yuki

Having seen Lazarus to the end, I like it better now. I would've been happier if it didn't wait to explore who these characters are until the final episodes. It hits better on the second watch, knowing them now, and you pick up seeds it came back to later.

Toonami's marathon of the original Japanese today makes me regret seeing the dub first, because so many characters have so much more personality and often sass in the Japanese voice acting, like the AI helicopter in the clubbing episode, Popcorn Wizard in general, or Axel saying, "O. ne. gai?" with such attitude. I like the characters better in the sub! I especially like Axel better.

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I worried that all the hype might contaminate my view of Sinners when I saw it, and I was correct. I had issues with the pacing and tone shifts, and the major action sequence was sometimes an incoherent mess for me. Sometimes I was bored. ( spoilers ) But it's cinematic, some of the scenes are really great, and the music is lit. I probably would've enjoyed it a lot more if I saw it in a dark theater on a big screen with the speakers up instead of on my TV at home.

But I fully support less corporate, more original passion projects with different points of view and something to say.

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I watched Thunderbolts* via several reactions on YouTube and mostly enjoyed it. Something character-driven where it doesn't feel like CGI has eliminated all feeling of weight? Yay! Having so much done practically makes a big difference for me in the action scenes. The emphasis on mental health gave a nice angle, and it being a sympathetic view is much appreciated considering how Thor was treated as a joke in Endgame. The humor felt more appropriately used, instead of destroying or undercutting a lot of emotional moments like in many Marvel projects in recent years.

I like Bob, and Lewis Pullman does a great job, though I do side-eye Marvel for his presentation. The oversized and soft clothing, the floppy hair, his angsty, tragic white boyness.... It suggests Marvel is aware of certain things.... I'm amused that some fic posits that Bob's body had to have been reworked in many ways, since his drug abuse should suggest that ( spoilers ) I'm curious to see how Sentry is deployed in the future given all the risks using him invites and how OP he is.

It was nice seeing Bucky getting a heroic, hopeful-sounding musical accompaniment as he rides up on the motorcycle. The Winter Soldier theme was very, very cool, but it was a horror story. The movie seems to find the idea of Congressman Barnes as ludicrous as I do.

I didn't like the 14-month time skip at the end. It glosses over a lot. And why does Bucky look awful in it?

I'm very tired of Marvel movies having characters get thrown around several times in ways that should seriously injure or kill them, even the super soldiers, but they're always fine afterward.

I've seen some things online that say that ( spoilers ), and I agree. ( spoilers )

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Checking out the recent volume of translated My Hero Academia has me back on that, and some recent developments in it make me feel like the author has course-corrected on or justified some things I had problems with previously. It's nice to get out of the section where the art was so busy I sometimes had no idea what was going on.

A problem with getting back into MHA is seeing some online fans convinced that Bakugo Katsuki never did anything really that wrong, and the ways he's improved are enough to negate all the bad stuff in his past and how he continues to be a bit of an a-hole. They're like, "God, a character bullies another child for several years, including burning him at times, and tells him to jump off a roof and kill himself, and you haters will never get past that? He apologized! (Once.)" Correct, I won't. Some of them still wish he was the protagonist.

Like I'm not thrilled by online fans convinced that the MCU's John Walker never did anything really that wrong.

Watching My Hero Academia AMVs on YouTube have given me a greater appreciation for Deku's evolved fighting style, specifically the kicks, which he started using and developing after the ability he was given was too powerful for his body so he kept tearing up and breaking bones in his hands and arms and needed to shift some of it to a different part of his body as he trained. (Deku continues to learn and adjust over the seasons, but the kicks started it.)

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I've also followed the Murderbot TV show through reactions on YouTube and enjoyed it. Having David Dastmalchian in it certainly helps. That season finale was really something, and I'm glad it's getting a second season. The PresAux team didn't make much of an impression on me in the books, aside from Mensah.

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I'm not used to having so much new stuff to watch and think about over a summer.

From dine:
Post a song from the year you turned 12


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A Perfect Circle's "Delicious," a song about the schadenfreude of leopards eating the faces of those who voted them into power, came up on my Shuffle today, and it hurt to think A Perfect Circle's 2018 Eat the Elephant album is so relevant again in 2025.

Encanto gen: “One Reason We Don’t Get Bruno Drunk”   [@ AO3]
RATING: PG-13.
SUMMARY: It’s a funny story! Drunk Bruno swears it is!
NOTES: Bruno’s language is saltier when he’s drunk with the “adults” than it is in my other fics.
Thank you to akira17 for beta.


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I've been watching My Instant Death Ability is So Overpowered, No One in This Other World Stands a Chance Against Me! [Sokushi Cheat ga Saikyou sugite, Isekai no Yatsura ga Marude Aite ni Naranain Desu ga]. A school bus from Japan arrives in another world ruled by a sage who kills the adults and claims the students will train as sages. But one student, Takatou Yogiri, already has a power....

The massive body count would usually bother me, but so many of the characters are such murderous a-holes that I'm often saying, "Die," along with Takatou. Sometimes even before him. It's self-defense every time. Sane people who heard about someone who could kill people instantly would not mess with the guy, especially when he just wants them to leave him and his companion alone as they travel, but these folks are determined to poke the bear, often while giving some long arrogant speech. This show could be used as an illustration for "fuck around, find out."

I don't entirely like the show but find it weirdly entertaining?

This book fought me. There were so many times I nearly put it down for good, but some online reviews said it got much better at about 50% of the way through so I slogged on. It does pull off something pretty cool at the end, enough for me to raise the rating from "did not like it" to "it's okay" but not enough for me to rate it higher or feel like the effort to get there was entirely worth it.

There are some great scenes! Punctuated by long stretches where I was so bored. How could a book about a lesbian highwaywoman seeking revenge on the industrialist who had her family and friends murdered when she was a child--only she survived the massacre--have boring stretches? And yet.

The writing is florid and sometimes nearly blurry. Metal from Heaven's main viewpoint character often sees the world somewhat off because she's deeply allergic to ichorite, a metal that she was exposed to a lot at the foundry she and her family had worked at that is now being laced into everything. When close to it or in contact with it, it hurts her body in many ways as well as overlays a nearly hallucinogenic slant to everything she sees. ( spoiler )

It might've been nice having more POVs than just hers.

This book throws a lot of superfluous details at you... then reveals much later on that not all of it was superfluous. Some transitions were abrupt and awkward. There are so many names in this--people, places, religions--that it can be hard to keep track of who is who and what is what, so an appendix would've been nice.

Some of the twists were very clever, but one major one absolutely failed at my suspension of disbelief. I was not able to go along with it.