil is still Saga of Tanya the Evil. There's been a movie in the interim, which I should watch since Crunchyroll has it available, but it was easy to pick up the thread again.

Goodbye, Lara is billed as a tribute to the Hans Christian Andersen story, but it steers midway between that and The Little Mermaid in the premiere. The sea witch in particular looks like a Disney villain and borrows Ursula's line about how she's just helping, when she clearly has an ulterior motive. Unlike Ursula, though, she seems genuinely disappointed by how Lara's first try turns out. I think the main thing to worry about is I'll be much more interested in what's going on with her and certain other undersea events which are barely explained than I am in the potential teenage romance that this story is going to focus on.

Dara-san of the Reiwa Era is a comedy about a pair of gender-nonconforming siblings and a newly reawakened half-snake goddess with giant boobs. If you think this is going to be one of those shows which consists of being crass and loud as a substitute for being funny, though, it's about as far from that as possible. The humor is mostly observational and the whole vibe is more like a solitary retiree starting to open up to a couple of neighborhood kids. If this season weren't so full of good stuff I would probably watch more of this.

Also if this season weren't already so full of good stuff, the buzz about Kaiju Girl Caramelise and Grow Up Show would get me to check them out.

senmut

So I have a bootleg of Wicked! and have sort of read the first book, and plot points of the second.

I do not like the books (sorry folks) but loved the musical. So, this year I bought the movie 2 pack.

Folks, I thought I couldn't love anything more than the stage production. I was WRONG. I love the additions, the expansion on characters, and OH MY GOD they went there!
( minor spoilers )

immortalje posting in

dailyicons

Today's prompt is: accessory

• You have 2 days time to submit an icon for this prompt (in other words, until prompt 2908 gets posted)!
• Prompt 2904 has been closed.
• If you have any questions regarding the prompt, feel free to ask in a comment.
• To submit an icon you simply reply to this post with the following information:
Icon:
Claim: (only necessary if it's a specific claim)
Status: (e.g. #1/10 - number of icon completed/table size)

Pre-formatted

autodach

My thoughts in handy list format

• The boss fights were great. The best part imo.

• Other enemies were a snoozefest. The vast majority are the same two enemy types.

• Very linear and discourages exploring. That’s not a bad thing in general necessarily, but not what you’re looking for in a Metroid game. The areas are not interconnected, instead accessed via a hub area. No routing or pathfinding is required of the player.

• The hub area is terrible, the worst part of the game. It’s an empty desert with no visual stimulation and no music. It’s huge. You have to cross it frequently, and there’s a late-game goose chase that takes place entirely here.

Now all of that is bad enough, but here’s the kicker: You can pay 20€ for an amiibo that lets you listen to music in the desert. I’m not kidding. I fully believe they made this area bad on purpose. They made it huge and obnoxious and no fun, so they can sell you a DLC to make it more bearable. Fuck.
Needless to say I won’t be purchasing any amiibo.

• The game introduces you to a handful of NPCs who provide mission control and even join Samus in some battles. They’re unremarkable except for how

Story spoilers

they all die. In the final area, there is a sequence of fights that each end in one of your companions nobly sacrificing themselves so Samus can go on. I found this an elegant way to get rid of the characters the game introduced so the next installment doesn’t have that baggage, as well as a good opportunity for drama (“It’s been an honour!”).

…and then it turns out they all survived after all. Yay?

…

…and then they all die for real in the finale. The emotional impact - small as it was anyway – is gone thanks to the fakeout, and there’s no postgame. I watched them croak stone-faced, lol.

• The final cutscene was nicely constructed and animated. Dignified. Reminded me of the Prime 3 ending.

• Some bits had a good idea but weren’t thought all the way through.
For example, one boss has a cinematic phase that’s clearly not meant to be a challenge but looks and feels cool. The problem is that it’s the first phase, and the rest of the fight is actually pretty hard, so you have to redo the cinematic stuff every time you die in order to try again. It gets old fast. Could have been fixed by placing an autosave after the first phase.

• The different areas are fun and distinct. In the steampunk electricity factory area, the constant rain and lightning even ties into the gameplay.

