SeeDarkly™

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.

I didn't go to look during the last week of June to see if Bloomingdale's did something for Pride like they'd done in previous years, but when I rode by June 22 and July 4 I didn't see any LGBTQIA+-related thing. I don't know if it was apathy or cowardice.

I've put up a ton of stuff on my Flickr since I last mentioned it: a lot of window displays (33 photos), some cemetery photos from May, a graduation photo, and a shot of hydrangea.

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I've been doing a lot of driving lately and working in a new-to-me fandom and have been getting so bunnied. It's been a long time since I've been spinning at this output. The night of July 4th, I got and wrote down a 600-word piece. And 1870 words on a WIP.

The number of times recently when I was reading the cover copy summary of a fantasy book and get interested in the plot... and then it gets to the part about the protagonist's attraction to so-and-so and I realize it's a romantasy and put it down... way too many. And it's almost always a dark, illicit, or unwanted attraction.

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My left ankle is doing well! It barely hurts. I left off the compression/support sleeve altogether today because it was making the top of my foot hurt and I was fine. I'm looking around and walking much more carefully and with more awareness though.

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I tried the first episode of season 1 of Peacemaker and bounced off it hard. I didn't even make it all the way through the first half. Didn't like the characters, didn't like the tone, it didn't make me care.

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My current WIPs are Encanto. No idea if anybody here is reading my Encanto fics, but it's what I'm doing.