• The controls, interfaces, and maps work flawlessly just like the previous Prime games.

• Remnants of scrapped content can be seen frequently. Things like a lengthy tutorial for skills that get never used, or the game going out of its way to make sure you get an upgrade that you also never need.

The worst Prime, and one of the worse Metroids overall. However, we are talking about one of the best video game series here - it’s easy to lose when your competition is timeless classics like Super Metroid and Prime 1. I think Beyond is a solid game overall, just not a very good Metroid.

elasticella posting in

femslashfete

( You're about to view content that a community administrator has marked as possibly inappropriate for anyone under the age of 18. )

elasticella posting in

femslashfete

( You're about to view content that a community administrator has marked as possibly inappropriate for anyone under the age of 18. )

althea_valara posting in

finalfantasy

The 35th anniversary of FFIV is coming up in one week, on July 19th! In celebration, there's a Prompt Meme on AO3! It's an anything-goes challenge, so we're accepting all kinds of submissions as long as ffiv is the main fandom.

Sign-ups are open!

https://archiveofourown.org/collections/FFIV_Prompt_Meme_35th_Anniversary

badly_knitted posting in

drabble_zone

This week's challenge is:

Unconscious

Reminder of Rules

Entries should be 100, 200, or 300 words exactly, excluding titles and headers.
Please place the body of your entry behind a cut.
Tag with the appropriate Challenge, Fandom, Type, and Ratings tags. If a tag for your fandom doesn't exist, leave a request on the Tag Request post and I'll create the tags you need. You can request as many fandom tags as you want.
You don't need to use the challenge word or phrase in your drabble, though you can if you like.
Each challenge ends when the new challenge is posted, but if you're a few days late that's still fine.

NEW RULE: DOUBLE AND TRIPLE DRABBLES ARE ALSO ACCEPTED ;)

Have fun!

Current Mood: tired
Current Location: my desk

zdenka posting in

femslashfete

( You're about to view content that a community administrator has marked as possibly inappropriate for anyone under the age of 18. )

oursin

Flitted past me yesterday something about 'village mysteries what is the attraction' and as it appeared to be a podcast DO.NOT.WANT I scrolled right on past, but did think about the question.

Which also resonated with something I saw on somebody's post about a village-set mystery which was that as a mystery it was somewhat subpar and pretty contrived and one got the impression that actually, the author would have been a lot happier writing about the squabbles of village life without actual mayhem.

And what people say about reading certain mysteries/thrillers/series not such much for the detection/puzzle aspect but for the people/communities/whatever that they are happening among.

Maybe there is no market anymore - or perceived to be no market? - for novels of small community shenanigans and hostile feelings over who does the church flowers and problems with incomers and so on and so forth (?decline of the middlebrow, o, come back, Provincial Lady).

So if some new writer rocks up to an agent or editor and Shows Promise, the agent/editor will make encouraging noises but say, could you not have the village schoolmistress Fight Crime?

I also wondered if this afflicts other genres and people who write sff are being besought to Make It Romantasy. (In bygone days when I was writing sf I got as far as Talking To An Editor and they had Requirements, though at least it was not that.)

*As I commented during my Jane Austen binge-read, she is surely the ancestress of the country-house/village murder-mystery. (Why did no-one bop Emma on the bonce? or put poison in Mrs Norris's tea or push her down the stairs?)

volkameria

inchoatewords asks: "If money were no object, describe your perfect vacation."

I answer: Easy. Japan tour. I want to hike Mt. Fuji, see so many different landscapes, go up to Hokkaido for snow crab and snow and hot springs, go down to Kyushu for beaches, see Masamune's castle, go to shrines, take bullet trains, see the giant Gundam statue, eat tons of food, attend a baseball game, go to Akihabara for the hell of it, and take over a thousand photos of it all.

juniperphoenix posting in

fanart_recs

Fandom: Star Trek
Characters/Pairing/Other Subject: Kirk and Spock
Content Notes/Warnings: n/a
Medium: cross stitch
Artist Website/Gallery:

vulcartist

Why this piece is awesome: This is the fight scene from "Amok Time" in cross stitch, complete with shadows and highlights and the slash across Jim's shirt. I can't imagine how many hours this took!

Link: Amok Time cross stitch

feurioo posting in

tv_talk

Assortment of black and white speech bubbles

Welcome to the weekly roundup post! What are you watching this week? What are you excited about?

oursin

Happy birthday,

emperorzombie!

nanila posting in

awesomeers

It's challenge time!

Comment with Just One Thing you've accomplished in the last 24 hours or so. It doesn't have to be a hard thing, or even a thing that you think is particularly awesome. Just a thing that you did.

Feel free to share more than one thing if you're feeling particularly accomplished! Extra credit: find someone in the comments and give them props for what they achieved!

Nothing is too big, too small, too strange or too cryptic. And in case you'd rather do this in private, anonymous comments are screened. I will only unscreen if you ask me to.

Go!

m_findlow posting in

drabble_zone

( You're about to view content that a community administrator has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

proustbot

Melissa Scott, Finders (2018) -- During a space-salvage operation gone wrong, Cassilde encounters a piece of alien technology that confers unto her supernatural healing and otherworldly sensitivities. Now hunted by others for her miraculous body, Cassilde and her two partners search for something with which to bargain for safety and find the key to the imprisoned AIs that nearly destroyed the galaxy long ago.

( I disliked this novel )

With all that said, there were things I enjoyed about the novel. A lot of the book is just Cassilde and her partners hanging out on their spaceship or excavating space-ruins as licensed scavengers, and their day-to-day lives are described in lovingly tactile SF detail. (There's an incredible brief scene where the characters go through a time-warp that physically scrambles them so badly that they lose their fingernails -- and then immediately regrow them.) In fact, given the book's lack of interest in being suspenseful or dramatic, I kind of wish that it had entirely jettisoned its must-save-the-universe plot and instead pared everything down to the domestic travails of Cassilde's immediate household.

P. G. Wodehouse, Galahad at Blandings (1965) -- Uncle Galahad tries to smooth the way for three sets of young lovers orbiting Blandings Castle.

Nobody here acts like a plausible human being -- in particular the mild-mannered guy who is forever accidentally stealing pocket watches and punching police officers -- but normal human behavior is besides the point. The pleasure of the novel, as usual with Wodehouse novels, is the arch narrative voice describing the wild behavior as normal and unexceptional.

He did not look the sort of young man from whom one would have expected stories about kittens called Pinky-Poo or indeed about kittens whose godparents had been less fanciful in their choice of names, for his appearance was distinctly on the rugged side. Tough was the adjective a stylist like Gustave Flaubert would have appied to him, though being French he would have said dur or coriace. He was large and chunky, he had been one of the Possibles in an England international Rugby trial game, and a fondness for boxing had left his nose a little out of the straight and one of his ears twisted. If he had been your guide to the Bronte country or the Land of Dickens, you would have probably felt a qualm at the thought of being alone with him on a deserted moor or down a dark alley, but your apprehensions would have been needless, for despite his intimidating looks he was inwardly, like Tipton Plimsoll's Officer Garroway, all sweetness and light. Off the football field and outside the ring anything in the shape of mayhem would have been unthinkable to him.

He had written the words "There never was a naughtier kitten than Pinky-Poo" and was leaning back in his chair with the feeling that he was off to a good start but wondering what twists and turns his narrative would now take, when the doorbell rang. [25]

The Wolf of Wall Street (2013) -- This movie is nearly three hours long. For the first half, I was thinking about Scorsese's directorial choice to keep all the scenes running a little too long, so that we repeatedly pass through the punchline and linger in a deflating aftermath until we-the-audience stop giggling at the zingy jokes and start feeling uncomfortable and sad instead.

Then we got to the scene where Belfort is trying to talk to his PI at the country club when his quaaludes take effect, and the film immediately kicked into a sublime comic gear, and I stopped noticing the draggy pacing. The shot of Leo DiCaprio steeling himself before he rolls down the brick stairs is incredible. (Runners-up: Jonah Hill explaining why he married his cousin; Jonah Hill promising never to eat at Benihana again.)

A profound Letterboxd review for the movie reads: women who love this movie are sexy but men who love this movie cannot be trusted

creepy_shetan posting in

comment_fic

[ If you're interested in being a Tuesday-Thursday guest host, you can sign up here. Thanks! ❤ ]
↑↑↑ Available dates:
July 28 & 30
August 4 & 6
August 11 & 13

Hello and welcome to this week's Free for All! ^.^ There are no themes to follow for prompts or fills. Btw, if you perhaps missed a prompt theme that you liked, or you've had any ideas that didn't really work with Tuesday's or Thursday's posts, then today's your chance to prompt 'em. Be free, and have fun! ✎

Just a few rules:
1. No more than five prompts in a row.
2. No more than three prompts in the same fandom.
3. Use the character's full name and the fandom's full name for ease in adding to the Lonely Prompts spreadsheet.
4. No spoilers in prompts for a month after airing, or use the spoiler cut option found here. Unfortunately, DW doesn’t have a cut tag, so use your best judgment when it comes to spoilers.
5. If your fill contains spoilers, warn and leave plenty of space, or use the spoiler cut.
6. If your story has possible triggers, please warn for them in the subject line!

Prompts should be formatted as follows: [Use the character's full names and fandom's full name]
Fandom, Character +/ Character, Prompt

Are today's prompts not catching your eye? No worries, because we have plenty of older prompts that just might do the trick! You can browse through the comm's calendar archive (here on LJ or here on DW) for themed and Free For All posts, or perhaps check out Sunday posts for Lonely Prompt requests. (Or, you can be like me, and try to save interesting prompts as you see 'em... and then end up with multiple text doc files full of [themes + links + prompts] that you can easily look through and search for keywords.) Multiple fills for one prompt are welcome, by the way! Oh, and you are very likely to find some awesome fills to read as well, and wouldn't it be nice to leave a comment on those lovely little writing distractions? ~_^

We are on AO3! If you fill a prompt and post it to AO3, please add it to the Bite Sized Bits of Fic from 2026 collection.

If you are viewing this post on our Dreamwidth site: please know that fills posted here will not show up as comments on our LiveJournal site, but you are still more than welcome to participate. =)

If you have a Dreamwidth account and would feel more comfortable participating there, please feel free to do so… and spread the word! comment_fic

A friendly reminder about our posting schedule: Themed posts for new prompts go up on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Saturdays are a Free for All day for new prompts of any flavor. Sundays are for showing Lonely Prompts some love, whether by requesting for someone to adopt them or by sharing any fills that you've recently completed.

morbane posting in

jukebox_fest

Dear DJs, thanks for your prompts, submissions, and pinch hits!

All pinch hits are either in, or on schedule to be posted, so we are hopeful we can open the collection for reading/viewing/listening on the 12th of July. To ensure a pinch hit buffer, we will open at 11:59pm New York time.

You are very welcome to post further treats - see prompts here and post to the collection here (make sure you fill in your recipient's name).

juniperberry

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

Style Credit

Base style: Basic Boxes by branchandroot
Theme: Acidic by timeasmymeasure

nubivagant

Network

Summer anime premiere notes

Wicked!

Prompt 2906: Accessory

Today's prompt is: accessory

Review: Metroid Prime 4: Beyond

Challenge #103: Argument

Roundup: Neat

FFIV Anniversary Prompt Meme!

Challenge # 509: Unconscious

[#102: neat] Utena fic: under the roses I hid my heart

2 or 3 families in a country parish, and then someone murders somebody*

AMA: Day 11

Amok Time cross stitch by T’Kay Vulcartist (SFW)

Speak Up Saturday

(no subject)

Just One Thing (11 July 2026)

Torchwood: Wake up call (Challenge 508 - Good reason)

some of her insights are too revolutionary to make it to the public

Free for All Saturday, Week 28 DW Edition]

On track for reveals - treats welcome!

Unfinished fic

Style Credit

Most Popular Tags